More on what a zero does to a grade

December 2007

A friend emailed me a PowerPoint created by Rick Wormeli that included some interesting ways of thinking about assigning zeroes. I've been discussing it for more than a year now but I really liked these two new (to me) takes on it.

The first one he called Imagine the Reverse. What if you did for A's what is currently done for F's.

100-40=A
39-30=B
29-20=C
19-10=D
9-0=F

Just look at it--no one in the world would go for it. Because we know what it would do to students--especially high achieving students. If we sent home report cards where everyone had an A and there were just a few F's parents would be outraged. (This brings up another post issue related to the Bell curve and students being trained by us to want to be separated into groups--the winners and the losers if you will--but that isn't for today.)

Another way of thinking about it would be to compare rubric scores to a 100 point scale. (Also from Rick Wormeli via Doug Reeves.)

4=100
3=90
2=80
1=70
0=60

There may be some disagreement on how these are assigned but it seems that thoughtful educators could agree that it at least makes logical sense. What if we continue the transition down to zero.

-1=50
-2=40
-3=30
-4=20
-5=10
-6=0

Wormeli, who I assume was paraphrasing Reeves, argues why would a teacher want to assigning such a low score for a zero. Doesn't zero mean that one is 6 times worse than the 60?

Yet another argument for thinking about the assignment of a zero for a grade. If it can be defended I suppose it can still be used, it just seems that the case for zero is getting weaker and weaker. Especially if the zero is being used as a punishment. Not turning in homework is a behavior so should be punished with a behavioral penalty not a grade penalty. As I have said before I am not telling anyone how to grade. But no one should grade or calculate grades without thinking about how they are doing it and why. At the end of the day the teacher (the expert in the subject) should know that the grade is a accurate and fair reflection of what a student is able to do.