Some SC school districts won’t give grades below 50. Legislation would ban such policies.

COLUMBIA — Legislation seeks to stop South Carolina school districts from requiring teachers to give students grades they didn’t earn.

Proposals filed earlier this month stem from a freshman senator’s quarrel with the school board he sat on before his election to the Statehouse. What started out as Sen. Jeff Zell’s attempt to block Sumter County from resurrecting a practice he fought to end could undo policies that have spread statewide over the last decade.

Measures filed April 3 in the House and Senate ban policies — whether district-wide or at individual schools — that set a minimum grade for teachers to give students, regardless of what they earned. Such policies would put school districts at risk of losing 10% of their state aid.

As a school board member, Zell helped undo a directive that barred teachers from giving students a grade of less than 50 on report cards for the first three quarters. That’s 10 points below a passing grade in South Carolina, where a D starts at 60.

Even Zell’s not sure exactly how long Sumter County’s grading floor existed. It had been in the district’s grading manual for teachers for at least a decade but was not a board decision — until the vote last August to revoke it.

Zell fought it as allowing students to do little-to-no school work for the first three quarters but still get passed on to the next grade if they applied themselves and did well in the final quarter.

“It’s just fundamentally not right,” the Sumter Republican told the SC Daily Gazette, adding, “I’ve yet to hear a single shred of evidence that it’s helpful.”

When the newly elected school board, without Zell, considered bringing back the grading floor as an approved board policy, he filed the legislation. Rep. Fawn Pedalino of Turbeville, whose district includes part of Sumter County, filed a companion bill in the House.

Zell noted the legislation specifies that students can still do extra work to replace or otherwise recover from a bad grade.

“Second chances matter to me,” but they should be provided in a way that doesn’t “incentivize lackadaisical effort,” he said.

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On April 7, four days after the bills were introduced, the Sumter County school board rejected the proposal with a 4-4 tie vote.

But Zell and Pedalino aren’t dropping the matter.

Pedalino, who lives in Clarendon County, said the idea shouldn’t be acceptable anywhere in the state.

“We need to make sure we set these kids up for success,” she said.

Republican leaders joining them as co-sponsors include House Speaker Murrell Smith of Sumter and Senate Education Chairman Greg Hembree of Little River, though the school district he represents, Horry County, does not have any such policy.

“Teachers can and do issue a grade lower than a 50,” Lisa Bourcier, a spokeswoman for the state’s third-largest district, told the Gazette.

Districts’ reasoning

It’s unclear how many school districts in South Carolina have similar grading floors.

That’s not something tracked by the state Department of Education. Those are local decisions, an agency spokesman said.

But the topic has been increasingly debated around the state over the last decade, said Patrick Kelly, a high school teacher who works for the Palmetto State Teachers Association.

And, while teachers understand the theory behind a grading floor, the “negatives outweigh the positives,” he said.

Shawn Ragin, chairman of the Sumter County school board, countered that setting a minimum grade such as 50 is a “strategic academic intervention, not a loophole or grade inflation tactic.

“Their purpose is to ensure students are not academically doomed by a single failure, encouraging re-engagement rather than academic withdrawal,” he wrote in a statement to the Gazette explaining his opposition to the legislation.

A 50 is still a failing grade, he noted. But assigning a grade of no less than 50 — he said “it’s not about ‘giving’ points” — ensures a student can still recover. It’s mathematically impossible to pass “after one or two zeroes,” he wrote.

Ragin, who’s also headmaster of a local private preschool, pointed to five other districts in South Carolina with similar grading floors, saying they “adopted the policy after seeing that giving a zero for missing work disproportionately harmed students in poverty, with disabilities, or experiencing trauma.”

The Gazette reached out to all five districts he cited.

In Kershaw County, which adjoins Sumter, it’s not an actual policy. However, teachers don’t give a grade of less than 50 on any report card for high schoolers. Younger students can’t get less than a 50 for the first three quarters. Parents are informed by a written note that their child’s actual grade is lower, said district spokesperson Becky Bean.

She did not say how teachers know not to give a lower grade if it’s not policy.

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In Richland One, the district for schools in the state’s capital city, students of all grade levels can’t get less than a 50 on any of their four report cards.

The goal is to ensure “temporary setbacks do not irreparably hinder a student’s academic progress,” said district spokesperson Ilyssa Weiner.

Without the policy, she said, it’s realistic that a student facing personal challenges could earn a 25 for the first quarter. But earning a 70 — a C in South Carolina — in the next three quarters would still average 59 for the year, which is just barely failing.

Greenville County, the state’s largest district, also has a different policy for middle schoolers and high schoolers.

In high school, students can’t get less than a 50 on any report card. In middle school, they can’t get less than a 50 on any assignment. That’s because it’s more difficult to keep middle schoolers engaged, said Tim Waller, the district’s longtime spokesman.

Ending that policy could result in a “decrease in student morale and a wider achievement gap between students who have support systems and those who do not,” Waller said.

The Gazette did not get a response from messages left with spokespeople in Charleston County or Richland Two in suburban Columbia, where it’s spring break.

Teachers’ opposition

Teachers in those districts oppose the policies.

They “lessen the integrity of a diploma,” said Sherry East, a teacher in Rock Hill and president of the South Carolina Education Association.

She happened to be meeting last week with a group of teachers from Sumter County when the grading floor came up in the conversation. All of them told her they’re adamantly against the policy, she said.

Teachers want to help students but don’t want to be forced to give students a grade they haven’t earned, she said.

She agreed with Zell’s second-chance argument: “Let me let the kid do some extra work or some extra credit if I think the situation merits it,” she said.

Sumter County school district’s own survey found that more than 8 of every 10 teachers opposed the 50% grading floor, The Sumter Item reported last May, before the school board voted to revoke the practice.

Teachers who opposed the set minimum said students were “gaming the system” and not being prepared for the real world, while the relatively few teachers who supported the floor said it encouraged students in dire circumstances to still apply themselves, the newspaper reported.

Even with the backing of GOP heavyweights in both chambers, the legislation is highly unlikely to pass this year. By state law, only 10 days remain in the regular session. For the House, which is on furlough this week, only nine days remain. And neither bill has gotten a hearing yet.

The only shot at the ban becoming law this year is if it gets inserted into the state budget. And floor debate on the Senate’s spending plan is next week.

Even if it doesn’t, the bill will stay alive for next year, as this is the first of a two-year session.