The grades that scholars obtain in highschool and faculty can make a decision their futures. Highschool grades form scholars’ total GPA, magnificence rank and the transcripts that faculties learn. They are able to resolve who makes the varsity sports activities staff and who earns the scholarship.
But some folks won’t notice that during a emerging collection of U.S. colleges, scholars won’t ever obtain a ranking of 0 – despite the fact that they by no means flip in a paper or solution each query improper on an examination.
1000’s of U.S. colleges have followed some type of “no-zero,” or minimum-grade coverage, lately. No-zero grading insurance policies save you academics from giving zeros on any project or check. Additionally they set a grade flooring, which means that academics can not assign a ranking beneath a definite quantity, generally 50 or 60 issues.
No-zero grading insurance policies have greater than doubled during the last decade. Whilst some estimates range, about part of Okay-12 academics in a single 2025 find out about mentioned that their colleges had followed some model of this coverage.
In Washington state on my own, about 30 of the just about 70 districts use no-zero grading insurance policies. Throughout South Carolina, a minimum of
18 districts out of 72 total districts have followed a model of this coverage.
The ones requirements are actually being upended, as South Carolina not too long ago changed into the primary state to formally limit no-zero grading insurance policies. The brand new regulation, which went into impact on July 1, 2026, bars districts from requiring a minimal grade and lets in academics to assign grades that mirror a pupil’s exact efficiency, together with a nil when no paintings is submitted. Districts that require academics to boost grades will lose 10% of a class of state investment for school rooms, consistent with this regulation.
For greater than a decade, my analysis on grading function, accuracy and reform has tested what a grade is supposed to measure and why file playing cards so ceaselessly leave out the mark. Districts undertake grade flooring for an comprehensible reason why: A unmarried 0 can do oversized harm to a pupil’s total grade.
South Carolina is the primary state to move a regulation that prohibits no-zero grading, permitting academics to offer beneath a minimal grade of fifty or 60.
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Why one 0 can sink a semester
On a 0-to-100 scale, a passing grade generally begins at 60. Each letter grade, from D to A, suits within 40 issues on the best, whilst failure stretches around the 60 issues beneath. And since direction grades get averaged, one 0 drags a pupil down greater than a super ranking can raise them.
A pupil who finished 4 assignments that each one won 90 issues or above, but additionally won one 0, will moderate a 72 grade, or a C. Analysis into this mathematical imbalance displays a nil on a unmarried project can depart a pupil not able to get well and in the long run fail a direction.
The rush to prohibit zeros took off within the early 2000s, when educators and faculty directors started rethinking grading practices to higher mirror studying and how one can assist suffering scholars get well.
Preventing academics from giving grades beneath a definite quantity additionally promised consistency. Lecturers grade so otherwise that one lacking project would possibly slightly dent one pupil’s grade and reason every other to fail a category. The function used to be to stay one tough week from defining a semester.
Critics see grade flooring otherwise. A pupil who skips an project nonetheless collects 50 issues, so the coverage arms out credit score for paintings that doesn’t exist. It additionally hides lacking paintings. On a file card, a 50 might appear to be a suffering try, when not anything used to be ever became in.
Lecturers stay divided over assigning grade minimums, and districts proceed to combat with the trade-offs between serving to scholars get well and grade inflation.
Does banning zeros paintings?
The proof is blended on whether or not letting academics give zeros if truth be told is helping scholars.
Some research in finding that minimal grades stay suffering scholars from giving up and are connected to better commencement charges.
Others in finding they prop up grades that now not mirror studying.
In my opinion, grade flooring and the brand new South Carolina ban each deal with the symptom, which is scholars suffering academically, with out addressing the reason for the issue.
A 2024 research calls grade flooring a “band-aid on a wound that never heals.”
So whilst South Carolina has banned the band-aid, the true wound – which means the underlying grading device and the best way conventional share grading is structured – stays.
3 more effective fixes
My analysis issues to a few adjustments that might assist cope with this larger problem of unfair grading techniques.
The primary is achieving settlement on what a grade manner. In many colleges, a B in a single lecture room displays most effective what a pupil realized, whilst a B in every other magnificence additionally counts homework conduct. When academics, folks and directors disagree a couple of grade’s function, similar paintings earns other marks. Colleges can settle it in writing, mentioning that grades file studying, now not compliance.
2d, colleges can grade scholars’ paintings conduct, like effort, participation and punctuality, one at a time from lecturers. My analysis unearths that mixing the 2 can transfer a last direction grade by way of a complete letter.
3rd, colleges can switch the 100-point scale for a more effective four- or five-level scale, the place a nil is simply the bottom point fairly than a 60-point hollow.
In this smaller scale, no grade flooring or ban is wanted.
The start of a development
South Carolina is the primary state to permit academics to offer a nil to a pupil, but it surely most probably gained’t be the ultimate.
In North Carolina, there are already calls to observe South Carolina’s lead. A majority of citizens within the state display fortify for this transfer.
And in Texas, a state regulation since 2009 has secure academics who document the grade a pupil earned – despite the fact that it’s 0.
Grading insurance policies stay touchdown in courtroom, and the insurance policies that dangle up percentage one trait: The grade suits what the coed did.
On the upper schooling point, Harvard’s school not too long ago voted to cap the percentage of A’s it awards, bringing the query of what a grade is for into nationwide view.
Lecturers are requested to measure each what scholars realized and the way scholars labored with a unmarried grade – separate components that may not be imaginable to evaluate with one unmarried ranking.
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No longer a handy guide a rough repair
Actual grading reform is slower to roll out than a ban. Changing the 100-point device may just imply issuing new types of file playing cards, trainer retraining and ongoing communique with folks.
The deeper drawback, deeper than any unmarried 0, is that one quantity is meant to mention two issues immediately: what a pupil realized and the way arduous that pupil labored. There may well be two separate traces on a file card, one grade for studying and one for paintings conduct. Each and every would inform folks, schools and employers one thing true and helpful.
