Half Of American Schools Require 'Equitable' Grading And Most Teachers Are Opposed: Survey

Lackluster student performance has plagued the Schenectady, N.Y., city school district for years.

The school district, like many others, implemented a “grading for equity” policy in response to dismal test scores.

However, as Aaron Gifford reports below for The Epoch Times, a recent national survey indicates that most teachers feel grade equity actually hurts students long term, although more than half of the schools and districts across the nation engage in the practice.

Schenectady’s 2022-2023 academic report said 95 percent of its high school freshmen were behind in math by three or more grade levels.

A year later, the district reported that in the first quarter of the 2022-2023 school year, more than half of its middle school students (grades 6-8) were three or more grade levels behind in both reading and math, while the daily attendance rate for high schoolers had dipped below 79 percent.

In response to these disappointing results, district leaders implemented a “grading for equity” policy whereby students are not penalized for handing in assignments late, and are allowed to retake tests with continuous guidance from teachers until their scores reflect proficiency levels. Incomplete grades for the semester require authorization from school principals. The policy took effect last fall.

“It’s almost academic fraud,” Christopher Ognibene, Schenectady High School social studies teacher, told The Epoch Times. He recalled a student who was given B’s all year but failed the end-of-the-year New York State Regents assessment with a score of 43.

“Watered-down report cards and transcripts mean nothing if you are left unprepared academically for college. And there are due dates in the real world—it doesn’t matter where you go after high school,” he said.

Most teachers agree with Ognibene’s assessment of the widely used approach, according to the recent survey by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and Rand Corporation education team members.

The Aug. 20 report, “Equitable Grading Through the Eyes of Teachers,” summarized responses from 967 teachers from K-12 districts across the country in late 2024.

“Turns out, teachers don’t like it when the powers that be take a sledgehammer to their few sources of leverage over student motivation and effort. Nor do they like giving students grades they don’t deserve,” the report says.

The report identifies five equitable grading practices—unlimited retakes, no late penalties, no zeroes, no homework, and no required participation.

More than half of those surveys identified at least one of those practices in their school, while a quarter noted that their district allows three of them, most commonly unlimited retakes, no late penalties, and no zeros.

Eighty-one percent of the teachers surveyed said they are particularly opposed to requirements for partial credit awarded on late assignments.

The survey included an open-ended response section, where teachers indicated that a guaranteed grade of 50 or higher is a common practice.

“We have gone to the ‘do nothing, get a 50’ grade policy,” one teacher wrote. The report did not identify respondents. “Students have figured out that, if they work hard for a quarter (usually the first), they can coast the rest of the year and get a D.”

This practice received negative national attention in Hartford, Connecticut, last year after an illiterate high school senior graduated and was accepted to college. The student, Aleysha Ortiz, later sued the district, noting that she completed assignments by using a talk-to-text function on her phone.

Carol Gale, president of the Hartford Federation of Teachers, previously told The Epoch Times that in addition to the automatic 50 score entitlement, her district only requires a 60 score to pass a grade level, and some students pass with 40 or 50 absences in a year.

“It seems to me this is allowed simply to embellish graduation rates,” she said.

The Fordham Foundation report doesn’t list the districts represented in the survey, but it does note that policies were hotly contested before their adoption in Schenectady, in Portland, Oregon, and San Leandro, California. It also said education leaders in Atlanta and Las Vegas are “reversing course” on grading for equity due to negative results.

Schools implement grade equity practices to counter low state test scores, bolster graduation rates, and address academic achievement gaps based on race and socioeconomic status.

Respondents said their school adopted policies from a 2023 book, “Grading for Equity: What it is, Why it Matters, and How it Can transform Schools and Classrooms.”  The author, Joe Feldman, a former teacher and principal, consults with schools across the country to implement those policies.

“Anything that has to do with equity and diversity for city schools, people eat it up,” Ognibene told The Epoch Times. “Everybody wants a silver bullet, but no book is going to fix what’s happening.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the Schenectady City School District for comment.

Gherian Foster, an activist with the Albany-based Black Abolitionist Directive who previously worked for the Schenectady City School District, said she believes grading for equity is a viable solution to improve student performance over time.

She said it encourages engaging classroom activities and discussions over what she called outdated and ineffective methods of instruction: drilling students to regurgitate information for the sake of high test scores.

“If [students] are just looking at their Chromebooks for every lesson, that’s not engaging instruction,” Foster told The Epoch Times. “That just stresses the teachers and the students out. Do we have to test them so much, or are there other ways?”