View of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. (Photo: EQRoy, Shutterstock)
California’s Failing Schools: Everyone Gets a Trophy and 4.5 GPA
Grade Inflation, Cancelling SAT/ACT Requirements ruined California’s students
By Katy Grimes, July 20, 2026 7:00 am
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reports that average 12th grade reading scores were 10 points lower in 2024 than in 1992, and 12th grade math scores were three points below their 2005 level, the lowest level since that year.
Recent studies using data from LAUSD and districts in Maryland show students exposed to more lenient grading had lower future test scores, reduced pass rates in later courses, lower high school and college graduation odds, and meaningfully lower lifetime earnings (hundreds of thousands in present value per affected cohort). Easy grades create complacency that bites later, Future Ed reports.
National test scores tell the damning story. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (known as the Nation’s Report Card) results show reading and math proficiency cratering, with declines starting well before COVID and accelerating under leftist/Democrat control of education. Fourth- and eighth-grade scores have slid for years. High school seniors are hitting record lows, with huge percentages below basic proficiency.
However, red states that embraced school choice, phonics, and accountability are seeing better outcomes and less learning loss.
Blue state California ranks in the lower half of states on NAEP despite its size and spending.
California’s substandard high schools are graduating illiterate students who can’t do basic math. California’s graduation rate reached 87.5% for the high school class of 2024–25, significantly up from prior years and at or above the national average of 87%.
However, students’ failing standardized tests tells the real story.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress is the “gold standard” for comparing states. California, once the “gold standard” in public education, now lags the nation:
- Grade 8 reading: 28% proficient.
- Grade 8 math: 25% proficient.
- Grade 4 reading: 29% proficient.
- Grade 4 math: 35% proficient.
California’s high school graduates can’t read at grade level, and many can’t even read at middle school level. A quarter of California’s students can’t even do basic math. Yet they are “graduating” with high GPAs unheard of in previous years.
What happened?
In 2020, under Gov. Gavin Newsom, University of California stopped requiring the SAT and ACT in admissions.
But before that, California Governor Jerry Brown abolished the high school exit exam in 2015 when he signed AB 830 by Assemblyman Ash Kalra (D). Soon thereafter, the legislature abolished the exit exam as a graduation requirement when Brown signed SB 172 by Sen. Carol Liu (D). Diplomas are awarded based on coursework and credits, not demonstrated proficiency.
We are witnessing in real time what happens when everyone gets a trophy and a 4.5 GPA.
UCOP.edu reports:
“Because California does not have state-representative NAEP results for 12th graders in reading and math, we cannot track California’s trend with the same data source. Instead, we analyzed California’s Smarter Balanced Summative Assessments (SBAC) for 11th graders in English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics, administered annually since 2018 (with 2019–20 canceled due to COVID-19).
In addition, at the request of the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS), we examined A-G course performance of California resident enrollees at UC. This report presents findings from these analyses.
Our main finding is that California high school performance in English and mathematics has declined in a pattern similar to the national trend.
The University of California system is actively reconsidering reinstating SAT/ACT requirements due to clear evidence of declining student preparedness, especially in math. This shift follows UC’s 2020 decision to eliminate standardized tests, driven by equity concerns, pandemic disruptions, and a lawsuit.
Many parents and college faculty counter that high school grades have become unreliable due to grade inflation, and tests provide an objective, standardized signal of readiness.
Grade inflation has been real, widespread, and often counterproductive—creating a misleading sense of achievement while weakening actual learning signals.
Not that long ago, achieving a 4.0 GPA meant excellence, even perfection by some students. Graduating high school with a 3.5 GPA or higher guaranteed a student a place in college or university. However, grade inflation has made a 4.0 GPA far less rare than it was decades ago. In the mid-to-late 20th century, a 4.0 GPA, straight A’s on the unweighted scale, signaled genuine excellence or near-perfection.
Grade inflation made many students think they were excelling when they weren’t. And their parents think their kids are honor students, when they can’t read at grade level.
It doesn’t take an academic to question why high school GPAs grossly rose while standardized performance tests and college diagnostics declined.
Recently, over 1,400 UC faculty, many in STEM–including math department chairs– signed an open letter urging reinstatement, at least for STEM majors, citing students arriving unprepared, Edsource reported. Faculty reported needing to reteach middle-school math in college courses.
A UC San Diego report documented a 30-fold increase, 2020 to 2025, in incoming freshmen with math skills below high school level; 70% of those were below middle school level. Similar diagnostic issues appeared at other campuses like UC Berkeley.
UC’s Academic Senate’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools launched a faculty-led review in June 2026 of testing and A-G high school course requirements. Regents accelerated the timeline, targeting a recommendation by June 2027. Any change would likely apply no earlier than fall 2028 applications (entering 2029).
Notably there is a broader reversal trend in which elite schools Yale, Caltech, Dartmouth and others have reinstated tests after test-optional experiments showed predictive value for success, especially in quantitative fields.
Critics of testing reinstatement argue tests favor wealthier students with access to tutoring and could disadvantage underrepresented groups. Supporters, including many faculty, counter that high school grades have become unreliable due to grade inflation, and tests provide an objective, standardized signal of readiness. Pre-2020 UC data actually suggested tests could help identify strong students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
California high school GPAs have risen while standardized performance mentioned above have stagnated or declined in many areas.
- Districts pressured teachers to reduce Ds and Fs, allow unlimited retakes, drop zeros, or base grades purely on “mastery” without late penalties or behavior factors—often framed as equity measures post-2020 George Floyd.
- State adjustments lowered thresholds for “meeting standards” on tests (including Level 2, “developing” as passing in some contexts), inflating apparent proficiency rates.
- Studies in LAUSD, San Diego Unified show large gaps: high pass rates in classes but low proficiency on independent tests. One analysis linked lenient grading to worse long-term outcomes, including lower earnings.
Ending reliance on testing in college admissions and K-12 exit exams removed an important check, allowing inflated grades and weakened A-G courses to drive decisions, as acknowledged in Harvard Admits That Grades Have Lost Their Meaning. Without objective benchmarks, underprepared students enter rigorous UC programs and experience increasing failure and dropout risks in STEM, which also strains faculty resources.
This isn’t isolated to California, but California’s scale and ending testing, combined with grade inflation, amplified it. University faculty are now pushing back with data, not ideology. Reinstating tests won’t fix K-12 overnight, but it should better align college admissions with actual readiness, and incentivize stronger preparation.
The review process is data-driven, so outcomes will depend on evidence vs. prior “equity assumptions.”
A California native and Navy mom, Katy lives in Sacramento, CA.
Eventually the system will collapse. Parents will exit schools, teachers will be laid off, administrators will be fired and schools will return that teach reading, writing and arithmetic.
Here’s the result of teacher activism- a school district just “hired” a robot teacher. The cost is $57,000 – much cheaper than a real teacher.
Parents are mainly illegals today in K-12. They love the free babysitting.
Kids attend pre-schools today where they do not take out a chair, when playing musical chairs.
That is because “the adults” (aka government employee teacher union members) decided the losers might feel bad,. But that keeps also the losers from finding alternate real skills elsewhere, where they can still shine.
The entire game of musical chairs was a training ground, even for little kids. We loved playing it mainly because we all risked being losers, the numbers of losers was always 99%, so rather than feeling bad, we considered ourselves in good company with our loser peers since there were so many of us.
And with each game, the winner could change, with the alternating losers having no problem cheering the next winner. I have nothing but happy memories playing musical chairs……and I never won. I just remember having fun, enjoying the competition, and cheering the winner. I would learn nothing from today’s…. “everyone is a winner” ….musical chairs. Nothing.
Plus, we got the chance to observe the skills that made that one person a winner, so we could apply them in our own lives the next time. Just one more example of the insidious destruction of the American spirit from within by the rapacious, wildly out of touch teachers unions -the “adults” now in charge of our multi billion dollar educational industrial complex. Cranking out unimaginative drones for their own Democrat party’s agenda.
Love this.
Wish I had a time machine.
I guess you didn’t like my comment.
censorship is in effect at California globe
Grade and test inflation helps hide the failing system. I recently saw a news story where a kid back east had a 12 GPA!
Why not give every kid a PhD at birth?
“:Critics of testing reinstatement argue tests favor wealthier students with access to tutoring and could disadvantage underrepresented groups.”
That’s not the reason. Wealthier parents send their kids to private schools where they will actually learn something. They don’t send them to public school indoctrination camps.
And lets talk about what the Democrats sweep under the rug. Daily marijuana use has reached a 30-year peak among high school seniors, and the rate of daily use among 8th and 10th graders has risen significantly since 2018. Vaping is the dominant delivery method, with nearly 68% of 12th-grade users consuming marijuana via vape devices, contributing to the normalization of use and increased accessibility. 1 in 6 teens who use marijuana repeatedly can become addicted, and early use is associated with long-term deficits in attention, memory, and academic performance.
Research consistently links marijuana use to lower academic performance in both high school and college students. A major 2024 meta-analysis of 63 studies involving nearly 440,000 youths found that adolescent cannabis use is associated with lower school grades, increased dropout rates, and reduced likelihood of university enrollment.
Current NAEP Standardized tests are probably easier than previous versions of the test. Again, it’s only nature that these educators would rig the tests to cover their poor educational curriculum which in these Blue States are more Indoctrination as opposed to learning.
I am a retired English teacher…do you think I need to read this?
…let’s see…nope.
Socializing, not teaching or improving students, is the goal. Grade inflation attempts to hide the fact that these ‘teachers’ aren’t teaching anything except racism, hatred of America, and hatred of Western Civilization.