Parental Grade Grubbing

The public schools in Fairfax County, Virginia have succumbed to a concerted lobbying effort by parents to relax the grading scale. In the future, a 90 will earn a kid an A; from 1981 until now, a score of 94 was required.

This is a cancerous way of thinking. It's a straight line from this piece of news to the recent news that Merrill Lynch paid its managers million-dollar bonuses, drawn from taxpayer bailout funds, for wrecking the company. This is rewarding class status, not achievement. Parents in a top tax bracket who can afford to own a house in Fairfax County are trying to guarantee their children's entry into the same tax bracket. They are not improving their children's education, only their paper credentials.

A depressing story. Check the paragraph about community leaders worrying that real estate values will fall if the reputation of Fairfax schools suffers. Inflating the public school bubble to support the housing bubble.