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Like evolution and climate change, "grade inflation" is not "just a theory"
Something about the graduates struck me, though, and it was the fact that the valedictorian had a 6.5 GPA (on a 4.0 scale, you see). I remember when I graduated (from the same school) 21 years ago, and our valedictorian had a 5.0 GPA (on the same 4.0 scale), and a lot of us thought that was a bit ridiculous. So a 6.5, to my admittedly twenty-year-out-of-date sensibilities, seems even more ridiculous. (On the plus side, my nephew characterized the valedictorian as "ridiculously smart", said he's working on a patent (or two?), got a hundred fifty thousand dollar scholarship to ... somewhere, etc.)
In the program, they had asterisks next to names of students with 3.0 GPA or above. Over half the class has a 3.0 or above.
They also set off the first page as "honor graduates". A little less than a third of the class (123/400) was on that first page.
Maybe they're all just that smart. I hope so. 'Cause otherwise it really seems to me that having a third of the class on the honors page dilutes the significance of graduating with honors. Over half the class having over a 3.0 washes away the meaning of a 3.0. As of now (if not earlier), the only thing a "3.0 or above" means is "graduated in the top half of their class". They should really start recognizing people with a 5.5 or above, from the looks of things. And if they still say they use a 4.0 scale, well, they should stop saying that.
...
As a side note, I don't know if anyone has challenged grade inflation as "just a theory". I read a (fiction) story called "Political Science" in my recent Analog magazine, in which a Department of Homeland Security agent needles the protagonist repeatedly with the "just a theory" line: the Big Bang is "just a theory", evolution is "just a theory", global warming is "just a theory". In the story, they've just finished spending trillions of dollars on a research project that depends on the Big Bang "theory". They've outlawed all drugs based on "so-called Darwinism" (except that all of the science of biology is based on "so-called Darwinism") and then are surprised at the various plagues sweeping the country. Coastal cities worldwide have been evacuated due to rising ocean waters, and the ice caps are melting -- "just a theory ... could be a natural process". (Spoiler warning) Oh, and that research project? The protagonist is trying to stop it based on "just a theory" -- which, gosh, turns out to be true -- but he fails, and we release a gamma-ray burst with the energy of multiple supernovae that obliterates all life on Earth and (eventually) in a thousand light-year radius. Bummer.
I dunno if anyone has challenged grade inflation as "just a theory", but if they have, I'm here to tell you, it has happened. :)
As a soon-to-be college graduate looking back on my high school experience,
I can say that this is not only not a theory in the least, it seems to be
encouraged by school policy's in some cases.
Not to be pedant or anything, but evolution IS a theory -- the best we have
so far. That's the main difference with religious gibberish: this theory
is testable and refutable , not some truth some fluffy god lands you with.
@ J. Robertson:
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol XII No. 2