by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
February 9, 2026
For greater than three many years, grades in American faculties and faculties have been going up, up, up. A’s are extra widespread. Failure is rarer than it as soon as was.
On the identical time, scholar achievement, as measured by standardized assessments just like the ACT and NAEP, has stagnated or declined. Grades say college students are studying extra. Exams say they don’t seem to be.
Does this disconnect matter? Perhaps larger grades encourage college students to indicate as much as college daily and study. Maybe harsh grading discourages them. Perhaps we should always cease obsessing over tutorial rigor and focus as a substitute on different qualities we need to foster: good attendance, habits, participation and cooperation.
A brand new research delivers an uncomfortable reply. It finds that lenient grading, or grade inflation, is definitely harming college students, main not solely to worse tutorial outcomes but in addition lowering their employment prospects and future earnings.
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The research, “Simple A’s, Much less Pay: The Lengthy-Time period Results of Grade Inflation,” was introduced in February 2026 on the Harvard Graduate College of Schooling by economist Jeffrey Denning of the College of Texas at Austin. A draft paper was co-authored with researchers from RAND, the College of Maryland and the College of Georgia. It has not but been revealed in a peer-reviewed journal and should be revised.
However its findings are putting and construct the argument in opposition to elevating grades.
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College students who skilled extra lenient grading had been much less more likely to cross subsequent programs, posted decrease check scores afterwards, had been much less more likely to graduate from highschool and enroll in school, and earned considerably much less years later.
The financial value will not be small. Denning estimates that when a instructor doles out grades which might be considerably larger (0.2 or extra factors on a 4-point scale, the distinction between a B and nearly a B-plus), a scholar in that class loses about $160,000 in lifetime earnings, measured in current {dollars}.
That’s the impact of a single instructor, in a single 12 months. If a scholar encounters a number of grade-inflating lecturers, the losses add up.
Proof from two very completely different locations
The researchers examined college students in two settings: Los Angeles and Maryland.
Los Angeles Unified College District supplied information on nearly one million highschool college students from 2004 to 2013, a interval when commencement charges hovered simply above 50 p.c. The scholar inhabitants was greater than 70 p.c Hispanic, and failing grades had been widespread.
Maryland’s information adopted about 250,000 highschool college students from 2013 to 2023. Commencement charges exceeded 90 p.c, and the coed inhabitants was extra racially blended. Maryland’s information allowed researchers to trace school enrollment, employment and earnings, whereas the Los Angeles information ended with highschool.
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Regardless of these variations, the sample was the identical.
College students taught by lenient graders — outlined as lecturers who gave larger grades than anticipated primarily based on standardized check scores and prior scholar efficiency — did worse later in highschool. In Maryland, the place there was information by means of school and into the office, these college students had been additionally much less more likely to attend school or be employed, and earned much less.
Seeing the identical sample in two very completely different programs strengthens the case that this isn’t a fluke of 1 district or one coverage regime.
When leniency helps and when it does not
The research makes an important distinction. Academics who nonetheless saved A’s difficult, however solely made it simpler to cross — turning failures into low passing grades — did assist extra college students graduate from highschool, notably these prone to dropping out. That short-term profit is actual. For some college students, passing Algebra I as a substitute of failing it could preserve them on observe to graduate and presumably enroll in neighborhood school.
However the profit stops there. These college students don’t present long-term good points in school diploma completion or earnings. The leniency helps them clear a hurdle, however it doesn’t construct the talents they want afterward.
Against this, common grade inflation (lecturers who elevate grades throughout the board, from C’s to B’s to A’s) reveals no upside and hurts college students’ probabilities of future success.
Why good intentions backfire
The research can not straight clarify why larger grades result in worse outcomes. However the mechanism will not be tough to think about. In a category with a lenient grader, a savvy scholar might shortly notice she doesn’t want to review arduous or full all of the homework. If she earns a B in Algebra I with out studying the best way to issue or remedy quadratic equations, the information gaps comply with her into geometry and past. She might scrape by once more. Over time, the deficits compound. Confidence erodes. Studying slows. In school or the office, the results present up as decrease abilities and decrease pay.
As Denning put it through the presentation, there seems to be a “causal chain” of hurt, even when he can not measure straight how a lot much less college students are finding out or how behind they’ve fallen.
Don’t rush accountable lecturers
Elevating grades isn’t all the time a person teacher’s resolution. A 2025 survey paperwork the frustrations of many grade-inflating lecturers who say that they really feel stress from directors to adjust to “equitable grading” insurance policies that forbid zeros, enable limitless retakes and eradicate penalties for late work.
Lenient graders should not dangerous lecturers. The research finds they’re typically higher at bettering non-cognitive abilities. Their college students behave higher, cooperate extra, and are much less more likely to be suspended. Nonetheless, on this research, that’s not translating into higher life outcomes, as one would hope.
Stricter graders are typically higher at elevating college students’ check scores in math, studying and different tutorial topics. Regardless of that correlation, that doesn’t imply all powerful graders are good lecturers. Some should not.
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That is early analysis. Extra research are wanted to grasp whether or not there are related office prices from school grade inflation. And there are questions on whether or not boys react otherwise than women to inflated grades.
Academics battle to get college students to have interaction in studying, which is stuffed with setbacks, frustration and boring repetition. Perhaps low grades received’t encourage college students to do that arduous work. However this early proof means that inflated grades aren’t doing them any favors.
Contact employees author Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Sign, or barshay@hechingerreport.org.
This story about grade inflation was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, unbiased information group centered on inequality and innovation in schooling. Join Proof Factors and different Hechinger newsletters.
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