Many school districts across the state and the nation have adopted “No Zero” grading policies. According to an article on Edutopia.com, the rationale for the decision to disallow zeros on assignments is to make it more difficult for students to fail because they will have more opportunities to make up work, complete assignments and retake tests. Not surprisingly, the No Zero policy is controversial among educators.
As stated in the article, the No Zero policy gives all students opportunities to be successful. The opportunity to retake tests, have endless time to turn in assignments and multiple opportunities to make up work will certainly allow more opportunities for students to be successful. That depends on how we are defining “success.” Part of the No Zero policy allows students to earn fifty or even sixty points for an assignment even if they don’t turn in anything. I cannot see how success can be found in the preceding framework.
The No Zero policy will provide the illusion of student success. Students’ grades may shine (which is often deceptive), but students will lose the opportunity to master time management, prioritize, learn to plan and suffer the consequences for failure to complete assignments. These are all skills necessary to be successful in life. How will awarding points for not turning in anything help a student be successful?
It’s a shame that in our state and nation’s public schools, we encourage student success by lowering the bar of what is expected of them. It seems that we are communicating to them that we have no faith in our ability to teach them effectively or their ability to learn, so we will tweak the matrix to net the illusion of success rather than raising our expectations and experiencing success.
With policies like No Zero in place, we are crippling our students and not preparing them to succeed in life. There are not many jobs that will compensate a worker for doing nothing. We are sending our youth a very skewed message and setting them up for failure.
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