Imagine a life where the letter “F” on any graded assignment ceased to exist and no assignment, no matter how bad, was called a “failure.” Sounds pretty good, right?

At West Potomac High School, this dream became a short-lived reality. The letter-grade “F” was banished from the school’s curriculum and replaced with the letter “I”, which stood for incomplete. The concept was that if a student cheated or received an F on a test or graded assignment they would receive an “I”,  which was an attempt by the school to practice their no-zeros grading policy.

In order to make up for the incomplete grade, a student would have to complete remedial work.

How touching that would be; an educational system without the word failure anywhere. But real life does not work that way – deluding students into that mindset is only setting them up for, well, failure.

The traditional grading system works so well with  students, as they dread failure and can revel in the “A’s” they earn. This grading system is the perfect way of commending a student for their sincere and diligent efforts and admonishing those who do not meet a teacher’s standards for their lack of work ethic.

Giving students the easy way out by removing their ability to receive an “F” is only teaching them that their failures lack consequences, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Every student has tasted failure and taking that away from them is only giving them a false sense of security.
Such a system would never work at AHS. We are an IB school, where students are challenged daily no matter if they are in IB, honors or non-honors classes. The entirety of the concept seems faulty, underneath that stereotype is piles of remedial work waiting to consume a student.
And any student of AHS can attest that more work is an even greater burden on top of all the work they already have.

With AHS and in any other school, this new policy would be met with laziness by the students. As it is, AHS already offers concessions for failing grades. If a student receives an overall grade of 15 percent for example, their percentage would automatically be bumped up to a 48 percent.

This is a large increase that students should be especially grateful of. Students would feel compelled to not do their work, as they would have the opportunity to make it up later.

Not only that, but the grading would completely mess up a students GPA if an “I” is present, and  would look questionable on a high school transcript.

As it is, teachers do enough in the classroom to drill information into the minds of students and offer help – the implementation of such a complex and extensive policy would cause their dedication to go to waste.

Students have to understand that there are consequences to their actions. Allowing an easy way out will only result in more wasted time by both the student and the teacher.

West Potomac retracted the new grading policy after parents and teachers began petitioning online and in person. Sharing the same views expressed above, they too believed this policy had too many faults to actually be successful.

What every student should know by now is that when they receive an “F”, the reasons are blatant to the teacher. Given the circumstances, teachers can still make accommodations, but in the end, the “F” will be given because it was earned.