The 50% Bare Minimum: How It's Becoming Impossible For Students To Fail

The subject heading in the email was in bold, cc’d to my supervisor: BELOW 50%!!! It was referring to the 37% one of my students had earned so far. Nothing else needed to be said—it was a self-evident smoking gun, like a woman holding up her husband’s shirt with a lipstick stain. 

For some reason, the counselor had decided to “report” me to the supervisor for the crime of giving a student the grade he’d earned. I lurched between being furious to rolling my eyes and tried to decide on my next step. A mind-numbing percentage of teaching is wasted on dealing with this sort of bureaucratic pettiness because this pettiness can cost you your job or at least make your job miserable. 

We’d been ordered to never give students grades below a 50%. 

This policy started during COVID, ostensibly to “not penalize” students "during these times," but probably for the district to conceal the high failure rate. The policy was decided on high with no discussion with teachers, parents, or students; it was merely announced. I didn’t know a single teacher who thought it was a good idea, but when we complained to the union, we were told we had to obey. It was just for COVID.

Three years later, it’s now seemingly codified, not merely in my district, but in multiple districts around the country. Some districts even mandate a 60% minimum. Others have mandates like mandatory make-up of all work during the last week of each quarter. 

The philosophy behind this enabling has been in the works for a while now. When I first started teaching 15 years ago, our principal announced at a meeting that he’d “monitor” to make sure we didn’t give “too many F’s.” “Oh, two or three at most,” he said when a teacher asked what was “too much." And what were teachers thinking, giving students an 11%! That meant the student had no hope of ever passing and would just give up! With a 50%, the kid had hope. “Come on, guys,” the principal said. “Does it really matter if he gets a D instead of an F?"

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A veteran teacher said, “We’re not giving the students an 11%. They’re earning an 11%” The principal ignored him. Another veteran teacher asked how a fake 60% was fair to a kid who worked his butt off and earned a 70%?” Privately, I agreed, but I was a single mom of five kids and needed this job. So, early on, I was trained to be very careful about the amount of F’s I “gave.” 

For every F, you had to document all the steps you took to make sure it wasn’t an F: Did you call the parent, who already had access to the grades online? Did you ask the nurse and guidance for a better number if you couldn't reach them? The Parent Teacher Coordinator? Did you document you weren’t able to contact the parents? Did you contact the parents and have a meeting warning them their kid was failing and ask “how you could help them”? Did you offer alternative assessments if the kid was “having a tough time” (which could be anything)? If not, change that grade to a D. Or else. And that was fifteen years ago. 

It's far worse now. The student who’d earned a 37% had only just joined my class a few weeks earlier, in the third marking period. He’d been arrested and had missed months of school in juvie jail, and had actually been withdrawn from the school roster. 

One day in the spring, he'd walked into class 10 minutes late, wearing an ankle bracelet. I didn’t recognize him at first; the other kids had to tell me who he was because he wouldn't. The music through his earbuds was so loud I could hear the lyrics, something about pussy and fucking. I told him to turn his music off and gestured to a seat, and he chose a different seat and left the music loud. 

I said nothing. I’d learned long ago that if I reacted in any way, he’d have a huge temper tantrum at the very least, culminating in being escorted out by security—and then he’d be returned 15 minutes later smirking in triumph. I refused to play the game at all and ignored him. 

A sweet student raised his hand and asked what the Big Bang was. I'm an English teacher, but I love such questions. As the student with the ankle bracelet muttered “gonna… suck my… kill you…” and a few others fell asleep or went on their phone, the rest of us talked about time and space. This approach ran against all my teaching instincts to never give up on any student. But our bureaucracy has a way of grinding down our ideals, and by now I was entirely practical: How could I help the most kids? 

The mandatory 50% has a predictable, disastrous impact on learning, morale, and drive. It may come as a surprise to academics, but a large portion of our population doesn’t care if their kid gets into Harvard. They want the high school diploma because that’s what their kid needs to move on. After that, they can work in their parents’ business, go to the army, or community college, or work at a car shop or a beauty shop, all perfectly reasonable options that require only a high school diploma. 

What do you call a student who graduates high school with a 60% GPA? A high school graduate.

So a sizable percentage cares only that they pass, with a 60%. With a mandatory 50%, all you have to do is one or two assignments the entire marking period, or get a 70% one marking period, and then do nothing the other marking period.

The only reason my student had a 37% and not a 0% was because the class was low-level and I graded easily. I'd give him the (fake) 50% once the marking period was over, no worries! I emailed back to guidance. The kid still had a chance to pass! 

Perhaps predictably, the guidance counselor sent an enraged email cc’d to several more superiors about how I wasn’t following protocol which had been stated explicitly by the principal on such and such a date, and she quoted.

I went to the union. How could this guidance counselor, who had no authority over me at all, cc all my supervisors? Was she targeting me? Or had she emailed other teachers? The union basically told me better to just let this go, it would go away, and maybe the counselor was truly concerned about the student. But I did have to give the 50%.

That was when I lost my fire, as I have so many times in my fifteen-year career. While I argued fruitlessly, I was ignoring my other students who wanted to talk about the universe, what was alliteration, or what jobs I thought they should do over the summer. 

So I gave him the 50%. After that, I could teach in peace again. For now.

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