Exploring data-driven empirical approaches to monitoring the risk of grade inflation in high school achievement assessments

The purpose of this study is to explore the risk of grade inflation in high school grading system from a data-driven empirical approach. Specifically, a series of indicators for detecting the risk of grade inflation were derived from high school assessment result data including there were related with the grade inflation such as achievement level ratio, GPA, and the cutoff score by achievement levels. Furthermore, data analysis was performed to identify the characteristics of the indicators derived from this study and to comprehend the the assessment results of the high school in terms of the risk for grade inflation. Consequently, approximately one to five percent of the result of the high school assessment during 2022 were classified as “cautionary” with regard to achievement assessment monitoring. These cases were displayed a high A grade level percentage and GPA, coupled with lower cutoff scores for A grade levels in comparison to those of typical high schools. Furthermore, the high school assessments in which an extremely high percentage of A grade level tend to be characterized as very high GPA or very low cutoff scores for A grade. Based on these results, the implications of applying indicators for monitoring achievement assessment were discussed in order to prevent the phenomenon of grade inflation and to reinforce the achievement standard-based assessment system.