Chicago principal warns lenient school grading won't match 'real world' expectations
By Joshua Nelson
Published May 26, 2025
Chicago Public Schools (CPS) officials are debating whether their grading policy is too lenient, with one principal arguing that leniency in grading won't translate into success in the real world for students, according to a report.
"When students graduate and are working in jobs, what they experience around grace and flexibility at school is not going to match," Ellen Kennedy said in a report from the Chicago Sun-Times. "This bubble is not going to surround you wherever you go."
Kennedy is principal at Richards Career Academy High School (RCAHS).
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RCAHS is predominantly enrolled by Latino and Black students. The school piloted a new grading policy before the COVID pandemic that allowed them to redo assignments repeatedly and then submit assignments late. The policy was intended to address rising absenteeism in the district.
"Even if they didn't complete the assignment, the lowest score they could get was 50 rather than zero — a concept known as no-zero grading," the Times reported.
The trend of "no-zero grading" started across the district and the United States as "part of a push to give students more chances to show what they learned." Proponents of the policy argue that the traditional grading policy makes it difficult for students to recover, put in effort, and attend class.
Jessica Bunzol, a transformation coach at the University of Chicago Network for College Success, who has done work at RCAHS, said issuing "Fs" are "not motivators for young people."
"That belief that our classroom should be oriented toward helping young people to succeed, rather than orienting them towards failure, is really a critical part," Bunzol said. "Research tells us that F's are not motivators for young people and that they're not going to engage them in classrooms in the way we might previously have thought or hoped."
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A CPS official charged with managing attendance and truancy said the "shift was key in becoming a district that's attuned to the social-emotional needs of its students."
"We're not issuing grades without knowing the full story," Zakieh Mohammed said. "If the student has not shown up, are we just issuing a zero, or are we asking why?"
"We wanted to show up for our kids first and then grading was secondary," Candace Brahm, a science teacher at RCAHS, said.
On the other hand, critics at RCAHS and another high school in CPSF "worry it allows some students to eke out passing grades with little effort and undermines the importance of turning in work on time and coming to school regularly."
One student was baffled by the notion that her classmates were passing the class with high absenteeism and missing assignments while she was doing the work.
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"I was a witness to kids just coming in, like, twice a week and doing two assignments and then passing the class," Kayla Saffold said. "It was just crazy to me."
"It felt like I had to put in the effort to get the A, and someone else ends up barely putting in any effort at all, and ended up passing the class. It felt unfair to me," she added.
According to the Chicago-Sun Times report, educators and experts posit that the policy is leading to chronic absenteeism and increasing graduation rates.
"Last year, a quarter of all high schoolers missed more than a month of school, a Chalkbeat and WBEZ analysis found. But the graduation rate has kept going up," the Times reported.
CPS officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
However, the school district released a statement to the Chicago-Sun Times.
"CPS is committed to balancing student wellbeing with academic integrity," the statement reads. "We recognize the complexity of grading and remain focused on equity — holding all students to high expectations while ensuring they have multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery of content."
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