You just used different words to re-state the same assertion that achievement should be shoehorned into a normal distribution regardless of students' actual performance. Why?
> Grade inflation means you have no idea how poorly of well someone is because everyone gets a “participation” score.
As I argued above, a high GPA is not a "participation" score, it is an achievement score. It just happens that achievement at top universities is generally high across the board.
And frankly, giving everyone an A is a far more desirable outcome than pitting students against each other in an artificially competitive and high-stress environment where the alternative is group study and collaboration.