By Sarah Ostergaard
On May 18 Governor Henry McMaster signed into law House Bill 5073 to prohibit South Carolina public school districts and public schools from requiring teachers to assign a grading floor higher than a student’s actual performance. Districts and individual schools can no longer require a teacher to give a student a minimum score (e.g., a 25 or 50) when the student’s work earned a lower grade or when no work was submitted at all.
The law moved the debate about grading floors into public view, sparking a larger conversation about the purpose, efficacy, and fairness of grades.
The most basic argument against grade floors goes like this: If I don’t show up to work, I would still get some of my paycheck? The real world doesn’t work that way. Zero work, zero grade.
Agree.
However, many of us do have sick days, personal days, and comp time that we can use and still earn the whole paycheck.
Education policy is never simple.
At its most basic level, a grade is information. It is intended to tell students, parents, teachers, colleges, and employers how well a student has mastered the material in a course. If grades are to have meaning, they should accurately reflect performance. Supporters of the new law argue that assigning a grade higher than what a student actually earned unfairly distorts that information and creates a misleading picture of academic achievement. Passing a course should provide clear evidence of mastery and lowering standards risks sending students into future courses, college, or the workforce without the skills they need.
Proponents of grading floors suggest that a grade of 25 or 50 is a more proportional representation of failure than a zero on a scale where anything below 60 is already considered failing. That imbalance is unfair because failure occupies a much larger portion of the scale. A student who earns a 59 has demonstrated far more learning than a student who earns a 10, but both fail the assignment and thus the 100 point grading scale is punitive. Grading floors provide struggling students with hope and keep them engaged rather than convincing them that passing is impossible.
Although a zero for each missed assignment can sink a grade, adversely affect opportunities to improve, and lower motivation or morale, and although a grade floor can inflate a grade and falsely indicate mastery of course material, there are so many more factors that go into a student’s final grade in a course than a 0, 25, 50, or other grade on an assignment. Is a rewrite or retest allowed? Is late work accepted? Number of assignments in the course? Is the lowest test grade dropped? Is afterschool tutoring available?
Even at schools within our own district, grading floor practices differed. How is that fair? Back in December, 2022, I wrote in this column: “Here in LexRich5, for example, Chapin High School, Dutch Fork High School, and Irmo High School do not have a minimum grade floor. Students there may receive zeros for assignments they do not do. Spring Hill High School has a grade floor of 25.”
Although public school districts and schools are now not allowed to require grade floors (or they lose 10 percent of state funding), the debate about grades and grading floors is not over. The new law also requires the State Board of Education to create a task force including educators, administrators, school board members, and high school students to review the state’s Uniform Grading Policy and recommend changes aimed at better measuring college and career readiness and whether GPA accurately reflects student performance. The task force must submit its recommendations by February 1, 2027, and any approved revisions must be implemented by the 2028–29 school year.
Whether you believe zero work should earn a zero grade or that grading floors give students a fighting chance, one thing is clear: grades matter. Grades and grading policies affect a school’s all-important graduation rate, determine career and college offers, impact financial scholarship decisions, and influence student motivation. Ultimately, the debate over grading floors is really a debate about what grades are supposed to represent. Are they a measure of mastery, effort, growth, or some combination of all three?
