Feeling a Little Zapped

A friend of mine teaches high school English, and when I saw her the other day she told me that her school is considering moving to a no zero policy - students wouldn't be given zeros for missed homework but instead would have to stay after school or arrive before school to make up missed work. The idea, my friend explained, is that students will be more motivated by the infringement on their time than they will be by a bad grade. Also, some administrators argue that a zero is too punitive, too discouraging for struggling students, and that it  mathematically skews a student's GPA to boot - every other letter grade, A-D, runs on a 10-point scale, but an F plunges a student into a difficult - and numerically misleading - abyss. Giving a 50 instead - or, in the case of some schools, an even higher minimum - will still mean giving a failing grade but won't disrupt the scale nearly as much as a zero.

My friend works hard, has 150 students, and is naturally exhausted. "My principal says that the research supports it," she said of the no zero policy. "Will you read 'the research' for me and sum it up?" she half-joked, half-seriously asked. "Because I don't have time to."

So (procrastinating on my own work, naturally!) I did do a little research of my own. Despite various differences, there's a unified name for these programs - Zeros Aren't Permitted, or ZAP. A quick Google search reveals that some have been around for years, and you can find them across the country. I also checked out the education database ERIC and found several articles on minimum grading, including a 2012 Educational Researcher article that reports on a seven-year study of a high school. "Statistical analyses revealed no evidence that minimum grading was inducing either grade inflation or social promotion," the authors write.

Artificially high grades and passing students into the next grade level before they're academically prepared - those are genuine concerns, and it's good to know that minimum grading doesn't seem to add to those problems. But what about other objections? For example, do these policies effectively tell a middle or high school student that no work or late, incomplete, or otherwise lacking work will still result in no less than 50 points - that nothing will always equal something? Or that they'll never have the choice or freedom to just not do something? Or that their time will never truly be their own - that "lunch" can always become a "working lunch"? Or that, I don't know, learning and working aren't ever enough to be their own reward?

And what about teachers? If you're supposedly autonomous in your classroom but nonetheless "strongly discouraged" from giving zeros, as discussed in this recent piece about the Virginia Beach school district, what do you do?

I believe wholeheartedly in equal opportunities in education, in helping students who need it, and study halls, tutoring sessions, and other services can and do help. I've taught classes where I've accepted late work in part because I recognize that all students sometimes have bad days or need a little extra time. But I don't accept late work for full credit, and no work = zero. I'm part of the college system that many of these ZAP youth will be entering. But honestly, I'm less concerned that the students won't be prepared for college than that colleges will change too, and one day no one will remember what was funny and painful about Power Points with sentences like this: "The vision of the ZAP program is to: Create a school climate which fosters academic success for those students not turning in homework."