Hrihaan Bhutani is already thinking about college. The Dublin High freshman is taking four Advanced Placement classes next year and has crammed his schedule with extracurricular activities to better his chances of getting into an Ivy League school.
But a change at the high school designed to get students less focused on grades has done the opposite. Suddenly, in some classes, A’s are almost unachievable, unless you score 100%. And F’s don’t exist. For high-achieving students like Bhutani, the pressure to be perfect is even more of a burden.
“I feel more stressed … now with this new system,” said Bhutani, who is especially sweating his biology class, one of dozens trying a variety of new grading scales under a two-year experiment. “Even if you’re at a 99, you would get moved down to an 85,” he explained, which translates to a world-ending B.
Dublin Unified’s new grading policy will go into effect for all 6th through 12th grade classes next year and is part of a national shift toward “equity grading” – a controversial concept that moves away from traditional grading to better measure how well students understand what they are being taught.
The goal is to lower the impact of things that “fluff” grades – extra credit, class participation and homework – while also making it easier for lower-performing students to bounce back from failing.
Several school districts in the Bay Area have explored similar ideas, including Oakland Unified, Pleasanton Unified, Santa Clara Unified and most recently Palo Alto Unified. But how districts implement the change differs, with some choosing to eliminate D’s and F’s, while others move away from zero grades or eliminate late penalties.
Equitable grading was first coined by Joe Feldman in his 2018 book, “Grading for Equity,” which has become the instruction manual for more than 200 schools across the country. Feldman said he’s partnered with 25 districts and schools in California to guide them as they make the transition.
Liliana Castrellon, an assistant professor in the department of education at San Jose State University whose research focuses on equity in education, said equitable grading practices became more common in school districts after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“If anything, what we learned during the pandemic is that our traditional education system is not working for everyone,” Castrellon said. “So there’s been a lot of conversations around … how do we reimagine and re-envision practices that are more equitable and that are going to benefit all students?”
A task force at Dublin Unified first discussed revising grading policies in 2021. The following year 28 teachers began testing new ways to measure students’ proficiency.
Dublin Unified’s superintendent Chris Funk explained at a board meeting last year that the district’s grading system wasn’t consistent across all schools, which caused issues in the classroom.
“There’s no question that the grading system that’s been around is an inequitable practice. Much of the grading that is involved does not grade anyone’s mastery of the subject content,” he said at the meeting. “Zeros in a grading system do not accurately reflect a student’s proficiency. Awarding zeros as discipline is not an appropriate consequence as they can be almost impossible to recover from.”
But the incremental changes led to widespread pushback among parents, students and teachers – inciting a Change.org petition to stop the practice and a WhatsApp group with more than 400 parents against the policy shift.
Next year, the district will restrict all letter grades to a 10% range and remove the practice of awarding zero points for assignments as long as they were “reasonably attempted.” The new policy will also remove extra credit and bonus points that elevated grades, and provide students with multiple chances to make up missed or failed assignments and minimize homework’s impact on a student’s grade.
Some parents and teachers said they worry the changes will encourage students to slack off and leave them unprepared for college.
“I think the dumbing down of curriculum will lead to our kids failing in college because they’re not going to be prepared on the same level as kids from other districts and other states,” said Dublin parent Olena Stadnyuk.
Skeptics say school districts are implementing no-zero policies and removing failing letter grades to boost graduation rates as they struggle to recover from learning loss caused by the pandemic.
“This will up kids graduating, it will up their numbers,” said Laurie Sargent, an eighth grade English teacher at Cottonwood Creek, a TK-8th grade school in Dublin. “They’ll have fewer kids failing and then that looks good. It’s strategic.”
Some schools have shifted their grading policies in response to the University of California and California State University “A to G” requirements, which mandate students receive a C or better in 15 of their high school courses to qualify for admission.
“Almost all kids in California graduate high school but only about half who graduate are eligible to apply to UC or CSU schools,” said Alix Gallagher, director of strategic partnerships for Policy Analysis for California Education. “In California, grades are the sole determinant … Grades are a gatekeeper for kids.”
Dela Antoinette, a parent of a sophomore at Dublin High, said she worries that equity grading will harm the high-achieving students who are performing well under the current system.
“Instead of pushing this agenda, let’s focus on lifting this particular group up and get them up to the standard of other students that are excelling,” she said. “Not lower the standards, not change the entire system for everyone.”
Bhutani and his biology classmate Bhuvan Krishnamohan, who are just completing their first year of high school, are already thinking about transferring to a school that doesn’t use equitable grading.
“I think the system favors the people that are not doing so well and they want to do well, rather than the people that are doing really well and want to continue that,” Krishnamohan said.
Sargent, the English teacher, said Dublin Unified’s new grading system doesn’t set students up for success in the real world.
“We want to make our students college and career ready,” Sargent said. “Nowhere in college do you get 50% for doing nothing. Nowhere in the world of work do you get 50% for doing nothing…If I don’t show up to work, they don’t pay me 50% of my salary even if I made a reasonable attempt to get there.”