Our school district had a good idea this year about improving grading by eliminating zeros and pegging undone student work at 50%.

However, as our district is prone to do, they didn’t involve teachers in the actual discussing and decision-making process and just announced it.

So, schools like ours are hustling to initiate a discussion on it so that there is “buy-in” to the idea.

Though I have a ton of resources at The Best Resources On Grading Practices, here are two particularly useful ones we plan to share with faculty next week:

Do We Give A Zero Or 50% For Work Not Turned-In? Here Are Some Useful Commentaries

Why Is Ninth Grade a Critical Time for Students? A Researcher Explains is from the Gates Foundation. Here’s the money quote:

Course failures have an outsize impact on students’ likelihood of graduating. In the Consortium’s 2007 report What Matters for Staying On-Track and Graduating in Chicago Public Schools, we showed that one “F” in a year-long course in the ninth grade decreases the probability of eventually graduating by 30 percentage points, even if a student has strong test scores. Two “Fs” in ninth grade decrease the probability of graduating by over 50 percentage points (from 85 percent to 33 percent).

You can find more information about this study at The Best Resources For Learning About The Importance Of Ninth-Grade For Students – & How To Support Them.

 

Do you have suggestions of any other key resources that would be helpful to the discussion?

You might also be interested in The Best Resources On “Differentiated Grading” For English Language Learners.