Discouraged from giving A's, but students are doing excellent work, what can a professor do? I know somebody who works in a department that discourages giving students A's. Basically, a few years ago, there was a professor giving everybody A's. The department was labeled as a "vacation spot" at the university. This led to a hardline stand on giving A's that is in effect to this day. If a teacher gives too many A's they have to first explain themselves to the Dean. If this continues next they talk to the VP of Academics

The problem is that there are students doing excellent work. However, my friend is worried that if too many students earn an A he will not be able to convince the department of the students' merit. Yet there is an ethical concern of artificially forcing down the grades and giving some poor chap a B+ due to political pressure.

Any suggestions?
Take special care defining the rules, previously, and stick to them. You should have a specific list of objectives and the associated grades. This is implicit on tests, more explicit on projects. For instance, when elaborating written exams, I usually try to cover the whole syllabus (for that part), with questions of different difficulties, for instance, 4 questions, one easy, two moderate, one harder. That way I can easily see who really knows the content and who is just coasting by...

If a student reaches all predefined objectives, that person earned an A. And you can easily prove it by showing that he indeed reached the objectives. It would be highly unethical not to give a deserving student an A for political concerns of some suit....