UT Researcher Warns Grade Inflation Hurts Students’ Long-Term Academic and Career Outcomes

University of Texas associate professor Jeffrey T. Denning argued that grade inflation in K-12 schools and colleges may boost short-term outcomes but undermine students’ long-term academic and career success at a Tuesday event at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

During the talk — hosted by the Center for Education Policy Research — Denning pushed back against arguments that grade inflation only occurs on college campuses, pointing to a 2025 study he co-authored analyzing grades awarded by teachers at K-12 schools in Los Angeles, California and Maryland.

“They’re like, ‘This is a college phenomenon. This is not a high school phenomenon,’” Denning said, referring to how grade inflation is often discussed in education policy debates.

“It’s a bulk phenomenon, is our argument,” he added.

The study distinguishes between two types of grade inflation: mean grade inflation, which refers to the rise in average grades across a class, and passing grade inflation, which occurs when a higher percentage of students receive a passing grade for the same or lower quality work.

In both Los Angeles and Maryland, Denning and his coauthors found that mean grade inflation in K-12 schools was associated with lower scores on standardized tests, reduced high school graduation rates, and decreased postsecondary enrollment.

Further, students exposed to mean grade-inflating teachers experienced an estimated $162,000 reduction in lifetime earnings, driven by lower employment rates and earnings in the years following high school graduation.

“Mean grade inflation is just you don’t go to a college at all. You don’t get an associate’s degree, and it actually looks like you don’t go to get a bachelor’s degree,” Denning said. “It reduces your enrollment.”

Passing grade inflation, by contrast, increased the likelihood that students graduated from high school and initially enrolled in postsecondary education — particularly two-year colleges. However, Denning said these gains did not lead to higher rates of college completion or sustained improvements in long-term earnings.

“For passing grade inflation, we have a slight positive effect on getting an associate’s degree. It’s very small,” he said.

Denning also examined how grade inflation relates to teacher quality. He found that teachers who tended to inflate grades more had lower cognitive value-added — meaning their students showed smaller gains on standardized tests — but slightly higher noncognitive value-added, such as improvements in behavior and engagement.

But Denning cautioned that the observed relationship between grading practices and teacher effectiveness was not “a causal thing.”

“It’s not super strong,” he said.

On Tuesday, Denning also mentioned the ongoing conversations around grade inflation at Harvard, referencing an October report from the College that found the grading system is “failing to perform the key functions of grading.”

Denning argued that reports like Harvard’s underscore the need for empirical evidence on how grading practices shape student outcomes over time.

“It’s an active policy question,” he said. “It really depends on what the effects of this are in terms of how you should think about the policy.”

—Staff writer Mahpara Faatin can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @mahparafaatin.