no-zeroes policy – A new national survey shows no-zeroes grading is fairly common but widely disliked. Teachers fear it can weaken engagement while some schools say it helps students recover after setbacks.
Plenty of schools have been rethinking what grades should communicate—and how students should be held accountable when learning gets interrupted. A new nationally representative survey sheds light on one of the most debated ideas: “no-zeroes” policies.
The debate matters because grades are not just academic signals; they shape whether students believe they can recover.. Yet the survey results show the approach is far from universal.. Misryoum reports that about one in four teachers say their school or district doesn’t give students zeroes. while nearly all teachers who answered about it expressed dissatisfaction with how it plays out in practice.
Equitable grading—an umbrella that includes withholding zeroes. not deducting points for lateness. allowing retakes. and limiting the impact of participation or homework on final grades—expanded after the pandemic.. Misryoum contextualizes this shift as a response to a reality many classrooms faced: students missing work. struggling to meet strict deadlines. and falling behind in ways that rigid grading systems often treat as permanent.
According to the survey. more than half of K-12 teachers said their school or district uses at least one equitable grading practice. but only 6% said their school used four or more.. The most common policy. by far. is also the one that triggers the strongest pushback: no-zeroes for missing assignments or failed tests.. Just over a quarter of teachers reported that their school or district follows a no-zeroes policy.
Other equitable practices appear with less consistency.. About three in ten teachers said students could retake tests without penalty. and a similar share said lateness didn’t lead to point deductions.. Roughly 1 in 10 teachers reported that participation or homework was not supposed to factor into final grades.
Why are these policies sticking—and why do they also create friction?. Proponents argue that a few zeroes can distort grades so severely that students see no realistic path to passing.. When that happens. disengagement can become a self-fulfilling cycle: students stop trying because the grade “story” tells them effort won’t change the outcome.
Teachers, however, often experience the policy on the ground in ways that don’t match the intent.. In the survey. eight in 10 teachers said giving partial credit for assignments students didn’t turn in was harmful to engagement.. The language that emerged from open-ended responses points to a shared classroom concern: if work is optional—at least in practice—then students may decide the fastest route to a passing grade is doing little. not doing better.. Some teachers also described how the “floor” that replaces a zero (sometimes implemented as an automatic conversion to a minimum score) can create a false sense of progress.
The policy also lands differently depending on grade level and student population.. Misryoum notes that schools enrolling mostly students of color were more likely to have no-zeroes policies. and middle schools were more likely than elementary or high schools to adopt no-late-penalty approaches. retake policies. and no-zeroes practices.. Researchers in the report weren’t certain why middle schools became a hotspot. but one former middle school principal training districts on equitable grading offered a plausible explanation: middle school teams may be more likely to treat grading as a developmental tool. since students are still building routines and organization.
There’s also a worry—expressed indirectly through teachers and administrators—that changing grading rules could threaten students’ ability to compete for college admission.. Misryoum frames this as a misconception that persists despite the fact that schools can balance fairness with standards in ways that still communicate academic rigor.
What makes the findings especially striking is that teachers didn’t uniformly reject all equitable grading ideas.. They were more divided on retakes without penalty.. Some teachers connected retakes to a growth mindset, while others warned they could encourage avoidance and procrastination.. Another concern was workload: if students are allowed to try again repeatedly. teachers can end up grading the same material multiple times. which can strain time and attention across the entire class.
In the background is a bigger educational question that Misryoum sees playing out across many districts: what should a high school diploma—or a course grade—actually represent?. With many schools rethinking graduation requirements and the weight of grades. equitable grading sits at the center of a tug-of-war between accountability and access.
One practical example comes from a K-8 school in Colorado, where a district adopted a structured 50–100 grading scale.. Students receive at least a 50% if they turn in work, while “missing” marks apply when they don’t.. But teachers can allow middle and high school students to make up incomplete assignments within the same quarter. including with limited deductions for late work.. A principal described the policy as a way to keep struggling students trying instead of giving up after early setbacks—an argument grounded in classroom psychology: motivation improves when students see that effort can change the outcome.
Misryoum analysis suggests the most durable takeaway from the survey is not that no-zeroes is “good” or “bad.” It’s that blanket policies can fail either way—by removing incentives for responsibility or. in the opposite direction. by trapping students in a grade that doesn’t reflect later improvement.. The report’s authors recommend moving away from one-size-fits-all rules toward flexibility, with safeguards that reduce bias.
Still, teachers disagree on what fairness requires.. More than half said it’s more important to have clear schoolwide policies to ensure grading is consistent. while others preferred teacher judgment.. That split underscores a central challenge for education systems: equitable grading is as much about process and incentives as it is about math.
As districts continue updating grading practices in the wake of pandemic disruption. Misryoum expects the real battleground to remain the details—what happens when students miss work. what “passing” should mean. and how schools preserve standards while making room for students to recover.. The survey shows teachers want the balance to work; the question is which version of “balance” classrooms can live with.