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Fact Check: Are Flexible Student Deadlines at Odds With Real Life?

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Fact Check: Are Flexible Student Deadlines at Odds With Real Life?

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One Sunday evening last spring, I opened my work email to see a request from a student: He was very sorry, but he had underestimated how much work he needed to do for an important oral presentation. Could he receive an extension?

Teachers are familiar with these emails that arrive the day-or night-before a project is due. I considered writing back that the deadline had been set a month ago and that since we'd met to discuss his plan already, he should just do his best. But the student, Alex (a pseudonym), had been sick the prior week with Covid-19 and had missed work in all classes. Alex also noted that he had worked through multiple revisions of the presentation, but he felt stuck. His request could be seen as an example of honest self-assessment and critical reflection.

Deadlines set by teachers are a source of student stress but can have clear value. Check-in dates help students break complex processes into manageable chunks as they plan and progress through course goals, and final deadlines can help them organize and prioritize work, complete tasks that are required to move to the next sequential skills, and avoid the anxiety of missed work piling up at the end of the term. (Having a due date for this article, for instance, helped me decide which of my many tasks to tackle when.) Teachers benefit too: Managing moving due dates for 150 students can quickly turn into chaos.

For many educators, strict adherence to deadlines is just one of many important skills they expect students to master before entering college and the world of work. "There is a camp that believes that setting deadlines and meeting deadlines is a life skill, and if we don't hold kids accountable in K-12, then they won't know how to perform in jobs," says Denise Clark Pope, senior lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Education and cofounder of Challenge Success. "But a lot of us who teach have realized flexibility is key."

It's almost certainly not a zero-sum game in life, or in classrooms, and the challenge for teachers such as me, and for leaders in business for that matter, is to judge when flexibility can improve work outcomes and lessen stress-and when it's important to firmly enforce deadlines.

What Is Flexible and What Isn't?

In the much-cited "real world," however, when a challenge to an anticipated timeline arises, colleagues often meet to discuss how to work with it, whether more people will need to join the task, or which due dates need to be revised. (Plus, few adult workers have as many as eight people they must report to, with separate policies, as students do with their teachers.)

When Ashley Whillans, an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School, and her colleagues surveyed working adults in 2021 about their willingness to ask for deadline extensions, they discovered that 53 percent of respondents' task deadlines were in fact adjustable. In the same study, Whillans and her team found that, based on survey responses from 10,000 working professionals, asking for deadline extensions is generally viewed favorably by managers-and it decreases employee stress while improving performance.

Yet employees, especially women, rarely asked for extensions, even when it was clear that due dates were flexible. They worried that managers "would think they were incompetent and unmotivated," the researchers wrote, even though "in contrast to employees' predictions, managers judged both male and female employees who asked for an extension as more motivated than those who did not," the researchers concluded.

If emulating real work conditions is an end goal, then perhaps holding your ground on all student extension requests doesn't make sense, given the Harvard workplace findings. To figure out which due dates are fixed and which are mutable, teachers might consider whether students are asking for extensions too frequently, whether adjusting the due date impacts any other student work, whether the completion date of the particular assignment is inherently difficult to gauge, or whether providing a little breathing space might allow the student to do better work.

Especially for students dealing with organizational issues, unilaterally inflexible deadlines without opportunity to revise contribute to high levels of anxiety around work completion. New Jersey parent Maureen Gallagher has found that homework zeros can accumulate very quickly for her child who has ADHD. Even though he tests well, his grades reflect attentiveness to tasks outside the classroom rather than mastery of material. To add to the frustration, teachers often are strict with students but then late themselves to enter grades, so students don't realize how many zeros they have until it's too late.

When Flexibility Is Baked In

A Universal Design for Learning framework acknowledges these contradictions and frustrations by emphasizing student choice and participation in task designs and goal-setting and helps support all learners, according to advocates. Students encounter goals, timetables, planning resources, and check-ins, as well as tasks with strong inherent interest, through collaborative planning and strong scaffolding.

Some schools have this process of continuous revision to one's thinking built in through standards-based or mastery-based grading. "The question of 'Did you turn it in on time' becomes even more arbitrary if you are operating under the notion that students have multiple opportunities to do the work and try again throughout the term or year," says Nataliya Braginsky, a social studies teacher and 2021 National History Teacher of the Year. At Metropolitan Business Academy, the magnet high school in New Haven, Connecticut, where Braginsky teaches, students receive benchmarks and guidelines but are not penalized for late work unless the work never comes.

Research backs up the effectiveness of offering regrading or multiple opportunities to submit drafts, in both humanities and STEM fields. Two different studies show that allowing students to be late without question by one to two days increased both turned-in work and student engagement and learning. That's the flexibility sweet spot: According to a 2019 research paper, stretching due dates by a week or more resulted in a steep drop in the rate of students turning in work. Students also tend to appreciate and feel they learned more when given the opportunity to get a revised grade on a draft effort, according to a 2022 study.

Deadlines, of course, can help students prioritize, and some students do well with fixed due dates. But even fixed due dates can be generated collaboratively and revised as longer projects and papers wind on-a common practice in the professional world, where deadlines are initially agreed upon, and then often extended as the complexities of a project become clearer. Braginsky, for instance, checks in with her classes throughout a project, especially during new units or work outside the classroom, and revises due dates if students need more time to do good work.

Finding the Right Degree of Flexibility

If extensions are common in the work world, then finding your own sweet spot-the point at which both you and the student are able to function at a reasonably high level-is the sanest way to manage the question of flexibility around deadlines. There are many places to start.

Allow extensions selectively: Teacher approaches to due dates can range from limited to near-total flexibility. Limited flexibility might include giving passes for late work-with two to three passes a semester, no explanation required. Stanford's Pope says that "just having that lowers the tension; even if they don't end up using it, it is a way to lower the stress." A second approach is to allow extensions as long as the student asks 24 to 48 hours before the due date, although this approach does not account for sudden emergencies. A third option is to allow any assignment to be handed in two days late without penalty.

Grade completion and quality separately: I often input two separate grades, one for completion and one for the academic quality of the work submitted. The completion grade is not worth a lot-in fact, I make it a binary of 0-1 in most cases-but it cannot be changed. This separates critical thinking and academic work from compliance or work habits, as Jennifer Gonzalez suggests, without entirely conceding the issue of deadlines. It can also be part of a standards-based grading approach, where students and teachers are clearly and continuously communicating goals and how to reach them, and therefore feel safer taking risks.

Take a mastery approach: Greater flexibility by necessity invokes mastery-based approaches, in which students have an array of tasks throughout the semester where they may set the due dates or check-ins collaboratively. Kathy Gentle, a chemistry teacher in Stamford, Connecticut, says her deadline is really the end of the marking period. Work in chemistry does build on prior work, and she reviews the sequence at the beginning of the year. But turning in something on time doesn't mean the work is good, she notes, and having a strict deadline doesn't mean students observe it. "I know that kids have other things going on in their lives," she says. "I let them be a little more responsible for deciding what they need to get done when."

With all of this in mind, I considered my response to Alex. Yes, I wrote, you can present at a later date. But, I added, come in at your originally scheduled time to discuss your ideas. In the end, Alex was learning how to manage due dates, stress, and his sense of what was possible both in his analysis and in his relationship to authority. This was as important an insight as one he might have about Hamlet or any other text we studied.

As teachers, we have to evaluate how much the deadline is part of the progression of student learning and how much it is for our own convenience (important too!) or sense of power and order. In the end-of-year class survey, Alex wrote that he felt "immense relief" when he received my email granting the extension. With extra time to discuss and revise, he decided to fully change a text he was discussing. He had a breakthrough, he wrote, and actually enjoyed the work.

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Fact Check: Are Flexible Student Deadlines at Odds With Real Life?

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One Sunday evening last spring, I opened my work email to see a request from a student: He was very sorry, but he had underestimated how much work he needed to do for an important oral presentation. Could he receive an extension? Teachers are familiar with these emails that arrive the day-or night-before a project is due.

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How to Support the Shy Students in Your Classroom - Da Vinci Collaborative

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There is an ongoing, ageless debate surrounding the differences between extroverts and introverts. You’ve probably read endless articles discussing these key differences and offering insight into how an introvert thinks and acts, versus how an extrovert does. While it’s true that introverts and extroverts have different learning styles, it’s essential to know whether a student in your classroom is introverted or simply too shy to... Learn More

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Contract grading is a form of grading which results from cooperation between an instructor and their student(s), and entails a contracted number of assignments of specified quality that correspond to specific letter grades.[clarification needed ] Contract grading may be contrasted with other grading methods, such as grading on a curve or percentile systems.[how? ]

In traditional grading, educators determine assignments, exams, and projects before the course begins. Students are expected to follow the syllabus and complete the tasks presented. The grade the student receives is a reflection of how well he or she completed the pre-determined syllabus. In this system, students are expected to follow a path that reflects the syllabus. Asao Inoue has contributed to the literature on this topic, especially in the context of the writing classroom. He emphasizes a version of contract grading called labor-based contract grading. This form of grading is connected to the effort a students puts forth rather than a "standard" form of writing.

However, the contract grading system allows each student to make his or her own path for the class, which allows students to pick and choose which assignments or projects they want to complete. Grades are assigned on the basis of the agreement between the student and the professor. With contract grading, students have a say in their curriculum, as well as how their grade is ultimately assessed. For some students this grading system requires a more active role.

Although the student decides what is to be accomplished throughout the course, similar to a contract, both the student and professor must come to an agreement. After students turn in their initial contract or proposal, the teacher may make revisions or require some changes be made before a final agreement is made. Similar to a contract, a contract grade must also be signed by both parties, confirming the agreement for a particular grade. However, the contract grading system is not as binding as a business contract. Should the student change his or her mind mid-semester, he or she may re-submit the contract provided the professor approves the changes.

In 1993, Peter Elbow problematized traditional writing assessment by suggesting a shift in what to assess. When a teacher uses a letter, number, grid, symbol, or another kind of ranking system to reply to a student's writing assignment, they are evaluating according to a hypothetically unilateral standard of writing. A standard to which writing is measured, however, is subjective. In his article published in the journal College English, Elbow suggests that writing assessment be based on effort rather than on a subjective evaluation aligned with a standard.

Dr. Scott Alberts, professor at Truman State University, has implemented contract grading in a few of the courses he teaches, including his Junior Interdisciplinary Seminar class and Introductory Interdisciplinary class. While students have the freedom to choose which assignments they will complete, Dr. Alberts does implement some constraints. The contract used in his course consists of both required components, as well as optional components. The required number of additional "optional" assignments for each letter grade is also clearly established.

For example, students must earn at least 10 +'s on required and optional assignments in order to receive an A in the class. Therefore, students are able to decide what letter grade they wish to receive in the course and accordingly complete the additional, optional assignments that may warrant a certain number of +'s leading them toward their desired grade. That quality is also an intrinsic part of Dr. Alberts' contract system because quantity alone cannot achieve the grade. Students, in addition to choosing the grade they desire and how many assignments they will complete, must also commit themselves to the completion of their contract. Once the student determines the number of works he or she chooses to complete, contracts are then signed and agreed upon. There is a grace period for changing of contracts, but it is ultimately up to the professor to accept or to reject any proposals. The student then has the responsibility to complete and turn in the contracted assignments, with a few deadlines to meet.

A study published in 1990 received opinions about the contract grading system from 51 undergraduate education majors and 28 graduate students majoring in education at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. Students at both education levels reacted to the contract grading system in a positive manner. They agreed that the grading system and assignments were made clear from the beginning, that the system was appropriate, and that grades were assigned fairly. When asked to rank the effectiveness and importance of the various aspects of contract grading, students reported that the key elements were the control they felt they had by being able to determine their grades, the clearly stated expectations for performance in the course, criterion referencing of assignments, and the mastery approach to learning.

Contract grading can enable the student to progress at his or her own pace. In addition to placing time management more fully in the hands of the student, contract grading can also emphasize learning and reduce grade competition. Systems of this style also encourage a cooperative learning process. By requiring instructor and student to work jointly, emphasis is added on the desires of the student and the goals he or she wishes to accomplish. According to Bucknell University, contract grading "facilitates the development of a partnership learning environment in which students are likely to retain more information, make better use of information, and be more highly motivated to learn than in teacher-directed learning environments." Due to the freedom allowed by the system, time management skills are acquired and exercised.

Contract grading could be viewed as threatening to students who have relied upon structured grading processes. Increased responsibility may cause anxiety for students expecting more common approaches. In addition to concerns for the individual student, contract grading is largely dependent upon implementation by the instructor. An instructor may, through this grading system, cause students to take on greater responsibility for learning and success while simultaneously restricting freedom. Contract grading systems are susceptible to paternalism on the part of the instructor. Whereas the students take on the responsibility of choosing assignments, they may not also actively determine expectations.

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Contract grading is a form of grading which results from cooperation between an instructor and their student(s), and entails a contracted number of assignments of specified quality that correspond to specific letter grades.[clarification needed ] Contract grading may be contrasted with other grading methods, such as grading on a curve or percentile systems.[how?

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“Think Again: Does ‘Equitable’ Grading Benefit Students?”

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“Think Again: Does ‘Equitable’ Grading Benefit Students?”

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Recent years have seen a flurry of new grading policies that risk lowering academic standards in the name of equity. Newly popular practices include "minimum grading" policies, which prevent teachers from assigning students less than 50 percent credit; prohibitions on grade penalties for late work; and bans on grading homework and class participation. Such changes in grading practices, which accelerated during the pandemic, deserve greater scrutiny. Indeed, they risk removing both discretion from teachers and crucial incentives for students to study hard and cooperate with teachers and peers. Although some grading reforms may benefit students, those that water down expectations ultimately harm the students they are meant to help.

Executive Summary

This policy brief challenges four key ideas that underpin "equity"-motivated trends in grading reforms.

"The existence of grade inflation has been exaggerated."

Maybe historically, but not now. While standards for assessing student work have been falling steadily over time, the "grading for equity" era appears to have supercharged grade inflation.
"Strict grading is harmful to students."
False. To the contrary, lenient grading policies risk lowering expectations, and there is evidence that more lenient grading leads to less learning.

Claim 3. "Traditional grading doesn't communicate what students know and can do."

False. If accompanied by clear expectations, a traditional summary grade can indeed communicate what students know and what they don't.

Claim 4: "Traditional grading perpetuates inequities."

In some cases. Without efforts to increase transparency and reduce bias, traditional grading can perpetuate inequities.
The Bottom Line
The push for more "equitable" grading policies has exacerbated grade inflation and proffered little evidence of greater learning. Some aspects of traditional grading can indeed perpetuate inequities, but top-down policies that make grading more lenient are not the answer, especially as schools grapple with the academic and behavioral challenges of the postpandemic era.
Implications
1. Policymakers and educators should be wary of lowering standards through lenient grading policies. Those include "no-zero" mandates, bans on grading homework, and prohibitions on penalties for late work and cheating. Such policies tend to reduce expectations and accountability for students, hamstring teachers' ability to manage their classrooms and motivate students, and confuse parents and other stakeholders who do not understand what grades have come to signify. All of this makes addressing recent learning loss even harder.

2. District leaders and state education agencies should support teachers in maintaining high expectations and holding the line on grade inflation. Educators need to know what high expectations look like. State and district leaders can present them with research on the connection between tough grading standards and student learning, as well as provide data about their grading standards relative to their peers. Individual schools or departments should often be allowed the flexibility to weigh the costs and benefits for themselves and to experiment with grading reforms-and individual teachers should have flexibility in adjusting deadlines or penalties based on student circumstances. What districts and states should not do is mandate reforms that could force teachers to lower standards and expectations. Such mandates are doomed to fail because so much depends on implementation, stakeholder buy-in, and the ways that reforms interact with other local policies.

3. Take the best parts from both traditional and equity-oriented grading approaches. Many traditional practices have persisted for good reason, but a few equity-motivated grading reforms should be adopted more widely. Specifically, there are good reasons for policymakers and educators to consider eliminating most extra credit assignments and implementing rigorous grading rubrics. These specific reforms do not lower academic standards, but they can strengthen academics and combat bias.

Background

In the 2000s and increasingly in the 2010s, the movement for "equitable" grading took root. Inspired by grading-reform gurus such as Ken O'Connor, Cornelius Minor, and Joe Feldman, a number of school districts-and at least one state-began implementing grading policies that explicitly or implicitly lowered expectations, including prohibiting teachers from assigning zeros (i.e., " minimum grading"), penalizing late work, and even marking down assignments on which students were caught cheating. Reformers have also argued for changing grading scales, which can have the effect of mechanically increasing students' grades.

The push to "give students grace" was understandable in that moment. Out-of-school inequities played a larger-than-ever role in students' academic lives, with many students sharing devices with siblings, lacking quiet places to study, and struggling to access the internet to join class. Yet the return to traditional, in-person instruction did not bring a return to traditional grading policies. To the contrary, more districts than ever put into place grading policies that many district leaders believed were better for "equity," or more precisely, leveling the playing field for disadvantaged students. Some of these policies-such as minimum grading (e.g., giving students no less than 50 percent of possible points) and prohibiting grading penalties for late work and even for cheating-make students' grades rise automatically. Others seek alternatives to the traditional 0-100 scale, revising it to a 0-4 scale, for example, or to mastery grading (which is more qualitative than points based). Of course, not all equity grading reformers advocate all these practices, but these are all policies that, justified by a focus on equity, have gained substantial traction in recent years.

Such grading reforms were not birthed during Covid, but their increasing popularity and growing implementation by states and districts is new. Unfortunately, many of these policies lower academic standards and are likely to do long-term damage to the educational equity their advocates purport to advance.

"The existence of grade inflation has been exaggerated." Maybe historically, but not now.

Concerns about whether grades accurately reflect student learning have been raised for decades. As far back as 1913, educational psychologist Guy Montrose Whipple questioned "the reliability of the marking system," which he characterized as "an absolutely uncalibrated instrument." Since then, grade inflation, by which teachers assign ever higher grades for the same level of academic work, has persisted.

Yet in the last few years, grade inflation has not only accelerated but has become normalized and pervasive, reframed as a core battleground in the struggle for greater educational equity (Table 1). Although not all reforms lead to more lenient grading, many do (Figure 1).
Table 1: Equity-oriented grading policies

Alternative Grading Scale

Mastery Grading

Grades are based on the extent of a student's mastery of standards at the end of a course

0-4 Grading

Grades are based on a scale of 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4, rather than a 100-point scale

Lenient Grading

Minimum grading

Students must receive a minimum grade (typically 50 points on a 100-point scale), even for missing or incomplete work

No late penalties

Student grades for work submitted after a deadline may not be reduced

Unlimited revisions

Students may resubmit work at any time without penalty

No graded formative assessments

Only summative assessments that represent a student's most up-to-date mastery of standards may be included in grades

No graded homework

Homework may not be graded

No grading penalties for cheating

Grades may not be reduced in cases of academic misconduct

Hold-harmless policies (pandemic)

A student may not receive a final grade worse than the grade at a specific earlier point in the term

No extra credit

Students may not receive extra credit for optional tasks

No grading participation or attendance

Student grades may not be affected by participation and attendance

Rubric-based grading

Assignments must be graded according to a transparent and specific set of criteria

Anonymized grading

Student submissions are anonymized and/or graded by someone other than the student's teacher

Mandatory retakes

All students earning below a certain score on an assessment are required to retake it, instead of retakes being optional

Figure 1. Although traditional grading tends to be strict, a few grading reforms may result in even stricter practices. Note: This figure represents the authors' subjective evaluation of the extent to which grading policies are traditional and/or strict. The upper-left quadrant shows reforms that tend to make grading stricter, while the lower-left quadrant shows reforms that tend to make grading more lenient. The upper-right quadrant shows traditional policies that tend to make grading stricter, while the lower-right quadrant shows a traditional policy that tends to make grading more lenient. Bolded policies are those that may help combat bias, and italicized policies are those that may contribute to bias. Descriptions of policies or reforms based on these policies are included in Table 1.
Feldman, who regularly consults with school districts and whose 2018 book Grading for Equity has become a staple of teacher professional development, contends that his proposed grading reforms actually counteract grade inflation, "particularly for more privileged students," because " equitable grading no longer includes nonacademic, compliance-related, and subjectively interpreted behaviors. " In discussing whether "classroom participation" should count, for example, Feldman worries that subjective grading practices will disproportionately inflate the grades of privileged students-who often benefit from advantages such as being more likely to encounter academic English at home.

Although this may be true in some cases, the claim that his recommended policies combat grade inflation ultimately confuses two aspects of grading: what should contribute to a course grade and how those activities should be assessed. After all, a teacher might grade class participation (the "what"), which Feldman claims may lead to grade inflation, but also use a rubric to do so strictly and fairly (the "how"). Meanwhile, another teacher might put more weight on an end-of-unit assessment (the "what"), which Feldman says will better capture a student's mastery, but that assessment could be below grade level and scored based on subjective criteria (the "how").

In the case of "no-zero" policies and prohibitions on marking down students, there is little possibility of counteracting grade inflation because grades inflate automatically. As explained below, mechanical grade inflation can also result from switching grading scales, for example going from a 0-100 scale to a 0-4 scale, because the same work is automatically assigned a higher grade.

Although researchers assured us a decade ago that the "sky was not falling" when it came to grade inflation, ever more students are now winding up in the highest GPA range. And as colleges have relaxed or completely removed standardized testing requirements for admission, grades are more important than ever. So while standards for assessing student work have been falling steadily over time, the "grading for equity" era appears to have supercharged grade inflation.

"Strict grading harms students." To the contrary, lenient grading leads to less learning.

The world of education is awash with rhetoric about the importance of holding " high expectations" for all students. What grading reformers have not understood is that high standards, rigorous grading, and student accountability are the incarnation of high expectations. Yet several of the core "equity grading" reforms-including not grading homework, allowing unlimited test retakes or assignment revisions, and prohibiting penalties for late work and cheating-weaken accountability for students. There's ample research to support it, but the notion that students do better academically when they face some consequences-positive and negative-is common sense. Moreover, there is not an iota of hard evidence that reforms that make grading more lenient benefit students in the long run.

Rather, a growing literature on grading practices strongly suggests that students learn more when teachers hold them more strictly accountable for their performance in class. For example, a 2004 study by professors David Figlio and Maurice Lucas analyzed the academic performance of elementary school students based on their teachers' grading practices. Those students assigned to teachers who graded more strictly-meaning that the teachers assigned relatively low grades to students while controlling for students' test scores-went on to experience greater test-score growth in both reading and math. And in a similar 2020 study, American University's Seth Gershenson found that high school students assigned to a tougher-grading teacher scored higher in math, both in that teacher's class and in subsequent math courses, and that was true of all student subgroups.

The rationale behind rigorous teacher grading standards is straightforward: being exposed to a higher standard prompts many students to try harder, and this increased effort leads to more learning. In a study of college students, economist Phillip Babcock found that students who expected a "C" in their class studied about 50 percent more than students who expected an "A."

Some promoters of more lenient grading encourage two practices that can contribute to grade inflation: the elimination of zeros for incomplete or missing work and the recalibration of numerical grading scales. Consider the adoption of the "0-4" grading scale as opposed to the traditional "0-100" grading scale. After the switch, students receive a 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 (meant to correspond to an F, D, C, B, or A). As with no-zero policies, the negative effect of low grades is reduced, because traditionally half or more of the 100-point scale corresponds to an F, whereas just 20 percent of the 0-4 scale does. Although teachers in different contexts frequently use alternative grading scales, including check marks, "satisfactory/unsatisfactory," and variations of 100-point scales and letter grades, switching from a 100-point scale to a 0-4 scale typically means assigning higher grades for the same work, which is the definition of grade inflation.

A 2023 working paper used data from North Carolina to examine the effects on student attendance and test performance when the state recalibrated its grading scale in 2014. The range for A's expanded from 93-100 to 90-100, while the range for F's shrank from 0-69 to 0-59. In the year of this recalibration, high-performing students were awarded even higher grades (unsurprisingly, since the grading scale had lowered the numerical threshold for earning top letter grades). What happened to initially low-performing students, however, should give grading reformers pause: their grades failed to rise, while their attendance actually declined. This troubling finding provides further evidence that grade inflation can exacerbate inequities.

This type of grade inflation could be thought of as "points-based leniency," where students are disincentivized to work hard. But another aspect of student accountability hindered by equity grading is "time leniency," where students are disincentivized to complete work in a timely manner. Grading reformers often argue against grading interim work, including formative assessments and homework, or insist that students should be offered nearly unlimited time to complete revisions. For example, Feldman earnestly argues, "Students must fix their errors and give it another try until they succeed, which means we have to offer them that next try." Unfortunately, the effect of reducing expectations for on-time work is to encourage procrastination, and this leniency on time surely has negative consequences for learning as well. One recent study, conducted as part of a master's thesis, showed that when late penalties were lifted for assignments in a high school chemistry course, homework completion dropped by more than one-third.

Lowering expectations is bad public policy, as it reduces learning and undermines the capacity of schools to help students succeed in the long run. Truly excessive academic pressure can be harmful to students, but international studies have indicated that moderate levels of stress can actually lead to greater student motivation and achievement. What's more, affluent students often have built-in mechanisms that hold them accountable, such as involved parents, as well as other resume boosters to distinguish themselves, such as AP courses and extracurricular activities. It is the students facing disadvantage who disproportionately rely on schools for motivation and credentials that can distinguish them academically. So-called "equity grading," when it leads to more lenient grading, will often harm these students the most.

"Traditional grading doesn't communicate what students know and can do."

Thus, some reformers call for grades to reflect only student mastery. If effort and behavior must be scored, the reasoning goes, those grades ought to be assigned separately, as has been policy for Boston Public Schools since 2023.

In fact, this practice is misguided. Modern online grade books already present students' scores within different categories and provide parents access so that they can see, for instance, how their child performed on tests versus on homework. Most importantly, all final grades are-by definition-a summary of performance. Even if a school uses mastery grading, in which scores are based exclusively on demonstrated mastery of specific content or skills, the final overall grade will still reflect students' mastery of the various categories of content being assessed. What's more, having a single summary metric for communicating information can be helpful for a number of audiences: college admissions officers, for example, may not have the capacity to examine individual grades on five different categories for every single high school course.

Reformers' greatest source of concern when it comes to grades and communication is that traditional grading partly reflects student behavior. That is, score penalties for behaviors like tardiness, cheating, and incomplete work produce grades that do not communicate information exclusively about students' understanding of course content. A student who turns in an excellent paper late may, for example, receive the same grade as a student who turns in a decent paper on time.

Yet to many stakeholders, that is a desirable feature of grading, not a bug. After all, success in both college and career depends not only on academic abilities but also on soft skills (sometimes called "noncognitive" or "social and emotional" skills) that enable students to follow instructions, persevere, and cooperate with their peers. Down the line, college students receive serious consequences for cheating, including course failure, probation, and even expulsion. Employees cannot consistently submit late work or skip assignments without consequences. Ability and behavior go hand in hand in determining success, which is probably why course grade point average has historically been such a powerful predictor of later success.

When colleges cannot distinguish among applicants using measures like GPA, they make admissions decisions based on less objective and less equitable measures, such as extracurricular participation and teacher recommendations, which may communicate very little about students' actual academic performance.

"Traditional grading perpetuates inequities." In some cases.

Though many grading reforms result in lowered standards and expectations for students, that does not mean that all changes to traditional grading practices are inherently undesirable. Indeed, some reforms do not make grading more lenient, and others may hold students accountable even more effectively (see the upper-left quadrant of Figure 1, above).

First, grading reformers are right to call attention to the inequities perpetuated by teacher bias in grading. Biases around race, ethnicity, prior academic performance, physical attractiveness, student weight, and teacher perception of student organization and attendance can all affect grading decisions. As Feldman observes, it's unfortunately not a realistic solution just to " stop our implicit biases," which are deeply ingrained in individuals and our society.

Such biases are not just about outright prejudice. Classrooms often operate under an unspoken code. What constitutes successful "participation," for instance? And even if that definition is clear, does it advantage students of certain personalities or language skills? What makes an essay a "B" paper, rather than an "A"-level exemplar or a still-passing "C" submission? Without clearly articulated answers to such questions, many students may face disadvantage, including those whose families have less experience in the U.S. education system and those who do not speak English fluently. A lack of transparency can thus be both discriminatory and an obstacle to learning.

As such, rubrics allow teachers to convey to students in advance of an assignment what the expectations are, as well as help teachers grade fairly and consistently, and they show students after the fact how they can improve (and where they have already been successful!). They can also help promote "interrater reliability," so that teachers across the hall from each other aren't assigning different grades for the same caliber of work. For a class discussion, for instance, a rubric can include categories such as the number of times a student participated and whether she cited class readings to support a claim, offered new ideas to the discussion, asked questions, or replied to a classmate's remarks. In this way, rubrics establish clear expectations and a relatively objective-not to mention efficient-means of scoring students. A student's discussion grade, therefore, really can reflect and communicate to others their mastery of discussion skills.

Other equity-centered reforms that deserve much greater attention are blind scoring (anonymized grading) and asking teachers to grade the work of students assigned to other teachers. If teachers do not know the identity of students, biased grading practices are less likely to seep through. Technology makes such approaches easier than ever, as grading platforms like Canvas offer anonymous grading options for teachers.

When it comes to what gets graded, equity-minded reformers get it right on some counts. Educators must be conscious of disparities in access to technology and quiet work spaces outside of school, and homework should not require parents' help. However, inflexible no-homework policies throw the baby out with the bathwater; quality homework can offer important opportunities for independent practice, foster positive attitudes toward learning, and boost academic achievement. A truly equitable approach could also involve creating quiet spaces and times for students to complete homework within their school building.

As for what should not get graded, there are indeed good reasons to believe that extra credit should be eliminated in most cases. Although it is occasionally used as a way for advanced learners to attempt work that goes beyond the scope of the course, extra credit often involves assigning points for optional activities that only loosely pertain to the course, abetting not only grade inflation but miscommunication of students' abilities and behavior. Instead, students who deserve an opportunity to earn more credit should have the opportunity to reattempt the assignments already given.

Grading reformers are also right to point out that grading "behaviors" can sometimes disadvantage the most marginalized students, communicating their personal obstacles more than their knowledge and skills. Late submissions may happen, for example, because a student is overwhelmed by family responsibilities, lacks a quiet space for homework, or is experiencing homelessness. But the top-down elimination of the expectation that students do their work on time is the opposite of equity. Instead, teachers should be able to exercise discretion over extensions, retakes, and the like-to provide each student with what is appropriate and needed.

As with monetary inflation, the point of combatting grade inflation is not to return to a golden age when a dollar could purchase a bushel of apples or an A was only assigned for truly remarkable academic achievement. The important thing is to hold the line. While the traditional 0-100 grading scale does not by itself uphold high expectations and academic rigor, adopting a more lenient grading scale is guaranteed not to do so. In the North Carolina study, for instance, the reform was simply to lower the numerical thresholds to obtain better letter grades, which in turn lowered standards and expectations. But there is no inherent reason that mastery grading or scales other than 0-100 cannot maintain or even enhance both rigor and transparency, when implemented conscientiously.

Above all else, grading reforms should not be mandated from the state or district down to classrooms. Individual schools, departments, and teachers should have the discretion to implement their own grading policies, depending on their school contexts and students' needs. Equally important, administrators need to provide examples of and supports for rigorous and transparent evaluation of student work so that teachers can hold the line on grades.

Policy Implications

1. Policymakers and educators should be wary of lowering standards through lenient grading policies. Those include "no-zero" mandates, bans on grading homework, and prohibitions on penalties for late work and cheating. Such policies tend to reduce expectations and accountability for students, hamstring teachers' ability to manage their classrooms and to motivate students, and confuse parents and other stakeholders who do not understand what grades have come to signify. All of this makes addressing recent learning loss even harder.

2. District leaders and state education agencies should support teachers in maintaining high expectations and holding the line on grade inflation. Educators need to know what high expectations look like. Educators need to know what high expectations look like. State and district leaders can present them with research on the connection between tough grading standards and student learning, as well as provide data about their grading standards relative to their peers. Individual schools or departments should often be allowed the flexibility to weigh the costs and benefits for themselves and to experiment with grading reforms-and individual teachers should have flexibility in adjusting deadlines or penalties based on student circumstances. What districts and states should not do is mandate reforms that could force teachers to lower standards and expectations. Such mandates are doomed to fail because so much depends on implementation, stakeholder buy-in, and the ways that reforms interact with other local policies.

3. Take the best parts from both traditional and equity-oriented grading approaches. Many traditional practices have persisted for good reason, but a few equity-motivated grading reforms should be adopted more widely. Specifically, there are good reasons for policymakers and educators to consider eliminating most extra-credit assignments and implementing rigorous rubrics. These specific reforms do not lower academic standards, but they can strengthen academics and combat bias.

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About the Report

This report was made possible through the generous support of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. We are grateful to Tim Daly, CEO of EdNavigator, and Sarah Ruth Morris, doctoral candidate at the University of Arkansas, for their feedback on a draft. We also extend our gratitude to Pamela Tatz for copyediting. At Fordham, we would like to thank Meredith Coffey and Adam Tyner for authoring the report; Amber Northern, David Griffith, Daniel Buck, Chester E. Finn, Jr., and Michael J. Petrilli for reviewing drafts; Victoria McDougald for her role in dissemination; and Stephanie Distler for developing the report's cover and coordinating production.

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Think Again: Does "equitable" grading benefit students?

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This policy brief challenges four key ideas that underpin "equity"-motivated trends in grading reforms.

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Reflection on Course Attendance Policies

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Reflection on Course Attendance Policies

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Creating a Clear and Supportive Attendance Policy: Emphasizes health, flexibility, participation, and removing documentation burdens.

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Creating a Clear and Supportive Attendance Policy: Emphasizes health, flexibility, participation, and removing documentation burdens.

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Choose Your Attendance StylePick the attendance approach that best suits your course:

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Generative AI in Higher Education: Institutional Policies & Guidelines

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Generative AI in Higher Education: Institutional Policies & Guidelines

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Generative Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education: Evidence from an Analysis of Institutional Policies and Guidelines

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The release of ChatGPT in November 2022 prompted a massive uptake of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) across higher education institutions (HEIs). HEIs scrambled to respond to its use, especially by students, looking first to regulate it and then arguing for its productive integration within teaching and learning. In the year since the release, HEIs have increasingly provided policies and guidelines to direct GenAI. In this paper we examined documents produced by 116 US universities categorized as high research activity or R1 institutions to comprehensively understand GenAI related advice and guidance given to institutional stakeholders. Through an extensive analysis, we found the majority of universities (N=73, 63%) encourage the use of GenAI and many provide detailed guidance for its use in the classroom (N=48, 41%). More than half of all institutions provided sample syllabi (N=65, 56%) and half (N=58, 50%) provided sample GenAI curriculum and activities that would help instructors integrate and leverage GenAI in their classroom. Notably, most guidance for activities focused on writing, whereas code and STEM-related activities were mentioned half the time and vaguely even when they were (N=58, 50%). Finally, more than one half of institutions talked about the ethics of GenAI on a range of topics broadly, including Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) (N=60, 52%). Overall, based on our findings we caution that guidance for faculty can become burdensome as extensive revision of pedagogical approaches is often recommended in the policies.

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Navigating the Future: Higher Education Policies and Guidance on Generative AI

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Navigating the Future: Higher Education Policies and Guidance on Generative AI

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Navigating the Future: Higher Education policies and guidance on generative AI - Artificial intelligence

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Updated 04/04/2025. Initially published 31/07/2024 we have reviewed, added and updated the resources. In our previous blog, we highlighted the transformative potential of generative AI in Higher Education (HE) and called for examples of AI policies and guidance from the HE sector. The response has been fantastic, and we are excited to share more examples […]

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Learn how to create a clear, cohesive generative AI policy at your academic institution. This comprehensive five-stop process includes forming an AI task force and creating responsible, consistent guidelines for AI use in higher education.

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Anthology’s AI Policy Framework for Higher Education

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Anthology’s AI Policy Framework for Higher Education

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Trying to create a university AI policy? There’s a framework for that | EdScoop

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The edtech firm Anthology released an AI policy framework that aims to support higher education institutions as they attempt to develop their own policies around AI.

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When it comes to course assignments, how much flexibility is too much?

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What to Consider in Late Work Policies | Center for Transformative Teaching | Nebraska

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Late work policies depend on factors such as the discipline, course level, enrollment size, and instructor educational philosophy.

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Faculty Share Ideas About Late Work Policies

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Faculty Share Ideas About Late Work Policies

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Faculty Share Ideas About Late Work Policies

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During the pandemic, many instructors have incorporated flexibility in their teaching and identified a need…

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Since COVID, many professors have become more flexible about due dates. But some teachers believe that the way to address student anxiety is more deadlines, not fewer.