Misunderstanding and Misapplying "No Zero" Policies (and Why They Are Good)
"'It’s going to make grades matter again,' said Rep. Fawn Pedalino, a Turbeville Republican who sponsored the bill." Skylar Laird (11 February 2026)
A “no zero” policy received media attention and stirred controversy and resistance in Greenville, South Carolina in 2016. Now, a decade later, Laird reports, ‘A kick in the pants’: SC bill banning minimum grades in schools advances in House.
Establishing a “no zero” policy is counter-intuitive for most people since it seems to work against a sense of fairness, and as those who oppose the policy typically respond, a “no zero” policy seems to encourage laziness and even passing students along who do no work, as covered by Laird:
“We are teaching bad habits with grade floors and diminishing the capacity of a grade to accurately report what the students know and can do,” [Patrick Kelly, lobbyist for the Palmetto State Teachers Association] said.
More students may graduate under the lower standards, but they’re less prepared for what comes next, Kelly said. State data reflected that trend this year, when more students graduated than in the past decade but a quarter remained unprepared for college or the workforce.
However, a “no zero” policy is the right thing to do both statistically and academically—but only if that policy is part of wider assessment practices that support dropping zeroes as part of the grading system.
First, an analysis shows why assigning zeroes is flawed in a traditional A-F grading system in which the F range is often 50-60 points while all other grade ranges are 10 or fewer points. As Cristea explains:
The flaw in the system is that a 100-point grading scale does not mathematically equalize zeros to have the same weight as other scores. This paper presents the view that zeros are not fair to anyone including students, parents, teachers, and society as a whole.
The statistical flaw of zeroes and a disproportionate F range lead us to the equity problem. As Rick Wormeli has noted, fair isn’t always equal. So let me lay out briefly the broader assessment practices and concerns that must be in place when a “no zero” policy is adopted (and the “no zero” policy and these issue below should be implemented).
Schools, teachers, parents, and students must set aside grading as a system of rewards and punishments, and begin to see grading as a subset of assessment, which must be used as a system of feedback and student revision to support student learning.
In other words, assessment, tests, and grades must become part of teaching and learning and not the conclusion of learning.
Student assignments, tests, and performances must be viewed as obligations by the students; in short, they must be done.
Ideally, all students would complete all assignments with mastery at the same rate, but in the real world, that will never happen. Thus, everyone must begin to worry more about students learning than at what rate they learn or if they learn simultaneously with other students.
Here, I must emphasize that assigning a zero for incomplete or skipped assignments is fundamentally no different than simply passing a student along because both practices prove that the assignment never mattered. The analogy I offer here is student assignments are similar to medicine prescribed by a doctor; neither the student nor the patient benefits if the assignment/medicine is simply ignored. In short, the only option is to do the assignment.
My alternative to the zero is that students must complete fully all work assigned or no credit can be assigned for the course; this approach addresses the problems with both assigning zeroes and simply passing students who do not complete the work.
That said, a key practice supporting all of this is requiring and allowing student revision without belaboring over trying to keep every student at the same pace or number of revisions. This expectation is also supported by using a grade contract instead of grading each assignment.
I have implemented these policies and practices in writing courses for over four decades, and students quickly learn that the sooner they try and the more fully they participate, the sooner they can move on; this is a much more authentic and academically positive and intrinsic motivation than punishing/rewarding with grades.
In the context of so-called content courses (wile problematic, many see writing as process, not content, although I disagree on that point), allowing zeroes or even low grades on assessments of acquiring content sends a message to students that some content simply doesn’t matter—if a student makes a zero or 63, and the class simply moves on to the next topic.
This traditional practice, I believe, has a much more negative impact on learning than any downside to “no zero” policies.
A “no zero” policy, then, is not an isolated issue, but it one important reform within a larger revision of how assessments, tests, and grades can and should be used in formal education to support the learning of all students—a messy and unpredictable process that should not be shackled to a traditional system of grading that is neither statistically nor academically sound.
For Further Reading
The Case Against Zeros in Grading, Alexis Tamony
Rick Wormeli’s Responses to a Parent of a High-Achieving Student with Concerns About Grading Changes
The Gray Areas of Grading, Rick VanDeWeghe
More Thoughts on Feedback, Grades, and Late Work
Update
But Carifio and Carey found the opposite to be true. In a comprehensive 2015 study, they analyzed seven years’ worth of data for more than 29,000 high school students, looking at the impact that minimum grading had on test scores, grade inflation, and graduation rates. Compared with their counterparts in schools with traditional grading schemes, students who benefited from minimum grading actually put more effort into their learning, earning higher scores on state exams and graduating at higher rates.
In fact, for many students, according to the researchers, receiving a zero was demoralizing—not corrective. “The assigning of even a small number of catastrophically low grades, especially early in the marking term, before student self-efficacy can be established, can create this sense of helplessness,” Carifio and Carey explain, putting students in an impossible situation and discouraging them for the rest of the grading period. Giving students a lifeline out of a ruinous situation keeps them engaged and motivated to do better, the research suggests.
The claim about real-life norms is also dubious. There are times when deadlines must be strictly enforced, but for the most part, employers are typically forgiving of extensions and late work, recognizing that “assigned deadlines can be stressfully tight, compromising output quality,” according to a 2022 study, which also found that 53 percent of workplace deadlines were flexible. In fact, “deadline estimates are often overly optimistic,” and adhering to them too stringently can dramatically increase burnout.
If you want to help with the costs of keeping my public work open access and free, please DONATE.
