**Updated 4.6.24 w/ quantitative results on minimum 50 grading**

We know that the 100-point scale has a staggering 60 points that fall within the F range, then just 10 points for each letter grade above. This major imbalance means that averaging zeros into a student’s course grade often has disastrous results, and can become mission insurmountable for getting out of that rut.

Still, the argument against zeros is surprisingly still going on, with advocates in plenty of schools everywhere claiming the old “something for nothing myth” when alternatives are suggest, like setting the lowest grade possible as a 50 (i.e., “minimum 50). In other words, teachers are still unconvinced that they need to stop using zeros. Well, we’re heading back 20 years to when Doug Reeves (2004) used a 4.0 grading scale example to show exactly how utterly absurd and destructive zeros are in practice. This is perhaps the most compelling mathematical case against the zero I’ve come across yet….

We know that the common GPA scale of 4.0 corresponds nicely to the the A-F letter grades (i.e., 4.0=A, 3.0=B, 2.0=C, 1.0=D, 0.0=F). That is, a zero is an F—the lowest grade—and the zero is equally as far away from a 1(D) as a 1 is away from a 2(C), etc. If we were to apply this equal distance to the 100-point scale, the interval between each letter would be 10 points, meaning an F would be a 50 (i.e., 10 points away from a D(60)), and is the basic reasoning behind all “minimum 50” recommendations. When a zero is assigned on the imbalanced 100-point scale, however, the distance away from a D becomes 60 points, not 10. In other words, the ratio between a D and a zero is different depending on the scale.

In his brief article, Reeves humorously, though perhaps callously, noted that the astute reader with a 5th grade level understanding of mathematical ratios should see the problem, yet “many people with advanced degrees, including those with more background in mathematics than the typical teacher, have not applied the ratio standard to their own professional practices” (p. 325). Reeves pointed out that assigning a zero is like averaging in a -6.0 on the 4.0 scale?! That is, it is six intervals lower than what already represents failing, and no one in even a lucid state of mind would consider averaging anything into a grade to any negative degree below a zero, let a lone six of them. When teachers use zeros on the 100-point scale, students aren’t just failing. They’re failing-failing-failing-failing-failing-failing. From this perspective, it’s mind-blowing how anyone can justify the use of zeros. More often, the justification leads to motivating students. Some teachers still believe that the threat of failure gets students doing the work. To be clear, threats have no place in education, and this use of the zero as a threat is an unacceptable practice. Besides, they don’t really work anyway. Just think back to the remote year during COVID to jog your memory. Instead of zeros, my recommendation is to think about what else is going on when students appear to be motivated by zeros (e.g., teacher reminders, announcements, calls home, stern looks, etc.) and stick to those.

Let’s finish up with a return to the “something for nothing myth” that advocates for the zero claim when asked to set the lowest grade at 50, and some data that trounces such a claim. Bottom line, it is more accurate to say that students get “a failing grade for doing nothing” in such a system. In a 100-point system with zeros that mathematically act like a -6.0, however, Reeves exposed that students have been getting “six times the debt for nothing,” which is simply beyond reason.

Furthermore, Carey & Carifio (2012) looked at seven years worth of grading data (2004-2010) from a large urban Massachusetts high school that set a school-wide minimum 50 policy. They wanted to see if setting the lowest grade to a 50 would result in passing kids along artificially (re: “something for nothing”), so they compared the number of first quarter fails with passing course grades. If a minimum 50 were to have inflated grades, a very large number of those fails would have become passes. Of the 8.5% of grades that began with a 50, just 0.3% of them ended in a passing grade. The researchers also compared grades to MCAS scores. Now, while we don’t want to place too much emphasis on standardized tests, it’s better that grades align *more* with them than *less.* For example, an argument against minimum 50 would be that kids might pass their classes due to the policy alone, but score low on the MCAS. I turns out the opposite was true: Scores increased. Furthermore, “the students who had received minimum grades were outperforming their peers who had never received a minimum grade” (p. 206). Unfortunately, this comparison to the MCAS also showed that GPAs of struggling students were underreporting their achievement (i.e., their standardized test scores were higher than the grades their teachers assigned them), exposing deeper problems with grading.

So, do you still have hang-ups about using zeros? What are they? Can you think of alternatives?

References

Carey, T., & Carifio, J. (2012). The Minimum Grading Controversy: Results of a Quantitative Study of Seven Years of Grading Data From an Urban High School. Educational Researcher, 41(6), 201–208. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X12453309

Reeves, D. (2004). The Case against the Zero. Phi Delta Kappan, 86, 324–325. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170408600418