First of all, go take a look. If you make it past the foreword, you’ll certainly find claims supported by research. You’ll also find assumptions that could contextualize interpretations as questionable, as well as misleading statements, such as “overall, about half of K–12 teachers in the United States say their school or district has adopted at least one ‘equitable’ grading policy” (p. 10). This is quite the claim when only 958 teachers responded to the survey. And I don’t think this is a typo. So, let’s look at some highlights, starting with a very important finding…

Most teachers (64%) said grades should be based on objective standards, as opposed to effort.
This finding is interesting because the Fordham Institute report is written from the perspective of teachers in the minority (36%) who grade effort, and whose main argument is that student motivation and effort are reduced by policies such as no zeros, no late penalties, not grading homework/participation, and having unlimited retakes. Yet, most teachers know that behavior and effort should not factor into grading, which is highly supported in research literature. It’s almost like the authors are acknowledging how traditional ideas have already fallen out of fashion while continuing to advocate for those very ideas.

Not off to a very good start…

High Expectations
Most teachers (71%) said grading policies should set high expectations for everyone. Good! What a noble response, right? Yet, this one’s interesting because the survey question gave teachers the option of choosing that response, or “grading policies should be reformed to be fairer to students who face disadvantages” (p. 17). This is what we call a false dichotomy. That is, high expectations can also be fair to students who face disadvantages, whereas this survey question makes it seem like only one can be true. This is bad survey design.

“Partial Credit”
A survey question about “giving partial credit for assignments that are never turned in” sounds awful, regardless of grading approach. Granted, I’d certainly raise an eyebrow if a teacher told me they assigned a grade of 60 to missing assignments, but the authors are trying to show that teachers oppose the “minimum 50” and “no zeros” policies by associating them with the idea of credit. In reality, the purpose of the “minimum 50” policy is to correct the scale so that every 10 points correlates to the F-A letter grades instead of the common system of allotting 60 points to failing (0-59), and then just 40 points for passing (60-100). For comparison, it would have been interesting to ask teachers their thoughts on giving no credit and GPA of 0.0 for the accumulation of 59 points and then sudden, passing credit and GPA of 1.0 for one more point accumulated. After all, that’s what the current 0-100 scale does, and when presented this way sounds just as awful as “partial credit” and “something for nothing” arguments!. That is, in many systems, the GPA begins at a 1.0 only with a grade of 60; there’s no 0.9 awarded if a student has a grade of 59, and then poof! You’ve got a 1.0 and a D-, which also is not going to land a student game-changing scholarships, right?

I believe the real issue with the “minimum 50” concern is that students get higher grades than teachers might expect because their assessments aren’t really high quality, and probably completion-based more than anything. Students who start at a 50 almost certainly have a 70+ when poor assessments fluff up and pad the grade. Instead of complaining about the 50 as the floor, I’d take a hard look at what you’re asking students to do, and how you’re measuring it. Grading work often exposes larger, systemic issues in education. Maybe these teachers are having a hard time and need support? Of course, that’s beyond the scope of this blog post and the article, though the authors do seem to be bothered by interrogating practices, especially when linked to racial disparity.

“Policymakers lowering standards for non-White students”
Yikes, right? But let’s look at that claim. Authors said this was common because 55% of teachers in majority-minority middle schools have some kind of “no-zeros” policy, and they’re equating “no zeros” with lower standards (but we saw this as part of adjusting the scale, above). Now, the total number of middle school teachers surveyed was 176. How many of those teachers were in middle schools with mostly non-White students? We aren’t given that information. Even if it were all 176, we’re talking about 97 teachers who have “no zero” policies, and 72 who don’t. Is it reasonable to claim that policymakers lower standards for non-White students because of these numbers? Hardly. What if only 60 middle school teachers were from schools with mostly non-White students? What if only 10 did? We just don’t know, and this is a weird sentence tossed in there that doesn’t have any comparison data, like how we aren’t given the percentage of teachers in majority White middle schools who have a “no-zero” policy, either. What if it was close? What if it was higher?! Also, these numbers need to be really, really disparate to make a strong claim that standards are being lowered for any group. 55% of an unknown number doesn’t warrant that conclusion. A more likely explanation is that there tends to be more surveillance of non-White schools that get more reforms, and we’ve seen parents from wealthy, majority-White districts rally against grading reforms. So, policymakers might be united in efforts across district demographics, but majority-White districts might have more resources to fight reform, and also come from more competition-based professions that view high stakes grading more favorably.

No Late Penalties vs. Unlimited Retakes
Teachers thought that unlimited retakes were helpful (41% to 37%), but then some of them thought it was harmful to have no late penalties (56% to 23%). This means that about 20% of teachers require work by a certain date, but then they also give unlimited retakes. This strikes me as some kind of control issue, or the false sense that students must be penalized in order to learn how to meet deadlines. Furthermore, what’s the point of a deadline if you then open up unlimited attempts? This actually promotes a common complaint teachers have about retakes, such as students turning in garbage the first round knowing they’ll have unlimited rounds. Of course, this is because there’s an arbitrary deadline established in the first place. Furthermore, this question doesn’t define “penalties.” The assumption, given the rest of the article and survey questions, is that grades have to be involved. This shouldn’t be the case. There are other consequences for not turning in work that might actually teach students about deadlines. Using low grades as threats has not shown to be an effective use of them, regardless of how several hundred teachers might feel on a survey, which is why there’s a call for reform in the first place.

“Grade Inflation”
Traditional grading expects a quarter of students to fail, a quarter to thrive, and the rest somewhere in the middle (re: bell curve). When teachers improve their instruction and use more accurate systems to report achievement, more learners have the potential to thrive. Well actually, what usually happens is that the fluff grades (e.g., participation, homework completion) are removed and kids “doing well” suddenly find themselves with lower grades, then their parents complain and blame the grading system instead of realizing the reform exposed lower achievement that was hidden by questionable grades for effort, behavior, etc. If grades do become more accurate and they’re not being used to control students, learning can improve. Unfortunately, this is sometimes dubbed “grade inflation.” Yes, grades are higher than before, but what usually gets overlooked is the increase in meeting learning objectives.

Were teachers asked how well their students were learning content? Nope.

As with most educational hot topics, actual learning is rarely addressed, ironically. For example, in the article, one of the highlighted quotes was about teachers being concerned that students might only “do a few assignments a year” (p. 20). Firstly, there are students who do this every year, regardless of grading approach. Secondly, this was correctly noted as a worry by the teacher, and not an actual result, which is one throughline in this article. The teachers who were surveyed are worried. And that’s understandable. What’s not so great is that teacher fears are being weaponized against reforms that could address a lot of those very fears! Of course, this requires good implementation, and I make no claims that the teachers responding to this survey have had adequate training.

Icing on the cake
For me, the coup de grace of this article is how 58% of teachers unexpectedly wanted “clear, schoolwide grading policies, so students’ final grades are fair” (p. 21). That’s a sizable number of teachers who see value in clear policies. Meanwhile, the findings mostly show that teachers are uninformed, misinformed, or untrained when it comes to grading. Something this article also does not take into account is accuracy of self-reported practices, or how well each school has trained their teacher taking this survey. It’s not pretty out there, and there’s a good chance that many of these teachers who were surveyed have less-than-adequate understanding of assessment and grading.

In sum, all this article tells me is that what mostly veteran teachers (78% of total teachers surveyed) think about new ideas in assessment and grading that almost no one trains for. In fact, some of the findings show a bit more support for equitable practices than the authors might have wanted to see. A lot of charts were closer to 50/50 than something like 75/25 or 90/10. So, I’m not surprised, but I am surprised by the tone of the foreword, as well as interpretations and conclusions drawn from the authors.

Equitable Grading Research & Pilot Study
More research is definitely needed on equitable grading practices, and I’ve personally got a critical eye towards them. In fact, in a pilot study I conducted (Piantaggini, 2025), I found that the majority of teachers I surveyed at a small rural school in New England used zeros, and most reported offering extensions and retakes, while almost half did so requiring some kind of condition (e.g., scheduling a meeting with the teacher, completing additional work, only allowed if grade was below a certain threshold, etc.). Students acknowledged this in their interviews. For example, responses tended to drift towards ways to increase grades, not improve learning, even when asked directly. One student mentioned putting in extra effort “to get better grades,” and another talked about getting help to “bring that grade up.” When asked about what might be different if there were no restrictions on who could take retakes, one student said he would “probably retake tests more to get higher grades.” Another student also spoke of retakes, saying, “you have a certain number of weeks to retake it and get a certain grade that you want, or try and get that certain grade.” The majority of students wanted unlimited and unrestricted retakes to overwrite previous grades, such as one student suggesting “two rounds of assessments” in which the first one was not graded. In sum, students focused on gaining points and getting higher grades, yet also were searching for ways to make the grades they did receive overwritable. They suggested that having more ungraded work could normalize mistakes and reduce pressure. 

Findings suggested that teacher policies concerning equitable grading practices influenced how students were preoccupied with how permanent their grades were. Under equitable grading principles, conditions that restrict opportunities for students to show their learning are not recommended. Most teachers also used zeros, adding to the sense of finality and causing confusion amongst students. This presence of zeros points to inequitable grading practices that are to be avoided according to the literature (Erickson, 2011; McMillan & Nash, 2000; O’Connor & Wormeli, 2011; Reeves, 2004). These policies left a negative impression on students, keeping the focus on grades, and being frustrated with the restrictions placed on extensions and retakes. These findings are consistent with Peters et al. (2017), who found that 9th through 12th grade students were confused about restrictions on when they could reassess and how to qualify for reassessment in the first place. The 10th and 12th grade students in the present study felt similarly, further describing how restrictions unnecessarily fossilized low grades, and how lifting them would lead to normalizing mistakes in a positive way. These findings confirm perceived benefits of unlimited and unrestricted retakes, for which scholars have been advocating (Feldman, 2023), and are two ways to overwrite previous grades (Schneider & Hutt, 2023).

Connecting The Study to the Article
In my study, the misuse of equitable grading practices seemed to have made things worse for learners, and these practices did not mitigate the lack of feedback. This makes me wonder how many teachers in the Fordham Institute article responding that practices were harmful were also misusing them. The article, stripped of its unwarranted tone and claims, might just be more evidence that teachers are in need of more professional development. My money is on training teachers, not throwing out promising practices.

References

Erickson, J. A. (2011). A Call to Action Transforming Grading Practices. Principal Leadership, 11(6) 42–46.

Feldman, J. (2023). Grading For Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms (2nd edition). Corwin.

McMillan, J. H., & Nash, S. (2000). Teacher Classroom Assessment and Grading Practices Decision Making. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED447195

O’Connor, K., & Wormeli, R. (2011). Reporting student learning. Educational Leadership, 69(3), 40.

Peters, R. E., Kruse, J., Buckmiller, T., & Townsley, M. (2017). “It’s Just Not Fair!” Making Sense of Secondary Students’ Resistance to a Standards-Based Grading. American Secondary Education.

Piantaggini, L., (2025, May 14). Captives: Students and Teachers Held Hostage By Graded Formatives [Poster session], University of Massachusetts College of Education Annual Research Showcase, Amherst, MA.

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

Schneider, J., & Hutt, E. L. (2023). Off the Mark. Harvard University Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=CoG3EAAAQBAJ