50 Points as the Minimum Grade for No Work? That's Deception, Not Compassion
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why awarding students 50 points for incomplete work undermines academic integrity and represents deception rather than equity.
Key Takeaways
- The 50-point minimum rewards not working - Students will realize they can receive half credit without submitting anything, reducing motivation to complete assignments
- Better alternatives exist for handling zeros - Dropping the lowest assignment, excusing first missing assignments, or allowing makeup work address the problem without inflating grades
- This isn't equity — it's dishonesty - Students who don't complete work aren't learning, and inflating their grades misrepresents achievement
- Grades should reflect actual learning - Awarding unearned points is comparable to marking students present when absent or inflating income on tax returns
Transcript
Should students get 50 points as the minimum grade on an assignment, even if they don't do it?
A lot of teachers have been saying this is now the policy in their districts, and I wasn't sure where this came from, but Rick Wormley, the grading expert, has an article in the Washington Post as of yesterday, you can read it at principalcenter.com slash 50, on why we should give 50 points as the minimum grade on a 100-point scale.
And of course, the rationale is familiar, right?
That zeroes have an outsized impact right if you get a zero it's very hard to come back from it and i think there are good reasons to do something about that right it is very discouraging if you get a zero and it tanks your grade and it's just very hard to come back from it so i think he's right that we should do something about this the something that we should do though is where we differ he thinks rick thinks we should give students 50 points even if they don't do anything and he even raises the criticism that this feels like giving students credit for doing nothing but then he just kind of changes the subject he doesn't say why this is actually a good thing to do I think there's a good case to be made for, you know, dropping the student's lowest assignment or excusing the first three missing assignments or allowing makeup work.
You know, there are lots of ways we can address the negative impact of zeros without giving students points for doing nothing.
Because here's what happens if we give students points for doing nothing.
They figure it out and they realize it's work to do work.
Why would I do work if I don't have to?
I will get 50 points if I do nothing.
So they will do nothing.
And it especially bothers me that people make this argument in the name of equity because if students are not doing their work, they are not learning.
And that can't be good for equity, right?
We can't just produce better statistics by lying and call it equity, right?
That's deception.
That is not equity to say...
that this student learned something that they didn't learn.
And I think everybody understands that grades represent some combination of effort and compliance and learning.
And certainly we want grades to reflect learning as much as possible and not be like a behavior thing.
So I think, again, he has some interesting points about how we could think about this differently.
But the recommendation that we give 50 points for no work just seems like lying to me.
It just seems wrong.
And it's different than saying, We're not going to count that assignment at all, right?
When you excuse an assignment, you are taking it out of the numerator of the grade and the denominator.
You're saying the student has a zero in the numerator because they didn't do it, but we can excuse it by saying that's not going to add to the denominator of their overall grade calculation.
That to me is okay.
I think we can do a certain amount of that and have grace for students without lying and saying they did work that they didn't do.
So let me know.
I don't know if I'm maybe overreacting to this, if this seems an exaggeration to call it lying, but, you know, if a student is absent and you mark them present, that's lying.
That's a crime.
You can be fired for falsely marking a student present.
If you were to go to someone and say, hey, you know what?
I think you should overstate your income on your income taxes because that will make your income look more equitable compared to other people.
They would say that would be stupid because then I would have to pay more taxes on money that I didn't earn.
Why would I inflate my income on my tax return.
That's basically what we're doing with grades.
When we give students 50 points for doing nothing, they realize it doesn't help them.
They didn't learn anything from that.
They don't have to do the work now.
Why wouldn't we want students to actually do the work, right?
If you want people to earn more money, you want them to actually earn more money, not just say that they did.
So I really don't understand this approach to achieving equity through deceptive statistics.
This just does not seem...
like a viable solution to me.
And it certainly seems like a bad idea to teach students that they don't have to do their work in order to get passing grades.
Let me know what you think.