Zero Credit for Zero Work
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that the simplest grading principle is also the fairest: if a student does no work, they should receive no credit.
Key Takeaways
- Zero work means zero credit - This is the most honest and straightforward grading principle
- Giving points for nothing is dishonest - Any grade above zero for work that was never completed misrepresents student learning
- Fix the scale if needed - If zeros are too punitive on a 100-point scale, compress the scale rather than giving unearned points
Transcript
Should students get no credit if they do no work?
If a student turns in an assignment, didn't do any of the problems on it, or didn't turn in the assignment at all, should they get a 50?
Should they get a certain amount of credit if they didn't really do any of the work?
Well, a lot of districts are implementing policies that say things like the lowest possible grade is a 50.
You get at least 50 points even if you don't answer any of the questions, or even if you don't turn in the assignment, you still get a 50.
And policies like this really bother a lot of people.
Like at a fundamental level, people feel like it's wrong to give credit for work that wasn't done.
And people are concerned about the lesson that that teaches students that, hey, if you, you know, go through life and don't do anything, you still get half credit like that.
That just seems kind of foolish.
deeply flawed and like a harmful lesson to teach young people.
And I get that concern.
And I think it's important to understand where policies like this come from.
Policies like the lowest possible grade is a 50 come from a desire to fix a flaw in our grading system.
Our traditional letter grading system is irrational and unfair in a very important way.
If you think about the impact, the mathematical impact of a zero on your grade.
Like, if you skip one assignment and get a 100 on the next assignment, your grade, you know, if they're equally weighted assignments, would be a 50, which is not a C, right?
You'd think on a rational scale, you know, where the grades are A, B, C, D, F, you should get a C if you get 100 and then a 0.
But that's not the case.
You get an F.
And it is very, very difficult for students to come back from a missing assignment.
It really can just torpedo your grade.
And Doug Reeves wrote an article many years ago called The Case Against the Zero, where he argues that a zero on the traditional letter grade scale is equivalent to like a negative six.
It's not really mathematically a zero.
So to fix this, what we could do and what I think we should do instead of giving 50 points for nothing is we should change the grading scale so that every grade letter, every letter grade represents 20 points.
So 80 or higher is an A.
0 to 19 would be an F, 20 to 40 would be a D, 40 to 60 would be a C, 60 to 80 would be a B, and again, 80 or higher would be an A.
That would be such an easy change to make, and it would make grades proper ratios of one another, right?
So if you do twice as much work, you get twice as many points, and your letter grade reflects that.
And I don't think we can do away with letter grades, or some places have done away with them, but I think it's such a naturally...
easy to understand system.
Everybody's familiar with it.
All we have to do is adjust the point values and we can introduce that rationality and solve the zero problem pretty single-handedly.
But I don't know what you think about these 50 points for no work policies.
I think were right to be bothered by them but i'm curious what you think so let me know should students get zero points zero credit if they do zero work or should there be a lowest allowable grade