Parents who value grades over test scores could be missing out on a key indicator their child needs more support – and raises the possibility students are graduating without necessary skills, a new study found.
Teacher-assigned grades and standardized test scores usually signal to parents how well a student is grasping reading, writing and math skills, but the two measures “often conflict,” the report said.
While trends across the country show grades are increasing while test scores are decreasing, an online survey of more than 2,000 parents by researchers at the University of Chicago and Oregon State University found parents are less likely to invest in academic support when a child has high grades and low test scores. Similarly, parents are more likely to intervene when grades are low, even if a student is scoring proficient in standardized tests.
Many parents surveyed voiced resistance to standardized test results as a measure of how their child is doing in school because of cultural bias and appropriateness. Given the options to answer agree, disagree or neither agree nor disagree, nearly 40% said they believe tests “are biased against certain groups,” and 27% “see tests as reflecting a family’s income.”
Grade inflation may make families think a student is performing better than they are; along with a distrust of standardized testing may mean “there’s skills that we’re leaving on the table,” said co-author Derek Rury, assistant economics professor at Oregon State University.
“If it’s true that parents place more weight on information contained in grades rather than test scores, that has very big implications for the economy and the growth of skills [in students],” Rury said.
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The responses around testing confirmed previous research studies around parental skepticism of standardized testing, including how test questions often lean into upper-middle class white cultural knowledge and in later grades, wealthier students often performing better on the SAT and ACT because of access to better academic support and retesting opportunities.
In the survey, parents responded more positively to grades, with 71% saying grades are more important than tests in their decision making for their children.
Previous research found parents believe that grades “incorporate effort, behavior and compliance in addition to mastery,” the report said. But Rury’s study found parents also likely trust grading because it’s reported regularly throughout the school year and is more understandable.
Grades make performance comparisons relative to classmates, the report said, while test scores are reported annually – usually a year after they’re taken – and make national comparisons, which can be hard to understand.
Standardized test scores are presented with “histograms and numbers, and there’s multiple comparison groups, like my kid in the school district versus my kid nationally, and we’re talking about percentiles and ranks,” said Ariel Kalil, co-author of the study and public policy professor at the University of Chicago. “This is all very confusing to parents.”
Parents are more likely to accept a “familiar, frequently received signal” like grading instead of a “less familiar signal,” like test scores, the report said, “regardless of relative accuracy.”
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An emphasis on good grades, “may systematically mislead parents about true standing,” the report said. Grades can mask academic struggles and how well a student fully grasps skills – leading to an underinvestment in resources, according to the report.
Rury also called grades subjective and that “you don’t know what you’re getting.”
“Test scores, for all their flaws, are objective and the same for people who are in that testing regime, which gives us so many advantages,” Rury said.
Other studies have found similar results, including one in 2024 that found nearly 60% of grades don’t match student test scores and newly-released research from the University of Texas earlier this month that reported grade inflation can reduce a student’s future test scores, graduation rate, college enrollment and lifetime earnings.
Grade inflation is also being addressed at the higher education level, where instructors at Harvard University would only be able to give A’s to 20% of students under a new proposal.
“The real downstream effect of [grade inflation] is that you have people who are leaving school unprepared for the labor force. … That is a policy failure in the United States,” Rury said. “A big part of what school should do is prepare people with the skills they need to at least figure out how they’re going to be productive later on.”
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Part of better equipping students for the future involves reframing the importance of standardized testing, Kalil added.
“In a world in which we know that grades are inflated, and in a world in which we know that on average, test scores are highly valuable predictors of future outcomes, then we’re trying to get to the parents who are just missing the signal,” Kalil said.
If test scores were made more accessible to parents, the measure could be another trigger to encourage academic intervention. Further investment from parents could help level a playing field for all students when it comes to measuring the full extent of their proficiency, Rury said.
“For any kind of policymaker, it’s in their best interest to help parents kind of shift the weight from grades to test scores,” Rury said. “We want everyone to succeed, particularly low income kids, who I think are the population that’s really hurt by these test optional policies. Those high-grade, low test scores, kids could really benefit from interventions from their parents.”
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