Much ado has been made about legislation passed this year in Texas that bars school districts from requiring minimum grades regardless of the quality of a student’s work.  This legislation was prompted by a policy in place in some districts that stipulates the lowest grade teachers can assign to students is 50% rather than a zero.  Similar policies have been implemented in school districts in throughout the United States.

Districts that enacted this policy had no intention of giving students credit when no credit was due.  A 50% is still a failing grade.  They did so to eliminate the devastating effects of a zero in a percentage grading system.
To recover from a single zero, a student must achieve a minimum of nine perfect papers.  Attaining that level of performance would challenge the most talented students, and may be impossible for most others, especially those who struggle in learning.  A single zero can doom a student to failure, regardless of what dedicated effort or level of performance might follow.
Certainly students need to know that there are consequences for what they do and do not do in school.  Malingering should be penalized.  But should the penalty be so severe that students have no chance of restitution or recovery regarding their grade?

Ironically, the true culprit in this matter is not minimum grades or the zero; it’s the percentage grading system.  There is nothing sacred about percentages in grading.  We use them today because we use computers for grading, and most computers are programmed to calculate grades in percentages.

In a percentage grading system, a zero is the most extreme score a teacher can assign.  To move from a B to an A in most schools, for example, requires an improvement of only 10% at most, say from 80% to 90%.  But to move from a zero to a minimum passing grade requires six or seven times that improvement, usually from zero to 60% or 70%.
An easy solution to this dilemma is simply to do away with percentages in grading and use integers instead: 0 – 4.  Many schools use integers already in calculating grade point averages (GPA’s).  Colleges and universities throughout the U.S. use the integer system of grading as well.  If greater precision is needed, tenths, hundredths, or thousandth can be included.
In an integer system, teachers can keep the zero and assign it to students when such a grade is deserved.  Improving from a zero to a passing grade for those students means moving from zero to one, not from zero to 60% or 70%.  It makes recovery possible for students.  It also helps make grades more accurate reflections of what students have learned and accomplished in school.

Assigning fair and meaningful grades to students will continue to challenge educators at all levels.  It requires thoughtful and informed professional judgment on the part of teachers, along with an abiding concern for what best serves the interests of students and their families.

But the purpose of grading is or should be to communicate information about students’ learning and achievement in school, not to punish students in ways that make recovery from transgressions impossible.