To Fail or not to Fail
Throughout the Canadian education system there are individual schools and school boards that have written their own no-fail or no-zero policies. Over the last few years these policies have become a much debated issue, not only between the schools, parents and teachers, but also in the media. In most cases these policies do not permit teachers to assign a student a grade of zero for incomplete assignments, deduct marks for late assignments or penalize students for cheating. Proponents for the no-fail system believe there is a need to separate behavior from achievement, where opponents believe that the traditional methods allowing teachers to use their own discretion when grading, provides superior learning outcomes. …show more content…
Although this may be true, it is a fair representation of the work they have completed. If a student feels that they will not do well on an assignment, under the no-fail or no-zero policy they are better to not hand anything in, as a low mark will lower their average and no mark at all improves their average or at a minimum keeps their average the same. This, in essence, rewards students for no effort and penalizes the conscientious students that have completed and handed in all of their assignments. Another aspect to this is the fact that the school as a whole will report higher averages for their classes. Gina Canevá, a teacher from the Lindblom Math and Science Academy in Chicago, compares data from two years. The first year when the no-zero policy was not in effect versus the second year when it was. In the first year 59% of students were considered to be on track to graduate within four years, where in the second year 87% of the students were considered on track. She goes on to state that, “With 87% of freshmen considered on-track, one would expect that those in the second group would have much higher standardized test scores. But in fact, the ACT scores of both groups were nearly the same, and equally abysmal—a 15.1 for those with a 59% on-track rate, and a 15.4 for the group with 87% on-track.” (For Student Sake). The reason for the dramatic shift in the on-track rate, compared to the near equal test scores, is that with the no-zero policy there is a minimum score of 50% for no effort versus the ability to give scores between 0-50% with traditional grading methods. In summary, no-zero policies misrepresent achievement data and demotivate
Throughout the Canadian education system there are individual schools and school boards that have written their own no-fail or no-zero policies. Over the last few years these policies have become a much debated issue, not only between the schools, parents and teachers, but also in the media. In most cases these policies do not permit teachers to assign a student a grade of zero for incomplete assignments, deduct marks for late assignments or penalize students for cheating. Proponents for the no-fail system believe there is a need to separate behavior from achievement, where opponents believe that the traditional methods allowing teachers to use their own discretion when grading, provides superior learning outcomes. …show more content…
Although this may be true, it is a fair representation of the work they have completed. If a student feels that they will not do well on an assignment, under the no-fail or no-zero policy they are better to not hand anything in, as a low mark will lower their average and no mark at all improves their average or at a minimum keeps their average the same. This, in essence, rewards students for no effort and penalizes the conscientious students that have completed and handed in all of their assignments. Another aspect to this is the fact that the school as a whole will report higher averages for their classes. Gina Canevá, a teacher from the Lindblom Math and Science Academy in Chicago, compares data from two years. The first year when the no-zero policy was not in effect versus the second year when it was. In the first year 59% of students were considered to be on track to graduate within four years, where in the second year 87% of the students were considered on track. She goes on to state that, “With 87% of freshmen considered on-track, one would expect that those in the second group would have much higher standardized test scores. But in fact, the ACT scores of both groups were nearly the same, and equally abysmal—a 15.1 for those with a 59% on-track rate, and a 15.4 for the group with 87% on-track.” (For Student Sake). The reason for the dramatic shift in the on-track rate, compared to the near equal test scores, is that with the no-zero policy there is a minimum score of 50% for no effort versus the ability to give scores between 0-50% with traditional grading methods. In summary, no-zero policies misrepresent achievement data and demotivate