Zero? Really, they learned nothing?

The "zero debate" is alive and well despite the compelling information that leading educational thinkers like Tom Guskey, Doug Reeves, and Grant Wiggins share about the lack of accuracy that is the end product of this practice.  In an excellent post recently on his blog (tomschimmer.com), Tom Schimmer notes "More often than not the zeros, and the resulting lower grades, move kids to a place of hopelessness where they would rather give up than try."

So why does the practice continue? More often than not I hear the response around fairness and/or consequences for a perceived lack of effort.  "The student earned a zero", is passed off as the rationale.  Recently I was talking with a group of secondary teachers and that defense was offered. I pushed back a little with the suggestion that I found it incomprehensible that, based on their skill set, training, and aptitude for teaching, any one of them could spend an instructional phase with students and not impart any knowledge.  That's what a zero means! After two weeks of skilled instruction, nothing was learned.  Is this even possible given the talent of the vast majority of teachers I have encountered? Absolutely Not!  On some levels the zero reveals more about ineffective adult practice than student performance.

When confronted with this perspective, the tone of the conversation quickly changed.  Let's focus on what's happening for students throughout the instructional phase.  Let's use assessment in a formative fashion so that we know, almost immediately, where students are during the learning phase. Let's commit  to bringing our entire skill set to impact the end result. Let's employ numerous strategies and share our passion for student success with all of our kids.

Once we can turn the discussion to whatever it takes in order to have students succeed, it's amazing how the zero debate has less traction.  We may never completely eradicate them from our marking system but they should serve as reminders of something needing improvement rather than a rationale that creates further disillusionment and disengagement.