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No Homework Policy: One Year Later

By Mary Montero

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.Last school year was a really big year in my classroom. We started flexible seating (you can read more about that adventure  HERE ), we implemented a Bring Your Own Device program, and we did away with homework. Like I said– BIG year!

While each of those three changes contributed to a very different feel in my classroom than years prior, I was particularly nervous about doing away with homework. I know that homework has its place, and I know there are concepts and skills (especially in 4th grade!) that require repetition to really grasp. Yet, I still felt like the reasons to do away with homework were more important than the benefits of homework itself.

Throughout the school year, I had many colleagues pop in and ask how our no-homework policy was going. “It’s going well!” I would respond, but I wouldn’t give many details. Now, after a full school year without it, I definitely have some reflections on how it went, what changes I would make, and if I would do it again!

After a Full Year of No Homework

You can see that we didn’t COMPLETELY do away with homework, but we did do away with 99% of it. We still STRONGLY encouraged students to be reading each night, and they were required to have a novel in progress at all times. We also continued our weekly letter writing, where students had to respond to us in letter form by the end of the week. You can read more about that idea  HERE . I’ll never have a classroom where I don’t do it!

We also had a disclaimer that if students did not complete their classwork in a reasonable period of time or were excessively off task during an assignment, they would need to bring it home to complete it.

How I Broke The News To My Students

Of course, when we first told students about this change, there was hooting and hollering and cheers galore! I let them have their moment and then gently pulled them back together. I reassured them that it was totally possible that they wouldn’t have homework, but that it would mean they had to give me their all every. single. minute of every. single. day. Their eyes got big, they sat up taller, and an air of confidence washed over them. “We’ve got this, Mrs. M.!” I remember one kiddo saying. In the beginning, it was as if they would do anything to keep this privilege.  We floated on clouds of no-homework bliss for a solid week…

And then here’s what really happened when I did away with homework…

I expected more from my students than ever before.

When I was planning my lessons this year, I packed in more than I ever had before. While that might send like a negative effect of this little experiment, it was actually one of the best parts for me.

The Monster That Is Math

In math, in particular, this was a game changer for me. I knew that my students needed to deeply and fully understand these concepts and be able to compute with automaticity. I also knew they wouldn’t be going home and doing 20 extra problems each night like they had in the past. This meant that 1) I had to make sure they understood the concept like the back of their hand and 2) They could apply that understanding to a wide variety of problems…. Of course, these are two non-negotiables that any math classroom should have, but I was going to be doing it with less practice and repetition than before.

Therefore, when I was planning, I ended up with FAR more inquiry-based lessons and practice (so that they would really get the meat of the concept), and far less direct teacher instruction. I jammed as much as I could into my whole group time (10-15 minutes a day) and then jammed even more into their workshop time. Kids were collaborating, practicing, and learning more than ever… Simply because I had this sense of urgency that I was missing before.

But What About Spelling

A few people have asked about spelling and how this worked without homework and studying at home. We use a word study philosophy, similar to Words Their Way , which means that students are studying patterns in words rather than the words themselves. I incorporated this into my reading rotations and would occasionally devote some of our writing to it, and I would highly recommend it!

Another option to fit in what would have previously been homework is to rethink your morning routine. I usually use my  Think It Through  critical thinking packet as morning work, and when I did away with homework this year and had to give them some more “intense” morning work, I started using the packet during Morning Meeting instead. I used our morning work time this year to review and reteach grammar concepts some days and math skills other days. It was the perfect balance!

This brought out the best in some kids

When I say it brought out the best in them, I mean it changed their study habits permanently. They created habits that I hope will continue on with them for years and years to come. They knew that in order to continue having no homework, they truly had to give me their all during the day. It wasn’t easy. They had to not only complete their assignments, but complete them well. We had very, very little down time, and I expected more from this group of kids than ever before.  Some rose to the challenge and THRIVED under the challenge…

…and some kids didn’t care.

I did have a handful of students who were not at all motivated by a lack of homework. These were the kids who repeatedly ended up taking work home because they weren’t completing it in class. Usually due to them being distracted and not on-task. Some kids learned quickly that this isn’t what they wanted, and a few kids never did quite learn.

Some parents loved it. Others hated it.

On Back to School Night, when we handed out this homework policy, the general consensus was all the praise hands in the world! Parents thanked us for giving them FREEDOM in the evenings to take their kids to gymnastics without worrying about homework and some parents thanked us for eliminating the nightly homework battle they had fought for the past few years.

We also had a small number of parents who wanted their kids to have homework. They worried that they would become accustomed to not having homework and have a difficult time next year when their teacher required it again. They worried they wouldn’t get enough skill practice. These were valid concerns, and we reassured parents that, if they requested it, we would send home supplemental practice. Not one of the parents who initially expressed concern over the policy ever ended up asking for homework.

…but some KIDS asked for homework!

I’ll never forget the first time one of my kids ASKED for homework! It was about a month into the school year, and we were working on  Error Analysis  in small groups. One of my students looked up and said, “I LOVE this. Can you PLEASE give us some more to do at home!?” How could I deny them that opportunity!? 🙂 The rest of the kids in the small group chimed in that they wanted to bring some home too. During my lunch break, I printed a few more tasks out for those kids, and guess what? Every single student in that group brought it home and returned it the next day– BY CHOICE!

This happened multiple times throughout the year, primarily with my  math projects  and error analysis tasks. I never, ever denied them when they asked to bring something home for homework.

Some kids NEED homework.

Usually, these aren’t the kids who were requesting the extra homework, but I had another handful of students who needed homework. They needed skill practice, they needed reading fluency practice, and they needed fact practice. I talked to each of those students individually and contacted those parents privately. They (both students and parents) understood why I needed to send supplemental work home. Once a quarter, I put together packets based on those kids’ needs. I gave them free reign to complete it at any time throughout the quarter, and every single packet came back completed by the end of the quarter.

I would do it all over again.

At the end of the year, I had parents come up to me and thank me for this policy, telling me how they had enjoyed a better relationship with their student this year without the nightly homework battle. They had taken more walks, participated in more after school activities, and were generally so thankful for the reprieve.

As a teacher, I saw happy kids coming in every day and relaxed kids leaving every afternoon. There were no battles over missing homework, and kids worked hard to keep the privilege. I had no noticeable (anecdotally or with data) drop in achievement or growth over the course of the year. I felt like a better teacher because I worked even harder during the school day to make sure they were getting exactly what they needed while they were with me.

…Oh, and I had a lot less grading to do, too! 🙂 🙂

I would do it again a heartbeat!

Homework Policy

We strongly believe in the power of play and the importance of letting children be children. Further, research does not indicate significant benefits of homework at the elementary level. We believe that when students give us all of their day, they deserve to have all of their night. Therefore, we have eliminated the majority of our standing homework assignments. Eat dinner as a family and ask them how their day was, enjoy your child’s extracurricular activities without worrying about homework, and know that your child is working hard at school each day and has earned their evening playtime!

To foster community and self-reflection, your student will have a weekly letter from their teacher (more about that below!) to respond to, and we highly encourage you to read a book of choice with your child each evening. Please Note: If a student exhibits off-task behaviors during the school day and fails to complete an assignment, the assignment will be sent home for completion.

Mary Montero

I’m so glad you are here. I’m a current gifted and talented teacher in a small town in Colorado, and I’ve been in education since 2009. My passion (other than my family and cookies) is for making teachers’ lives easier and classrooms more engaging.

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We have spelling and vocabulary programs that each have a workbook. I've used those as homework assignments with the test on Fridays. Would you have the kids do these assignments in class rather than as homework? What homework did you use to give for Language Arts and how did that change? Do your kids take tests and do you have them study at home for those? I'm interested in having no homework – I'm just not sure how to fit everything in a short class period. Thanks in advance for providing more information!

Thank you for sharing your thoughts! My team and I have been thinking through this possibility for us. I am wondering if you give spelling tests? If not, can you tell me did this go away at the same time or previously? Thanks!

I did not do homework in my fourth grade classroom last year either. I had very much the same reactions from parents and results with my class. I also felt that sense of urgency to get things accomplished and to make sure that kids really knew what they were doing in the time we had at school. I am definitely planning on implementing this again this year in my third grade classroom! I do like your idea of making it a privilege. Putting it to them that way also creates a sense of urgency with them to succeed. Thanks so much for sharing!

That was a fascinating read. Good to hear that most of the kids stepped up their game!

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Think Again: Does "equitable" grading benefit students?

Recent years have seen a flurry of new grading policies that risk lowering academic standards in the name of equity. Newly popular practices include “minimum grading” policies, which prevent teachers from assigning students less than 50 percent credit; prohibitions on grade penalties for late work; and bans on grading homework and class participation. Such changes in grading practices, which accelerated during the pandemic, deserve greater scrutiny. Indeed, they risk removing both discretion from teachers and crucial incentives for students to study hard and cooperate with teachers and peers. Although some grading reforms may benefit students, those that water down expectations ultimately harm the students they are meant to help.

Download the brief here or read below.

Executive Summary

This policy brief challenges four key ideas that underpin “equity”-motivated trends in grading reforms.

Claim 1: “The existence of grade inflation has been exaggerated.”

Maybe historically, but not now. While standards for assessing student work have been falling steadily over time, the “grading for equity” era appears to have supercharged grade inflation.

Claim 2:  “Strict grading is harmful to students.”

False. To the contrary, lenient grading policies risk lowering expectations, and there is evidence that more lenient grading leads to less learning.

Claim 3.  “Traditional grading doesn’t communicate what students know and can do.”

False. If accompanied by clear expectations, a traditional summary grade can indeed communicate what students know and what they don’t.

Claim 4:   “Traditional grading perpetuates inequities.”

In some cases. Without efforts to increase transparency and reduce bias, traditional grading can perpetuate inequities.

The Bottom Line

The push for more “equitable” grading policies has exacerbated grade inflation and proffered little evidence of greater learning. Some aspects of traditional grading can indeed perpetuate inequities, but top-down policies that make grading more lenient are not the answer, especially as schools grapple with the academic and behavioral challenges of the postpandemic era.

Implications

1. Policymakers and educators should be wary of lowering standards through lenient grading policies . Those include “no-zero” mandates, bans on grading homework, and prohibitions on penalties for late work and cheating. Such policies tend to reduce expectations and accountability for students, hamstring teachers’ ability to manage their classrooms and motivate students, and confuse parents and other stakeholders who do not understand what grades have come to signify. All of this makes addressing recent learning loss even harder.

2. District leaders and state education agencies should support teachers in maintaining high expectations and holding the line on grade inflation. Educators need to know what high expectations look like. State and district leaders can present them with research on the connection between tough grading standards and student learning, as well as provide data about their grading standards relative to their peers. Individual schools or departments should often be allowed the flexibility to weigh the costs and benefits for themselves and to experiment with grading reforms—and individual teachers should have flexibility in adjusting deadlines or penalties based on student circumstances.  What districts and states should not do is mandate reforms that could force teachers to lower standards and expectations. Such mandates are doomed to fail because so much depends on implementation, stakeholder buy-in, and the ways that reforms interact with other local policies.

3. Take the best parts from both traditional and equity-oriented grading approaches . Many traditional practices have persisted for good reason, but a few equity-motivated grading reforms should be adopted more widely. Specifically, there are good reasons for policymakers and educators to consider eliminating most extra credit assignments and implementing rigorous grading rubrics. These specific reforms do not lower academic standards, but they can strengthen academics and combat bias.

In the 2000s and increasingly in the 2010s, the movement for “equitable” grading took root. Inspired by grading-reform gurus such as Ken O’Connor , Cornelius Minor , and Joe Feldman, a number of school districts—and at least one state —began implementing grading policies that explicitly or implicitly lowered expectations, including prohibiting teachers from assigning zeros (i.e., “ minimum grading ”), penalizing late work, and even marking down assignments on which students were caught cheating. Reformers have also argued for changing grading scales , which can have the effect of mechanically increasing students’ grades.

Then, in the face of widespread school shutdowns in the spring of 2020, districts scrambled to respond to students’ unprecedented needs. Amidst the context of racial reckoning, economic crisis, and a global pandemic, concerns about equity and mental health motivated many educators and policymakers to add on to or expand previous grading reforms, whether through pass/fail options , counting “needs improvement” as a final grade, prohibiting grade drops below prepandemic levels, or waiving standard graduation requirements .

The push to “give students grace” was understandable in that moment. Out-of-school inequities played a larger-than-ever role in students’ academic lives, with many students sharing devices with siblings, lacking quiet places to study, and struggling to access the internet to join class. Yet the return to traditional, in-person instruction did not bring a return to traditional grading policies. To the contrary, more districts than ever put into place grading policies that many district leaders believed were better for “equity,” or more precisely, leveling the playing field for disadvantaged students. Some of these policies—such as minimum grading (e.g., giving students no less than 50 percent of possible points) and prohibiting grading penalties for late work and even for cheating —make students’ grades rise automatically. Others seek alternatives to the traditional 0–100 scale, revising it to a 0–4 scale, for example, or to mastery grading (which is more qualitative than points based). Of course, not all equity grading reformers advocate all these practices, but these are all policies that, justified by a focus on equity, have gained substantial traction in recent years.

Such grading reforms were not birthed during Covid, but their increasing popularity and growing implementation by states and districts is new. Unfortunately, many of these policies lower academic standards and are likely to do long-term damage to the educational equity their advocates purport to advance.

“The existence of grade inflation has been exaggerated.” Maybe historically, but not now.

Concerns about whether grades accurately reflect student learning have been raised for decades. As far back as 1913, educational psychologist Guy Montrose Whipple questioned “the reliability of the marking system,” which he characterized as “an absolutely uncalibrated instrument.” Since then, grade inflation , by which teachers assign ever higher grades for the same level of academic work, has persisted.

Yet in the last few years, grade inflation has not only accelerated but has become normalized and pervasive, reframed as a core battleground in the struggle for greater educational equity (Table 1). Although not all reforms lead to more lenient grading, many do (Figure 1).

Table 1: Equity-oriented grading policies

Figure 1. Although traditional grading tends to be strict, a few grading reforms may result in even stricter practices.

Note: This figure represents the authors’ subjective evaluation of the extent to which grading policies are traditional and/or strict. The upper-left quadrant shows reforms that tend to make grading stricter, while the lower-left quadrant shows reforms that tend to make grading more lenient. The upper-right quadrant shows traditional policies that tend to make grading stricter, while the lower-right quadrant shows a traditional policy that tends to make grading more lenient. Bolded policies are those that may help combat bias, and italicized policies are those that may contribute to bias. Descriptions of policies or reforms based on these policies are included in Table 1.

Feldman, who regularly consults with school districts and whose 2018 book Grading for Equity has become a staple of teacher professional development , contends that his proposed grading reforms actually counteract grade inflation, “particularly for more privileged students,” because “ equitable grading no longer includes nonacademic, compliance-related, and subjectively interpreted behaviors. “ In discussing whether “classroom participation” should count, for example, Feldman worries that subjective grading practices will disproportionately inflate the grades of privileged students—who often benefit from advantages such as being more likely to encounter academic English at home.

Although this may be true in some cases, the claim that his recommended policies combat grade inflation ultimately confuses two aspects of grading: what should contribute to a course grade and how those activities should be assessed. After all, a teacher might grade class participation (the “what”), which Feldman claims may lead to grade inflation, but also use a rubric to do so strictly and fairly (the “how”). Meanwhile, another teacher might put more weight on an end-of-unit assessment (the “what”), which Feldman says will better capture a student’s mastery , but that assessment could be below grade level and scored based on subjective criteria (the “how”). 

In the case of “no-zero” policies and prohibitions on marking down students, there is little possibility of counteracting grade inflation because grades inflate automatically. As explained below, mechanical grade inflation can also result from switching grading scales, for example going from a 0–100 scale to a 0–4 scale, because the same work is automatically assigned a higher grade.

Although it is difficult to quantify the impact of these specific grading reforms on national grading standards, pandemic-era grade inflation is well-documented and persistent. For example, a 2023 report from ACT showed that “the rate of grade inflation increas[ed] substantially during” the pandemic years. Not only was the average 2021 ACT composite score the worst of any year they reported (going back to 2010), but the average GPA of ACT test takers in that year was the highest ever recorded at 3.4 on a 4-point scale. In late 2023, studies in both Washington State and North Carolina also confirmed enduring disparities between student grades and test scores.

Although researchers assured us a decade ago that the “sky was not falling” when it came to grade inflation, ever more students are now winding up in the highest GPA range. And as colleges have relaxed or completely removed standardized testing requirements for admission, grades are more important than ever. So while standards for assessing student work have been falling steadily over time, the “grading for equity” era appears to have supercharged grade inflation.  

“Strict grading harms students.” To the contrary, lenient grading leads to less learning.

The world of education is awash with rhetoric about the importance of holding “ high expectations ” for all students. What grading reformers have not understood is that high standards, rigorous grading, and student accountability are the incarnation of high expectations. Yet several of the core “equity grading” reforms—including not grading homework , allowing unlimited test retakes or assignment revisions, and prohibiting penalties for late work and cheating —weaken accountability for students. There’s ample research to support it , but the notion that students do better academically when they face some consequences—positive and negative—is common sense. Moreover, there is not an iota of hard evidence that reforms that make grading more lenient benefit students in the long run.

Rather, a growing literature on grading practices strongly suggests that students learn more when teachers hold them more strictly accountable for their performance in class. For example, a 2004 study by professors David Figlio and Maurice Lucas analyzed the academic performance of elementary school students based on their teachers’ grading practices. Those students assigned to teachers who graded more strictly—meaning that the teachers assigned relatively low grades to students while controlling for students’ test scores—went on to experience greater test-score growth in both reading and math. And in a similar 2020 study , American University’s Seth Gershenson found that high school students assigned to a tougher-grading teacher scored higher in math, both in that teacher’s class and in subsequent math courses, and that was true of all student subgroups.

The rationale behind rigorous teacher grading standards is straightforward: being exposed to a higher standard prompts many students to try harder, and this increased effort leads to more learning. In a study of college students, economist Phillip Babcock found that students who expected a “C” in their class studied about 50 percent more than students who expected an “A.”

Some promoters of more lenient grading encourage two practices that can contribute to grade inflation: the elimination of zeros for incomplete or missing work and the recalibration of numerical grading scales. Consider the adoption of the “0–4” grading scale as opposed to the traditional “0–100” grading scale. After the switch, students receive a 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 (meant to correspond to an F, D, C, B, or A). As with no-zero policies, the negative effect of low grades is reduced, because traditionally half or more of the 100-point scale corresponds to an F, whereas just 20 percent of the 0-4 scale does. Although teachers in different contexts frequently use alternative grading scales, including check marks, “satisfactory/unsatisfactory,” and variations of 100-point scales and letter grades, switching from a 100-point scale to a 0-4 scale typically means assigning higher grades for the same work, which is the definition of grade inflation.

A 2023 working paper used data from North Carolina to examine the effects on student attendance and test performance when the state recalibrated its grading scale in 2014. The range for A’s expanded from 93–100 to 90–100, while the range for F’s shrank from 0–69 to 0–59. In the year of this recalibration, high-performing students were awarded even higher grades (unsurprisingly, since the grading scale had lowered the numerical threshold for earning top letter grades). What happened to initially low-performing students, however, should give grading reformers pause: their grades failed to rise, while their attendance actually declined. This troubling finding provides further evidence that grade inflation can exacerbate inequities.

This type of grade inflation could be thought of as “points-based leniency,” where students are disincentivized to work hard. But another aspect of student accountability hindered by equity grading is “time leniency,” where students are disincentivized to complete work in a timely manner. Grading reformers often argue against grading interim work, including formative assessments and homework, or insist that students should be offered nearly unlimited time to complete revisions. For example, Feldman earnestly argues, “Students must fix their errors and give it another try until they succeed, which means we have to offer them that next try.” Unfortunately, the effect of reducing expectations for on-time work is to encourage procrastination, and this leniency on time surely has negative consequences for learning as well. One recent study , conducted as part of a master’s thesis, showed that when late penalties were lifted for assignments in a high school chemistry course, homework completion dropped by more than one-third.

Lowering expectations is bad public policy, as it reduces learning and undermines the capacity of schools to help students succeed in the long run. Truly excessive academic pressure can be harmful to students, but international studies have indicated that moderate levels of stress can actually lead to greater student motivation and achievement. What’s more, affluent students often have built-in mechanisms that hold them accountable, such as involved parents , as well as other resume boosters to distinguish themselves, such as AP courses and extracurricular activities . It is the students facing disadvantage who disproportionately rely on schools for motivation and credentials that can distinguish them academically. So-called “equity grading,” when it leads to more lenient grading, will often harm these students the most.

“Traditional grading doesn’t communicate what students know and can do.” False.

Advocates of grading reform argue that traditional grading obscures how students are actually performing in a class. First, they critique typical “ omnibus ” or “ hodgepodge ” weighted grading systems, wherein teachers calculate students’ scores in various categories—such as homework, tests, projects, and participation—and then weigh them to calculate an overall grade. Homework might be worth 10 percent of the final grade, tests worth 40 percent, and so on. As a result, a student who turns in all her homework and has average test scores may earn a final grade similar to that of a peer who missed some homework but earned superior test scores. Such a grading system, Feldman warns , “conceals critical information about students and leads to decisions that harm [students].” Parents and educators could over- or underestimate students’ level of content mastery, for instance, depending on how participation grades impact their averages.

Thus, some reformers call for grades to reflect only student mastery. If effort and behavior must be scored, the reasoning goes, those grades ought to be assigned separately, as has been policy for Boston Public Schools since 2023.

In fact, this practice is misguided. Modern online grade books already present students’ scores within different categories and provide parents access so that they can see, for instance, how their child performed on tests versus on homework. Most importantly, all final grades are—by definition—a summary of performance. Even if a school uses mastery grading, in which scores are based exclusively on demonstrated mastery of specific content or skills, the final overall grade will still reflect students’ mastery of the various categories of content being assessed. What’s more, having a single summary metric for communicating information can be helpful for a number of audiences: college admissions officers, for example, may not have the capacity to examine individual grades on five different categories for every single high school course.

Reformers’ greatest source of concern when it comes to grades and communication is that traditional grading partly reflects student behavior. That is, score penalties for behaviors like tardiness, cheating, and incomplete work produce grades that do not communicate information exclusively about students’ understanding of course content. A student who turns in an excellent paper late may, for example, receive the same grade as a student who turns in a decent paper on time.

Yet to many stakeholders, that is a desirable feature of grading, not a bug. After all, success in both college and career depends not only on academic abilities but also on soft skills (sometimes called “noncognitive” or “social and emotional” skills) that enable students to follow instructions, persevere, and cooperate with their peers. Down the line, college students receive serious consequences for cheating, including course failure, probation, and even expulsion. Employees cannot consistently submit late work or skip assignments without consequences. Ability and behavior go hand in hand in determining success, which is probably why course grade point average has historically been such a powerful predictor of later success.

Just as grade inflation diminishes standards and expectations, it also distorts signals about student performance. Whether about points or timelines, when grading is stricter, it can help educators identify students who need the most support, academic or otherwise. That is, regardless of whether students are struggling with content or with timely work submission, lower grades flag for teachers and administrators the students most in need of intervention; indeed, research confirms that GPA is a reliable predictor of dropping out . Being able to accurately identify at-risk students can therefore boost the effectiveness of preventative intervention programs.

Likewise, parents need to know when their children are falling behind. Between 2018–19 (the last prepandemic school year) and 2021–22 (the first postpandemic “in-person” year for most students), the average student lost about five months of learning in both reading and math, according to state tests. Yet, according to TNTP, most students “ earned the same grade—or better—in 2022 as they did in 2019 .” Putting the same trend into different terms, another study revealed that although under half of students are performing below grade level, almost 90 percent of parents believe their children are performing at or above grade level and two-thirds of parents rely on report cards as a primary indicator of their children’s academic progress. In the long term, stricter grading can also help guide students into best-fit college and career pursuits. That’s because grade inflation can lead students and parents to overestimate students’ knowledge and skills in a certain field; these false signals can contribute to poor choices of college major or career path.

When colleges cannot distinguish among applicants using measures like GPA, they make admissions decisions based on less objective and less equitable measures , such as extracurricular participation and teacher recommendations, which may communicate very little about students’ actual academic performance.

“Traditional grading perpetuates inequities.” In some cases.

Though many grading reforms result in lowered standards and expectations for students, that does not mean that all changes to traditional grading practices are inherently undesirable. Indeed, some reforms do not make grading more lenient, and others may hold students accountable even more effectively (see the upper-left quadrant of Figure 1, above).

First, grading reformers are right to call attention to the inequities perpetuated by teacher bias in grading. Biases around race , ethnicity , prior academic performance , physical attractiveness , student weight , and teacher perception of student organization and attendance can all affect grading decisions. As Feldman observes, it’s unfortunately not a realistic solution just to “ stop our implicit biases ,” which are deeply ingrained in individuals and our society.

Such biases are not just about outright prejudice. Classrooms often operate under an unspoken code. What constitutes successful “participation,” for instance? And even if that definition is clear, does it advantage students of certain personalities or language skills? What makes an essay a “B” paper, rather than an “A”-level exemplar or a still-passing “C” submission? Without clearly articulated answers to such questions, many students may face disadvantage, including those whose families have less experience in the U.S. education system and those who do not speak English fluently. A lack of transparency can thus be both discriminatory and an obstacle to learning.

That is why reforms that increase transparency around expectations and grading can be beneficial. Research confirms that scoring rubrics can reduce the effects of bias . Rubrics explicitly delineate the categories on which an assignment will be assessed; one category to be evaluated on an argumentative essay, for example, would be the thesis statement. The rubric should also lay out the criteria to earn a particular score in each category: an A-level thesis is clear, persuasive, and accurately synthesizes the paper’s argument; a B-level thesis is clear, persuasive, and partially synthesizes the paper’s argument; and so on, for each possible score and for each category.

As such, rubrics allow teachers to convey to students in advance of an assignment what the expectations are, as well as help teachers grade fairly and consistently, and they show students after the fact how they can improve (and where they have already been successful!). They can also help promote “interrater reliability,” so that teachers across the hall from each other aren’t assigning different grades for the same caliber of work. For a class discussion, for instance, a rubric can include categories such as the number of times a student participated and whether she cited class readings to support a claim, offered new ideas to the discussion, asked questions, or replied to a classmate’s remarks. In this way, rubrics establish clear expectations and a relatively objective—not to mention efficient—means of scoring students. A student’s discussion grade, therefore, really can reflect and communicate to others their mastery of discussion skills.

Other equity-centered reforms that deserve much greater attention are blind scoring (anonymized grading) and asking teachers to grade the work of students assigned to other teachers. If teachers do not know the identity of students, biased grading practices are less likely to seep through. Technology makes such approaches easier than ever, as grading platforms like Canvas offer anonymous grading options for teachers.

When it comes to what gets graded, equity-minded reformers get it right on some counts. Educators must be conscious of disparities in access to technology and quiet work spaces outside of school, and homework should not require parents’ help . However, inflexible no-homework policies throw the baby out with the bathwater; quality homework can offer important opportunities for independent practice, foster positive attitudes toward learning, and boost academic achievement . A truly equitable approach could also involve creating quiet spaces and times for students to complete homework within their school building.

As for what should not get graded, there are indeed good reasons to believe that extra credit should be eliminated in most cases. Although it is occasionally used as a way for advanced learners to attempt work that goes beyond the scope of the course, extra credit often involves assigning points for optional activities that only loosely pertain to the course, abetting not only grade inflation but miscommunication of students’ abilities and behavior. Instead, students who deserve an opportunity to earn more credit should have the opportunity to reattempt the assignments already given.

Grading reformers are also right to point out that grading “behaviors” can sometimes disadvantage the most marginalized students, communicating their personal obstacles more than their knowledge and skills. Late submissions may happen, for example, because a student is overwhelmed by family responsibilities, lacks a quiet space for homework, or is experiencing homelessness. But the top-down elimination of the expectation that students do their work on time is the opposite of equity. Instead, teachers should be able to exercise discretion over extensions, retakes, and the like—to provide each student with what is appropriate and needed.

As with monetary inflation, the point of combatting grade inflation is not to return to a golden age when a dollar could purchase a bushel of apples or an A was only assigned for truly remarkable academic achievement. The important thing is to hold the line. While the traditional 0–100 grading scale does not by itself uphold high expectations and academic rigor, adopting a more lenient grading scale is guaranteed not to do so. In the North Carolina study, for instance, the reform was simply to lower the numerical thresholds to obtain better letter grades, which in turn lowered standards and expectations. But there is no inherent reason that mastery grading or scales other than 0–100 cannot maintain or even enhance both rigor and transparency, when implemented conscientiously .

Above all else, grading reforms should not be mandated from the state or district down to classrooms. Individual schools, departments, and teachers should have the discretion to implement their own grading policies, depending on their school contexts and students’ needs. Equally important, administrators need to provide examples of and supports for rigorous and transparent evaluation of student work so that teachers can hold the line on grades.

Policy Implications

1. Policymakers and educators should be wary of lowering standards through lenient grading policies. Those include “no-zero” mandates, bans on grading homework, and prohibitions on penalties for late work and cheating. Such policies tend to reduce expectations and accountability for students, hamstring teachers’ ability to manage their classrooms and to motivate students, and confuse parents and other stakeholders who do not understand what grades have come to signify. All of this makes addressing recent learning loss even harder.

2. District leaders and state education agencies should support teachers in maintaining high expectations and holding the line on grade inflation.  Educators need to know what high expectations look like. State and district leaders can present them with research on the connection between tough grading standards and student learning, as well as provide data about their grading standards relative to their peers. Individual schools or departments should often be allowed the flexibility to weigh the costs and benefits for themselves and to experiment with grading reforms—and individual teachers should have flexibility in adjusting deadlines or penalties based on student circumstances. What districts and states should not do is mandate reforms that could force teachers to lower standards and expectations. Such mandates are doomed to fail because so much depends on implementation, stakeholder buy-in, and the ways that reforms interact with other local policies.

3. Take the best parts from both traditional and equity-oriented grading approaches. Many traditional practices have persisted for good reason, but a few equity-motivated grading reforms should be adopted more widely. Specifically, there are good reasons for policymakers and educators to consider eliminating most extra-credit assignments and implementing rigorous rubrics. These specific reforms do not lower academic standards, but they can strengthen academics and combat bias.

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About the Report

This report was made possible through the generous support of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. We are grateful to Tim Daly, CEO of EdNavigator, and Sarah Ruth Morris, doctoral candidate at the University of Arkansas, for their feedback on a draft. We also extend our gratitude to Pamela Tatz for copyediting. At Fordham, we would like to thank Meredith Coffey and Adam Tyner for authoring the report; Amber Northern, David Griffith, Daniel Buck, Chester E. Finn, Jr., and Michael J. Petrilli for reviewing drafts; Victoria McDougald for her role in dissemination; and Stephanie Distler for developing the report’s cover and coordinating production.

Meredith Coffey, a senior research associate at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, is a graduate student in education policy at Johns Hopkins University. Originally from Miami, Florida, Meredith holds a BA in comparative literature & literary theory from the University of Pennsylvania, a PhD in English literature from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MS in education from Hunter College. Before coming to Fordham…

Adam Tyner is national research director at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, where he develops, executes, and manages new research projects. Prior to joining Fordham, Dr. Tyner served as senior quantitative analyst at  Hanover Research , where he executed data analysis projects and worked with school districts and other education stakeholders to…

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• In This Issue

Fairfax County elementary school principal talks no-homework policy

A year after implementation, we chatted with the administration at Bull Run Elementary School to find out more about its no-homework policy.

By Jess Feldman August 9, 2019

The month of August is a time of preparation for parents, children and, of course, the teachers and administrators across all levels of education in Northern Virginia. 

While children approach higher grade levels, the common expectation is that they will receive a larger workload, typically in the form of homework. Yet, at Bull Run Elementary School , in Centreville, homework is no longer a part of the curriculum, and it has been this way since Principal Jason Pensler implemented a no-homework policy before the 2018 academic year began. 

A few years ago, research was published on the effects of homework, fueling a debate on whether or not children needed assignments outside of academia from a young age. According to Harris Cooper , a researcher with Duke University, homework has a significant benefit at the high school level, drops off for middle school students and has zero impact on the academic performance of elementary students. 

Pensler, an Arlington-native with over 17 years of experience in education, is the only administrator in Fairfax County to put the no-homework belief to the test at the elementary level. Bull Run has around 800 students and 100-plus staff members. 

Since its inception, the only assignment outside of school is for children to read. Whether they read for 20 minutes or one hour, aloud or on their own doesn’t matter, so long as the children are reading something. Plus, he has increased his presence on social media in order to share events happening in the community that might be beneficial and enriching for families to attend.

The one-year-old policy is meant to put a stronger focus on the development of the children within the classroom, better preparing them for the future, explains Assistant Principal Rachael Blanchard.

“With our sixth graders, for example, we work with time management,” says Blanchard. “They have all week to work on certain tasks or with long-term projects they’ll have a final due date, which prepares them for what is ahead. We are trying to teach them what assignments look like in real life.”

In lieu of the start of the academic year and the one-year anniversary of Bull Run’s policy, we chatted with Pensler to find out more about life inside the Fairfax County school. Highlights from our conversation are below. 

What prompted the change at Bull Run? I think what really prompted it was just my experience as an administrator and a parent. We started looking at the purpose of homework at the elementary level and found that kids were spending countless hours doing this work at home and also a lot of it was done by parents. I also did my research with books, including Ditch That Homework: Practical Strategies to Help Make Homework Obsolete , The Case Against Homework,  and spent time looking at people of influence on Twitter. In elementary school, the research predominantly says there isn’t a correlation between academic success and homework.

I’ve been thinking about this for seven years and I felt like it was the right time to implement it. We made it a procedure, a belief, a commitment. Our kids work almost eight hours a day, so we are going to ensure they get the content here and communicate to families what we are doing, but not send them home with work. We want kids to be kids, to be able to go outside and play, participate in extracurricular activities and read.

What has the reaction been like? From families, it was well-received. You’re looking at a small handful of families that have contacted me or Rachel about why we don’t do homework. But it’s our opinion that homework should not be the vehicle for how you communicate about what’s going on in school. When you talk about the why we are doing this, it all comes down to the fact that we want our kids to come to school ready and excited to learn. So, our communication with families is growing to show them what exactly we are doing here.

Feedback from teachers has been the same, though we’ve had a couple who are like, ‘We need to give them homework, what about when they get to middle school?’” But our job is not to prepare them for middle school, it’s to prepare them for life. 

Have students retained information in a similar way prior to the start of the policy? Formative and summative assessments are still administered, and our teachers are doing a lot of quick checks. We also incorporate a 30-minute intervention block with the staff, twice a week as a collaborative team where we discuss content and what the kids need to know. The process is looking at what do my kids know and what we need to do while at school. Since we started the policy a year ago, I have not seen any level of understanding dip because they’re not doing homework. I just think it’s so much more than homework, we have to see that progress. 

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No zeros: Kansas City Public Schools has a new grading policy meant to improve equity

During the most recent school year, KCPS launched a different grading system where the minimum grade on any given assignment is 40% — even if the student didn’t do a single bit of it. It has drawn a mix of praise and criticism.

Finish zero schoolwork, expect zero for a grade.

Not anymore in Kansas City Public Schools.

The district launched a different grading system during the most recent school year. The minimum grade on any given assignment is now 40%, even if the student didn’t do a single bit of it.

The district started to discuss changes to the grading policy — which also addresses late work and grading categories — in 2021 to make grades more objective, more equitable and less punitive.

KCPS declined an interview with The Beacon, but the district has said publicly that the new system leads to grades that better reflect students’ mastery of their schoolwork.

It has drawn a mix of praise and criticism.

“Those who do not support it say you should not get 40% for doing nothing. (If) you are an hourly employee, and you don’t come to work, you don’t get 40% of your pay,” said Jason Roberts, president of the district’s teachers union. “Those who do support it say a 40% is still an F. But it’s an F that you can recover from.”

Tricia McGhee, a KCPS parent, backs the 40% grade minimum. But she said the late work policy has been unclear and inconsistent in her daughters’ middle school.

KCPS should also have done more to engage with families before implementing changes, McGhee said.

“Conversations have been going on for three years surrounding this,” she said. “Those three years could have been used a little bit better had they been in conversation with parents.”

The KCPS grading policy’s impact on schools

High school student Zoe Wilson, then a junior at Lincoln College Prep, had the impression her teachers hated “the 40% rule.” So she polled them.

Of 46 teachers she interviewed, nearly two-thirds didn’t like the 40% grade minimum and another quarter were on the fence, she told the school board during its April 24 meeting.

Zoe said one concern is that students calculate the bare minimum of work they need to do, sometimes waiting until the end of the semester to do enough makeup work to pass a class.

When she asked about that possibility in a district meeting, she said she was told it doesn’t happen. That doesn’t ring true to her experience.

“Students refusing to make up work because it won’t hurt their grade happens daily, which is a loss in education,” she said.

Roberts estimated about 60% of teachers favor the grading policy and 40% oppose it.

He doesn’t take a side but would have liked to see greater community engagement and formal board approval. The revisions were developed by a committee of teachers and administrators and approved by the union.

The district later sent parents information and surveys about the policy changes, but McGhee said that engagement should have come before the policy was in place.

“Decision-making can lack other perspectives when you’re just leaning on academic experts and not families or parents,” she said.

In addition to the 40% rule — which applies to non-Montessori students, grades two to 12 — the policy specifies that middle and high school students can get no more than 70% credit for late work and gives them a deadline to complete it.

McGhee said that’s one place where she thinks the district’s communication fell short.

She saw teachers interpret the late work policy in differing ways. Some teachers accepted work later than others. Some reminded families about late work deadlines, but McGhee didn’t receive reminders from the district or school.

Deadlines are based around quarter and semester end dates, which aren’t obvious to families because they don’t always line up with school breaks.

“The policy is not being applied across the district equitably, or even within the same building,” McGhee said.

The 40% rule has helped cushion the impact of that confusion, McGhee said, and nudge grades toward better representing what her daughters know.

One daughter, for example, regularly gets A’s on exams and projects but can fall behind on homework.

“That’ll tank her grade in a class that she’s actually excelling in skillswise,” she said.

How the 40% rule works or doesn’t work

Imagine a student who skips the semester’s first assignment and gets a 0% grade.

If all assignments are worth the same, it would take two perfect scores to get her grade above failing and nine perfect scores to eke out the lowest possible A.

Now imagine the student gets 40% for the missed assignment. With just one perfect score, she’s at a low C and with five she has a low A.

Proponents of the 40% minimum say that better reflects the kind of work she typically does and keeps her motivated.

“That can be discouraging to a student to say, ‘Hey, look at the progress I’ve made, and I still haven’t improved my grade,’” Deputy Superintendent Derald Davis said during a presentation about the grading policy to the KCPS District Advisory Committee.

The new system also makes more sense mathematically because it doesn’t devote nearly 60% of the scale to F grades, the district argued during the presentation.

The newly adopted system is an idea that has been around for decades.

In a 2004 article that is still sparking discussion, education researcher and writer Douglas Reeves called a zero on a standard grading scale a “mathematical inaccuracy” and disproportionate punishment.

But just because a scale is even mathematically doesn’t mean it’s the most fair or appropriate for a specific context, said Daniel Buck, a policy associate at the Thomas Fordham Institute. He wrote a 2022 critique of Reeves’ piece after seeing districts adopt minimum grades .

During his seven years as a classroom teacher, Buck said, he found himself becoming stricter and more convinced that high standards push students to excel. He thinks the traditional grading scale “tips toward excellence.”

While he believes some alternative grading systems are worth exploring, he said they need more study.

“We kind of skipped over the experimentation phase and went straight to the universal adoption phase,” he said. “I’m pretty sure if we had stuck with the experimental phase, we’d find out that it didn’t work very well.”

Reeves still defends his original article , but now he’s focused on teaching students to take feedback well. He thinks averaging grades in a way that penalizes students for early mistakes defeats that purpose.

Instead, he’d like to see grades based on a few major assignments that go through required revisions, with students expected to improve their work and evaluated on the final result.

“This 40% or zero is the wrong argument,” Reeves said. “The appropriate argument to have is how do we evaluate students based on how they finish?”

This story was originally published by The Beacon , a fellow member of the KC Media Collective .

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No-Zero Policy: Does it Help or Hurt Students?

• March 8, 2021

Home Educators Blog

What is a No-Zero Grading Policy?

Traditional grading is based on a scale of 100 and is most often translated into percentages. In recent years, a movement began to think critically about the purpose and equity of grading policies. What do grades represent? Are they representations of effort, content mastery, responsibility, memorization, or proficiency?

View Model A and Model B

The traditional grading system is shown in Model A. What schools around the country are navigating are the muddy waters of the equity in 59% of a 100% scale being considered ‘failing.’ When we anchor ourselves in the true meaning of a grading system and look at Model A through the lens of equity, can we say that Model A is a useful, reliable, and true system for rating student performance and learning? Model B is a visual representation of what a No-Zero Policy defines, a grading policy in which the lowest grade possible is a 50% with equal ratios of percentages per rating group.  

Arguments for No-Zero Policies

Forward-thinking schools have questioned how students benefit from a traditional system in which the ratio for failure to passing is 3:2. Furthermore, they are digging into why grades differentiated in increments of 10 for ‘passing’, yet everything earned from a 0% – 59% is considered ‘failure.’ Shouldn’t all levels of achievement reflected through a grading system be incremented equally?

Early Elimination

Within the traditional grading policy in Model A, students frequently eliminate themselves from the ability to pass courses early in the year. This perpetuates academic apathy, truancy issues, and a fixed mindset. For example, if a student earns a 30% in Quarter 1 and a 0% in Quarter 2, even if they earn 100% in Quarters 3 and 4 they will be unable to pass the course because the highest grade possible will average to a 57.5% F.

As a student, especially a student from an environment of trauma and poverty, this reality is ultimately defeating and inevitably contributes directly to student dropout rates. According to DoSomething.org , “Every year, over 1.2 million students drop out of high school in the United States alone. That’s a student every 26 seconds – or 7,000 a day.”

As an administrator, I have seen this scenario play out poorly in a few different ways. Most students in this situation would immediately stop participating in class, could begin to disrupt learning for others within the classroom, and possibly start to skip that class in their schedule, leading to disciplinary issues. The consequences for these behaviors would naturally lead to out-of-school suspension days, which leads to more time out of the classroom and missed learning opportunities.

Once a pattern of poor behaviors has begun, it is difficult to re-motivate students to put effort into a class or classes that they have no opportunity to pass. This can spill over to deteriorating motivation to achieve in other classes, and this pattern ultimately leads to lower self-esteem and skewed beliefs of intelligence and potential within a student. A No-Zero Policy does not reward students for lack of effort or achieved learning, but does make classrooms and schools more inclusive and equitable when it comes to earning class credit and passing.

Reflection of Learning or Punishment?

Grades are designed to be reflections of achieved learning and performance mastery within a subject or class. To be a true reflection of learning that has occurred, the grade must be reliable and valid, as with any data, or it becomes futile and irrelevant.

However, as this article from Douglas B. Reeves points out , many times teachers fall into using grades as a punishment for lack of effort, instead of using grades for encouragement. He points out that many teachers see ‘giving’ a student a 50 as an unearned gift when they should be given a zero as punishment. Giving a student a zero for not turning in an assignment is not a true reflection of learning and invalidates the grades earned that are truly reflections of learning. A No-Zero Policy provides a platform for grades to be earned that are valid, reliable, and encouraging instead of rewarding or punishment.

Arguments Against No-Zero Policies

Handing out as & gifty-fifties.

The building that I lead serves grades 7 thru 12. When I arrived as principal, the district already had a procedure in place to award no grades lower than 50% for the 1st Quarter in an effort to mitigate students eliminating themselves early from the potential to pass classes. Last year, as the pandemic ravaged our routines and daily access to face-to-face learning in school, we implemented the same policy for the end of the 3rd Quarter. Other local districts established the same or similar policies in an effort to accommodate for disrupted learning.

This year, we followed the same policy as usual with the minimum of 50% for 1 st Quarter. As we came to the close of the 2 nd Quarter of the 2020-2021 school year, I surveyed our staff to get their input. The options included: A- Minimum of 50% again for 2 nd Quarter, B- Minimum of 30% for 2 nd Quarter, or C- no change, students get what they earned.

Ultimately, the staff chose a compromise between options A and B, but there were still some who did not agree. Those few who believe that we are perpetuating the “Everyone Deserves a Trophy” ideal believe that we are not helping students by ‘giving’ them grades that they ‘did not earn.’ I put these words in quotations because these beliefs are based on the punishment vs. reward theory. In my school, those folks have colloquially termed our No-Zero Policy as “Gifty Fifties.” Depending on which aisle you land on, this term may screech in your mind like nails on a chalkboard.

Another argument against No-Zero Policies lies in the belief that this enables students and sets them up for failure after graduation. Students know what they need to earn to succeed and can be motivated or unmotivated depending on their own goals and ways they recognize to achieve them. For example, a student can earn a 50% for Quarter 1, 50% for Quarter 2, 50% for Quarter 3, a 90% for Quarter 4, and pass for the year with a 60%. This student essentially ‘plays the game’ and does nothing all year until April and still earns the same credit as a student who works hard all year. We can admit that this student misses out on a higher GPA and intrinsic reward of hard work, but it is possible. If this scenario seems unacceptable, a No-Zero Policy could be seen as unacceptable due to its potential to enable learned helplessness in students, even if the traditional grading scale is not perfect.

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Peter DeWitt's

Finding common ground.

A former K-5 public school principal turned author, presenter, and leadership coach, Peter DeWitt provides insights and advice for education leaders. Former superintendent Michael Nelson is a frequent contributor. Read more from this blog .

Homework: High-Quality Learning, or Act of Compliance?

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Today’s guest post is written by Kris Fox, senior field specialist for the Quaglia Institute for Student Aspirations ( QISA ).

Challenge yourself to rethink the purpose of homework. Although the general usefulness of homework is debatable, let’s assume all homework assignments have a learning goal. One frequently espoused goal of homework is to teach students responsibility by making them independently responsible for completing and turning in homework on time. This “lesson” is often reinforced with zero-tolerance policies for late assignments.

I can’t grasp the thinking behind a blanket policy of no late homework assignments. Sure, repeat offenders require some type of intervention: But not as a punishment, rather as a support to help them succeed in learning. Right?

A common argument for zero-tolerance late policies is: “ In the real world, if a student is late for work, or misses a deadline, he or she will be fired .” Personally, I have never known an adult who was fired if she showed up once or twice late or missed one deadline. No doubt someone who is habitually late for a job will find her employment in jeopardy.

However, even if a 15 year old has a job, it is uncertain whether receiving a zero on a late assignment has any correlation to that job or any future employment in a teen’s brain. Presumably, the teenager would learn the consequence of being late to work at work. In the absence of that correlation at school, we have to question whether anything meaningful is being taught about responsibility when a student receives a non-negotiable zero for a late assignment.

So, let’s not deceive our students by saying no tolerance policies help them learn responsibility and teach them about “ the real world .” Students live in the real world everyday. They work, volunteer, take care of siblings, cook meals, study for exams, and, all too often, take on many adult responsibilities. Many teenagers are just trying to survive. A policy based on the thinking that by accepting no late assignments students learn to be responsible simply ignores who each individual student is.

Some questions: Do all students need homework to teach them about responsibility? If student responsibility is a goal, then why not involve students in developing meaningful homework assignments? In determining due dates and grace periods? In assessing their own and peers’ homework? In thinking about learning and what they do and don’t understand and why?

Pedagogy that includes students as decision-makers teaches responsibility far more than a hard and fast deadline. Strict homework deadlines also thwart the real purpose of homework, which is to extend learning, rehearse developing skills, deepen understanding, and broaden concepts. If a student fails to meet a deadline and receives an automatic zero, then typically the assignment is never completed. As a result, the student misses a genuine learning opportunity. One must wonder whether the goal in such a case was authentic learning or mere obedience.

This does not mean I am not advocating a flood of procrastinated or ignored assignments streaming in the day before the end of the semester. What I am advocating is a common sense approach to late assignments - one based on learning, not behavioral compliance, as the goal of homework. One that considers individual students and their realities. An approach that realizes a day or even two late on the occasional meaningful assignment might earn partial credit, but certainly not a zero. Grace-periods, second-chances, and flex time are, after all, parts of the real world, too.

In the real world of school, the fact is that grades count (for far too much I might add, as grades do not always reflect actual learning). Both struggling and high achieving students are penalized by no late assignment policies. A missed homework assignment that garners zero points can drop a struggling learner from passing a course to failing. Such a student, inclined to hang on as long as they are passing, might give up on all work if they find they are failing.

Likewise, a missing assignment in a competitive A.P. class may mean a difference of a half-letter grade even though the student has mastered the content. On a GPA in front of a college admissions officer, up against students of exactly the same caliber but in a school without a zero tolerance policy, a tenth of a point may matter. In a system driven by grades, every grading policy should be carefully weighed for all its consequences.

Before requiring students to sign a beginning of the year agreement to a policy of no late homework (a policy that students have no choice, but to sign), consider trying the following practices.

Focus on Relationships Get to know your students and have them get to know you. You may discover that some students learn best with a week’s notice in order to balance their lives with lengthy projects. Or, you may learn that homework assignments need to be differentiated depending on the needs of your students. Once students discover you care about them and know them as individuals, they will do their best to complete assignments in a timely manner.

Develop Assignments with Students Take the time to design homework with your students - not for them. Students know what will help them learn, what they don’t understand, and ultimately, what assignments they are willing to put forth their best effort to complete.

Create Engaging and Meaningful Assignments When homework is merely about compliance and deadlines, many students simply share and copy answers. However, when exciting, interesting and meaningful assignments are co-developed, student interest in completing assignments increases. Consider homework assignments as a precious opportunity to hook a student who appears bored in class or uninspired by the content matter. Realize that students who are engaged at school are 16x more likely to be academically motivated (QISA, 2014).

Establish Networks To help and to support students as learners, introduce them to a network of support outside school. This includes guiding students towards free supplemental, online material and encouraging students to attend after school tutoring sessions as well as connecting students to peers. Students who are new, shy, or simply afraid to ask for help may not have peers readily accessible to support their learning outside of class.

Consider Alternatives Encourage students to submit alternative assignments that demonstrate the equivalent learning goals. One student may learn best through a Khan Academy video while another may demonstrate the necessary understanding by building a 3D model with a peer.

If you still hold onto the idea that a no late policy works in your class, then at minimum be fair. Be transparent that the purpose of homework is first and foremost to teach responsibility and not to reinforce or extend content knowledge. Let your students know that the former lesson will always trump the latter. Provide students one-week notice on all assignments so they can accommodate homework to their other responsibilities. Respond in a timely manner to inquiries about homework. In addition, make a specific time commitment to when assignments will be graded and posted - no exceptions. Like your students, sign your name to that agreement. If nothing else, then at least you and your students will be operating in the same “ real world .”

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Woerterhexe.

The opinions expressed in Peter DeWitt’s Finding Common Ground are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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How To Create A No-Zero Policy In Your Classroom

It was because I changed my policy on zeroes mid-year that this student was afforded the opportunity to pass when everything looked bleak.

Creating A No-Zero Policy In Your Classroom

by TeachThought Staff

One of my students came up to me at the beginning of this year and said, “I’ll be graduating next year because of you.” It was a wonderful experience and one that I hadn’t experienced before.

It was because I changed my policy on zeroes mid-year that this student was afforded the opportunity to pass when everything looked bleak. I don’t advocate a mid-year policy change, but after reading and considering my grading practices, I felt that not changing my policy would be deeply unfair to my students. Small change, big results.

What Does the Policy Look Like?

You could consider the following before you implement your policy.

1. Involve the students Though your students don’t ultimately control how you teach or grade, you do need to communicate with them about what you’re doing and why. Before changing grades , know what works and what doesn’t in your present system. Kids are wonderful resources for such feedback. Get really clear about that because you want to eliminate what does not work and keep what does.

2. You need to craft your plan What is your plan for dealing with zeroes? What does it look like when kids receive zeroes and how are they allowed to make them up? What is your purpose behind grading? Summertime is a great time to do this. Read up on various grading strategies, and be prepared to be challenged in your thinking—that’s how growth occurs! The book that changed my grading practice was A Repair Kit for Grading by Ken O’Connor.

After honing our purpose for grading and fleshing out all the permutations and effects of a zero on the grade book, then you may wonder, what does this look like in real use? These are a few things I’ve used in my own practice. 3 tips:

Use zeroes as place holders. This lets you, the student and the parent see what’s amiss.

Have students fill out a quick form with the following information: student name, assignment missed with original due date, reason why the assignment is late, and when the assignment will be turned in. This creates a paper trail for you and can work as a point of organization.

Once the date has passed, call the parents to schedule a time before, during or after school that the student comes in to make up the assignment.

See also 8 Ways To Create A Brain-Friendly Classroom

Generally, most students don’t want that third step to occur, so they avoid it by getting the work in. There are a few students, however, who are a bit tougher and parent contact becomes the linchpin for success. The purpose behind the system is for the zero to be more trouble than it’s worth—literally and figuratively—and to help students realize they still need to complete the work.

A Reminder: Formative Versus Summative Evaluations

There are times when the late grade has to be treated differently. It is difficult to give full credit to a student who is late because it isn’t fair to the other students in the class, but you still want the grade to accurately reflect student ability. The system is not perfect, but there are a few things that help create as accurate a picture as possible:

Formative assessments Anything that isn’t a quiz or test gets docked about 25%. This helps me to keep the playing field fair for those who turn their work in on time and provides a stick to those who haven’t. Telling students what they would have gotten had their work not been late helps them see how turning work in on time helps their grade.

Summative assessments Summative assessments are where we can really tap into student knowledge. They show what kids know. Because of this, summative assessments stand on their own merits without docking the grade to reflect lateness. That allows the parent, the student and teacher to see exactly what is or is not developed in the unit.

No system is 100% perfect for 100% of students. What do we do when a student demonstrates they know the content, but still has missing work (even after parent contact, etc)? How do we handle a student who refuses to turn in work, but has demonstrated content knowledge through passing summative assessments? What if parents are disengaged or unsupportive of this process?

Some teachers snag students during the school day during study halls, lunches or other times in order to help students who can’t or won’t stay after. Other teachers use summative assessments to fill in gaps in their formative assessments (for example an 80% on a test would mean filling in zeroes with 80’s).

Not every teacher will agree what is the best way to get rid of the zeroes.  The big picture, though, is getting kids to learn—it’s figuring out how to help those students who have the most barriers towards getting work in and on time. Most road blocks will, with some creativity, be moved out of the way and you can find success with a no-zero policy.

Image attribution flickr user woodleywonderworks; How To Create A No-Zero Policy In Your Classroom

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Though it's not a popular method, could a zero-homework policy actually be beneficial to younger students? Find out here!

This is the season for many schools around the world in which the school year officially begins. As parents and their kids excitedly gather their back-to-school gear and prep for their next academic endeavors, teachers prep for sea of new faces and new experiences. For one teacher from Godley, Texas (USA), however, this new school year has been far from the ideal start for which she was hoping.

Second grade Texas teacher Brandy Young has made headlines as of late due to the following note that she sent home with her students at the start of the school year:

“After much research this summer, I am trying something new. Homework will only consist of work that your student did not finish during the school day. There will be no formally assigned homework this year. Research has been unable to prove that homework improves student performance. Rather, I ask you to spend your evenings doing things that are proven to correlate with student success. Eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside, and get your child to bed early.”

Young’s policy, which has no need for formal homework, has been welcomed by some parents of her second grade class. Mom Samantha Gallagher is one example of a supportive parent.  “My initial reaction was positive,” Gallagher told  CNN  in an interview . “She handed out the letter at a meet-the-teacher night and discussed her reasoning with us. My husband and I were both taken aback, in a good way. [Our daughter] Brooke has had homework since preschool. So the idea of not having any made her extremely happy!”

Sure, it sounds a bit…unorthodox, to say the least. However, science seems to apply method to Brandy Young’s alleged madness. A  recent study found that primary school students are sometimes getting around 3 times more homework than what’s recommended . As a result, many of these students have suffered a number of consequences like increased family stress, lowered self-esteem, and a negative impact on social skills.

Homework–something that many have always claimed as “busy work”–offers little in regards to building life skills. Many believe that homework doesn’t provide any more important lessons than things like team sports and time with family. Of course, spending an hour or so each night studying won’t do anyone any harm. Especially for kids in higher grade levels.

However, for younger children  in preschool, kindergarten, and lower grades of primary school, homework seems rather fruitless.

When it comes down to it, as mentioned, homework for older students can prove valuable. It provides a great resource for developing students to hone in on particular lessons and skills that require effort and dedication. For younger students, though, does homework really offer much? One could argue that between heaps of homework, extracurricular spots and activities, baths, mealtimes, and bedtime…when are younger students supposed to enjoy being kids?

It may seem like a controversial method today, but who knows? Maybe Brandy Young’s method could be part of a wave of revolution that leads to more productive (and far less stressed) younger students!

Young wasn’t the first teacher to test this method! Learn about other teachers’ zero-homework policies by clicking next!

Just last year, a New York City elementary school took a firm and controversial stance: they banned homework for its entire student population. They noted negative effects on students including “children’s frustration and exhaustion, lack of time for other activities and family time and, sadly for many, loss of interest in learning.”

As an alternative to excessive homework, the school encouraged families to spend time–that would otherwise be spent on homework–together instead. As one could imagine, the initial feedback and reception from the policy was abrasive at best. In fact, some parents were up in arms!

“I think they should have homework — some of it is about discipline,” one father  vehemently spoke on the issue . “I want [my daughter] to have fun, but I also want her to be working towards a goal.”

There’s still much to learn about whether or not implementing a zero-homework policy can have any beneficial longterm effects. However, we’ll never know without experimenting.

Though it’s certainly not a popular policy, you have to give credit to teachers like Brandy Young for having the audacity and brazenness to experiment with such a policy!

This story was initially covered by BabyCenter

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Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An anthropological case study on the impact of the "no zero" homework policy on teacher culture in two central florida middle schools.

Mary Bolger , University of Central Florida

Teacher culture, no zero, privatization, educational policy, middle school, high stakes accountability

No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top are Federal educational policies that have evoked criticism from teachers and administrators. Both policies extended the federal government’s reach into local education by tying federal funds to a school’s student growth and teacher effectiveness. With an increasing emphasis on economic mechanisms such as choice and competition, teachers’ effectiveness is now determined by standardized and quantifiable measurements. These policies have created a data driven and high stakes accountability culture within each school. Teachers are finding themselves in a new balancing act of recording quantifiable yearly progress for all students while trying to work against environmental factors that are out of their control. The rising trend to utilize a “no zero” homework policy under these new pressures merits investigation into its role within teacher culture and these current tensions. The recent call for anthropology to re-enter the classroom as a cultural site allows the researcher to provide context to the fluid relationships that often lead to the reproduction of or resistance against dominant ideology. Using the case study method, this ethnography employs the critical theory framework to examine policy impact on teacher culture and gain an understanding for how and why trends such as the “no zero” homework become a part of school policy. By looking at a “school of choice” and a traditional “feeder middle school,” this thesis gives context to how the local trends illuminate larger cultural shifts

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The Case Against Zeros in Grading

Teachers can rethink their grading practices to make them more mathematically fair for students and allow for redemption for a missed assignment.

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Let’s say a student fails to turn something in. What grade should they receive? I have asked this question of a lot of teachers lately, and here are the most common answers I’ve gotten: “Zero.” “Nothing.” “-5.” “An F.” “A K.” What?

I’m currently in my 19th year of teaching, and my answer to this question has evolved significantly over time. I was a staunch “Give them a zero. I don’t give points for doing nothing. You earn them.” However, in the past two years, my answer has evolved to include some nuance that I believe is more mathematically fair to students and allows for redemption.

Understand the Grade Band Reality

I’m a math teacher and I love number lines. So what does this have to do with grades? Let’s envision a number line with the traditional 0–100 grade scale on it. Way over on the right would be the A grade band (90–100). The B band would be from 80 to 90, a C from 70 to 80, and a D from 60 to 70.

When a student receives an F, that grade band doesn’t continue with that nice equal 10-point interval from 50 to 60. When we give students a zero, that zero is in grade purgatory! If we continued the equal-interval spacing of 10 points per letter, a zero would actually be a K. I think K stands for “Kill Grade.” Let me explain.

Think about a student who does consistent B (85) work. Their first two assignments are solid 85s, so the average is an 85. If this student doesn’t turn in the third assignment and receives a zero, their grade drops to an F (57). Because of that one zero, it will take that student 14 more 85s just to get their grade back to an 80.

To be clear, a student could have 15 total 85s in the grade book and one missing assignment (traditional zero), and their grade would still be C because of the way that zero mathematically affects the grading system .

Our students know this. They get in a hole because of some missing work or some zeros and they inherently know that they may never be able to get out of it no matter what they do. They can consistently turn in good work, but their grade hardly improves because of the math behind the K (the zero).

Think Philosophically to Redefine ‘0’

When I realized this, I had to philosophically understand what I wanted my grade book to be: an accurate reflection of student knowledge. I also don’t want my grading practices to be demotivating. I needed to make a change and wrap my head around “giving them something for nothing.” It seemed as wrong as the K grade. So here’s what I did: I had to reframe the concept of a zero.

If we think about grades on an equal-interval basis, each grade band is worth an equal value of 1. An F is 0, a D is 1, C is 2, B is 3, and A is 4. If we make each grade band equal, then failure isn’t disproportionately weighted. If we still have to use the 0–100 scale (which is mathematically skewed to failure), then we have to hack the traditional grade book and convert that 0–4 equal-interval scale into a 50–100 scale. Essentially, this makes 50 the new zero. We redefine the floor of our grading system to make it more mathematically accurate and less punitive. I’m not giving them something for nothing. I changed the narrative to redefine the floor at 50, so that failure isn’t worth more than success.

Let’s revisit our student who does consistent B work. The student does B-level work on two assignments and then misses one. Instead of giving that missing assignment a K (0), we give it an F (50). We use our new floor of 50 for a missing assignment. The student’s overall grade significantly drops to a 73, but it takes only four more Bs to get back into the B band. The F allows for redemption. The K doesn’t.

I spent this past summer involved in a study on Joe Feldman’s book Grading for Equity with 55 secondary teachers and administrators in my district in Sonoma, California. One of the practices discussed in the book that is an easy one to defend and implement is this idea of redefining the zero.

Many of my experienced colleagues are rethinking their use of the zero because they’ve seen the stark reality of what it takes to overcome a K. I encourage you to think philosophically about what you want your grading practices to encourage and convey to students. Are your grades an accurate reflection of what a student knows? Do your grading practices align with your teaching philosophies? Discussing my grading practices with colleagues was one of the best professional development exercises I have undertaken in 19 years.

Pushback Is Common but Manageable

The biggest pushback I have gotten from my colleagues has been related to the reporting of the redefined floor of 50 in the online grade book to parents and guardians. I agree that it’s confusing for a parent to see that an assignment is missing but at the same time the student received a “7/14.” The online grade book exacerbates the issue of “I don’t want to give them something for nothing.”

At my school site, there is no way around this, so we have to clearly communicate the rationale to parents with conversations or grade book comments, which is a good thing. However, this also unveils a bigger issue that can be raised with school administrators: reevaluation of our institutional systems to allow for a reimagined grading scale that is more mathematically sound and accurate.

I encourage you to find some like-minded and also some not-like-minded teachers and/or administrators and try this grading method. It makes you really have to defend your practices or develop new ones that might be contrary to what you experienced as a student.

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No-zero policy: a failure of one-size-fits-all education reform

Last week marked the one-year anniversary of the exoneration of Lynden Dorval, an Edmonton physics teacher who was suspended and then fired for giving zeroes on student assignments that were not completed.

While the school district later rescinded the policy, no zero policies still persist in other provinces. In 2010, the Ontario Ministry of Education directed all school districts to implement non-zero minimum grades for report cards. Since 2011, school districts in Newfoundland and Saskatchewan disallow teachers from giving out zeroes—effort, participation, and attendance can no longer be considered in grades.

“No-zero" advocates say zeroes discourage students from trying because such low scores may make passing the course impossible.

Canadian schools are not alone. In the United States, there’s been a trend toward no-zero policies. For instance, schools in Chicago have adopted a no-zero policy, while Fairfax county in Virginia is not far behind. Numerous other school districts, such as the Houston Independent School District, allow zeroes on homework but teachers are unable to give less than 50 per cent on report cards. In other districts, the grade cutoff is 70 per cent.

A school district in upstate California has adopted an equal interval grading scheme, where 80 per cent and up merits an A, and only scores below 20 per cent merit an F. Combined with its no-zero policy for missing work, observers note the new grading scheme may end up giving a student who attempted an assignment and performed poorly a lower grade than one that did not try at all.

No-zero policies raise a number of concerns. To begin with, while some students will benefit from the grace of getting a pass with no work, in practice no-zero policies effectively serve to "tax" work by students on the margin. After all, if some effort and no effort produce the same grade, some students will be incentivized to give little effort. Similarly, no-zero policies may deprive students of the satisfaction of hard work.

Consider a student with a standing of 32 per cent but whose grade has been bumped up to 50 per cent on their report card. Through renewed dedication and hard work, suppose the student manages to score 52 per cent on the next evaluation. The student sees a two percentage point return to their labour—not 20. Finally, students are likely to develop an increased sense of entitlement. Kids are quick to learn that they can pass with little to no effort. This entitlement likely contributes to the current student movements on college campuses.

This hyper-concern over student grades is in part driven by incentives created under centralized education reforms, such as No Child Left Behind. Under this federal program, funding is more tightly connected with student performance, which in practice has caused schools to inflate grades or pass under-performing students. And schools aren't stopping at no-zero policies. Many schools also have rules to allow students to retake their exams as many times as needed. Teachers are directed to avoid penalizing late work. Even students who cheat may no longer get zeroes, out of an ostensible desire to "reward the knowledge not the behaviour." Many schools now give cheating students opportunities to retake tests until they pass.

While the solution to improving school performance is complex, one-size-fits-all education policies have promised much but haven't delivered. In the United States, despite a fivefold increase in federal education spending since 1970, student achievement has been flat or declined.

Though this question has yet to be empirically tested, economic theory and teacher reaction suggests no-zero policies are just an extension of bad policy—bad ideas that school districts can't get out of.

To let good ideas develop, become imitated and spread, schools in the United States and Canada need the flexibility to address the needs of their locality and the freedom to innovate. In doing so, teachers will gain the discretion necessary to reach kids where they're at, such as determining whether incomplete assignments reflect satisfactory or unsatisfactory performance, all the while remaining accountable to taxpayers and parents.

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Though it's not a popular method, could a zero-homework policy actually be beneficial to younger students? Find out here!

This is the season for many schools around the world in which the school year officially begins. As parents and their kids excitedly gather their back-to-school gear and prep for their next academic endeavours, teachers prep for sea of new faces and new experiences. For one teacher from Godley, Texas (USA), however, this new school year has been far from the ideal start for which she was hoping.

Second grade Texas teacher Brandy Young has made headlines as of late due to the following note that she sent home with her students at the start of the school year:

“After much research this summer, I am trying something new. Homework will only consist of work that your student did not finish during the school day. There will be no formally assigned homework this year. Research has been unable to prove that homework improves student performance. Rather, I ask you to spend your evenings doing things that are proven to correlate with student success. Eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside, and get your child to bed early.”

Young’s policy, which has no need for formal homework, has been welcomed by some parents of her second grade class. Mom Samantha Gallagher is one example of a supportive parent.  “My initial reaction was positive,” Gallagher told  CNN  in an interview . “She handed out the letter at a meet-the-teacher night and discussed her reasoning with us. My husband and I were both taken aback, in a good way. [Our daughter] Brooke has had homework since preschool. So the idea of not having any made her extremely happy!”

Sure, it sounds a bit…unorthodox, to say the least. However, science seems to apply method to Brandy Young’s alleged madness. A  recent study found that primary school students are sometimes getting around 3 times more homework than what’s recommended . As a result, many of these students have suffered a number of consequences like increased family stress, lowered self-esteem, and a negative impact on social skills.

Homework–something that many have always claimed as “busy work”–offers little in regards to building life skills. Many believe that homework doesn’t provide any more important lessons than things like team sports and time with family. Of course, spending an hour or so each night studying won’t do anyone any harm. Especially for kids in higher grade levels.

However, for younger children  in preschool, kindergarten, and lower grades of primary school, homework seems rather fruitless.

When it comes down to it, as mentioned, homework for older students can prove valuable. It provides a great resource for developing students to hone in on particular lessons and skills that require effort and dedication. For younger students, though, does homework really offer much? One could argue that between heaps of homework, extracurricular spots and activities, baths, mealtimes, and bedtime…when are younger students supposed to enjoy being kids?

It may seem like a controversial method today, but who knows? Maybe Brandy Young’s method could be part of a wave of revolution that leads to more productive (and far less stressed) younger students!

Young wasn’t the first teacher to test this method! Learn about other teachers’ zero-homework policies by clicking next!

Just last year, a New York City elementary school took a firm and controversial stance: they banned homework for its entire student population. They noted negative effects on students including “children’s frustration and exhaustion, lack of time for other activities and family time and, sadly for many, loss of interest in learning.”

As an alternative to excessive homework, the school encouraged families to spend time–that would otherwise be spent on homework–together instead. As one could imagine, the initial feedback and reception from the policy was abrasive at best. In fact, some parents were up in arms!

“I think they should have homework — some of it is about discipline,” one father  vehemently spoke on the issue . “I want [my daughter] to have fun, but I also want her to be working towards a goal.”

There’s still much to learn about whether or not implementing a zero-homework policy can have any beneficial longterm effects. However, we’ll never know without experimenting.

Though it’s certainly not a popular policy, you have to give credit to teachers like Brandy Young for having the audacity and brazenness to experiment with such a policy!

This story was initially covered by BabyCenter

Be sure to check out theAsianparent Community for more insightful stories, questions, and answers from parents and experts alike. If you have any insights, questions or comments regarding the topic, please share them in our Comment box below. 

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Is "no late work" a common policy?

When I wrote my syllabus for this term, I added the line "Late work will not be accepted." In the past, I just took off a large percentage of the grade per day, but I became tired of the added work of managing papers that students handed to me at random times and places.

The students, naturally, complain this policy too harsh, especially when some larger projects are worth 25% of their grade. I searched the Internet to try to establish what the norm is. I found many syllabi from famous universities, but found very few even list any policies at all.

Is "no late work" a typical rule?

• 13 As a student, I had a number of courses which did not accept late submissions at all . I also had courses which had similar rules to what you've done previously, deducting points for late work, and other courses with other different policies besides. I see nothing wrong with a "no late work" policy that is clearly stated in the syllabus. (I was an undergraduate in Texas.) –  Brian S Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 17:57
• 12 Yes, it is very common. For examples you can try Google queries like "no late work will be accepted" site:harvard.edu . –  Nate Eldredge Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 20:00
• 13 @Joshua I have a hard time seeing what would qualify as "insane" in what the OP proposed. –  xLeitix Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 22:36
• 6 In industry, late work could cause serious consequences such as huge financial loss. You are doing your students a big favor by imposing no late work policy so that they learn this precious lesson as early as possible if they are going to work in industry after graduation. –  Nobody Commented Mar 26, 2014 at 2:28
• 10 Is “no late work” a common policy? It should be. –  Marc Claesen Commented Mar 26, 2014 at 7:10

21 Answers 21

One issue not covered by the many good answers is proportionality .

There's nothing wrong with having firm deadlines and sticking to them, or allowing a grace period with corresponding deductions, and so on. But it's your job as lecturer to make sure the 'punishment fits the crime'. If you have a zero-tolerance late policy and a short time window for a hard assignment that counts for a lot of points, then the policy is disproportionately harsh even if it's fair and clearly stated. I bring this up because you mentioned assignments/projects that carry upto 25% of the grade.

This is partly why I use a sliding scale late policy, where students can turn in things late, but lose a percentage of their score for each day they're late, upto a week for a 2-week assignment at which point they earn nothing. If you wish to have firm deadlines for a project that accounts for a large portion of the grade, then you might consider creating intermediate deadlines to break up the penalty. This way, students can learn the consequences of missing deadlines without facing huge penalties. It is also more robust to unforeseen events that no one can control.

• 7 Codified rules are good. They don't preclude you from being accomodating of special situations. Say a student approaches you well before the deadline and has valid reason to be late (illness, tragedy, ...). This might be obvious to many, but maybe it needs to be said. (Also, I challenge that university attendees should be forced to do anything. Give them material, give them offers for support, and then the exam. Those who can not motivate and organise themselves should fail. Unfortunately, that point of view is not economically (US et al) and/or politically (EU et al) opportune.) –  Raphael Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 18:52
• 2 True. What I meant to say was that the OP mentioned zero tolerance AND lots of points. Then a short time window is the last piece that turns this into an unfair policy. –  Suresh Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 20:18
• 9 One percentage point per day is not enough IMO. I like multiplier = 0.90 ^ (days late) , which is 100%, 90%, ~81%, ~73%, ~66%, ~59%, ~53%, ~48%... but never quite gets to zero. –  Mooing Duck Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 23:21
• 3 @Joshua And those rules apply in special circumstances.... There is a huge difference IMO between allowing a repeat due special circumstances and allowing late work...Note that students complaining that late work is not accepted is not the same as "in special circumstances" late work is not accepted...... –  Nick S Commented Mar 26, 2014 at 1:13
• 4 I've never taken a class where we were directly punished for showing up for an exam late. The punishment was always implicit and proportional (if you show up late, you have less time to finish; the later you are, the less time you get). –  Brendan Long Commented Mar 26, 2014 at 15:23

Disclaimer: I am a student in Central Europe (Computer Science), but an enthusiastic one ;)

"No late work" rules are common for both courses with many (>100) and with few participants. Usually, there will still be a couple of students trying to get a deadline-extension, but in my experience this number is far smaller if you make the "no late work" rule clear to everyone.

Just keep in mind that students have other work besides your course and make sure that there's enough time to do the assignment. I don't really see the point to give less than two weeks - if a student falls ill for a couple of days or is otherwise occupied, a second week will give him or her the chance to nevertheless produce a good solution.

Even for regular homework assignments, I think that giving the students two weeks time will result in far better hand-ins: they can ask questions/request clarifications one week after the assignment was published in the lecture.

• 18 +1 for "make sure there's enough time." Even for a short assignment, don't assume that I can find an hour in the next two days to complete it. –  ff524 Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 16:17
• 6 "I don't really see the point to give less than two weeks." One possible point is that students retain much more from a lecture if they do a follow-up assignment as soon as possible after the lecture -- two weeks later is almost as bad as two months later. –  Mark Meckes Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 16:41
• 7 @MarkMeckes If you want the follow-up assignment to immediately follow the lecture, make it an in-class assignment. Otherwise, don't assume that students should be able to rearrange their schedules to accommodate your tight deadline, however well-intentioned. –  ff524 Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 16:51
• 7 @ff524: I don't expect my students to rearrange their schedules, I expect them to arrange their schedules around the classes they're taking. –  Mark Meckes Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 17:25
• 5 @Raphael We were often forced into those two days due to projects for other classes. In my experience, professors seem to like to assume that they're the only ones that give homework, and assign due dates accordingly, not taking into account we have stuff to do for other classes as well. –  Izkata Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 19:40

I am sure this varies between lecturers/courses; some universities may have more or less stringent policies but none that I have seen. In my own surroundings, a deadline used to be a deadline. This has softened over time due to many circumstances. Lecturers/teachers are more stressed and enforcing deadlines inevitably involves more work; students seem to find more and more excuses for not being on time. It is hard to point the finger in one or the other direction.

It is, however, interesting to think about the fact that deadlines are still deadlines in society. If you do not send in your tax report in time you are fined; if yo do not pay your bills you are "fined" etc. More critically, if you cannot finish a work task on time you may lose out on salary increases promotion or even lose a job, the latter particularly if you run your own business. So learning to cope with deadlines is important yet it seems to not be prioritized.

So what can be done? Key is to be very clear on what will happen from the start. If you make assessment criteria you can state that a late task means fail/zero points or whatever the perspective is. At the same time you can say that for a larger task, points will be deducted or grade lowered a step at a time after each time period the work is late. My former advisor gave all of us the option of being late but told us that points will be deducted. It was up to us to judge if we would benefit from being late (Better answer gave more points than was deducted for being late). This fostered some form of responsibility where you as a student had the power to decide.

So I do not think that it is difficult to impose rules for lateness that allows students to assess the effects of being late. Learning is of course about learning a subject but it is also about learning to function in society (in the work place) and that involves developing work standards that are good. So when imposing rules that involve lateness, it is also important to make the rules very clear and also to provide suggestions for what you perceive as a good work ethic/schedule to pass the tasks well, i.e. provide the students with enough information to also see what will not work. If you fail to do so the lateness effects may only seem as punishment.

• 4 +1 for So learning to cope with deadlines is important yet it seems to not be prioritized. –  Marc Claesen Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 16:28
• 13 True, though if you don't pay your bills, you're fined, you aren't generally immediately sent to collections or thrown in jail. If you don't send in your tax report on time, you have to deal with bureaucracy, fill out a bunch of papers, and probably won't get your refund very quickly, but you will still generally get it eventually. Learning to deal with deadlines is definitely good, but still, the real world isn't usually "turn it in on time or you're just completely screwed with no recourse", either. –  neminem Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 18:44
• 2 @neminem ... but losing a significant amount of points isn't exactly "being screwed with no recourse" either. It's exactly what you mentioned for the other examples - it's quite bad, and you would generally want to avoid it, but it's not the end of the world if it happens. –  xLeitix Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 22:39
• 1 As I understand it, there are a lot of career paths (e.g. medical school) where having a single 'C' on a college transcript is an automatic and irrevocable disqualification. And if you have a 'no late work' policy and individual assignments worth 25% of the grade, you're talking about giving an otherwise perfect student a 'C'. –  Daniel McLaury Commented Mar 27, 2014 at 8:11
• 1 @DanielMcLaury And if the students shows up late for the exam, you are also giving an otherwise perfect student a "C"... If the assignments for a class are worth 25%, then they should be a higher priority for that student than a 10% assignment... And we are speaking about probably multiple assignments worth 25%, being late once is not the end of the world... Being late always would be an issue, but then would you really want to accommodate that student?... And since you brought up medical school, would you want the student which is always late to be your heart surgeon? –  Nick S Commented Mar 27, 2014 at 14:01

I would say that in general it depends. If assignments are going to be happening regularly or are kind of a hard mathematics course (think calculus, differential equations...) then I think the no late work policy is valuable. This is particularly true if you plan to post a solution to the assigned problems shortly afterwards.

On the other hand in a class that I teach most of the assignments are more project oriented. As a result they will take longer than a normal assignment, and they are also far more open-ended (a solution from student A may look nothing like solution from student B, but they may both be completely valid). As a result the approach that some students use may lead them to take longer on an assignment than others. I use a sliding scale as discussed above; Typically I allow 1 week grace where each day costs a few percentage points, and after that the assignment is not accepted.

as for pros and cons,

• students seem to like the flexibility, sometimes many of their assignments are due in one or two days and this allows some buffering (at a cost)
• with a digital submission like blackboard the late grading is very easy to do
• assignments appear to have more work put into them, instead of students doing the bare minimum they tend to explore their solutions more
• since introducing the policy some students tend to turn in homework later (typically 1-3 days)
• some students treat the final deadline (1 week late) as the deadline, so a limited number of students will turn in their homework late consistently

Overall I am happy with the solution though, and I would suggest offering a slight grace period where it doesn't make your life too difficult. The main approaches that I've seen being either % off per day, or x number of free late days for the class.

• 4 +1 for "if you plan to post a solution to the assigned problems shortly afterwards," which seems to be an issue not addressed by the other answers. –  Mark Meckes Commented Mar 26, 2014 at 10:35

As an undergrad computer science/philosophy major at a top 10 school in the United States, I would say that 90% of the classes I have taken have had a no late work policy. Particularly after the end of freshman year, it's understood that you need to get your work in on time.

However, it's usually understood in these classes that there is still the option to ask the professor for an extension, which will almost certainly be granted in cases of illness, etc, unless the class is just too large/has an automated grading system (checkouts of code on a particular date from SVN, for example) that prevents this. The late policy covers the case where a student just doesn't hand in his or her work when it's due and says nothing to his or her professor, and there is really no excuse for that.

I think it depends a lot on the culture and the institution. In America, er, a decade or two ago, I remember there was usually some penalty for late work at the Universities I and my friends attended, but "no credit for late work" was rare. However when I was at university in England, there were no penalties for late work in any of my classes. Even very late work was not considered a problem. Personally, I found that having all the time I needed to do the work, resulted in me being far more productive (if not as timely, but no one cared about that), and doing much more interesting and better writing, as well as not abusing my sleep by staying up all night.

• 1 I find the last part interesting, as typically when one is late on an assignment it results in less time for the following assignments... And then you get no better writing and more abusing sleep.. –  Nick S Commented Mar 27, 2014 at 12:32
• 1 Ah but if no assignments have punitive deadlines, that doesn't need to happen. My overall amount of work done went up by a lot, actually, as I would actually spend several productive days working on a paper, revising it, turning it in when I was happy with it. So it didn't create a backlog - it just had me feeling no deadline pressure or resentment, and doing the work when I was ready and had thought of something interesting to write about, instead of stressing and resenting the deadline and doing something at the last minute, losing sleep, etc. –  Dronz Commented Mar 28, 2014 at 20:47
• I highly doubt that any instructor would accept assignments long after the final examination. Typically the final exam is a hard punitive deadline for all the assignments... Which means that the total time you can spend on all the assignments is the same, no matter how deadlines are set... It is an illusion that with no strict deadline, you get more time for all assignments, but this is a very popular thought among the students... The reality is that you only get extra time if you start the assignments late... If you have 2 weeks for an assignment but you only start it a day or two before .. –  Nick S Commented Mar 28, 2014 at 22:28
• ... the deadline, yes by extensions one actually gets more time and less abusing sleep. But exactly the same result can easily be accomplished by starting the assignment 2-3 days earlier... Or, and some of my students are shocked when I tell them this, one should simply start the assignment 2 weeks before the deadline as one is expected. –  Nick S Commented Mar 28, 2014 at 22:29
• Have you heard the expression, "what we resist, persists?" Do you think the shock of a student hearing that they could start assignments early is about not having heard it before, or about having to be punished into learning the truth of that obvious statement? I think the suffering and head-butting around deadlines comes from the power conflict in the situation. It's not about learning the obvious truth of when things could be done, and it doesn't have to be a stressful power struggle, and when it's not about that, it can be about much more interesting things. –  Dronz Commented Mar 29, 2014 at 20:23

I have never seen a no late work policy; on the contrary, most of the classes I have taken/TAed accepted late work and took off no credit when the amount of time late was reasonable (1 or 2 days if you were asking questions / professor knew you were working on it.) This is probably due to the fact that most of my classes have had 5-10 students in them; the classes that I have taken with 20+ students have all accepted late work with a similar penalty as the one you described.

The question follows: Do you want every students best work, or do you want every students best work within a very strict time frame? If an assignment is difficult, and not just time heavy, it might be worth relaxing a no late work policy in my opinion.

It is entirely possible to have a hybrid, in which weekly assignments are not accepted late but larger assignments can be late with penalty.

• 4 "Do you want every students best work, or do you want every students best work within a very strict time frame?" I want students to learn as much as possible from the course. Research on learning has shown that students retain more from a lecture if they do follow-up work as soon as possible after the lecture, regardless of how well they do on that work. –  Mark Meckes Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 16:46
• 1 @Mark Meckes: and is that difference large enough to offset learning less from the work itself because it has to be done at a more likely unsuitable time? –  Mark Commented Mar 26, 2014 at 15:27
• 1 @Mark: Based on studies I've seen, yes. –  Mark Meckes Commented Mar 26, 2014 at 15:51

I specify a due date, but have a 48 hr, no questions asked, grace period. If a student gets an assignment in by the due date, I give a small amount of extra credit (typically 0.25 pts added to his or her final percentage*). I do not accept assignments after the grace period. I never get complaints about this policy.

* I don't round final percentages. Students are in charge of their own rounding by getting the extra credit for turning in assignments by the due date

I've always been a student that turned in HW late, and it varies widely depending on the professor. In general, I have found the humanities departments the most harsh about deadlines. The natural science classes are more lenient, with some professors clearly stating that they will accept late HW with a deduced grade. Others will accept late HW unofficially before they return graded HWs to students, and yet others will work with you more flexibly. There hasn't been a single professor of mine that hasn't accepted at least some late HW from me.

As a TA, I fully accept late HW, with no deadlines, and likewise return the HWs to students late (you can call it a "suggested deadline"). My teaching principles are fairly libertarian, and my students tend to learn a lot during the semester. That's what I care about. The only time I care about HWs and examinations is to see whether I'm doing an effective job at what the students' pay me to do, which is teach them. It's only fair to examine the students to see if I'm failing them.

It's appalling to see professors demand of their students, who, just in case anyone forgot, pay the professors' salaries, demand of their students to learn a certain way within a definite deadline. Nothing in my experience has been more detrimental to my learning. I've gained the most out of classes that allowed me to turn in HW late.

Just in case anyone thinks that students who fail to "respect" deadlines are intrinsically procrastinators, I declare that it was quite the contrary in my case. The reason I submitted HWs late was to ensure I read the whole relevant text before attempting the HW. I wanted to know exactly what I was doing when I solved a problem, rather than use "ad hoc" methods to get something that resembles the correct answer. Moreover, I would often find a passage in a text that interested me, so I would pursue the topic and do some research. Sometimes this "research" would take a week out of my time, but I learned more from the self-driven pursuits than all the professor-imposed, who was paid by me to teach me, HW combined.

It's time we do away with harsh grading policies and strict deadlines, because I don't know a single person who has ever learned that way.

On the other hand, I do know a lot of wage-slaves, also known as employees at major companies, who rent their bodies to their masters; and the masters certainly will demand of their subjects to have work done on time and subject themselves to meaningless evaluations by authoritarian figures. That isn't the environment in which people can learn and discover; that sounds more like mines, sweat-shops, and assembly line to me. Unless one wants to impose an assembly-line education, which is what's common in USA universities these days, I'd advise against serious deadlines.

• 14 their students, who, just in case anyone forgot, pay the professors' salaries — Incorrect. My salary is paid by the state, not from tuition income. (I do not accept late homework, even for illness or injury. I do, however, forgive homework under extenuating circumstances, so that the student's grade is unaffected. And I'm happy to give feedback on anything.) –  JeffE Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 22:40
• 6 Yes, but so do I. And so do their future employers. –  JeffE Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 22:44
• 8 @TheLateGreat you don't purchase learning. you pay for the time and expertise of people who've spent a long time studying the topic you're learning. If you want to buy your education, you can always buy a degree. But then it won't have much value. –  Suresh Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 22:46
• 9 Sometimes, "staggering consistency" = "correct". I should add though that I've seen courses (often, mathematically oriented ones) dole out homework that has no deadlines and merely needs to be turned in by the end of the semester. The problem is then that the homework fails as a diagnostic tool to identify student weakness and misconceptions that could have been rectified if detected early. –  Suresh Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 22:47
• 13 This is what worked best for you . Other students may find (in the long run) that a lack of firm deadlines would be a detriment to their learning; for instance, it gives them the option of putting off work until they've forgotten how to do it. I understand your point of view, but I don't think you can claim that it's the one right way to do things. –  Nate Eldredge Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 23:17

My problem with a "no late work" policy is that it disincentivizes learning. If a student forgets an assignment or can't quite finish it in time, they no longer have any reason to learn the material; they get no credit for learning it because they cannot turn it in late. Because of this, I favor a 10% or even 20% per day penalty as oppose to a no late work policy.

I also think the "prepare students for the real world" argument is invalid. In the real world, if you miss a deadline for something (work deadline, tax filing, etc.) you will get punished somehow, but you likely still have to complete the work; it doesn't just disappear. Also, preparing the students for the real world is a secondary goal at best. Helping students learn the material should always come before preparing them for the real world. Internships and first jobs are much more suited for preparing for the real world.

• 2 Aren't doing better on the final exam, doing better in followup courses, doing better in job interviews, doing better on the job, and "gee my mom and dad paid all this tuition money so I'd better get something out of it" reasons to learn the material? –  JeffE Commented Mar 28, 2014 at 5:41
• 1 So, college students are known for being great planners with lots of well thought out long term goals who rarely make poor decisions...? Don't pretend like rewards months/years down the road are of the same value to students as instant rewards. Also, for gen-ed courses, almost none of what you mentioned applies. How can you motivate a CS major to learn more about chemistry? Well, you can start by not disincentivizing them with a silly grading system. –  MikeS Commented Mar 28, 2014 at 17:31
• 2 College students are adults. –  JeffE Commented Mar 29, 2014 at 3:48
• 1 That's exceedingly dismissive and I'd say flip to sweep this and so much else under the rug with "he's/she's an adult". Are you going to hold me to your arbitrary standards even though I'm not even considered legally competent among other things? And even if I were, what you said is inappropriate for a great many people, probably a quarter, for any number of other reasons. –  Vandermonde Commented Aug 9, 2015 at 6:16

I remember an answer I once got for a piece of work handed in a few minutes late (and rejected):

How can you have nothing ready for 30 days and then suddenly have something in the last few hours?

In fact, I had been working on it the whole time, trying to constantly improve it, despite the fact that I had a working solution early on. Waiting was a mistake and helped me learn to prioritise.

So welcome be hard deadlines, they teach planning and prioritisation , and save examiner time.

As an undergraduate, I have had a few classes like this, but if it's a class with lots of HW assignments, usually the professor will grant extensions if you ask; sometimes there are also a set number of "late days" that students can use, so maybe you can do that so that the volume of late submissions is reduced, or just take 50% off for one day and 100% off for more than one (that way I doubt many people would ever submit late).

I just want to make it clear that any professor should, of course, always grant extensions in the event of an emergency (family emergency / illness); to do otherwise is, well, barbaric.

Edit: I don't think you're obliged to give full credit if there was no extenuating emergency circumstance (e.g. illness) and the student didn't ask you beforehand. If they thought they might not finish in time, it's definitely their responsibility to tell you that. That said, giving 0% for such a case is also pretty harsh.

I think the focus of teaching should be students' learning, and all policies including late assignment policies should be designed with the goal of improving student learning and experience. A good fair policy would encourage learning and good behavior, a bad unfair one would do the opposite.

I think students generally care too much about grades, it is important to refocus them as much as possible on learning. Assignments, tests, and grades are tools for teachings not goals of teaching.

The hard deadline policy is common but I think it is also a common experience of instructors that it doesn't work well. It is important to think about why it is so, if we understand why hard deadlines do not work well then we can design better policies.

In my experience, the followings are the main reasons for missing deadlines in most cases (roughly based on the justifications my students gave me when asking for extensions in my previous courses):

Technical difficulties: small unexpected submission difficulties, i.e. they have finished assignments but they were unable to submit it before deadline, e.g. they lost power just before deadline.

Procrastination: Considerable number of students leave working on assignments to the last minute. They are also not good with estimating the time they need to finish assignments. So they go over deadline.

Special cases: events beyond students' reasonable control prevented them from finishing assignments, e.g. serious illness.

Of course we would not want to penalized students for the 3rd reason. But we should also try to help those in the first two groups.

One common alternative to hard deadlines is having grace days, but it has a too high administrative overhead in my opinion, and it doesn't really work much better. They will use up their grace days and then go over deadline. If we give them a grace day for all assignments then we are essentially shifting deadlines in their minds.

After discussions with a few more experienced instructors I switched to something similar to Suresh's policy for my last course and it worked quite well. There was almost no serious complaint. Here is the policy I used:

1% penalty for every 30min after the deadline.

First, it is easy to implement. I use an online submission system so it is quite easy to compute and apply these penalties using time-stamps for latest submissions, it is a simple script.

Second, it is effective way of helping the first two groups. This policy gives them two extra days after the deadline if they really need. Most late submissions miss the deadline by a small amount of time. Being essentially a continuous linear penalty function it makes sure the penalty is proportional: a student who goes over the deadline a few minutes doesn't loose too much points. I give students typically 2 weeks for submitting assignments. I don't think it makes sense to give more that 2 extra days. Too many days and too soft penalty will essentially shift assignment deadlines in their minds and cause further procrastination. The hourly lateness penalty creates a sense of urgency that daily penalty would not. I had around 100 students and they seldom went over a few hours. I also put deadlines on Friday evenings. Students who don't like doing assignments hate to spend their weekend on them. Student who submit their assignments on time do not have to worry and spend their weekend working on assignments, this adds an extra incentive for them to finish it by deadline, or if not possible with as little lateness as possible. In addition, it also makes sure that the following week we can focus on our topic without them worrying about assignments.

To deal with the 3rd group I don't use my late assignment policy, I use an special consideration policy. If a student misses an assignment deadline with a good reason, e.g. serious illness supported by medial documents, I apply my special consideration policy to accommodate them e.g. I may move the points for the assignment to other assignments.

I think the appropriateness of such a policy depends on the class and the students within it, and even when it exists, I'd consider flexing it for extraordinary circumstances.

For example, I once had a student who turned in late work because they were called up to respond to a national emergency. Is that really something I should have savaged their grade for, even if generally the class had a pretty strict deadline policy (because I was trying to turn grades around fast)?

As an undergrad engineering/computer science alum, I will say that I am biased towards having a late policy. Scale the assignment difficulty appropriately to account for "extra" time at a penalty and codify the policy to be clear and non-negotiable, ie 10% off per day. The other option is to tell students late assignments are not accepted, but extend deadlines appropriately based on student feedback. The goal remains the same: maximize participation.

The reason I support this is pedagogical. It is not to account for students being irresponsible. It is to attract more students to complete an assignment, allowing them to be methodical and calculating with their learning experience while ultimately maximizing the value they receive from a course.

The goal with college classes, from a pedagogical view, is to maximize turnout and participation. These are solid measures indicating that students are learning and that the college experience is economically valuable. If there is a no late assignment policy and 25% of students received a zero or extremely low mark for being unable to "complete" on time, we have an issue that could potentially be fixed with a course policy change. So I argue that it is better to have a late penalty while scaling content difficulty appropriately.

I was exceptionally busy during my senior year, taking the max amount of credits where all classes were advanced level/difficult. I recall one class where the policy was no late assignments. This was a very difficult programming class. I was on the wire for time, and pulled repeated all-nighters to complete an assignment for this course- right past the due date. I was very stubborn and I refused to just give up, although in the back of my mind I considered the high likelihood I would receive a zero. It ended up being accepted with no penalty and I received a high grade where the average grade was significantly lower.

Many would say this is not fair. But from my perspective, I learned more actually doing the assignment rather than being defeated - the alternative fate would have been to cease all work and receive a zero had the policy been uncompromising. As someone who is a perfectionist- I prefer not to stop until I know I have produced something that is robust and meets all requirements- this hits home even more for me. I believe that from a learning standpoint, accepting late assignments is far more likely to result in higher quality education. If a late penalty makes a course "easier", scale the content appropriately. Or surprise the students on a case by case basis at the instructor's discretion.

The goal is to get as many students as possible in a course to give a best effort attempt on an assignment given a variety of schedules, circumstances and uncertainty in the assignment itself. If after some date they receive a zero you will always chop off a number of students who can do the assignment with more time, and would with the opportunity, even with dramatic penalty.

• 1 And if the policy had been "no late work", then instead of just handing in what you had, you would have done nothing ? Be realistic. You wouldn't have been "defeated", you would simply have handed in something that wasn't as good as it could have been if you'd had more time. Which is kind of a common situation to be in throughout your life. –  jalf Commented Mar 29, 2014 at 11:40
• That is sometimes true and sometimes not. In that particular case I would have failed the assignment completely. I consider that defeat. It is actually not as common a situation as you may think. Very rarely in life do you need to complete something, once, before a certain date or face failure. Things we do at work don't just disappear once a certain day passes; it just gets deferred until a later date. The point is that handing in something that isn't as good as it could have been is bad . The goal is to get as many students to hand in their best work as possible. Is that so far-fetched? –  trueshot Commented Mar 30, 2014 at 7:48
• no, if that was the goal, you wouldn't have deadlines at all. It is up to the student how much work they want to put in before the deadline. Universities are not obligated to coddle you. And you're still hung up on the (wrong) mindset that "if it is not perfect, then it might as well not exist". In real life, people do not just "defer" the task you've been working on if you exceed the deadline. Instead, you just have to make do with what you've got. You , not I, are the one pretending that things just disappear if you can't perfect them before the deadline. They don't. –  jalf Commented Mar 30, 2014 at 10:32
• But please enlighten me as to how it is "fair" that you get a full grade for breaking the rules. You were supposed to do X before date Y. By your own admission you were unable to do that, and would have failed the course if they hadn't been lenient. Why did you deserve that leniency? You were unable to do what the course required. –  jalf Commented Mar 30, 2014 at 10:35
• I'm not going to tell you I deserved anything. I am going to tell you that I have personally experienced the benefit of a late policy in courses. Those policies have allowed me to absorb more from a course than what would have been possible without one. The goal for me was always to learn. Forgive my selfish desire to maximize learning. You imply that the goal of a university is to sink as many students as possible, ie no student deserves "leniency". I argue that the goal is to maximize participation. Target any average for a course, but get as many students to try their best as possible. –  trueshot Commented Mar 30, 2014 at 20:01

An important role for a college professor is to prepare the students for the real world. And in the real world, deadlines are firm. You think a customer or an employer cares that you have a "good excuse" for being late? That you "tried"?

Trust me, you'll be doing all your students a favor by accustoming them now to the reality that schedules are unforgiving.

When I was a student, one of the first things we were told was "No late work is accepted. Not even if it is only a matter of seconds. Not even if the printer catches fire or you're snowed in".

My university had previously just subtracted from the grade, and had been warned by the authorities that this was against the rules. So they stopped doing that, and instead enforced a zero-tolerance rule of "respect the deadlines".

And honestly, it worked well. The only requirement is that you make absolutely totally sure that all of your students are aware of these rules! Like I said, it was drilled into our heads on day 1 (and repeated regularly ever since). And it was enforced for the entire Computer Science department, not just for individual courses.

Of course, students can always ask (preferably in advance) to have an agreed-upon extension in special cases (perhaps in case of extended sickness, or whatever else it might be), but if it's just a matter of "I didn't finish in time", then tough luck. You either hand in what you have, even if it is incomplete, or you don't hand it in at all.

Honestly, I kind of think it is the only fair policy. Lowering a student's grade for handing his work in late strikes me as much weirder. Their work should be graded on its quality, and nothing else. "your ability to manage time" should not be part of the curriculum. If two students hand in equally good work, they deserve the same grade.

I think the important point is that being late doesn't mean that you can't hand in your work. It just means that instead of handing it in late, but complete, you hand it in on time, but incomplete. And you get graded on what you handed in.

I don't know about "typical," but I have definitely seen it used. I've taught mostly in design schools where understanding the importance of hitting deadlines is a core part of the training.

Having said that, most instructors are a little more moderate. Some will say students are allowed one late assignment per semester, some will accept any assignment late for half-credit.

My own personal policy was this: As long as you made a reasonable effort to turn an assignment in on time you could always improve your grade on that assignment by resubmitting any time before the end of the semester. If you missed that first deadline, no deal. But if you turned in a project at, say, 25% completion on the day of the deadline and then before the end of the semester managed to get in the remaining 75% you could have full points. But that's just me.

One other thing I go out of my way to say on day 1 is that communication is important. I had a student who didn't show up for class all semester only to tell me two weeks before the end that he'd been caring for an ailing relative. I could have made an accommodation in week one, but what am I supposed to do in week 13?!

The university I attended had a no late work policy, however, some of the modules did allow a 24-hour late work window, but work submitted in this 24 hours was capped at 40% (Minimum pass grade).

I work at a middle-ranking UK university and we have a rule of 5% per day for 5 days then zero. I think it becomes counted as a cost by some students. "No late work without a doctor's cert", providing everyone knows well in advance, seems as fair as any other, what with the deadline being part of the test.

Your students have the reasonable right to expect you to operate the policies decided by your department. Whilst I have every sympathy with the notion of 'a minute late = no marks' providing exceptional circumstances are accounted for, it's really not your decision but rather a decision that should be made by your department and uniformly applied across different courses.

It is unfair on students for your course to operate a different policy to the other courses they are taking because it (a) unfairly requires them to prioritise the work for your course over other courses and (b) it requires them to notice that you've set different regulations. So, whether or not your method has merit, you should adopt the same system as other courses they are taking.

I'm kind of surprised that your university/department does not already have a formally stated and agreed policy on this.

• 4 My department leaves this decision to the individual instructors. As it should. And no, students don't need to notice ; instructors just need to tell them. –  JeffE Commented Mar 26, 2014 at 23:29
• The comment on noticing was based on the assumption that was a general ruling. If every course does things differently then that alters expectations. –  Jack Aidley Commented Mar 27, 2014 at 7:01

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