New Grading System Deserves an F : Board of Education policy eliminating F grades fails to address root problems

On the nights when sleeping or partying or hanging out is more inviting to a teen-ager than studying, the threat of an F can be a powerful motivational tool--especially for students barely holding on to a low C or D grade in a course. It may not be as positive an incentive as a thirst for knowledge. But parental and peer pressure has kept many a young person at the books.

San Diego city schools see it differently. F grades are part of the dropout problem, argue administrators, community advisers and most school board members. Students with several Fs are more likely to give up.

Under a recently approved policy, junior and senior high school students who fail a course would get a “no credit” designation on their record instead of an F. Grade-point averages would be calculated only on courses successfully completed.

Previously, F grades were averaged with passing grades. So, an F continued to drag down the cumulative score.

The underlying idea is that schools should expect success, rather than failure. Allowing students to repeat courses without penalty would help foster that expectation. And a clean slate might encourage students to try harder the second time.

Supt. Tom Payzant says the new system is akin to repeating the bar exam or a driver’s license test. Others liken it to college, where students have a certain number of weeks to drop a course without penalty, or to take some courses pass/fail.

There may be some logic to allowing a new grade to replace the original one when a course is repeated. It could be an added incentive.

But at a time when accountability is the watchword of educational reform, eliminating F grades sends the wrong message. If teachers should be accountable, shouldn’t students and parents also be?

For accountability to be more than a buzzword, it must include a means for measuring performance. Grades do that, albeit imperfectly.

Everyone deserves the right to fail. Students should be treated no differently. That does not mean they are failures.

If teachers are dismissing them as failures, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, that should be addressed. Children’s different learning styles and different rates of progress should be accommodated, although that is tough without smaller classes.

Also, many children enter school with so many economic, health and social difficulties that they have little reasonable chance of success without extra support and services.

Smaller classes and better support services are improbable while the state and counties are climbing out of their deep budgetary holes. But simply eliminating F grades is unlikely to produce the positive learning experiences that the school district is seeking and may do more harm than good.