A 50 and a 0 Are Both F's on the Report Card — But Very Different in the Gradebook
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses how the 50-point minimum grading policy allows students to pass while missing half their education, and why grades must reflect actual learning.
Key Takeaways
- The math problem is real - Giving 50 points for no work allows students to pass classes while completing only half their assignments
- This fabricates educational achievement - Assigning points where no learning occurred misrepresents student progress
- Defenders change the subject - Advocates for the 50-point minimum often pivot to standards-based grading discussions rather than addressing the core issue
- Grades must correlate with learning - Some level of compliance with educational activities is necessary for grades to be meaningful
Transcript
50 and a zero are both Fs, but they're not the same.
This is one of the strangest arguments that I've been hearing lately about giving students 50 for doing no work, the idea that it's an F, so it's the same as a zero.
Well, it's the same on the report card, of course, right?
It's just a letter at that point.
But it's not the same if we're going to use it in a grade calculation.
And using it in a grade calculation is the whole point.
So I really don't understand kind of the doublespeak that we're hearing on this idea that an F can be a 50 or a 0, it doesn't really matter, and we should make it a 50 because that doesn't hurt students' grades as much.
if we're going to average those 50s in, what is going to happen?
Well, if you've done the math on this, you've realized students can pass a class with 50s on all the work that they don't do by doing half of the assignments, only half of the assignments, and they don't actually even have to show up every day to get that passing grade, right?
Like, if you get 100 on most of your assignments, but, you know, do all your...
completion grades, do your classwork on the days you're present, and then skip fully every other day of class.
You can miss half the school year, do only half of your work, and still pass with, you know, something in the 60s, a 70, as high as a 75 by getting, you know, decent grades on the work that you do.
And, you know, teachers typically give a lot of kind of completion grades, so that's pretty feasible.
But I don't think anybody would argue that a kid who missed fully half of the school year got the education that they were there to get.
And that, to me, is the big problem with this idea of giving points where no points were earned, is that the education did not occur, right?
It's not just that they need a little bit of grace because they don't test well or something like it.
This is not wiggle room stuff.
This is fabrication stuff where we're saying this kid got an education when he They didn't.
So again, it doesn't matter on the report card, right?
Like whether you get a 59 on your report card or a zero, you get an F, you get no credit.
But in the grade book, the number that goes into the calculation gets averaged with all the other grades.
If that's what we're doing with that number, then it matters a great deal.
And defenders of this idea of giving 50 points for nothing like to change the subject a lot.
They like to say, well, we could be using standards-based grading, or there are lots of ways to assess student learning, or, you know, there are lots of different scales.
Like, they change the subject in all these kind of different ways that distract from the fact that they're giving students points for doing nothing that inflates their grades and represents non-learning as learning.
And that's not to say that there's a perfect correlation between grades and learning.
I don't think any teacher would say, yes, I've perfectly broken out my grades so that every single standard is represented by an equal number of points, and if you've earned the points, you've mastered the standards, and it's completely standards-based and mastery-based, and it's absolutely perfect.
Nobody has it that perfect.
but that's our goal right the the general correlation between grades and learning is there that's why we make things a grade because they correlate with learning and learning is messy learning takes multiple attempts you don't learn something you don't master something the first time the teacher mentions it or the first activity you do on it so that's why we have this whole system of grades that pushes students in the right direction right you do these assignments you do this work you do this reading you take these tests you take these quizzes you answer these questions you write these papers you solve these problems And you're going in the right direction of learning and toward mastering those standards.
And I've heard a lot of kind of slander toward that idea lately.
The idea that that's just about compliance.
And I think compliance is one of those things that we have to not get weird about in either direction, right?
Like if your grades are super, super compliance driven and not really related to learning, that's weird, right?
But on the other hand, if you're opposed to any kind of grades because you think there's some sort of sick compliance trip on the part of the teacher, like, students need to comply with the teacher's directions to learn stuff.
Like, have you ever taken a class?
You can't just show up to a class and be like, I'm going to do whatever I want.
and then learn the objectives of the class.
Like it doesn't work that way.
And maybe in graduate school you have an independent study or something, but like we're talking about kids here.
They need direction.
They need a curriculum.
They need guidance to follow.
So of course there's going to be an element of compliance.
We just need to not get weird about that.
But I don't think we can just make up grades.
I don't think we can defend this position that a 50 and a zero are the same thing because mathematically they are not.
Let me know what you think.