The 50 floor should remain in place for assignments

In March of 2020, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools implemented Policy 3400, which made the minimum grade on any assignment a 50. The district revised the policy prior to the start of this school year, applying the 50 floor to quarter grades only, leading teachers with the discretion to assign zeros on assignments that students did not turn in. At the school board meeting on October 20, the board voted to reinstitute a “no zeroes” policy on individual assignments. Staff writer Oleksiy Fitel supports the school board’s decision, and staff writer Elea Haskell opposes it.

Despite pivoting on the issue multiple times, the district’s school board has finally decided the fate of the minimum score for assignments, a 50, sparking debate among teachers, students, and administrators over the benefits—or lack thereof—that could result from keeping the policy in place.

The designated minimum score, usually called the “50 floor,” has been in place since the 2020-2021 school year. A vast majority of students seem to support the 50 floor on individual assignments. 

“It takes off so much pressure from students, to be able to fall back on the 50 floor in case you have to prioritize other classes, for example,” junior Wilson Yeung said. 

In a time of increased rates of stress among students, the 50 floor comes to our aid when we need to balance seven classes, tens of assignments per week, responsibilities at home and keeping up some sort of social life, not to mention building up a competitive list of extracurriculars or working a job. 

The Pew Research Institute reported in 2019—even before the pandemic—that 70% of teenagers see depression and anxiety as a major problem among their peers. We can safely infer that this number has rapidly increased in the past three years. 

It has also been widely reported that mental health challenges interfere with a student’s performance in school.

“In qualitative interviews, adolescents reported that negative thinking led to procrastination, which led to poor school performance, which led to more negative thinking,” reads a study on depression’s impact on students’ ability to complete schoolwork, published over a decade prior to the spike in mental health issues we see in students today. Again, we can infer that this has increased significantly since publication. 

Given these results, it is not rocket science to reach the conclusion that the rising rates of mental health issues, coupled with the academic challenges that follow, are negatively affecting students’ grades. It is also not hard to conceptualize that returning to giving zeros for assignments would not help students’ mental well-being. 

Opponents of the 50 floor may argue that temporary increase in grades may lead to a rough transition into college. I beg to differ. 

Firstly, recall that we students are given piles of assignments to be completed. With the first of the quarter having just concluded, I have had over 100 assignments entered into PowerSchool; I’ve written a total of about 180 pages of notes. I have read probably 500 pages in textbooks, and another 50 pages from outside sources.

Many of my assignments have been “busy work,” which may serve to reinforce concepts learned in class, but ultimately take away much of my time that could be spent on larger projects requiring more thought. Many of my peers agree that a large number of assignments could be shortened while still helping us practice the same concepts. 

Contrast this to the work in college: more reading, but substantially fewer assignments. This allows college students to pace themselves and produce quality work; college students also only take four or five courses per semester, rather than seven.

Therefore, attempting to drown students in assignments and giving them a zero for not completing the mind-numbing work does little to help our transition into college.  

Overall, for the sake of our mental health, intellectual stimulation and the little free time that we have, the 50 floor should be kept in place. I speak on behalf of the entire student body when I say: we would all rather take a 50% on a few assignments than spend our nights grinding out unfinished classwork, homework and projects.