Back in MY day, if I, as a student didn’t complete an assignment at school, if I skipped a class or was getting bad marks my parents heard about it and there were repercussions. This still happens now in some cases and it should as far as I’m concerned. If we take away all the repercussions and make everything coast along easy, are our children really going to benefit in the end? I think not.

An Edmonton teacher with 35 years experience has been suspended and fully expects to be fired for giving some of his students zeros despite his school’s “no-zero” grading policy.

A physics teacher, Lynden Dorval says he continued giving zeros when students failed to hand in assignments, instead of using the school dictated behaviour codes like “not completed.”

“To me, this is just not working,” he says of the no-zero policy the school introduced about a year and a half ago. “This is just a way of inflating marks and it’s not benefiting the students... It’s a way of pushing kids through and making the stats look good, but at what cost?”

I agree. If they know there’s no possibility of failing there are most definitely students out there who WILL take advantage of the system. It’s the easy route but it doesn’t make it right.

Under the school policy as it exists now, a teacher has to pursue his or her students to arrange for late assignments. If they’re not successful in getting the student to cooperate, they are to mark “unable to evaluate.” That’s just plain silly if you ask me. Teachers today have a big task at hand and enough to contend with on their plates. Classrooms are full with a wide variety of student needs to attend to, why should a teacher have to waste his or her valuable time hunting down assignments?

Apparently the “no zero” policy is becoming more and more popular with proponents saying it helps to ensure more students make it through the school system. Well sure it does, but again, at what cost? If we’re pushing kids through who have no comprehension of the course material, what then is the point of attending class?

Some changes are beneficial and we learn as we go along but taking away a teacher’s tools to properly educate our children – the whole goal behind sending them to school – is not going to accomplish the desired end result.