Why bother with long-term patterns? That penalizes teachers who wish to change. Do the norms class by class, and don't call it "degree of difficulty" (because there's the actual level of the class to consider as well) but simply relative position.

Grade inflation may not seem like a real problem, but I hear about faculty capriciousness constantly from my advisees. I would be delighted if someone would implement a system that could straighten out the inequity between the students in classes in which people who walk into class day one and announce that everyone will get an A of some flavor if all work is submitted and those whose professors actually grade.

Please don't think the above is fictional or hypothetical - it's an anecdote that I didn't get from advisee hearsay. A tenured professor announced it at an open meeting of the faculty and held his practice up as a pedagogical example for the rest of us.

I'm going to say something that is going to be branded as retrograde and elitist and awful. But that has never stopped me before:
We need to ask ourselves what grades are. Are they (A) a reflection of empirical measurement of work? Are they (B)a reflection of work vis a vis the particular student body of which students are a part? Or are they (C) part of a larger world of student performance? Because if your answer is A or C, I say that the fact that students get A's at Harvard or Princeton (Or Williams -- Go Ephs!) should not bother us one whit. One thing I've discovered teaching at state institutions -- my students want it both ways. From when I was a freshman in college, my history classes had 7-8-9-10 books a semester. If I assigned ten books in even an upper level history class at the last place I taught, I'd have a fast appointment with my department chair and dean. And let's not even get into the miasma of my student evaluations. And never mind the quality of my students' writing, analytical skills, etc. The fact is, at the same time, most of my students would find it (do find it) incredibly unfair that the fact that a kid goes to, say, Carleton, or even the U, gives those students advantages. I'm sorry -- it may not be the case across the board, and I know the best students that I have had could have gone on and competed anywhere, but the kids at Harvard and Stanford and, hell, even Amherst, (sort of), probably deserve those A's given their caliber of writing, quantity of reading, ability to and willingness to engage and absorb. (And if your answer to my question is B, and you do not teach at one of the schools in question, why do you care?) in other words, while I support rigorous grading in principal, why do people care about grade inflation in practice?
dc

Prof. Berube revealed on his website before the article came out that it was satirical. Even with my foreknowledge, I think the line "it would eliminate faculty capriciousness precisely by factoring it in" is a kind of give-away.

This grade inflation thing has always seemed like a non-problem to me.