Parents who make a lot of noise insisting their children are special and need to be recognized as so eventually end up getting their way. That doesn’t make the kids any more talented or able than they already are. It does, however, reinforce in the parents’ minds the notion that their kid is some sort of special gift to be celebrated.

That’s not necessarily good for the kid, and could end up setting impossible expectations against which the child will never be positively measured. Such is the fight going on right now in Fairfax County where a group of parents is trying to alter the grading system to boost their kids’ grades.

I’m a product of the current system, one that has a grading scale requiring students to achieve a 94 average in order to earn an A. This group of parents says it’s an outrage that their kids aren’t measured under a system where a 90 gets an A, as in many school systems around the country.

As a Fairfax County student, you’re told you have a great opportunity to learn in a top school system–one that will challenge you and prepare you for whatever your next step may be. For most of us, that was college. That’s where the uproar begins.

The parents say a kid from a 90-percent school has a huge advantage because their GPA will be higher. Yes, averages will be essentially higher across the board, but at what cost?

If you only have to get a 90 for an A, what’s the point in working any harder than that? I know there were several classes I took in high school where I sweated out the final exam results to see if I was going to get to that 94, or at least the 93.5 that most teachers would round up. The key example here is freshman English, which was taught by Ms. Amaker. She had a policy stating if you received an A for each of the four quarters you were exempt from the final exam/presentation. You could also borrow one percentage point a quarter in order to boost your grade, the only catch being that you would have to pay it back next time. (Go from a 93 to a 94 this quarter, but be sure you have that 95 to be able to keep your A next time).

I rocked through three quarters with an A and worked hard in that fourth quarter to push through the final A. At 90 percent, I would have been able to slack off and still net the same result.

I went through my high school transcript to see just how much the proposed grading system change would have affected my bottom line. The result: I would have earned a 3.87 instead of a 3.67. That’s a five-percent overall boost for doing absolutely nothing, and doesn’t take into account how much less effort I could have put into the A’s I originally earned.

In fact, looking at the individual years shows a bigger effect. I would have finished freshman year with a perfect 4.0 vs. the 3.79 I earned. Sophomore year–3.71 vs. 3.57. The boost would have been best my Junior year, giving me a 3.86 instead of another measly 3.57. Senior year would have also sent me out on another perfect 4.0 vs. the 3.83 I actually earned.

In several Washington Post articles, the school system has said students don’t have a disadvantage when it comes to college admissions and in fact may get a boost from admissions officers. They say colleges know a county’s reputation, even down to individual teachers, and give a boost to Fairfax students that way.

But what about the effect on students’ minds? I left high school knowing I was a good student, but certainly not the top tier. I didn’t think about going to Princeton or Harvard, or even UVA. I knew I wasn’t that level. But a kid who gets boosted by the system to a 3.87 thinks he’s a great student who doesn’t have to work as hard to succeed. When he applies to college, not only is he now going against a greater level of competition (thanks to other students getting help), but may not truly grasp which schools might be a better fit for his academic future.

Once he’s in school, the kid still thinks it’s easier to get good grades. That means he doesn’t work as hard and suddenly finds he’s struggling in college. He calls his parents, who think of him as the 3.87 prodigy, and all three blame the college for being too demanding.

Perhaps we should take a step back and realize that challenging students is a good idea. It’s part of the point of school. You should learn your abilities and limits and how to push through that in order to get to the next level, whether that’s a C+ or an A. Changing the grading system to achieve those goals instead of forcing students to work for them is not the path to success for the county, parents or the students.

Too bad the school board looks like it’s giving in to those who want to be “Proud Parent of an Honor Student.”