The Great Grading Debate: Two Sides of Awarding Zeros

Folding in non-academic factors transforms a student’s academic measure into a moral judgment

By Kate A. Elliot

Walk into any faculty lounge in South Carolina and mention the word “zero,” and watch what happens. Teachers divide instantly. Some insist zeros given to students on assigned work teach responsibility — you do nothing, you get nothing. Others argue zeros create an academic death penalty that has nothing to do with what students actually know.

After spending two years studying grading practices across three upstate South Carolina school districts, I’ve seen both arguments play out — and the data tell a clear story.

This isn’t just a philosophical squabble. It’s a math problem. And the math is brutal.

Consider this scenario: A 7th grader earns 100, 79, 86, 75, 88, 92, 80 and 72 on eight assignments. Her average is 84 — a solid B. She clearly understands the material. Then, she fails to turn in two assignments. Those zeros drop her quarter grade to 67, a D. A moment of irresponsibility and weeks of solid work vanish.

Here’s the math everyone misses: A student who turns in an assignment but gets most answers wrong earns a 60, a D. A student who doesn’t turn in the assignment at all gets a zero. Both students failed. But the zero is many times worse than the D. Is missing a deadline really five times worse than submitting work that shows you tried but didn’t understand? Why does our grading system punish one failure five times harder than the other?

What’s Actually Measured

If grades exist to communicate what students know, zeros fail spectacularly. A zero announces that a student understands nothing — absolutely none of the assessed content. That’s almost never true. More often, a zero measures missed deadlines, disorganization, family chaos or competing responsibilities.

Research confirms that teachers routinely fold nonacademic factors into grades — effort, behavior, work habits — and in borderline cases, weight compliance more heavily than mastery. This transforms grades from academic measures into moral judgments.

Defenders of zero grades invoke their role in “real-world” preparation, but this argument collapses under scrutiny. Fail your driver’s test? No problem — return to the DMV two days later to try again. Miss a deadline at work? You face questions from supervisors and performance review comments — not permanent marks that erase everything you’ve done. I’ve yet to see a study that supports using low grades as effective motivation. Students who can mathematically recover from zeros often do. Students who can’t recover simply stop trying. The zero becomes prophecy, not pedagogy.

Two Approaches

In my research, I studied three neighboring districts in South Carolina: Anderson District 4, Oconee County and Pickens County. All three implemented a 50 percent floor grade, but in meaningfully different ways, and the distinctions matter.

Pickens County and Anderson District 4 applied the floor to final quarter averages rather than individual assignments. Under this model, a student who earns a zero on a missed assignment still receives that zero in the gradebook — teachers record the actual performance — but the floor kicks in when calculating the quarterly grade. If a student’s true average falls below 50, it is reported as 50. The zero still stings. Students feel the drag on their grade immediately.

However, the quarterly average cannot collapse so catastrophically that recovery becomes mathematically impossible. A student who earned 82, 78, 90 and zero on four assignments ends up with a calculated average of 62.5 — the floor makes no difference there. But a student who earns two zeros alongside otherwise average work avoids the grade cliff that would otherwise make the rest of the quarter pointless to attempt.

In both Pickens County and Anderson 4, students in grades 3 through 12 were subject to this grading policy.

Oconee County went further. Rather than waiting until the quarter average was computed, Oconee required that no individual assignment grade fall below 50. Every zero was converted to a 50 at the point of entry. This is the more aggressive intervention. A teacher in Oconee could not record a zero. The floor applied to each discrete grade.

The practical effect is that every assignment, however incomplete, carries a minimum weight in the gradebook. The model reflects a deliberate philosophical position: The purpose of a grade is to measure learning, not to punish the absence of a submission.

In Oconee’s framework, an empty gradebook cell communicated that a student did not demonstrate mastery. It did not communicate that the student knew literally nothing because that is almost never true.

Oconee’s floor applied differently by grade band, extending to all students for the full course at the elementary level and for the first half of a course at the secondary level for credit-bearing classes.

Teachers across all three school districts reported the same phenomenon. Both models produced the same result: Kids stayed in the game. Students who previously shut down after one or two zeros — convinced that mathematical recovery was impossible — remained in the game through the quarter. The grade still reflected their performance. Weeks of competent, diligent work no longer were rendered meaningless by a single missed submission.

The floor did not give students credit for work they didn’t do. It prevented the gradebook from declaring academic bankruptcy on their behalf before the quarter was over.

Community Input

Policy change in student grading is never purely technical. It is deeply emotional because grades are one of the primary ways families understand their children’s academic standing.

When any of these three districts began moving toward a grade floor, the reaction from some parents was immediate and skeptical. Isn’t this just giving kids points they didn’t earn? Won’t this teach them that consequences don’t matter?

The districts that navigated this most successfully did so by framing the conversation around accuracy rather than leniency. The argument wasn’t “We’re going to be easier on students.” It was “We want grades to tell you the truth about what your child knows.”

When parents heard it that way — when administrators could show them the math of how a single zero could devastate an otherwise solid average — the conversation shifted.

Sharon Huff, former assistant superintendent for instructional services in Pickens County, says the grading protocols were applied to transferring students’ grades as well, noting that current students should not be graded more harshly than transfers.

In all three districts, these grading practices were implemented administratively rather than as school board policy, and little information about the grading policy adoptions is publicly available. However, the three district policies likely followed the lead of nearby Greenville County Schools, South Carolina’s largest school district, which publicly adopted a middle-school grading floor in 2016 and published its rationale, arguing that the 0–59 range (F grade) was disproportionately large compared with the 10-point ranges for A–D grades. Some Greenville middle schools already had implemented the practice before districtwide adoption.

School board approval in Greenville required making the case not just to educators but to elected officials who hear from constituents. What made the argument persuasive was that proponents could demonstrate the floor was not a ceiling. Students who genuinely mastered material and turned in work were unaffected. The floor only mattered when a zero threatened to destroy an otherwise accurate picture of learning. That distinction — the floor as an accuracy tool, not a grace tool — was the one that moved skeptical school board members toward approval.

What’s at Stake

The stakes extend far beyond report cards. Grades that poorly represent what students actually know keep capable kids out of gifted programs and advanced courses.

A mathematically talented 8th grader who missed two assignments gets a C instead of an A and becomes ineligible for Honors Algebra I. A strong reader with inconsistent homework habits doesn’t qualify for AP English, not because he can’t handle the work but because his grade doesn’t reflect his ability.

College admissions officers read transcripts that measure compliance more than competence and make decisions accordingly. When we conflate behavior with achievement, we close doors and tell universities a story about students that simply isn’t true.

This is a policy problem, and policy problems have policy solutions. Standardized grading practices, whether local or statewide, wouldn’t eliminate teacher judgment. They’d ensure that judgment operates within consistent, equitable parameters so that geography doesn’t determine a student’s mathematical destiny.

New State Policy

The three upstate South Carolina districts showed that it could be done. However, beginning with the 2026–27 school year, South Carolina law prohibits schools and districts from requiring floor grades. Therefore, Oconee, Pickens and Anderson 4 and a handful of other South Carolina districts no longer can require teachers to replace a zero with a 50. Individual teachers may not independently use a grading floor.

The intent of the law, which went into effect July 1, is to create greater consistency and accuracy in grading across South Carolina by ensuring that grades reflect students’ demonstrated performances rather than an artificially established minimum. The law also addresses credit and content recovery and places restrictions on how certain formative, benchmark and district assessments may be incorporated into final grades.

The goal is to ensure that grades accurately reflect demonstrated student performance while still allowing opportunities for reassessment, recovery and additional learning. The law does not prohibit standards-based grading or reasonable opportunities for students to improve their grades.

Making It Happen

The conversation with families is harder than the policy itself, but it is worth having. Ask whether your grading policy measures what students know or how they behave. Then show them the math. If the answer makes the room uncomfortable, that discomfort is data. Use it. 

Kate Elliott is the lead 7th-grade mathematics teacher at R.C. Edwards Middle School in Pickens County, S.C., and a national board-certified teacher. 

Our nationwide survey finds teachers mostly feel constrained by unlimited test retakes and banning of zeros

By David M. Griffith and Jill L. Hoppe

What educators refer to as “equitable” grading policies that prohibit the use of zero grades and require teachers to award partial credit for unsubmitted work have become increasingly common in U.S. schools.

As the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s 2025 report “Equitable’ Grading Through the Eyes of Teachers” documents, the three most common policies — allowing unlimited retakes of tests, banning late penalties and prohibiting zeros — each present in at least a quarter of K–12 schools, despite the fact that no credible study has found that students benefit from any of them.

At least a third of the nearly 1,000 teachers surveyed for our study say their school or district has adopted one or more of these grading policies.

Importantly, these policies are not randomly distributed. For example, 55 percent of majority-minority middle schools now have some variant of “no zeros” because either the school district or the school has adopted such a policy. At least one ostensibly equitable policy now has been adopted in at least half of public schools, and many places have adopted more than one policy.

Essentially, a set of practices with no basis in empirical research has replaced traditional grading in thousands of U.S. classrooms at a time when national test scores and other indicators suggest that many students are struggling.

How did this happen?

Genesis of Mandates

The push for equitable grading dates to the late 2010s, when advocates began arguing that longstanding practices such as awarding zeros for missing work and penalizing late assignments disproportionately harmed students who faced systemic barriers, and that eliminating them would reduce racial and socioeconomic biases.

The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic was a boon for the equitable grading movement, as widespread disruption and concerns about some students’ ability to access their coursework in a fully remote environment pushed many school systems to experiment with looser grading rules. And, despite the gradual return to in-person learning, many of these policies stuck, as raising expectations in the post-pandemic era proved more difficult than lowering them had been.

Five years later, as the nation reckons with another bumper crop of underprepared college students and job seekers, the consequences of this approach are increasingly apparent, as are the sources of its enduring appeal.

By providing a pseudo-intellectual rationale for grade inflation, equitable grading reduces student pushback, eases tensions with parents and offers administrators the tantalizing prospect of soaring graduation rates at a time when an unprecedented number of students struggle to read, write and compute.

What Teachers Think

In general, teachers are skeptical of equitable grading practices. In the Fordham Institute study, 81 percent say the lack of zero as a grade option is harmful to academic engagement, while just 8 percent say it is helpful.

Similarly, overwhelming majorities of teachers oppose the abolition of participation points, late penalties and graded homework, though a slim plurality does support the concept of retakes.

In many districts, hastily adopted policies have been reversed or scaled back in response to concerns raised by teachers and parents. Just one year after its adoption in 2023-24, the Kansas City Public Schools in Missouri discontinued its no-zeros policy.

As one Kansas City teacher remarked, “There’s no way I could come to work each day and do 50 percent of my job and stay employed.” Yet by the logic of no zeros, a student who does half the work may very well earn a C.

Teachers’ dissatisfaction also is clear from their written responses to our nationally representative survey, which identify numerous problems with the implementation of specific policies.

These problems include a heavier workload. One teacher noted the need to “grade almost every assignment more than once” unless there are “policies in place to encourage [students] to try their best the first time.”

Another teacher complained that “allowing retakes without penalty … promotes avoidance and procrastination,” while another observed that students “only have to participate half the time to pass.”

Perhaps the most common complaint is the way these policies have lowered expectations for the students they are meant to help. In the words of one veteran, “Students will sink to lower expectations. Every time.”

As another teacher put it, “Equity grading is not leveling the playing field. … It is simply lowering standards so that school districts look like they are meeting kids where they are, when in fact they are hiding their failures behind ‘equitable’ policies.”

Teacher Discretion

Collectively, teachers’ responses suggest that equitable grading mandates have been both ineffective and inequitable. This implies that those practicing in their shadow should have greater discretion with regard to grading, which shouldn’t be controversial.

After all, 9th grade is different from 12th grade. Teaching AP and IB courses is quite different from teaching a remedial algebra course. It borders on the nonsensical to mandate that physics and French teachers take the same approach to “participation.” So, regardless of the setting, it makes little sense to require the same grading policies across the board.

Nor does it make sense to insist that every student in the same classroom receive identical treatment. Students with individual education plans are legally entitled to accommodations that would not apply to most students. Common sense suggests that teachers make some allowances for English learners who are adapting to a new language and culture.

Probably every teacher has had at least one student in class who deserves some grace because of their difficult home life. But this doesn’t imply that every student in every class should be treated as if they face insurmountable barriers to completing every assignment, which is the practical effect of many equitable grading policies.

Like most other elements of teaching, grading is a deeply human activity, which means that fairness depends on the judgment of individuals. With each additional year in the classroom, teachers gain new insights into the grading practices that are likely to engage students while holding them accountable and preparing them for future success. This accumulated expertise enables teachers to make nuanced decisions that rigid, one-size-fits-all grading policies cannot accommodate.

Administrative Acts

So, what should administrators do instead?

Keep expectations high. Many districts maintain explicit attendance requirements, and a growing number of jurisdictions prohibit the unsanctioned use of artificial intelligence.

Protect teachers’ autonomy. No two students or two classrooms are exactly the same, and numerous studies have found that perceived autonomy is strongly correlated with teachers’ job satisfaction and intention to continue teaching.

Provide targeted supports. Instead of eliminating graded homework, a district could give students the option of completing it after school with the assistance of a teacher or tutor. Similarly, instead of granting unlimited retakes, a school or teacher might permit them only after a student has participated in tutoring or successfully completed a study guide.

Worthy Norms

Lowering grading standards in classrooms with disadvantaged students is inherently inequitable. After all, the point isn’t to tell students they are successful. It’s to help them succeed. And of course, most teachers already want what’s best for their students. So to the extent that mercy is warranted, it needn’t be mandated or micromanaged.

That’s why truly equitable grading policies support teachers who have high expectations, value their professional judgment and provide real supports to students who need them. It’s why so many teachers are speaking out against a grading culture that undermines those longstanding and fundamentally worthy norms. And it’s why these grading practices, contrary to the claims of supporters, are anything but equitable. n

David Griffith is national research director of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, D.C. Jill Hoppe is research assistant at the same organization.