Zero Tolerance for Zeroes
It looks like when it comes to giving zeroes, the Hamilton Southeastern School District has a zero tolerance policy.
According to the student handbook at Fall Creek Intermediate school, if a student doesn’t turn in an assignment, they don’t get a zero. Instead, according to the policy, “Late or missing work will be indicated in Skyward with a zero or NHI (not handed in) and marked as missing initially until completed. All work is to be completed unless a teacher utilizes alternative means to assess based on differentiation. Zeroes are not acceptable.”
Now, before we go any further, I did reach out to HSE but they respectfully declined to come on my radio program, but they did say any parent who had questions could contact them. I wish they would have sat down and chatted because this policy raises a number of issues. First of all, in real life, if you don’t turn in your work, you get fired, and on the surface, this policy doesn’t seem to reinforce that message. And as someone who has taught for 12 years, I know when you have a troubled student and you need to intervene, however, students and families need to know there are consequences for not completing work, and usually that consequence is failure. If part of the job of school is to prepare students for the real world, this policy seems to take things in the other direction.
We’ve all heard stories about contests where every kid gets a ribbon, or the school system that no longers labels students as “talented and gifted” because it might hurt the self-esteem of other students. I think these are bad ideas because these policies don’t promote excellence,they promote mediocrity and they really don’t help kids in the long run.
It would be nice, if we lived in a world where you didn’t have to give zeroes, but unfortunately we do. And some days those zeroes can act as a wake up call. There shouldn’t be a zero tolerance policy for zeroes.
