Teacher lawsuits over forced grade inflation won’t fix unfair grading – here’s what could

Some teachers are resisting efforts to give students grades they believe they haven’t earned. skynesher via Getty Images by Laura Link, University of North Dakota After refusing to give some students grades they hadn’t earned, high school chemistry teacher Toni Ognibene sued the Clovis Unified School District in California for allegedly retaliating against her. The lawsuit was filed in December 2023. In 2020, Michael Ramsaroop, a teacher at the Academy of Hospitality and Tourism High School in Brooklyn, New York, sued his principal, his union and the city’s Department of Education after he was fired following a series of disputes that began when he refused to change his students’ grades. In 2018, fifth grade teacher Sheri Mimbs sued Henry County Schools in Georgia. She claimed she was fired in 2017 for objecting to the assistant principal’s directive to change a number of zeroes she reported for students’ missing assignments. The district had a policy, she asserts, indicating that a failing grade of 60% is the lowest possible score a student can receive on any particular assignment or exam. Ognibene, Ramsaroop and Mimbs are among a growing group of teachers rebelling against orders to change grades – and filing federal lawsuits...