Want a 3.8 GPA? Major in Education
by Frederick M. Hess • Sep 12, 2011 at 8:05 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
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ShareThere are perennial concerns about the rigor and quality of teacher preparation. These have become so familiar that ed programs have taken to shrugging off the critiques as uninformed or anecdotal. Well, University of Missouri economist Cory Koedel has provided some new, clear, and pretty troubling evidence about the lack of rigor in teacher preparation. In "Grade Inflation for Education Majors and Low Standards for Teachers: When Everyone Makes the Grade," he compares grade distribution in education departments to that in twelve other university departments. Turns out that ed faculty are much more generous when it comes to grading (full disclosure: my shop at AEI published this "Outlook").
Koedel compares the distribution of course grades at two state flagship universities, Indiana University and the University of Missouri. At both universities, the average GPAs for the other twelve majors were roughly similar, while education stood as a stark outlier. Indeed, the average education GPA was 3.66 at Indiana University and 3.8 at U. Missouri. At Missouri, he reports that "every single student received an A (that is, 4.0) in one out of
