Grade 'inflation' allowing failing students to pass, Suffolk CC Professor Nicholas Giordano warns
Long Island academic joins 'The Story' to sound off on how giving undeserving kids high marks is endangering the US.
A longtime political science professor warned many of today's secondary and post-secondary students are being failed by the education system in part because their grades are artificially inflated.
Professor Nicholas Giordano, of Suffolk County Community College in Selden, N.Y., said he tests each of his new students every semester with a simple four-question quiz – which he lamented usually results in mostly failing marks.
Most students could not name entirely correctly the Speaker of the House (Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.), the branch of government that declares war (legislative), the father of the U.S. Constitution (President James Madison), or the number of Supreme Court Justices (nine). On average, he said, there is an average 11% pass-rate for his test.
On Fox News Wednesday, Giordano said he follows up his government quiz by giving students passages from the Russian Constitution, and many pupils don't realize that they aren't reading their own nation's founding document.
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"So something is broken within the K-12 system. I notice because I've been doing this for the last 12 years, and it really has become a problem that's metastasized," Giordano, a Campus Reform fellow, said on "The Story." "And then I look at the proficiency levels and the absolute historic lows now, but even worse than that, these proficiency levels have been flat for about 30 years."
Empty Classroom In Elementary School. (Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Giordano has warned that low-performing, under-educated students have been passed through the system for years.
"We've created a system where we're just cycling students through the system, and that's become one of our biggest problems because we see what's happening," he said in recent remarks.
"We are the wealthiest nation – we're the sole superpower of the world, at least for now -- How long do you think that's going to be going forward if we don't fix this problem? And what really is mind-boggling to me and I can't seem to get a grasp on it, is why don't we speak about it as much as we should be?"
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A failing grade.
Giordano chalked up much of the issue to inflated grade-point-averages – citing the fact the average 1970s American GPA was 2.5 and in 2021 was 3.1 – while 40 years ago, there were a higher percentage of students at or above standards.
In the same way $1 in 2020 would have the purchasing power of about $1.15 in 2022 – revealing a weakening currency amid inflationary fiscal policy at the federal level – a higher GPA with less academic "power" portrays an inflated sense of aptitude.
"All we've done is create a system where we cycle students through so that they get the piece of paper. And this is something that has a critical effect on our nation that we cannot survive," Giordano said.
"We need a robust public education system. We need it because in education systems designed to give us a sense of civic obligation to teach us how to be productive members within society and instill some type of human decency. Without it, you don't have a civil society. And that's where we're headed right now."
Giordano added that the U.S. education system continues to falter as more and more taxpayer money is poured into it, showing that the problem is not entirely funding related.
"[T]he results are getting worse and worse and worse. But parents have woken up to it."
"We need to completely revamp the system -- we need to stop with the ideologues getting controlling education. We need to stop with the bureaucracy pushing the curriculums down people's throats, let teachers develop curriculums that want to teach and actually know what education is about. We need to get parents more engaged and we need to change the mindset of the student body."