Some Chicago high schools are rethinking lenient grading amid surging absenteeism

Teachers at Richards Career Academy High School on Chicago’s Southwest Side raised a question last spring that took principal Ellen Kennedy aback: Should the school stop giving students so much leeway on grades and go back to stricter standards?

The school — which serves mainly low-income Latino and Black students — had piloted a new grading approach in 2019, then embraced it when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted students’ lives and learning. Students could redo assignments repeatedly and turn in work late. Even if they didn’t complete the assignment, the lowest score they could get was 50 rather than zero — a concept known as no-zero grading.

In Chicago and around the country, no-zero grading started to take hold at least a decade before COVID struck — part of a larger push to give students more chances to show what they learned. Its supporters argue that giving students zeros for missed or badly bungled assignments makes it too hard for them to recover, leading some to stop trying — and to stop showing up to class.

But teachers at Richards and at least one other high school in Chicago are pushing back on the controversial approach to grading. They worry it allows some students to eke out passing grades with little effort and undermines the importance of turning in work on time and coming to school regularly.

Some educators and experts think no-zero grading — and a broader push to avoid giving F’s — is one reason why CPS has experienced two seemingly conflicting trends since the pandemic: High absenteeism among high school students and increasing graduation rates.

Last year, a quarter of all high schoolers missed more than a month of school, a Chalkbeat and WBEZ analysis found. But the graduation rate has kept going up.

Principal Kennedy, at Richards, is skeptical that no-zero grading was a key factor in lowering attendance, and remains a firm believer in second and third chances for students. But she could also see where her teachers were coming from last spring.

“When students graduate and are working in jobs, what they experience around grace and flexibility at school is not going to match,” Kennedy said. “This bubble is not going to surround you wherever you go.”

Chicago Public Schools does not dictate grading scales to its schools, and school district leaders said they don’t track what approach campuses choose. In response to a public records request by WBEZ and Chalkbeat for grading information at each high school, CPS provided information for about 50 out of 83 district-run schools.

Of the grading policies provided, at least 17 schools currently use a 50-to-100 scale and four others use a standards-based approach, which puts emphasis on whether students can prove they learned something, and homework often isn’t graded. The rest appear to use the traditional zero-to-100 grading scale.

CPS officials defended allowing schools to choose an approach that works for their campus.

“CPS is committed to balancing student wellbeing with academic integrity,” the district wrote in a statement. “We recognize the complexity of grading and remain focused on equity — holding all students to high expectations while ensuring they have multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery of content.”

Richards High School tries no-zero grading

Richards first began using no-zero grading in the fall of 2019, before the pandemic hit, for just its freshman class.

The grades students earn during their first year of high school are a powerful predictor of how well they will do — and how likely they are to graduate, according to research from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. Getting F’s during that crucial year only spells more academic trouble to come.

CPS has used the Consortium’s Freshman On-Track metric as a factor in measuring high school performance since 2009.

As part of efforts to help students stay on track at Richards in 2019, Kennedy and a group of her teachers read a 2018 book, “Grading for Equity,” by Joe Feldman, which makes the case for rethinking how schools grade students. Feldman, a Harvard-educated former school district administrator, runs a consultancy that works with districts on implementing equity-based grading. In recent years, Feldman and others had questioned the zero-to-100 grading scale, arguing that it’s slanted toward failure. Feldman’s approach has gained traction — and spurred debate — in recent years.

Feldman argues that traditional grading often does not reflect whether students have learned something or gained skills, and grades based on attendance, along with homework grades, can be unfair to low-income students and students of color, who are more likely to contend with homelessness, responsibilities such as sibling care, and other hurdles.

In a traditional grading scale, students get an A when their grade falls between 90 and 100, for instance, or a B if they earn 80 to 89, and so on. But the range for an F is much wider: any grade below 59 in some schools or below 69 in others. That makes recovering from even a single F really tough, proponents of no-zero grading say.

“That belief that our classroom should be oriented toward helping young people to succeed, rather than orienting them towards failure, is really a critical part,” said Jessica Bunzol, a transformation coach at the University of Chicago Network for College Success, who has worked closely with Richards. “Research tells us that F’s are not motivators for young people and that they’re not going to engage them in classrooms in the way we might previously have thought or hoped.”

In CPS, Richards was not the only school moving to no-zero grading. On the eve of the pandemic, a districtwide shift toward giving students many more chances to avert failing their classes was underway. There were opportunities to turn in assignments late, redo any work for a higher grade, and show what they had learned in different ways.

Zakieh Mohammed, CPS’ senior manager of attendance and truancy, said that shift was key in becoming a district that’s attuned to the social-emotional needs of its students.

The goal? “We’re not issuing grades without knowing the full story,” Mohammed said. “If the student has not shown up, are we just issuing a zero, or are we asking why?”

At Richards, the Freshman On-Track rate jumped from 76% to more than 94% in the year after its no-zero grading pilot. But educators say it was primarily the pandemic’s upheaval that inspired staff to gradually expand the approach to all grade levels starting in the 2020-21 school year.

“We wanted to show up for our kids first and then grading was secondary,” said Candace Brahm, a science teacher at Richards who works with students with disabilities.

Did lenient grading go too far?

Student Kayla Saffold loves that Richards has fewer than 400 students and so many teachers like Brahm who work to make the school a welcoming, understanding place. “It is like a family,” she said.

As she wraps up her senior year, she can name a long list of her activities, from basketball to founding the student council.

But Saffold said the no-zero grading system was a disappointment.

“I was a witness to kids just coming in, like, twice a week and doing two assignments and then passing the class,” she said. “It was just crazy to me.”

“It felt like I had to put in the effort to get the A, and someone else ends up barely putting in any effort at all, and ended up passing the class. It felt unfair to me,” she said.

Many teachers agreed.

Last year, Kennedy says, teachers started really questioning whether giving students more grace might be hurting rather than helping teens, including hampering efforts to get students to come to school more regularly.

“Teachers felt kids were getting away with too much and doing too little work,” Kennedy said.

Like other CPS campuses with high-needs students, Richards has long struggled with attendance, but it doesn’t appear that no-zero grading made it any worse. As it did at schools across the country, attendance at Richards dropped during the pandemic. But unlike at other CPS schools, Richards bounced back to pre-pandemic levels by the 2023-24 school year. The attendance rate hovered around 78% last year, and about 36% of students were absent for more than 35 days — in line with data from 2019.

English teacher Kalina Fleming-Lopez said spotty attendance led her to alter the way she teaches. Rather than have everyone read a book together and hold literature circles, she has students do independent reading and then write essays they submit online. Students can do the work even if they aren’t in class.

While she doesn’t think the zero-grading impacted the attendance rate, it did seem to have some negative effects.

Fleming-Lopez noticed students had started skipping assignments. She said one student didn’t turn in a single essay one semester, but was still able to pass her class.

Then, Fleming-Lopez was assigned a “transitional” class, which allows students who earn a C or higher to bypass remedial classes once they get to college. The course follows a rubric and curriculum set by City Colleges of Chicago.

Fleming-Lopez had to use the zero-to-100 grading scale to be in line with City Colleges.

“Students were struggling just having a concept of a zero because they had never experienced what a zero actually meant,” she said. “I was then concerned about, ‘What is this going to look like when students go to college and they’re faced with their first zero to 100 grading scale?’”

She said she was worried the students would be shocked to learn that missing just one assignment or test could tank their grade.

Ethan Hutt, an education professor at the University of North Carolina and a co-author of a book about grading, said there’s no research or other solid evidence that more permissive grading generally serves students well. But some studies have suggested that raising grading standards can lead to improved outcomes.

Flexible grading and missed work policies made sense during the pandemic, but now, students can be missing out on crucial timely feedback from their teachers, he said.

“Grades since the very beginning of schooling have always served as a motivating factor for students,” Hutt said. “It’s a mistake to tell students: ‘Missing work? There’s no penalty for that.’”

Feldman, the author of “Grading for Equity,” pushed back on the idea that this way of grading is more lenient, saying students should not be able to master concepts without attending classes or doing the work. He emphasizes that the 50-to-100 grading scale implemented without other changes can lead to faulty outcomes.

“Equitable grading is a comprehensive complex way to address the multiple harms of traditional grading and if you only address one small piece of it you’re not actually gonna solve the problem and you might make it worse,” Feldman said.

Ultimately, a majority of Richards teachers agreed in spring of 2024 to return to a zero-to-100 grading scale.

Fleming-Lopez said, once Richards implemented to the 50-to-100 scale, the discussion about how to make grading more equitable was shut down. Now that the school has brought back the zeros, she hopes the conversation can resume.

Balancing accountability with grades

Nearly one year into the new grading system at Richards, Kennedy says her team needs to take a closer look at student outcomes at the end of the school year to really assess how the return to zeros has played out. Attendance ticked up for each grade for the first semester this year compared to the same period last year, though it’s tough to say whether grading changes contributed. The school has seen an uptick in D’s and F’s — and also a rise in A’s and B’s.

Farragut High School also moved away from no-zero grading this fall, and its principal, Virag Nanavati, in part credits a firmer hand with grading and higher student expectations for dramatic improvements in attendance and the portion of students who are on track.

But no-zero grading still has strong support. Some Richards teachers, such as Brahm, remain fans and have stuck with it, an option Kennedy left open.

The special education teacher still feels zeros are too harsh.

“The grace is gone,” said Brahm, a social worker by training. “We need to hold these kids accountable. But kids are still recovering from COVID.”

Some schools have tried to fine-tune their approach to no-zero grading or to find a middle-of-the-road scale. Some now grade freshmen on a 50-to-100 scale, sophomores on a 40-to-100 scale, and so on. Some have stuck with a scale starting at 50 for all grades, but some key assignments students don’t turn in are marked as 40 or below to signal missing work to families.

Getting these decisions right is paramount, says Brahm, because high schools only have so much time with teens before they send them into the world.

“I feel a sense of urgency to support young people so when they graduate, they can be the best versions of themselves and be prepared,” she said.

District officials also remain unapologetic about the push to prioritize what students learn over what they consider compliance measures — meeting deadlines, turning in each assignment, showing up for each test.

Megan Hougard, the district’s chief of college and career success, said the onus is now on teachers and individual schools to make sure students get any missed learning done — and pass their classes.

CPS leaders “don’t allow you to say, ‘Oh, this student missed this many days, so they can fail. There’s nothing more we’re going to do,’” she said. “We really have doubled down on how you ensure students do not fail that class by ensuring that they have to recover that learning.”

Ultimately, schools must find a way to strike a fine balance on grading, said Bunzol, of the Network for College Success.

“If I know I’m going to fail, I’m not going to come because you’ve already shown me I don’t belong here,” Bunzol said. “And if I know I don’t have to come and I can still be successful, then why do I come? I think both of those things might be true for different sets of young people.”