BIn most math problems, zero would never be confused with
50, but a handful of schools nationwide have set off an emotional
academic debate by giving minimum scores of 50 for students
who fail.
Officials in schools from Las Vegas to Dallas to Port Byron,
N.Y., have proposed or implemented versions of such a policy,
with varying results.
Their argument: Other letter grades — A, B, C and D — are
broken down in increments of 10 from 60 to 100, but there is
a 59-point spread between D and F, a gap that can often make
it mathematically impossible for some failing students to ever
catch up.
"It's a classic mathematical dilemma: that the students have
a six times greater chance of getting an F," says Douglas Reeves,
founder of The Leadership and Learning Center, a Colorado-based
educational think tank who has written on the topic. "The statistical
tweak of saying the F is now 50 instead of zero is a tiny part
of how we can have better grading practices to encourage student
performance."
But opponents say the larger gap between D and F exists because
passing requires a minimum competency of understanding at least
60% of the material. Handing out more credit than a student
has earned is grade inflation, says Ed Fields, founder of HotChalk.com,
a site for teachers and parents: "I certainly don't want to
teach my children that no effort is going to get them half the
way there."
Schools have taken a variety of approaches:
• In Hillsboro, Ore., the school district is planning to roll
out such a policy slowly. School board member Hugh O'Donnell
says he hopes it is implemented within a couple of years "once
we educate the teachers."
• The Dallas Independent School District has a policy not
to allow semester grades below a 50. One principal's decision
to disallow grades below a 70 in certain instances drew protests
this spring and was rescinded.
• At Lehn Middle School in Port Byron, N.Y., the teachers
turn in numerical averages from zero to 100 for report cards,
and a computer program rounds up anything below a 50, following
principal Sally Feinberg's policy. "An F is an F, and 50 is
still not passing," Feinberg says. "The point is motivation
and to give kids the opportunity to pass a grade."
A top proponent of a minimum-50 policy, Thomas Guskey of Georgetown
College in Kentucky, acknowledges that there are no studies
he knows of that examine whether such approaches increase passing
rates.
"Oftentimes, when schools go to this policy, a major component
of doing so is a significant parent training program," Guskey
says. "That makes it hard to tell if it's anything the school
did, or maybe by informing parents, they become more conscientious."
