Is 50 percent an F?

In the case of the student with the lowest D, 60%, the average is 80% for a grade of B. However, in the case of the lowest F, 0%, the average is 50% for a grade of F. This is illustrated in Table 1 below. This is called the power of the F.

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The 50% Minimum: Using Political Capital

School leadership in several jurisdictions have proposed that teachers use 50% as their lowest grade, the minimum F. It is a request that often receives push back from teachers. Is it a worthwhile use of political capital or are there other options to achieve the same goal that would be politically less draining?

A Teacher’s Perspective

Telling teachers what their minimum grade should be does not respect teachers as professionals who can fairly assess their students’ work. As a teacher I question the appropriateness and the validity of such a request. Luckily, I work in a jurisdiction [Washington, DC] where the teacher’s right to assess student work is embedded in the law. The District of Columbia Municipal Regulations Section 200.4 states “The primary responsibility for evaluating the work of the student shall rest with the teacher.”

But for those who live or work in jurisdictions where similar protections for teacher grading are not afforded: what is the reason for this ask and are there better ways to achieve the same objective?

Why the Minimum F?

The stated reason for a minimum F is usually the power of the zero-point F, how a zero-point F can affect student averages. Using a minimum F is a strategy to protect students from digging such a deep hole that it is very difficult for them to recover. Before the prevalent use of technology for grade management this argument had some validity. However, with the current state of educational technology, where electronic gradebooks are commonly used for grade management a more valid question becomes: Are there other ways to offer students the same protections without compromising teacher integrity while respecting teacher professionalism?

I will present three other strategies offering student protections. But to begin I will first clarify the issue at the heart of this discussion: The Power of the Zero-F.

The Power of the Zero-F with traditional Grading

The issue arises from the fact that in most US grading systems A is 90% and above, B is 80-89, C is 70-79, D is 60-69, and F is anything below 60. This creates unequal grade bands. The A through D bands all have an approximately 10-point spread [A usually has an 11-point spread] while the F grade band has a 60-point spread. What is often referred to as the power of the F is readily illustrated if we consider a student with two assignments. On the first assignment the student will earn 100% and on the second assignment they will earn the minimum in each grade band. This examination of the averaged grade for the two assignments should serve to clarify the power of the F. For the student with 100 and the lowest B, 80%, the average is 90% for a grade of A. For the student with the lowest C, 70%, the average is 85% for a grade of B. In the case of the student with the lowest D, 60%, the average is 80% for a grade of B. However, in the case of the lowest F, 0%, the average is 50% for a grade of F. This is illustrated in Table 1 below.

A student with 2-assignments: 100% in assignment 1

This is called the power of the F. For all other grades, when the lowest grade in that band is averaged with a perfect score, 100%, the letter grade improves. But for an F, this is not the case. This creates the case for the minimum F. To ensure that a perfect score averaged with a minimum grade from any grade band improves the student grade a minimum is set for the F band. For a perfect score to cause the average grade to improve the lowest possible value for an F would be 20%. Using a 20% minimum F, a student with a perfect score and a minimum F would get an averaged grade of 60%, a D as shown in Table 2 below. This is for a system with 10-point grade bands and a minimum D of 60%. Many people have argued that this still makes the F band four times [X4] wider than all other bands, from 20 to 59%. So, in an effort to have grade bands of equal width, a minimum 50% F has been proposed so that the F band would also be a 10-point grade band, 50 to 59%. In this case the averaged grade of our student would be a C which is more consistent with what happens to other grades as shown in Table 3 below. For a system with different grade band widths or a different minimum D then minimum 50 would not be applicable. There are two aspects that must be considered: (1) Improving an average grade with a perfect score and a minimum F, and (2) Equal Grade-bands.

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(1) For a system with minimum D at 66% then the minimum F would have to be at least 32% so that a perfect score averaged with the minimum F would result in an improved score. (2) For systems with different grade-band widths then the minimum F would have to be one grade band width below the minimum D. Example, in a system with average 8-point grade bands and a minimum D of 66 the minimum F would have to be 58%. Caution. If your system does not use 10-point grade bands and minimum D of 60%, proposal of a minimum 50% is clear evidence that you have not thought this through carefully and you are simply transplanting a practice from one system to another without careful consideration of the purpose and philosophy behind that practice and how the practice would need to be adjusted to meet the needs of the transplant system.

Options to Minimum 50

Using the technological facility of electronic gradebooks, I am aware of three commonly used ways to offer students similar protections without creating an artificial minimum F. The three techniques are (1) Letter Grade Entry, (2) Categorical Grading, and (3) Four-Point Conversion. For Each example below I will consider a student with four (4) assignments. The grades will be C, C, C, and minimum-F, that is three grades of 70% and one grade of zero. Using traditional averaging and a minimum-F of zero (0) this student would earn 52.5% which is an F. Using a minimum-F of 50% the Final Mark would be 65%, D.

Letter Grade Entry

In electronic gradebooks, letter grades are linked to grade-bands. For calculation purposes the letter grade must be assigned to a single value in the grade band. For a lot of systems, the assigned value of each letter grade defaults to the highest value of the appropriate grade band. So, for a traditional 10-point grade band system, an entered grade of A calculates as 100%, entered B calculates as 89%, C as 79%, D as 69%, and F as 59%. For a student with four assignments: C, C, C, and F (0): In this system the final mark would be 74% which is a C. The major challenge with this system and teachers entering only letter grades is that it only takes one non-F grade on average for a student to get a non-F grade. A student with 9-Fs, each earning 59%, and one D earning 69 %, would have an average 60% which would be a D. For a single D not to have this effect the student would have to more than 19-Fs. 19-Fs and 1-D have an averaged score of 59.5% which, by standard averaging becomes a D. At 20-Fs and 1-D the average score is 59.48% which by standard averaging is still an F. Some educators may be concerned that a student with 19-Fs and 1-D should not earn a D for the course. This is a valid concern. There are work-arounds to this where the F may be attached to a different value so the system is not as liberal with grades but that would be driven by the District grading philosophy. Another caution: treating the F grade differently than the other grades and attaching the F to any number different from the highest grade in the band would require justification. Making it more difficult [or easier] for students to pass is not an acceptable justification. Any justification should be part of a broader, well thought out educational philosophy.

Categorical Grading

With Categorical Grading student tasks are assigned to different categories. Each category is given a different weight. Many systems use categorical grading for a variety of reasons. Categorical grading ensures that students are graded on a variety of activities. As a teacher I use the following categories with the indicated weights: Homework (HWK-10%), Participation (P-10%), Practice and Application (PA-40%), and Assessments (A-40%). Provided I have at least one assignment in each category HWK can never affect the overall grade by more than 10%. If a student had four assignments, one in each category, with minimum grades of C in P, PA, and A, 70% in each of those categories, and a minimum F (0%) in HWK. Using standard averaging the Final Mark would be 52.5 % which is an F. Using weighted categories as identified above the Final Mark would be 63%, which would be a D.

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Categorical Grading is often used by schools as part of a comprehensive grading policy. Unless a student does no work in any category that student would not earn the grade of 0. If a student does nothing in any category, then there are other issues that need to be addressed. The issue is not one of grading.

Four Point Conversion

Another mechanism that offers students protection from the power of zero is use of the Four-Point Conversion. The technique, as described here, is really a combination of two techniques, the Four-Point Conversion and the Siloed Interim Grades techniques. However, in this instance the focus is on the power of the Four-Point Conversion to create equal gradebands and remove the power of the zero-point F. As with all tools there are variants. One common form is breaking a course into interim grades [which might be four term grades] converting those interim grades from letter grades to a 4.0 point scale, and then averaging the grades based on some set of predetermined weights. In this system all letter grades correspond to the same numeric band width and no one grade over-powers another. The challenge with this system is that the calculated grade results in a value on a continuous scale and a protocol needs to be developed for converting the calculated numeric value back to a letter grade. For this system A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, and F=0. A student with term grades of C, C, C, and F would earn 6 points and have an average point value of 1.5 which by standard rounding is 2. This student would earn a final mark of C.

Summary

In summarizing I want to reflect on the practice of giving a numerical grade of 50% where a student made no effort. As an educator I have a problem communicating to students that you will earn 50% of a grade for doing nothing. I have a problem writing 50% on an assignment where the student made no effort. I have no problem with telling a student that they can earn an F for doing nothing. I have no problem writing F on an assignment where the student made no effort. I also have no problem with the fact that by using Letter Grade entry the F may not calculate as a zero. While the differences here may be subtle, especially to educators who are not in the classroom, I am confident that most classroom teachers understand the difference in these scenarios. This article only seeks to give an overview of a few grade averaging techniques and compare the results with using a minimum-50-F grading approach. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, only a taste of what is possible. There are many other techniques in common use and these techniques are often used in combinations. Using, as an example, a student with four grades of C, C, C, and F the different averaging techniques discussed, when applied in the manner described, give the results in Table 4 below. Educational technology has evolved to an extent where the typical electronic gradebook enables multiple methods of student grading and grade averaging. The minimum-50 approach was probably very powerful and innovative before the advent of electronic gradebooks. However, in today’s environment, advocates of Minimum-50-F approach would do well to investigate where their districts are with electronic gradebooks and grading policies before suggesting this approach as a panacea for all grading ills.

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