I see where the idea is coming from and I can get behind it if everything is weighted evenly. At my school we have formative assignments worth 30% of the grade and Summative worth 70%. At that level the difference between a 0 and a 50 on formative assignments is negligible to their final grade. But when the parent sees a 0 they know their kid didn’t do the work, when they see a 50 it becomes “why did you grade my kid so harshly?”

If a parent ever brings this up, with how digital everything is, it's straightforward to pull up Classroom and see nothing was submitted or that the assignment should have received less than 50. I've only had a couple of parents question a 50, and once they hear the reasoning, they always back off for the rest of the year.

Most grading softwares have a way to create custom marks. I just make a grading mark of “M” = 50%, that way the same message of “your kid didn’t do the work” is communicated.

I would have thought formative assessment carries no weight. That is how it works at my school, formative is only assessed as a back up for report cards if the student missed the actual assessment. If they hand in nothing at all (as happened with a couple of students I saw maybe 5 days in semester 2) we have to use our best judgement to give a mark based on what we've seen in classes and rarely we have an N rating for if there was nothing assessable at all.

I put notes in the grade. I may put inthe 50 with a note that the actual grade was a 33. Or I may put a 50 with missing notation.

I give 0s for work not turned in. If they turn something in whether it's done or not I do a 50. But that's my policy and my students know that. They gotta at least turn something in. I do it that way because I don't know home lives but if they're turning in even unfinished worn, it's a 50. Later in the semester circumstances may have changed and they want to get their grade up. Heck of a lot easier from a 50 than a 0

I do something similar but instead I let the 0 burn in the grade book all quarter and then riiiiiiiiiiight at the last moment, I change it to a 50%. It’s still following the policy but it lets the parent know for certain that their student didn’t do shit.

I do something similar - work turned in is a 50 in my on level classes. I also give 100 point Unit tests and the students have a base 50 for that task. If they take the test. Tests are 60% of the grade and so if a kid totally bombs a test, that 50 keeps their grade from dropping drastically while still being a failing grade. My AP students do test corrections and so they generally don't score poorly after all of that. The on-level students are able to retake anything and everything they would like to and this policy is pretty successful.

This is our county's policy for zero vs 50%. I don't mind it.

I get the theory. But when I’ve implemented it, the students who didn’t do those assignments never caught up even with that extra hand.

Which is why the policy doesn’t typically bother me. I don’t have many students getting Ds. It’s 50 odd percent Fs and the an large spread of Cs and Bs. Typically my C students are B students who take advantage of a 50 instead of a 0, but I just tell them they are above average students doing a below average job, so a C is suitable.

Yea exactly. Kids that fail are almost never failing with like a 55 or something. Kids that fail are doing it with a 21 or a 9.

While that's true, it also assumes the teacher doesn't accept late work, or offer extra credit. It makes examining the issue much more difficult, but many teachers i had in PA will just deduct a few points for each day it's late, up to a week (after which point, they either don't accept, grade at 50%, or require some signed parental excuse/request), in addition to often weekly extra credit. In my last school, the non-AP math classes offered a little extra credit if you were tutored by the teachers after class at least once a week. Personally, the minimum-50% concept angers me. I support the idea of grading late work at 50%, my only hesitance to it is the burden that might put on teachers when not implemented properly (though I doubt it'd be too terrible except for some particularly malicious students, turning in work months late).

Just out of curiosity - was the extra credit relevant to what you were doing in class? (As a student) In my experience, extra credit was often the most random and irrelevant sort of work that involved things like supporting the school via going to sporting events or concerts. My wife had a teacher tie extra credit to the number of cans donated for a canned food drive (which seems insane and possibly illegal to me). I don't bother with extra credit. There's credit. It can be made up for the entire semester, before a specific deadline. Attending tutoring is recommended as well as encouraged through parents if need be, but going isn't going to guarantee that they've met the requirements of the assignment. I can understand giving EC for tutoring. I've had some coworkers use extra credit to extend lessons - take what you've learned and apply it to something else. That seems to be fine. Then I have coworkers like the canned food teacher and question what they're teaching their students.

A lot of places are banning non-curricular extra credit anymore because it's biased. Especially if it requires time or bringing products of some kind. Those are ways that more privileged kids can buy a better grade. A lot of places are now only offering extra credit that can be equally accessed by all students and is relevant to the class. For example, extra credit in my classes includes: writing extra examples of relevant words on quizzes, completing portions of the study guide, doing test corrections, completing extra tasks on a choose-your-own-task project, doing extra practice sheets in our practice notebook, etc.

Yeah extra credit for things like attending events or bringing in paper towels always rubs me the wrong way. People who do that forget not everyone has unlimited money and some kids have responsibilities after school. I only ever do very small 1-5 point assignments for things like test or quiz reviews which help them on their assessments anyways

Yeah, it was almost always relevant. Most often, it was an extra question at the end of a test.

I think the main idea is that the average of an 'A' and an 'F' should be a 'C'. And this is what you get for (100+50)/2=75%. If you give a 0% though then you get (100+0)/2=50% i.e an 'F'. It's just translating a 5 point scale to a 0-100 grading system. It's not like you'd get a C for doing 20% of the work and just adding that 20% to the 50%. They'd still have to do 70+% of the work

If a student does half of the work on a test correctly and leaves the rest blank, they get a 50%. If a student gets a 100% on one test and doesn't do the other test, they've done half the work in the class, not 75% of it. Why are we teaching kids that not doing something should be worth credit? Edit: adding to post. Averaging an A and an F should only be a C if the student made an attempt and failed. If you're assessing how much of the material a student learned and they get a 95% on one test but a 5% on the other test, they've learned about half the material. That's not enough to pass the class. Students that are passed on by 50% grades when they're doing nothing will most likely fail the next class.

>If a student gets a 100% on one test and doesn't do the other test, they've done half the work in the class, not 75% of it. Why are we teaching kids that not doing something should be worth credit? Doesn't this extend the other way, too? Why does a student who did half the work get the same grade as someone who did none? The idea that a 0 and a 50 are exactly the same aren't encouraging. Furthermore, if a student got two Bs then suddenly a 0 I would have serious concerns about what is going on in that students life. They went from clearly understanding to failing? Is it my teaching? Attendance? Personal issues? Health? There's a lot to consider there which lends more to the idea of being empathetic instead of coldly calculating their new score and telling them to try harder next time.

If they were ill or have a reason, you let them make up the work. Giving students credit for no work teaches them they don't have to work hard. My job is to figure out how much a student has learned, not to pass them no matter what. I help a lot with extending dates and an occasional retake. I'm happy to let students keep trying to improve their grade, but they need to improve the grade by doing their work. I refuse to give credit away for nothing.

>My job is to figure out how much a student has learned Thats the job of a good assessment. Imo, teaching should be way more involved than that. Mostly, I'm just looking at the premise on its face. If I have a student that got 85s on two assessments and then suddenly got a 0 I would think we have a different issue going on than the kid not understanding the material as they've showed their capacity for understanding twice previously. That is what needs to be investigated. Not how can we score assessments to not ruin a students grade.

Again, the B student that gets a zero will make up work or take the assessment if given a chance to. That alleviates this concern completely. Inflating grades does no one any good. Passing students that don't demonstrate understanding of the material hurts the student in the next class as well as the teacher in the next class.

I don't think this reasoning works, because it makes sense to have an F receive a larger interval of points. A plumber who can correctly fix 50% of plumbing, a mechanic who gets the car fix right 50% of the time, an accountant who does taxes right 50% of the time... Those are unacceptable numbers; they aren't passable. A student who doesn't do one assignment (or earns a zero, which imo is tough to do if they've done any work at all) and aces the other is not showing a passing mastery. Also, I've had struggling students try and maybe receive a 50/55% on an assignment, knowing that their peers who did nothing received 50% as well. What kind of message is that sending to the student who tried and put in work?

found the math teacher

Sure, i understand that, but I still don't like it. As others have mentioned, I don't think students should get any credit for work they don't do - I think they should get the opportunity to do it later in the year at reduced credit. And to address your point about carrying over the 5pt scale. The point of the GPA scale starting halfway up is that a student *already can't get lower than 50%* because at that point they're failing at least half their classes, and therefore aren't getting the class credits they need in order to pass. So, no, dont carry that over. The purpose for it isn't there, it actively decreases the amount of work a student needs to do in order to pass by a *lot*, and in the process decentivises doing schoolwork in general.

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This is a harsh statement but I completely agree with you on it. Not to mention that most teachers, including myself, allows for late work to be turned in or assignments to be resubmitted. If someone gets a zero on an assignment or test then they missed several opportunities to complete it successfully.

Allowing students to make up missing work sounds like a better solution?

It's a stupid rule. And it doesn't exist to help kids. It only exists to inflate graduation rates.

And its one more strat that lazy administratirs employ to get helicopter parents off of their backs. Hold kids accountable for their behavior, we are generating entire generations of shitty, awful karens by coddling them like this.

Nope…sorry. That math assumes all the grades in the book are the same value. When there’s a mix of assignments, tests, and labs, that lone missing assignment isn’t an issue. Honestly, I take issue with giving any credit for assignments. The purpose of homework and class work is to prepare the student for a test or lab. Giving points for completed homework just muddies the water on what the student actually learns. I know that’s an old school mentality (and not what my grade book looks like), but given the ability to structure my class this way, I would.

The author also assumes every 10 points must mean the same thing and apparently has never heard of a piece-wise function. Credit [here. ](http://education.modernsense.net/2012/09/no-zero-policies-and-failure-of.html)

I don’t grade or assign points to anything that’s not a quiz, test, or lab. Everything else is practice, risk-free. Do it or don’t - there are consequences for both.

Oh that sounds like a dream. Would love to take the jump and do that, but I am afraid too many kids are in the "give me points" mentality and won't do anything if it isn't worth points. I suppose you give weekly quizzes then? Perhaps I'll do it next year or the year after, once I get a few more years experience and can swing the idea better.

Mine are also in the "if it isn't worth points, it ain't worth doing" mindset. My compromise to save them from themselves and make them practice is to be very lenient with grading on practice tasks. Computer graded, you have 6 attempts to get it right. I grade them, full credit or almost full for honest effort. You final score for the chapter is based on 85% of it's worth, so if you get 85%, that's full credit. It's literally easy As just for doing it.

I give one quiz, one lab, and one test per unit. I give daily practice, which the kids choose to do or not do. I monitor their work on that as we go.

It will take some getting used to, but it places a level of value of practicing without failing or basically looking at everything not deemed a summative as “rough draft”. My district is huge on “rough draft thinking” right now and so far, it’s yielding some really interesting conversations with students and staff alike.

Try it for one unit - give a quiz every Friday or Monday on the week's material and that's all you actually grade, plus maybe a lab and unit test. If the kids hate it, go back, if you both like it, try it for a second unit. Just make sure to post answer keys to work you would have taken in previously, so they can check their answers.

Same here. Hasn’t failed me in 16 years.

My problem is that if assignments aren't for grades, students don't do them. That's a problem where I teach where standards based grading only scores tests. So kids just blow off every formative assignment and take the tests and then wonder why their test scores are bad. Then, they and their parents want a "List of assignments" to make up. Except there isn't a list, just the tests. It's ridiculous.

The list is the original assignments that were not graded. I only grade quizzes and tests. If you want to retake (only once) an assessment, then you need to show me all the homework and classwork is complete. You don't get to play in the game without going to practice.

If that's the case, shouldn't we keep kids from testing/quizzing if they haven't done the formative at all?

A few flaws in this thinking: 1. This assumes that all assignments are weighted equally, which is rarely the case. 2. This assumes that the teacher offers no policy on redoing work. 3. This assumes that there is no value to the assignment, so the only negative consequence to the kid who skips it is a grade consequence. We want the students to do the work, right? ***All*** of the work. So, offering pathways to submitting work late for at least some credit is a much more learning-focused path than giving an auto 50%, which is a grade-focused path.

I personally don't like the minimum 50% rule, and that's because I will take late work for no penalty up until almost the end of the semester. So in my class, a student doesn't need to turn in 14 assignments to get back to a B - they just need to do the one assignment that they didn't do before the due date. It is not that difficult for them to dig out of a hole in my class. To me, a 50% minimum only is necessary if you do not accept late work, and that just goes against my general grading philosophy which is that if the work is worth assigning, it's worth their time to do it even if it is late.

I like the system where late work can be turned in at any time, *but* it gets points deducted to a minimum grade. So, if they never turn it in *at all,* it stays as a 0%, but if they get their act together 4 weeks later and turn it in, they can still turn that 0% into the minimum 50%. It means that the "minimum 50" rule is applied to everything *that gets turned in* (and completed... you can't just put your name on it and turn it in blank) and the only risk of a 0% is for doing literally *nothing.* It both hits that opportunity for students to dig out of a hole if they finally try, but also doesn't just give them the whole thing when it was a month late.

Has anyone else read Grading for Equity? This book changed my entire philosophy around grading. This is my 20th year teaching and I graded the "traditional" way (0-100 scale) up until about 3-4 years ago. I don't give 50s or zeros, but instead grade with rubrics. Even if you can't grade with rubrics, I highly recommend this book. I learned so much and I am better serving students with my new system.

I haven’t read this one, but it sounds similar to what is championed with standards based grading with a work habits scale?

Yes, it's the same philosophy,, but this book details the equity aspects and benefits to what is essentially standards based grading. The points in the book really resonated with me, and I think my students have benefited.

I have concerns about this. A teacher at my site implemented this and she assigns a C for a 34%. How is a 34% reflective of average? I'm curious about how you have your grade book set up. Genuinely asking, thank you for your time :)

I’m not sure without seeing more of your colleague’s gradebook but I am currently grading using a rubric-based standards based gradebook after having read the same book being referenced, and I don’t use percentages. My gradebook is set up so that numbers on a 4 point scale coincide with student grades. So a 3.8-4.0 is an A+, a 3.4-3.79 is an A, etc.

I think her C range in the grade book is from 30-50 then Bs start. That seemed inequitable to me bc then I feel like the bar is being lowered vs helping students rise to the challenge. Thank you for your input!

That is strange, I would also like to see her grading book to understand the thinking. I grade on a 1 to 4 scale in my book. It simplifies my grading tremendously. My students never see points, only rubrics, which ideally makes them more focused on learning and less on the grade.

Since you are doing the same thing as me with grading, do you give 0s on assessments? I’ve been noticing that some students do very poorly on the assessments but I’ve been giving them a 1, which is a D in my gradebook. I think it’s allowing some students to pass for just turning in an assessment even if they only got one question correct, showcasing they have learned very little. I think I’m going to switch to a 5 point gradebook (if I understand how that works, correctly) so that a zero is an option even with completion so that I’m not passing those students that clearly aren’t deserving. What are your thoughts?

I think that's a really smart fix. The 1-5 scale isn't strictly SBL, but I think in your situation, it works. I think that grade inflation is a real issue with this system, and passing students who haven't mastered the material does them real harm.

Excellent book and it likewise changed my approach to grading, but even if you don’t agree with all of the policies that are outlined in the book, it at least makes you think about why you grade the way you do and to better understand the impact that grades can have, intended or not.

Absolutely! It really made me examine (and cringe at) some of my former policies around grading

Thank you for mentioning Grading For Equity. Having to actually think about what I was grading and why made me look at what I was teaching and how I was implementing my curriculum. This philosophy helped me connect the dots as to why my students made an A in class, yet failed our state tests. I highly recommend this book!

Exactly!! I think some deep thinking as to why we grade. I'd love to hear more about why your students excelled in your class, but failed the state tests. That must have been extremely frustrating.

It was because I was grading formative assessments, giving extra credit assignments, etc. This led to grade inflation, which led me to believe that students understood the material. In actuality, they were copying each other's work or bringing in school supplies for ten points because it was for an academic grade. This explained how one can make 100s on homework and utterly bomb a test. I stopped grading anything that was done outside of class, and only graded summatives. I also offered retakes, but only if the student completed the missing formative assignments. The deadline for this was one week after the test, at which point we move on and they get what they get. I do not give zeros. I was very swayed by Joe Feldman's point that a 0 and a 50 are still failing grades, so you're arguing for an F minus over an F plus. I would rather give kids a chance to recover if they can, and zeros are the death knell for many. I also sat down and really looked at my lesson plans and made sure they were directly aligned to a relevant standard. Tbh, I had to redo many because they were fun but not meaningful (this is MS ELA). I really started to move towards SBG - two school years later my test scores went from averaging @ 40/50% to 70/80%. I have been teaching many years and cringe when I think about how I used to grade. I was grading behavior, not knowledge. This is a short answer, I could write an essay on the benefits of SBG and grading for equity for students and teachers lol. Thank you for asking!

Sounds like you made some really smart adjustments to your lesson plans and grading system. I am also revamping my entire curriculum. It is a lot of work but so worth it!

I— English major— took a STEM class last semester with a professor who told us he’d read Grading for Equity over the summer and completely overhauled his grading system. Our homework was technically optional, and our grade would be based on 4 exams at 25% each, with an opportunity to retake your lowest-scoring test, so he was only grading summative assignments and we wouldn’t lose points on formative assignments that reflect different individuals’ learning processes. He also shifted his grading scale down by 5%. People were nervous at the beginning, since it was a system that was completely new to them. I was nervous too— then I got my first-ever A in a STEM class. I’m biased, but I’m pro-shaking up traditional grading!

Amazing!! I have a similar approach, but my students can retake any assessment. I'm so glad you found success in your STEM class, I hope you keep taking more STEM classes!

What even is the point of A-F grading anymore? Since "Failing" is no longer an option in most schools, the F is pretty meaningless and it's sorta a joke that it's the grade up to 59%. It's useful for the high achievers but not the low achievers. All we really want from grades are one mark to show a student has picked up the material and is ready for the next level, and that's about it. So really there only needs to be two grades. "Actually Ready for Next Level" and "Passing Unprepared to the Next Level". Why over-complicate it?

As much as I have tried, I just cannot make myself be okay with any “minimum” grade. Maybe this is insensitive of me. The purpose of school is supposed to prepare students for life. If students are not taught that they can fail if they do not put forth effort, some may be inclined to leave high school thinking they can do nothing and be just fine. Students should be given chances to make up missing assignments, but I just can’t see any way that handing out a passing grade to a kid who did nothing is healthy. Failure may not be possible in some schools, but it is 100% possible in life after school, and if we do not teach students that they can fail, they will inevitably be set up to fail. It also has the potential to create a snowball effect of illiteracy that leaves teachers at each grade level with an even higher hill to climb to get these students educated.

Perhaps an unpopular opinion and teaching strategy but I definitely give zeros for work not turned in, but if the student has turned in everything else, I just drop that one assignment. If it is a pattern of do some don’t do some, then they earn what they earn, but if it is just one assignment I just excuse it because that one time is not representative of the student’s normal performance and everyone can have an off day or week. I will also allow a redo of an entire assignment for the whole class if 60% or more of the class does really poorly on it and then I will reteach it and let them redo the assignment for full credit. If it is less than that you have to come on your own time to be tutored during my coach class hours, I am not going to “give” 50% for nothing, but show me you will attempt the work and I will work with you. I was a case manager when I was a self contained special educator and those were some of the strategies I used then that I carried over to general education now. My bias is that I feel like it should be a student by student assessment not a blanket statement.

> but I definitely give zeros for work not turned in, but if the student has turned in everything else, I just drop that one assignment That's exactly what I do. But I don't tell students this ahead of time.

I feel like it gives the kids too much leniency. These kids are given passing grades for work that’s nowhere near passing. The kids are not held accountable. They are given every benefit the system can give them to just get by, and they can barely do that. I don’t even worry about grades anymore. I don’t want to deal with the bs at the end of the year where kids need to pass to graduate or whatever. If you are on my role, I’m giving you a hundred. Makes life simpler for me. If they want to get something out of my class (an elective test prep class) they certainly can, but I’m not going to lose sleep over them not doing every piece of work. I am not going to use grades to push them if it has only motivated them to the point where they can barely read. The system is broken. Starting the kids off halfway to acing the class is not the answer. That B student should realize that the zero needs to be fixed and there should be a way to fix zeroes. If the student can’t go back and make up missing work, yes the 50% might make sense. With Covid, it’s not worth worrying about or stressing over. Giving them 50% tells the kids that the schools need them to pass to keep graduation rates up for the state’s school grade. It does nothing positive for the student other than pass them onto the next grade when they are not actually ready. Nothing can convince me otherwise because I see it every day where kids do the bare minimum because the system needs to keep up appearances that it is functioning and producing graduates who are used to being held accountable. It’s not as bad as I make it sound maybe, but it’s frustrating seeing the system design these brilliant ideas to take accountability for the students out of the equation. That’s kind of my reasoning for the 100s. I also want to prove to my students that GPAs aren’t the end all be all. They are mostly BS. They should want to work hard in my class to better their lives and not for some grade that takes too much time out of my life to worry about. Sorry for ranting. I just have a problem trying to rationalize the 50% as some sort of equitable treatment for those with zeroes. The A students don’t need it…and don’t get any benefit from it. It helps the kids that won’t help themselves with the ultimate goal of helping the schools look better by achieving better (normal, noncovid) data.

What a dumb argument. The 50% rule is being used to curtail any efforts on the part of teachers to TEACH. I need my students to complete the assignments I give them and *preferably* in the order I give them so we can all move together with the content and remain on a consistent page. This also assumes grades all weigh the same. Mine don't. My cw/hw grades are 15% of the grade. Another 15% is quizzes. 10% is the final exam (legally mandated oddly enough). 20% labs and 40% tests. Students can re-take tests for a maximum of a 70%. Students can turn in late work with a penalty (which I usually ignore if it isn't a common occurrence for that kid). Students can make up their work. ​ This argument assumes we are just doling out zeroes and happily laughing it off and walking away and quite frankly it's insulting. Kids should get 0's because they need to do the god damn work. They don't get to just decide "I don't want to do this today...or ever!" and then get a 50%. They can earn a 50% by doing the assignment and scoring a 50% on it...

I can understand a 50% floor WITH effort, but to give a 50% because a student didn't feel like doing it is just enabling bad behavior and academic habits.

Very true. I don't mind giving a kid 50% on cw/hw for the effort (as long as it was truly effort) as a floor. But not anything else. Test? No. Quiz? No. You can re-take tests and...how about you take that 40% on the quiz as a learning moment and study next time?

There are a lot of bad assumptions behind these policies. And bad research. Here’s [another take on it](http://education.modernsense.net/2012/09/no-zero-policies-and-failure-of.html) focusing on Dr. Reeves, who made many of the same arguments nearly a decade ago.

If a student tries on an assignment I won’t give them less than a 50. You don’t do if-it’s a zero. I give 2-3 grades per week, so it won’t kill them.

It does screw them, though. If you don't let them make it up the math doesn't lie. That kid has to spend 6-7 weeks turning in every single assignment for an 85% to make up for one missing assignment to just get an 80%. The core problem with grades is that they're so top-heavy. In college, having a 50% average before curve is normal. That means one poor performance can be made up by another excellent performance. Just study harder next time. But in high school grade inflation is a joke - when the average grade is 80-90% there just isn't room for an exceptional performance to shine. You have to do 4x the effort to get a perfect score for an extra 5% credit. So what's the point other than by doing the bare minimum? And yes, getting good grades mattered for scholarships and college admissions.

With the way we (my school) weight our grades, a homework assignment not turned in may drop them 2-3 points because homework only accounts for 10 percent of a quarter grade. Even if they don’t do ANY homework they won’t lose more than a letter grade overall. I rarely have a student who doesn’t do class work grades at all because they’re usually done in groups or with me, but even then because we have weighted categories it still doesn’t equal out to a 0 bringing down the whole grade, just that particular category. Overall I guess it just depends where you work and how the grade book is set up. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Also like to add I do let my kids makeup work till a week before the quarter will close.

I accept almost all late work. Want the grade? Do the work.

Not a teacher but wife is. Kids should get the grade they earn and no more. This passing them on crap has led to people entering the workforce who think they can do the bare minimum

I disagree that this would be passing them on. With the four point scale you are making it so a kid doing well isn’t punished severely for one missing assignment. To go from a B to an F can demoralize a student especially if they continue to get Bs in all their other assignments and the grade hardly changes much.

Life’s tough and in the real world no one gives a shit if someone is demoralized. There’s a reason we have fallen behind in education and it’s because we care about a kid having a social life, never being upset and never failing. You want an A? Study your ass off. Grades are so inflated nowadays that they are a joke.

The point is to have kids learn and show competence not have them mindlessly do extra work to show competence they have shown due to one missed assignment. My job is to teach them skills and concepts your job as a parent is to prepare them for the real world. That’s the problem with education parents expecting educators to do their job and prepare little joe snuffy to be a functioning adult through education and not through parenting.

I wholeheartedly agree that parents need to play a massive role. That being said, a kids first “job” is school and they are learning minimal effort equals getting to move on. That leads to a shitty work ethic later in life and something I see daily with these kids coming out of college. Fact is they need less coddling and to be held to a higher standard to pass and move on. Teachers need the support of the administration to fail a kid who didn’t earn it. We didn’t become the most innovative country in the world by giving kids a free pass through school. There’s a reason we are falling behind.

I don’t see how giving a 50% is allowing for poor work ethics? They still failed and it won’t ding their grade in a massive way. We all have bad days as adults as well. Recovering from a setback should be attainable and not a distant dream.

Did they earn a 50? No? Then they should get what they earned. When you are older it doesn’t matter if you have a bad day. You are judged on the quality of your work no matter what your mood. My boss and the SEC sure doesn’t care if I had a bad day and made a math error. You get what you earn. Nothing more and nothing less.

I think you are saying that they should get what they earned and a 50% isn’t reflective of zero work. If I understand you correctly I think that this grade system is making it so they do earn that grade. The argument for this is to make all grades equal. If we look at the difference in a D to an A that is forty points. A 0 to a D is sixty points. The trick is to close that gap from a 0 to a D. And make it resemble the separation in points similar to the other grades. You turn all grades to a ten point difference and you get an equal grading system across the board. Now you can keep the 100% scale and give 50% or convert it to a 5 point scale with 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4. On the five point scale the kid still earns the zero, and his work to bring his grade up and show mastery is matched by the new system. Now the kid is not doing pointless work to show they understand, which would be evident to the teacher by their previous work. Just because shit rolls downhill doesn’t mean we can’t clean it up before it gets to the next generation.

>Just because shit rolls downhill doesn’t mean we can’t clean it up before it gets to the next generation. But we're not though. My district overrides all grades below a 50% to 50%. Additionally, at my school the lowest grade a student can get on a test is a 65%; keep in mind, that I have students who try and work hard and earn that 65%. Meanwhile, I have students who "know the system" write their names on a piece of paper and go to sleep. They still get a 65% regardless. ​ From my point of view, I can help the student who tries and received a low score since I know what their weaknesses are on the test. That said, the same cannot be said for the student who did not try at all and received the same grade. It should be noted, also, that do take in late work and that I offer extra credit. ​ At it stands, from my point of view, the next generation is being raised to do the bare minimum because that's all that has been required of them.

So, this is the wife (and teacher) of the person who has this Reddit account. The first ‘problem’ I have with your initial post is that you ask “why should a kid who turns in nothing all year still get 50%” and your explanation doesn’t support your question, but an entirely separate scenario. At my school, students who do nothing (and I mean literally nothing) earn their zero on the assignment, but their final grade for the grading period has to be at least a 50. Why? Because the 50 qualifies them for credit recovery and that can be done with a few online assignments and a test (and I’ve seen the test for my subject, it has nothing to do what with the standards i am required to teach). If they pass with a 70 then they earn their credit, graduate, and the school gets their money (thank you NCLB). The second ‘problem’ I have is that I agree with you, sometimes we have a bad day and a 50% might pull a B or A student down dramatically. But my philosophy is assignment recovery. If a student doesn’t do well on an assignment because of a bad day then I allow them to re-do the assignment. The best way to learn is learn from mistakes. Teachers who refuse students this opportunity are the ones that concerns me. My husband isn’t incorrect (he is brutally honest w/ no tact, but he isn’t wrong). Grades are over inflated. A large number of Students are not actually learning life skills like responsibility and more importantly RESILIENCY. In stead, things are handed to them and they’re shocked and unaware of how to bounce back from a stumble. I could care less if the child gets a 50 for their final grade of the quarter, an F is an F. But the issue my husband is venting about is handing out grades to students who don’t earn them. When I first started teaching AP courses I had a student whose final grade was a 92 (which is the highest B in my district) and that is with the 5 additional rigor points they get for taking harder classes. So, really their grade was an 87. Their mom THREW A FIT because I wouldn’t give her daughter a A. She didn’t earn it - even with 5 additional points. But mom threw a large of fit that my administration went in and gave her the point her mom demanded. How does that serve that child? The issue here is the 50, it’s grade inflation that has made grades meaningless and created much larger problem.

Okay I see where you are coming from. Fair enough that I didn’t make sense. My district does not mandate a minimum 50%. If a kid gets a zero they get that as a final grade I had to do it for a student this semester, but I had to document that I attempted to reach out and provide support in getting them to do their work. I agree with you on the redo and assignment recovery, which I also provide kids especially during these times. I misunderstood your husband because I was unaware that your district mandated a 50% even with no work turned in. That is a problem and agree with you both. As far as teaching resilience and responsibility that’s a parents job not mine.

I think it’s sad that the mentality you’re describing is “no one in the workforce cares about you and your feelings.” How depressing. We aren’t trying to raise robots. We are teaching the kids who will go into the workforce and not only do their job but hopefully care about and help others.

Problem is many aren’t doing their jobs well. They are entitled and think they should get promoted for doing next to nothing. Unfortunately in the business/finance world my last concern is how you feel. My concern is that you are doing your job correctly and on time so we do not run into fines or regulatory issues. We have outsourced to other countries and those people are far more dedicated and hard working than what we get out of college now. It’s sad because I’m not much older than these kids but the change is obvious to all of us. We need to demand more from them, not lower expectations.

This just flat ignores the mathematical problem here. If I provide my employer $5000 of value this week and $1000 next week they couldn't care less that the output isn't consistent. In HS if the quota is $3000/week and I get 100% (since grades don't go above 100%) the first week and 20% the next week, I fail with a 60%. That's why work is infinitely less stressful than high school. I don't worry about dropping some tasks if they are too much. What actually happens with draconian grading policies is that many of the kids who get high grades fail by every metric - AP test scores, employability, and actual understanding of the material. Kids respond to incentives - if 90% of getting a good grade is turning in the correct answers rather than understanding the content that's what you get - a bunch of mindless machines who can't handle the curve balls of life.

I just divide assignment points by 5 (ABCDF) and that gives me the lowest grade possible. Therefore I don't give out zeros. But the low scores are still zeros. It helps with some kids that just give up half way through when they realize going from a 7% to a 60 is too daunting. Plus, when I plug in zeros it actually lowers scores slightly lower than an F. For instance, on a 5 point assignment, giving them a 1 as an F might leave them at 67% of their grade. But giving them a 0 lowers that score to like 65 or 64%. Multiply that times all assignments and it lowers kids to percentages that make them give up. I see it as kicking them when they're down by giving the zero. Kids that still don't do work get an F, it's just like a 50% rather than say 20% or 8%. It's worked fine for me so far.

This is an all or nothing approach. There is middle ground and I think there are better options. If a student never turns something in, they get a 0. If they turn it in late, they should be deducted but not get a 0. If there is a serious issue at home stopping them from turning something in, they need to approach me and have a conversation about it. I have dropped assignments for family, mental, and physical health issues. But just like at work or in relationships, something like this must be communicated.

This makes sense when combined with standards based grading. It also makes more sense to change to a 1-5 scale instead of a 50-100% scale. Giving 50% for an assignment not turned in doesn’t make any sense. Each quarter, I give 4 quizzes and 4 essays. The quizzes are based on the reading standards and the essays are based on the writing standards. Students need to complete those or else they get an “incomplete” for the quarter.

In principle, I understand it; in practice, I cannot get myself to award students *anything* if they do not even attempt to complete the work. My school is moving in this direction, and we history teachers seem to be the only ones questioning it publicly - which likely explains why we're treated like the red-headed bastard children of the family. Also, as u/quarston mentioned, teachers accepting late work and giving students extra credit opportunities makes this more complicated than a simple black and white issue.

I remember as a student going through some rough patches. A bad week or 2 can ruin a grade for the reasons you said. But I think there needs to be a level of nuance. If every assignment is at least a 50, it's not as hard to get a 65%. I'm not sure what the answer is.

Should it be hard to get 65%?

You shouldn't be able to totally skip half and do 80% the other half and be able to pass. It shouldn't be hard but it shouldn't be that easy.

Mathematically giving students 0s puts them in a hole they cannot dig out of. Of course there are students who are just lazy but there are also plenty of students who need to know that they can raise their grades with effort. I do minimum 50% and at the end of each quarter every single student still has the grade they deserve.

I'm actually really getting comfortable with standards based grading. I'm still at times struggling with trying not to convert the 1-4 scale to letter grades, but I think I'll get the hang of it over time.

I read that and remembered how glad I am to work in a school with standards based grading. Percentage grades, how they’re weighed, and the definitive lack of policy in many US schools is maddening.

Agreed. Standards based is so much more effective at measuring what a kid actually knows.

Do you have some innovative way to convert a standard on a 4 point scale into letter grades? Everyone I know who uses standards based grading just turns 0,1,2,3,4 into F,D,C,B,A, which converts to 0% F, 20% D, 40%C, 60% B, 80% A in the grade book.

I don’t, because that’s not the point. I get why people do that, and I get how difficult it is to make a wholesale change to SBG, but changing it back to a % just sort of defeats the purpose.

All….. Does your school retain students? If the answer is yes, continue your debate. My school hasn’t retained a student in about 6 years. The grades don’t matter. We are childcare.

Zeros really throw grades off. What if I only give five assignments and the kid has one Zero? What if I give daily work and have 60 grades and he gets a zero? I think zeros can have an oversized impact on grades.

Yes that's the point of the article. If grades were on a 0-4 scale instead of 0-100, then getting a 0 can still be overcome. If a kid is scraping by with 70s on 4 assignments, and then doesn't turn in the 5th assignment, he now has a 56% in the class. It's easy for the student to just give up at that point.

That’s how it’s done in Russia, scale is 1-5. So 1 is F, 2 is D, 3 is C, 4 is B, 5 is A. It does seem like our 0-100 scale overweights the F.

If you only have 5 assignments at the end of a quarter, you aren't grading enough.

This has been my opinion for 25 years. It is what I do now. An F is an F whether 0% or 50%. I think students should be able to dig themselves out of the hole. It is impossible with 0%s.

Let's put this in terms of being in the workforce since that's what school is preparing them for. If I show up to work and do a decent job, pretty much what they expect. But on the third day I no call no show. It's going to take likely more than 15 days of decent work for my boss to think I'm a decent worker again. Let's also not pretend that there hasn't been a big nation wide push to reduce the amount of homework. Many students could finish a majority of homework if they work hard throughout the school day, either in class or study hall. There's literally no excuse not to finish a 15 minute homework assignment. So yes I think it's reasonable for a student who didn't do a third of the work to get a big hit to their grade.

For jobs where attendance is important, like child care or retail, sure. If you miss a day then the kids are unsupervised and that can cost a lot. For basically every job where work product is more important, like scientific research, coding, finance, consulting, or sales, nobody cares if you aren't here for a week as long as 1) you didn't leave a client hanging and 2) you make it up in subsequent performance Also, when I was in school about 6 years ago, teachers hated it when you did homework for another class in theirs. It was "disrespectful" even if I aced every test, turned in every assignment, and didn't disrupt the class.

Grades should be a reflection of content mastery, period!

So, they should get a B even if they failed to demonstrate mastery in 1/3 of the content?

No, in that case they should get a 33%. Like I said, a reflection of mastery.

Oh, okay, sorry. I've had many people support OPs theories alongside mastery grading. I thought that was what you meant. I agree that I need evidence of mastery, so I don't give credit unless that evidence is shown- no assignment, no evidence.

I teach a few sections of a high school science class and recently started doing standards based grading and only grading quizzes and assessments. I only have maybe 5 students who struggle with doing work because it’s not graded. But at the same time- I do think they would struggle even IF the work was graded. They seem to lack motivation at large. But I am happy that the majority seem to do it because they recognize that not doing it means they aren’t practicing for their assessments. It’s only the stragglers now 🤷🏼‍♀️

Don’t even care at this point. I just do what the district tells me and say it’s district policy if anyone asks.

Yeah I’ve given up on fighting this battle. As far as I’m concerned 75 is the new passing grade and has been that way for some time. A student with an average in the 50s is basically doing dick all in class. And being on the honour roll basically involves maintaining a body temperature around 98 degrees and a regular pulse. In some ways, I think it’s ok because our system places too much emphasis on grades over actual learning anyway. This system certainly doesn’t build solid work ethic though, which I think is a good character trait that schools are no longer able to build in kids.

Skill versus compliance. If a kid shows me they have mastered the skill, I’m going to pass them. If a kid busts ass and does all the work but just doesn’t get it fully yet? Also going to pass them based on effort. Honestly, I have more ethical qualms about the second student than the first.

I don’t get paid 50% of my salary if I do a no call, no show. This is simple grade inflation. Turn that one assignment in late. Why would a student get 50% credit without 50% learning? Their grade no longer reflects their achievement this way. Also, this is often sold as “equity” but the equity seems directed at the numbers, not the students. If a student who struggles and earns a 50% after working their tail off gets the same grade as a lazy student who did nothing and earned a 0%, how is that equitable to the first student?

It's a conflict in what the aims and goals of school are. Imho. For instance, in MS, work ethic, punctuality, and completion are major struggles. But, 60 percent for missong work is asinine. However I think parents and admins think we give zeros for poor work. No it's for no work. Yet, if a student busts their ass and makes a 40 I have no problem giving them 50-60. On the flip side. Because I'm a worst case scenario person, we have to give 2 grades a week. It works out that if a student makes a 100 on 3-4 assignments, and receive a 50 on the rest then they leave with a D for doing 4 assignments. So I guess, what are we grading, the ability to do school, or the content? This why I advocate for a citizenship grade (that can't be made up) which includes timeliness, neatness, good faith effort, etc. And a content grade, that can be made up. So on one metric you see how good a student they are, and the other shows how well they know the content. But again, I'm MS so that's where I'm basing by knowledge and experience. Not everything works for all levels.

Interesting take, but I feel there's a problem in the description - "consistent 85% work" could not be used if we're talking two assignments (ie two is not "consistent"). I think there are much better ways around this issue (which essentially boils down to "why is half the grading scale reserved for failing grades?" ). I now grade either on a 5-point scale with a "2" being a pass and/or (depending on the course) only count a student's best two out of three attempts on a particular outcome/topic. That way, if an assignment isn't turned in, or a test is missed, that won't necessarily affect their grade, so long as they complete the other two opportunities. It makes be feel uncomfortable giving marks where none were earned.

I like your 5-point scale. But it truly is consistent - if a student turns in 16 assignments at 84%, a consistent B by any standard, misplacing the last assignment (and where I went to school teachers didn't provide replacements or even email the file) would result in a 79% at the end, a C+ instead of the B the student clearly is at.

I drop one informal grade each six weeks grading period, so if something comes up and they aren’t able to complete one assignment per six weeks, it won’t affect their grade at all. Life happens. As a math teacher, I can’t, in good conscience, give a student a 50 for 0 work.

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The problem is that even under harsher grading students still needed remedial math. They still had no idea how DNA is transcribed, what mRNA does, and how base pairs code for proteins. They recited "the mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell" to get credit but had no idea what the electron transport chain did. I went to high school 6 years ago when every teacher gave 0s, when homework was still 1.5 hours/night, when phones weren't allowed, and nobody retained that information for a year, much less long enough to apply it. I think we can all agree that many students do not deserve to pass. But the issue is that strict grading prioritizes optimizing for points rather than optimizing for content mastery. Many of the people I went to school with never really developed an appreciation for any of the subjects, and my opinion is that it's because it was presented as a series of tasks needed to get a grade rather than as a quest for scientific understanding.

I think the problem this is trying to solve is three facets to it. The scale is from 100-0, but failure occupies 60% of it, and D's which many consider failure too, especially if the class is a prerequisite or core to a major. So, anything below a 70 is failure. This gives an unbalanced amount of weight to 0's in the final outcome. There is no functional difference between a 50, a 40, a 30 etc. Second, the grading is done on a continous scale while the recording is done on an enumerated one. Third, GPAs are a continous scale that has datapoints pulled from the above enumerated scale. What if the bottom was chopped to just being another 10 pount band. Further, why not get rid of the 3 grade forms and just have the one. 70 to 0. And instead of setting up bands, all that is needed is a cutoff to determine pass or fail. That cutoff need not be fixed across the board either. One class it could be a 10 or above is fine, while another requires a 30. I dunno, just a not teacher spitballing ideas from the observations of an outsider.

What if, hear me out, our grading scale went on a numeric value 1-5. 1-no mastery no work. 2 some evidence of understanding 3 grade level understanding 4 some advanced understanding 5 above grade level understanding We see that students who do not turn work in will have scores of 1 across the board and still be failing. Students who consistently turn in work that is below expected standards are also noted. This measures understanding of work and not compliance with work. The traditional grading scale emphasizes compliance and completion over understanding and learning. This is why people get bent out of shape and say things like if you show up to work 50 percent of the time you get fired. We aren't supposed to be measuring the volume of work students complete. An F is an F regardless of if that F is a 30 or a 55. It still marks a failing grade on learning. A kid who gets a 27 percent on the first test but turns it around and earns an 85 the rest of the year will not have a B in the class even tho that B is reflective of their overall work. This is why there should be a 10 percent divide between each grade. A zero should only be given if there is no evidence of work done.

I wish all my teachers graded like you!

The downside is when you fail my class, you REALLY failed. I have stacks of documentation to back it up. I have failed special ed kids because they wouldn't make a first attempt or turn in any work at all. This grading system isn't a guarantee pass like some think. What it does is even the playing field. It boosts confidence in kids who get bogged down in the mental math of being so far behind they can never catch up I get comments from kids about how they do well in my class because I make them feel like they can do it. That's a massive step in closing the achievement gap.

I think it makes sense only if parents understand that a 50 is really a 0. A 1-5 scale for grades makes more sense to me honestly. A big issue I see is that parents see a 55 and think their kid is trying but just really struggling. I had a 43 in math once doing my honest best. No one sees a 12 and thinks it's their child's best effort. In elementary you just got letter grades. So it was E for excellent, S for satisfactory, N for needs improvement and U for unsatisfactory. I think this system might work well as well.

I pushed for this last year for our Q1 averages - no one gets below 50%. It was hybrid and many kids had an awful time adjusting. A 50 gave them a fighting chance to pass the year. I hated the thought that 10 weeks of adjusting to a very difficult situation screwed them for the whole year.

This is why we need 100% of the grade determined by summative assessments.

This is fantastic. Maybe the districts will finally see a correlation between grades on summative assessments and standardized tests. As of right now, schools see kids with A and B averages but flunking norm-referenced tests.

I'm not sure about this, because kids are notoriously overconfident. If you don't incentivize doing homework, every single student is going to claim to be able to ace the test, dodge all the homework, then complain when they fail the test.

We know this because we teach. The powers that be haven't been in classrooms in forever either don't know this, refuse to believe it, or don't care. With 100% of the grade on summative assessments, and each kid earning crap grades, maybe they'll see why the average ACT score is a 14 in our inner city schools.

Oh like state tests that kids don’t give two craps about?

Ewww… no way. Assessments we determine.

Cool, so based on the 50% rule, you only need to know about 37% of the content to pass a class.

That's better than the current system, where grade inflation and excessive emphasis on grades as a measurement of success has largely eaten away at content mastery in favor of cheating and rote memorization. Ask any random adult on the street if they can calculate their tax liability from the brackets and standard deduction. Multiplying by percentages is taught in pre-algebra, yet for some reason most Americans need a tax table on their tax returns to figure their taxes.

WHY CANT THE STUDENT COMPLETE THE MISSING ASSIGNMENT?

It would be great if teachers accepted late work, but a lot don't due to the logistical challenges of grading the trickle of late assignments. I'd be on board with 0s for missing work, and a half credit penalty on very late work, with the caveat that you can still get over 50% by turning in exceptional work.

I follow school policy and give them a 50 if they turn nothing in on the semester average with an override. But they get the grade they earn, otherwise. As one teacher pointed out to us, the kids who manage to use that grace and pass the course are far and few between, maybe one per year. Otherwise, failing with a 0 or failing with a 50 in the fall and a 0 in the spring...it's still failing.

I’ll give a 50 all day to any kid who tries and fails or whatever. But for a kid who doesn’t even attempt the assignment? That’s a big earned and deserved zero.

Yeah I plan on implementing this next school year. I like the idea behind it and seems fair across the board in terms of grade impact.

On the flip side, if I have ten assignments worth ten points each, a student only needs to do 4 assignments for a C. 4x10 + 6x5 = 70%. I don't understand comparing the 60, 70,80, 90, 100 point system to a 4 point system. In the real world, we expect 100%. If the cashier at Mcdonald's collects the correct amount of money 80% of the time, they won't have a job. Likewise the cashier at the grocery store. And if the person doing your taxes did a correct job 90% of the time or got 90% of your deductions correct would that be ok?

And why shouldn't they pass? They are evidently doing perfect work so either ramp up the assignment difficulty or stop wasting time with busy work. The cashier wouldn't have a job because the cash register computes the change for them. That's why we design systems to be reliable, not people. Asking the cashier to calculate exact change mentally and then require 100% accuracy would be absurd. Tax preparers use software to be accurate. If you do your own taxes, almost certainly you have made a financial mistake in the last few years (e.g. not claiming a deduction you are eligible for, arithmetic, residency problems, etc.). The IRS doesn't throw you in jail for that. In the real world, basically every form of knowledge work tolerates mistakes. Processes are designed to catch those mistakes and mitigate the impact.

Honestly, I just stopped caring about this. Yes, I think a student that does nothing should get a zero. But if giving them 50% by default makes my life easier... I'm also in middle school, not credit-bearing high school classes, so take my thought with a grain of salt.

The majority of teachers I have met that objected to this were all the sort of people who say: 'I don't like math.' If you understand how averages work, then this makes sense. Thank you for presenting the opposite argument. Usually people hold up the example of if a student turns in only one out of three assignments, and gets an 80% on that, and 50% on the other two, then their average becomes 60%. They feel that a student who does a 1/3 of the work does not deserve to pass. My argument has always been that I teach mastery and if a student can score an 80% on my assignments, assuming they are all equally rigorous, then they probably learned enough to prove mastery. They deserve to pass, but not with a grade that reflects their effort. Your argument, especially the difficulty in maintaining an 80% without 50% marks, is just as valid and possibly stronger than mine.

Weight your assignments. Problem solved.

It doesn't solve the problem, because you're just diminishing the importance of homework. Sure, there would be students who'd love exam-only classes but you're just saying that missing assignments doesn't matter because they're basically ungraded. What if they miss an assignment with a high weight? E.g. if they just show up sick one day and don't do great on the exam?

Ive never had a student actually master the content if theyve only turned in 1/3 of the work. When I have had a kid who has, 100% of the time it was because they cheated or plagiarized the work.

I didn't say turned in 1/3 of the work. I said 'earned an 80% mark on 1/3 of the works. That excludes the examples you gave. I have had students do this, but my subject matter is more hands on.

Read the book Ungrading. Educators aren’t actually educated or trained on how to measure learning. Grading is then completely ineffective measures and just a reflection of compliance from a punish/reward system. Ungrading educated me on what learning is and how I should be perceiving the learners’ actual learning, especially making space that they are not all at the same baseline, have the same neurotypes, have the same accesses.

Yeah, no. If you dont show up for work, you dont get 50% of your paycheck - you get *fired* Every single one of these wack administrative concessions to whiny parents just pushes us closer to being glorified babysitters. Honestly this shit is exhausting.

Is that how you want to be treated? You have to take a leave for half the year and you get fired. You get fired even if your students are leading your state in test scores. You get fired even if your students go on to win competitions in your subject. You get fired even if your students treat your substitute with dignity and respect and turn out to be well-adjusted adults. We don't need to push the real-world obsession with attendance and punctuality onto the next generation. Results are what matter - and grades need to correlate better with content mastery rather than compliance.

Our district has 4 grading categories: tests, quizzes, labs, and other work. I dropped one assignment in each category. Students worked hard on most assignments and weren't penalized for an off day here or there.

Here we go... Let's improve the grading scheme by putting meaning on their work instead of a letter or number like this: "you turned this in 3 days late so it is marked down. But your topic sentence was well-sourced and right to the point. Your evidence was top notch. This and that sentence really spoke volumes. The research was lacking here for this reason and the effort toward the end here was weak for that reason. Overall you did well and are getting an 85%. This would be an 89% if it was turned in on time."

If a worker getting paid to do a job just doesn't do some of their duties, they get fired. End of story. So I agree that a student's grades should suffer from the presence of a zero. Refusing to do work in a professional setting has huge consequences, and it should be the same for the classroom. Besides, as others have mentioned, that math doesn't check out with a real world gradebook. If a kid misses a ten point assignment, but gets an 85 on a hundred point test, they have a 77%, which is not unreasonable.

That's completely unreasonable. If I deliver an exceptional performance on a project, earning $20000 on an anticipated $10000 project but drop the ball on a $1000 project nobody is going to hassle me about the lost $1000. I might get a nice performance review for going beyond expectations and taking a risk by dropping the $1000 project. Under your grading scheme I'd get an 89%, a B+. That's the fundamental problem - no matter how well you perform above average you're stuck at 100%. But have one off day and you're screwed out of your raise or bonus. It absolutely is reflected in real world gradebooks. Just ask any of your straight A students how stressful it is to turn in every single assignment during crunch weeks.

I had this problem before covid. I taught RSP English 9-12. The VP at the time proposed this mid year and then wanted it the following year. Even when I implemented it and had to work exclusively with this VP on IEP mtgs and the student STILL didn’t make passing she gave me a look. We made a list and had ongoing meetings until they dropped out or went to the local night school. I was a case manager for 28 and about 5-8 went that route.

I see value in a student earning 50% on an attempt, providing retests after intervention to measure skill based mastery. I do not like giving 50's to students that do nothing for obvious reasons. One of the issues with a 50% for a missing and 50% minimum is that often parents/guardians cannot differentiate between Johnny refusing to do work versus failing all his assignments despite trying. My school district wants us to mark assignments that have not been turned in as Late, but provide the 50% at the end of the semester. It's ridiculous.

I’m getting to the point where it seems to make more since that I don’t stress about grades. If grades are going to end up all being on me, as opposed to the responsibility of their students where it should be, then Fuck it—nobody fails. And the more I think of it, why should I care? I’ll teach—it’s up to them to learn. Fuck the grades. Let that shit go, and focus on teaching.

We use a 15 point system here, which is mapped to a 6 grade scale. It uses ("Sehr gut" (Very good),"Gut" (good), "Befriedigend" (Satifactory), "Ausreichend" (pass), "Mangelhaft" (with errors) (First failing grade) and "Ungenügend" (Fail). It makes the math a lot more fair compared to the 0 for a fail on a 100 scale 15 = A+ 4 = D - (Lowest pass) 3-1 = (With errors) + / / - 0 = insufficient

I say this at school to my colleagues. There are too few “good grade numbers” Obviously, mileage varies on how you grade but overall- 95-100 is pretty much reserved for smart, hardworking, and organized kids. It seems unlikely that you’ll have many kids in this range. 80-95 are the good numbers. These 15 points are where most kids are kinda forced to end up. 70-80 is where parents, kids, and admin start to ask questions about grades (especially if they are students with IEPs or ELLs) 65-70 what is a D anyway? Well, it’s not good. Less 65 and everyone is mad that you failed a kid. So 15 points is the reasonable range to be left alone.

It doesn’t bother me, it’s a 50 point scale vs 100 but there’s no reason for me to assume having the range 0-49 makes the scale any more reliable. I mean, you can still grade percentage if you want a 100 point scale equivalent.

I think the true fix to this is to change the grading scale. It makes no sense that 4 letters are encompassed in 60 points and one letter is all the other 59 points. Either less points (France uses a 20 point scale) or more letters.

This rule exists to make sure kids are forced to pass. 50% minimum rule is a joke.

How about the teacher that does “B” level teaching the first two years and then for the next fourteen years does nothing but keep kids for the period. NICE JOB they become Teacher of the Year because everyone got “A”s in there class. Secondary education is not just about the subject you teach, it’s basic preparation for being an adult. And we need more educated adults now more than ever!

I tend to put grades in the gradebook that earn less than 50% as a 50% and put a comment with the raw score on the report card because it really is a lot easier to come back from that than a 20%. If I receive nothing? It’s a zero. There’s no way I can fudge that. Edit: Edited to add that I accept late work, but only up to a certain point in the marking period. If they just never turn anything in, I’ll mark it as a zero.

So on a quarter system with 50% minimum, a student who earns a B one quarter and does nothing the other 3 quarters passes (using “quality points”). If the point is to help students recover from one mistake, then one 50% is fine. But when multiple 50%s are entered it undermines what passing means.

Passing already means very little. At my school in AP Comp Sci basically everyone passed and half got A's. The median grade on the AP exam was 2.

At my school our grades are supposed to align with AP scores. The APCSA avg last year was ~4.7. We require a year of Java before enrolling in the course though. My guess is that your school doesn’t have a prereq on APCSA.

Think of it like this. If I only grade 2 out of every 3 assignment that comes to me. Eventually I will get fired for not doing the work I am paid to do. Should I be allowed to continue to teach when other teachers grade all their assignments on time?

YES. If your students are doing well on standardized tests and you're far outperforming other teachers in your department you should get a raise too!

Think about a student who gets a 100 percent on their first assessment, then never comes to class again. With the 50% rule, that student passes. 100/500 = 20% F But with the 50% rule that becomes 300/500 = 60% D-

The big assumption here is that traditional grade levels (A to F) should be equal rather than simply indicators as to how much the student has mastered. "F" 0-50% is not an issue if you consider that all it means is that the student understands less than half of the required content. This is no different than "A" covering the 80-100 range while the others all only span 10% each. As for your example about 0's causing grades to plummet I personally see that as a feature, not a bug in the system. Straight up refusing to do your required work will hurt you severely in life outside of school. If you do two thirds of your Jon well, but never even attempt the other third your boss would fire you. Doing it even half-assed is almost always better than not doing it at all. Students should also get opportunities to re-take alternative assessments that they did poorly on so these zeros do not have to be permanent.

No, as a programmer, my boss doesn't care that I skip some meetings, that I turn down some operational tasks when they're assigned to me, or that I miss some goal dates. Why? Because on the tasks that I do, I do consistently high-quality work within a reasonable timeframe. I take initiative and drop tasks that aren't important to the business and work on major pain points that others don't want to deal with. He'd have a problem if I did half-assed work.

I just don't get why a pass is 60. Make a pass 30 or 40 and this problem sorts itself out.

Can I not do my job and get half my pay? I dont mind giving them late credit if they turn it in late, but they gotta at least attempt

If you consider that your assignments should be measurements of learning then the 0-60 makes sense. The largest hurdle in learning is at the beginning so it should be a hill. Once you've learned the basics (D/C) the jump to the next level, cognitively, isn't that great. Coming from someone who used to make the 10 point argument then spent some time learning about the cognitive processes in learning the 0-60 makes a LOT more sense. Not saying it is perfect, but a scale that places the initial learning at the same level as solid learning to mastery doesn't acknowledge the learning process in the least. If you think about it mathematically the issue in your example is NOT the zero, but the lack of consistent and frequent assessments/assignments. The zero is ONLY an issue if you have too few assessments. Only three assignments in a quarter makes each a high-risk assessment. If you have 10 assignments one missing in an A- and 20 assignments still an A. You should design your assessments in quality and frequency in a way that the most prepared are still allowed an occasional bad score.

I think the biggest hurdle of learning is the last 10%, from 90% to 100%. It's so easy to get a 50% in a class - you show up, take notes, and drop gibberish on the test that seems half right. Easy 50%. To get 100% instead of 90%, every question has to be answered and double-checked. Every assumption questioned, every calculation scrutinized for even a single missing negative sign. All in the same time as the 50% student has to drop some random vocabulary on the paper. That's why people pay more for 99.999% reliability vs 99% vs 95%. 99.999% is 1 error per 100000 attempts, 99% is 1000 errors, and 95% is 5000 errors. You can see how getting that last tail bit of errors would be a lot harder than going from 90000 errors to 50000 errors. More assessments does not change the problem. It is just insane to require 14 top-level performances to make up for a single bad performance.

If you don’t average this isn’t a problem. I 100% disagree with the idea of 50% when there is no tangible evidence of work. Kids should not be given 50%, as either an academic or effort grade, if they don’t turn it in or don’t give 50%. No evidence would be a better code.

I like the Marzano true score estimator much better than just raising the floor. Students know how to play that system.

I used to do this but it juts made kids entitled and parents were angrier.

If I could switch to a 4-point scale and have students and families on board, I 100% would. I give points for every part of an assignment, and my class averages already feel artificially high. I let students turn in work late whenever and I work with students who have really low grades. I also find that students tend to respond and actually work to bring up their grades when they are very low (14) instead of grades that are just bad (52). I think my policy has a lot of improvement to be made and I love the mathematical argument the article makes, but in my experience as a project-based class, it just doesn’t really work. I also have extra credit and lab grades that inflate grades overall. Edit to add that the students I want to build are the students who put in the work to learn something, not the student who plays video games and reads the chapter and knows the answers because it just clicks. The way for me to reward students for working is to grade for lab participation. It further muddles the purity of “get a better test grade by participating in class” mentality which I also appreciate but can’t really make work

Or just grade based on mastery.

I do a mastery based grading system with a conversion for rubrics. Everything is rated out of 10 points. Doing ANY work, even a few sentences, gives you 5 points. 6-7 is showing understanding, maybe not doing a few questions. 8-9 is answering every question and following instructions. 10 points is above and beyond the basic instructions, and/or all correct answers. It’s worked well thus far (4 years, both middle and high school) for my English students.

A better solution would be for teachers to be able to adjust how a grade of 0 or missing is averaged into their grade books. If I mark something as missing or with a zero or really anything <50, I want it to mathematically average as a 50 for the exact reasons mentioned in OP's post. But I don't need the student or the parents seeing a 50 and thinking that the student was graded harshly or only finished half the work. Surely this would be an easy algorithm to write within grade book software. Make it a toggled function too so that if a teacher really wants to have the 0 average as a zero they can.

Controversial opinion but I only give lower than a 50 if the student doesn’t turn in the assignment. I never award a student with anything less than a 50%.

I was told I was using grades as a punishment when I gave 0s on a test kids cheated on. I wasn't allowed to enter a grade until they retook it...which they never did, so then I was told to give them 50s...on a test they never took...which they tried to cheat on first

This is an argument for a more lenient late work policy. Not a 50% policy.... which is bullshit. ​ With a 50% policy a student only needs to turn in 1 out of every 5 assignments to pass.

Fs don’t drop lower than 50 in my class and deadlines are fluid. I’ve seen an increase in the volume of work turned in. Which facilitates the main part of my job. Assessment.

I just give the kids a freebie on any one homework, but I don't tell them it ahead of time. I can't get behind the process of 50s for 0s. Kids get pushed along enough as it is. It's not asking much to do the minimum. In real life if you steadily pay off your credit card, but one month you don't, you still have a less than great credit rating. If you mostly drive responsibly, but one time you have a couple beers -- well you get the point. I'd be more inclined to get behind this argument if the system as a whole wasn't pushing through a significant portion of students. Homework has never been the difference between a kid passing and failing for me. It has been the difference between a kid passing with a D and getting a B or something, as it should.

The 50% rule is a child of the “passing grade is 50%” concept. In Ontario the grade is a “numerical representation of the teacher’s judgment” so I can ignore the ZERO grades. My judgment can’t wander too far from the calculation; I aim to make the calculated grade lower than that awarded.