The ‘no-zero’ grading policy exposes a far larger rot within the American education system.
The ‘no-zero’ grading policy exposes a far larger rot within the American education system.
J ust when one thought there couldn’t be fewer expectations in schools, the public-education establishment came along and tossed the rest out the classroom window. School districts across the country — from Arizona to Minnesota and Connecticut — have done away with zeros. Whether a student performs poorly on a test or simply hands in no work, the lowest grade teachers can assign is 50 percent.
This fad isn’t new. The New York Daily News reported in 2013 that it was “common practice” at individual city schools to forgo grades lower than 55 percent even if kids didn’t attend classes. As an emergency measure during the pandemic, it was an official policy for schools in New York to ban failing grades. While it’s no longer official policy to forgo Ds and Fs, the district pressured teachers to pass failing students, even many who never attended class.
Perhaps most appallingly, one school — part of KIPP, America’s most extensive charter-school system, consisting of over 270 schools — sent an email (obtained by this author) instructing teachers to “update [a] grade to above a 50 percent” regardless of completion, and other KIPP schools have followed suit. KIPP initially committed to exacting academic and behavioral standards but has ultimately yielded to progressive criticism. The participation trophy has reached the report card.
This fad is so patently idiotic that I’m struggling to criticize it. Is it even worth reasoning against someone who advocates including nails on the lunch menu?
What does this fad accomplish? It communicates to students that life has no consequences, that they should be rewarded and coddled regardless of effort, and that excellence isn’t worth the pursuit. It incentivizes skipping projects, tests, or essays and discourages kids who would otherwise seek extra help or test corrections if a zero weighed heavily on their final grade.
More broadly, this fad underscores two unfortunate trends in American education: the adoption of baseless practices and the lowering of standards in the name of equity.
Regarding the first, there is no evidence that eliminating the zero accomplishes any good. One academic review admits that “limited evidence of effectiveness has led multiple schools to abandon no-zero grading policies.”
Before this fad spread, a handful of districts had attempted it, and the evidence points toward failure. One teacher who worked for a Chicago public school that adopted the policy back in 2013 wrote that the change “didn’t encourage students who had failed. It resulted in formerly hard-working students turning slack.”
There’s a habit in American education wherein some professor or organization has a novel idea, and schools adopt the practice without any evidence of its efficacy — whole-language instruction, learning styles, workshop model, and plenty more. The New York Times recently ran a scathing piece about a popular curriculum that largely forgoes phonics instruction, demonstrably the best means of teaching early literacy. The field of education is rife with pseudoscience based on either scant or faulty social science, and no-zero grading policies are only the latest example.
The second trend is the heroic lowering of standards, all in the name of equity, following George Floyd’s murder. KIPP schools led the way, retiring their pithy slogan “work hard; be nice” in the name of anti-racism and loosening discipline practices. Other schools have certainly done worse than KIPP, but because of their influence and once-staunch defense of standards, their capitulation is a saddening bellwether.
There’s a rank irony in this trend. So-called no-excuse charter schools like KIPP are renowned precisely because they succeed where others fail: they push low-income and minority students toward academic success, outpacing even affluent schools in literacy and mathematics. When they do away with these expectations, they’re not demonstrating care or concern for students while implicitly communicating to students that they don’t expect anything better.
Tragically, these policy changes lowered expectations and slackened discipline, working against the stated goals of equity and anti-racism. School systems like KIPP are accomplishing the holy grail of education reform — closing the achievement gap — and then surrendering that success to progressive political pressures and trendy buzzwords.
No-zero grading is but one ridiculous policy that, when interrogated, exposes a far larger rot within the American education system. The sooner both trends are confronted, the better.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify the source of quoted information.