aurants would fall to 42 percent of the total — meaning that one-quarter of all restaurants now displaying an A would be downgraded to B.
The point is not to quibble over the cut-off point, but to acknowledge that switching the (seemingly) arbitrary threshold slightly results in a major change in our perception of how well restaurants are doing.
|Cut-off score||Share of restaurants graded A|
As an alternative to the coarse three-letter system currently used by the Department of Health, the graph below puts the current scores on the more familiar academic scale by subtracting each point in violations from a restaurant’s initial score of 100 percent. For example, a restaurant with 13 points in violation would score an 87 (100 − 13 = 87). As in a school setting, a score between 90 and 92 receives an A−; between 93 and 96, an A; between 97 and 100 receive an A+, and the B and C grades are broken down similarly. In addition to being more recognizable, a more nuanced grade system provides more precise information to consumers, and addresses the reality that not all A’s are equal.
Although the current grading scheme is imperfect, it does offer some consumer protection and ought to be applauded. According the Department of Health, tainted restaurant food accounts for more than 10,000 visits to the emergency room and 5,000 hospitalizations each year; providing customers with easy-to-access information may help them avoid joining those totals.
In rethinking the grade system, we should keep in mind that any grading systems necessarily involves arbitrary cutoffs. Publicly available information does not provide any rationale for 13 points as the cutoff for an A grade, and requests for explanation went unanswered by the Department of Health. The distribution of scores around the 13-point cutoff raises questions, but these questions should not lead us to abandon the system of scoring restaurants completely.