Making the Grade: Zero Tolerance
This article is part three of a series on assessment. Click here to read the intro article and here to read the second article.
Math was a struggle for me as a student because I often failed to understand the deeper significance of the skills I was being taught. The same was true when I first learned about online gradebook programs that would calculate a student’s grade for me. I was excited, thinking only about how much time I would save by not having to complete oodles of mathematical calculations. However, PowerSchool, Canvas, and Skyward numbed me to the deeper significance of how that grade was actually calculated and what it represented. My mindset believed that whatever the program spit out must have been a perfect reflection of each student's academic aptitude. Wow….was I wrong!
I mainly neglected to understand the disproportionate relationship between a low percent (especially giving a zero) and a letter grade. In his book Get Set, Go! grading guru Thomas Guskey outlines the danger of using a full 100% grading scale, like the one featured in the table below.
The key column in the visual above is the Interval. The discrepancy between an “F” and all other letter grades creates a grade that becomes increasingly skewed the closer the percent drops towards zero.
To provide a better perspective, let’s return to the fictitious student Devin who I created for the previous article in this series. If Devin has received B’s on his first two assignments in my class, but he neglected to turn in his third assignment (which for most teachers is scored as a zero in the grade book), Devin’s next B grade would result in him still failing the class with a 57%. In fact, it would take Devin FOURTEEN (14) B grades in order for him to return to just an 80%!
Both Guskey and Rick Wormeli would argue that schools and administrators should issue a Zero Tolerance Policy for giving zeros for the following reasons:
A zero in the gradebook is demotivating for most of the students who struggle with missing work. They know the extreme uphill battle they will have to face to make up for their one basement level grade and are often unmotivated to start the climb.
The extreme skew that a zero creates miscommunicates an accurate measure of what a student actually knows/understands.
Creating a grade that blends student aptitude with student behavior is a misrepresentation of a grade’s purpose.
The million dollar question then becomes: How do teachers hold students accountable for missing and poorly completed work?
The answer to this question is not simple, and it will require thoughtful conversation at your school, but here are some ideas to get you started:
All missing work needs to be clearly and punctually communicated to students and parents. Some schools have colored slips that are sent home and need to be signed and returned whenever a student has an incomplete assignment.
Many online gradebooks feature a “Missing Work” checkbox that can be clicked to help communicate incomplete assignments.
If a student has any missing work, the grade for that class should be labeled as “Incomplete,” and not a letter grade, especially if the student is missing any major assessments. It is impossible to grade work that doesn’t exist! Once the assignments are complete, the letter grade will be an accurate measure of the student’s aptitude.
For repeated and egregious missing work, consider providing a consequence that is not connected to a student’s grade such as requiring them to stay after school and removing various privileges, including participation in extracurricular activities.
Establish a grading scale that is proportionate for each interval, where the lowest grade that can be entered is a 50%. Any evidence of student aptitude that falls below a 50% would require intervention and additional opportunities for the student to demonstrate proficiency.
I am fully aware that the ideas above may cause some of you to cringe… almost as much as I did when I first realized that I’d be writing a blog post centered around math! However conversations like this are necessary, as your school continues to align your grading practices so that all grades
“represent an honest report of evidence at this moment in time, nothing more. If we make them [grades] something more than that, we undermine the student’s maturation and any useful purpose for grading” (Wormeli, as cited in Smartbrief, 2018).
Questions for Faculty Discussion:
Discuss the different ways that teachers communicate missing/late work to students and parents. Could this be a universal practice at your school?
Do all teachers at your school use the same grading scale?
Discuss the pros and cons of implementing a 100-50% grading scale.
Might your faculty benefit from reading Get Set, Go! for professional development regarding grading practices?
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