>In my experience, public schools are under far more pressure to do this than universities are. A major part of this pressure is manifested in the tendency to s

>In my experience, public schools are under far more pressure to do this than universities are. A major part of this pressure is manifested in the tendency to standardize exams, leading to hyper-focus on exam prep at the expense of general learning. Funny anecdote, when I was in (public) high school my school district calculated your "GPA" with additive bonuses for honors classes and AP classes. If you pass an honors course, it adds 0.08 to your cumulative GPA, for an AP course 0.16, with the top students in the school district usually graduating around a 7 point GPA On top of this, the guidance counselors were really pushy about making sure every good student took every AP class available. Once I had to argue with a guidance counselor not to put me in AP history because I didn't like history. She put it on my schedule anyways and I had to go back and transfer out. Turns out teachers get bonuses, and the school gets bonus funding, when students pass AP exams. I would assume there's also GPA based funding for the schools, but I don't know of any specifics except that the schools are measured for 'improvement' which certainly hints at structural incentives for GPA inflation.