Dealing with Pushback on Minimum Grades

(Originally titled “The Unwinnable Battle Over Minimum Grades”) 

            In this Educational Leadership article, Thomas Guskey (University of Kentucky) and Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey (San Diego State University) say grading reform has been a “lightning rod for controversy,” especially the idea of minimum grades – giving a student a 50 or 60 instead of a zero for work not turned in. The rationale: preventing a single grade from drastically pulling down overall performance and undermining students’ incentive to keep trying. 

            The pushback: minimum grades “offer unfair and unearned assistance to low-performing students,” say the authors, giving students credit for incomplete or failing work and not teaching them responsibility. This criticism has led some districts to reverse course on minimum grading. 

            But the real problem isn’t zeroes, say Guskey, Fisher, and Frey. It’s the 100-point grading scale and the time-honored practice of averaging grades. On the first: 

• A percentage scale has 101 possible levels of performance, allowing teachers to assess student work in a super-precise manner. 
• But tests and assignments are not exact measures, and subjectivity and other variables introduce distortions. 
• The wide range of possible grades compounds those distortions (even with minimum grading, teachers must discern 51 levels), which increases unreliability. 
• Errors and distortions have been especially harmful to students of color. 

            The solution? Using a five-level integer grading scale (4 3 2 1 0 or A B C D E) like most colleges and universities, say Guskey, Fisher, and Frey. This approach aligns with the four-point scale used by most state tests (Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Below Basic) and the classroom rubrics used by many teachers. Zeroes can still be given, but they have much less sting: students must improve only one level to pass, compared with moving from zero to 50 or 60 on a percentage scale. And grades can be converted to GPAs with several decimal points. 

            Integer grading systems, say Guskey, Fisher, and Frey, “make grading much more consistent and reliable. Teachers with comparable knowledge and experience find it easier to agree on distinctions between an A level versus a B level of performance than when asked to distinguish a 90 from an 89 using a percentage grading scale. Clear and well-defined scoring criteria, coupled with a limited number of grading categories, are essential in implementing grading reforms that prioritize fairness, accuracy, and equity.” 

    The second design flaw in traditional grading, say the authors, is averaging all scores across a grading period. The problems: 

• Averaging accentuates the devasting influence of zeroes. 
• Averaging says that everything students do counts equally. 
• Averaging makes students less likely to take risks and try new approaches. 
• Averaging doesn’t show student growth – the final grade may indicate mastery. 
• If effort and behavior are averaged in, feedback on academic learning is diluted. 

“The primary purpose of grading is to effectively communicate student achievement toward specified standards, at this point in time,” says the American School of Paris’s purpose statement. Well said! say Guskey, Fisher, and Frey. 

 “The Unwinnable Battle Over Minimum Grades” by Thomas Guskey, Douglas Fisher, and Nancy Frey in Educational Leadership, October 2024 (Vol. 82, #2, pp. 68-72); the authors can be reached at guskey@uky.edu, dfisher@mail.sdsu.edu, and nfrey@mail.sdsu.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1056 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.