The red flags of grade inflation have been flying above Nevada's education system for many years. More than one in four Millennium Scholarship recipients -- the state's highest-achieving high school graduates -- needed to take remedial classes upon enrolling at the state's public colleges and universities last fall.

These students completed their high school curriculum with at least a 3.1 grade-point average and won taxpayer-subsidized scholarships, yet they lacked the proficiency to take basic college-level English and math classes. Among all new students within the state's university system, 36 percent of enrollees signed up for remedial classes in the fall semester, and that figure doesn't include the thousands of young men and women who weren't able to sign up for the limited number of lectures available.

Clearly these students weren't adequately prepared for college, although their report cards said otherwise.

Now comes a new grade inflation alarm from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which administers the best gauge of national student achievement. On Thursday, the organization released "The Nation's Report Card," which reported that national reading and math test scores remain weak despite the fact that more high school seniors are taking upper-level courses and passing them with higher and higher grades.

About 40 percent of high school seniors scored below the "basic" level on the math test, and more than 25 percent rated worse than "basic" in reading. Only 25 percent of seniors were deemed "proficient" in math, meaning they could understand charts with different kinds of data. And only 40 percent possessed the language skills necessary to draw conclusions from an essay and relate their own experiences to the writing.

Meanwhile, these same seniors had a cumulative grade-point average of 3.0 -- representing above-average achievement. That figure is up 10 percent from the 2.7 grade-point average of 1990 graduates.

If more high school students than ever are completing their standard curriculum with B's, and more are taking and passing college-preparatory classes, logic dictates that standardized test scores should be up as well.

"The reality is that the results don't square," said Darvin Winick, chairman of the organization that oversees the national tests.

So what's happening in our nation's schools? For starters, grades don't mean what they used to. A "C" once represented "average" achievement. And even the most unprepared, underachieving students are allowed to advance through "social promotion" regardless of whether they're ready to study more rigorous material.

Passing marks are a new educational entitlement. So a B+ is the new C, and a C is the new F.

Additionally, in the Clark County School District and elsewhere, class titles don't accurately convey what's actually taught in the classroom. "Algebra II" might not get to basic algebra until the end of the second semester because the teacher had to waste three quarters re-teaching multiplication, long division, fractions and decimals.

"We are telling students that they're being successful in these courses when, in fact, we're not teaching them any more than they were learning in the past," Daria Hall, assistant director of the nonprofit Education Trust, told The Washington Post. "So we are, in effect, lying to these students."

Indeed. School systems need to stop rewarding mediocrity and failure with high marks and start being honest with students about their abilities. High school teachers shouldn't be expected to cover the basic material taught in elementary and middle schools.

If students haven't learned rudimentary math and English, they shouldn't be allowed to advance.

And parents from all walks of life need to have more choices in where their children are educated.

Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust, laid out where the country is headed without wholesale education reform: "What we're going to end up with is the high school valedictorian who can't write three paragraphs."