This is a scandal, assuming the exams being used are as easy as us oldsters imagine on the basis of our high school memories (and more of a scandal if, as I suspect they, are actually easier).
On the other hand, one of my favorite stories from grad school involved one of the professors in our program announcing the curve on a sophomore calculus test (it was really a course on mathematical methods in engineering that covered multivariate calculus, ordinary differential equations and Fourier analysis), beginning "A 68% and above..." and being interrupted by a student who objected, "Prof. Shatz that can't be right, 68 is a terrible score." For which the student was rebuked, with "When you're doing mathematics for real, you doing well if your right 1% of the time!"
Upon reflection, it is possible that what San Francisco is doing is simply being honest. Students arriving at the large midwestern state university where I teach almost uniformly seem to be under the impression that a curve modifies the scores on an exam to fit pre-assigned grade ranges, because evidently a lot of school districts decree that 90-100 is an A, 80-89 is a B,... so that when an exam proved to be too hard to assign a reasonable distribution of grades reflecting student ability on that basis, the teacher is obliged to perform some sort of scaling to fit the grades into the decreed score ranges. Perhaps San Francisco is simply dropping the pretense this involves.
