The "No Zero" policy in Education is a beneficial first step in an education system overhaul

I look forward to seeing your arguments. I accept the rules as stated. The age range I would like to focus on is high school, though I would like to note that the arguments could well be extended to other age ranges. As the No Zero policy is a part of the assessment aspect of education, I will focus exclusively on strengths and weaknesses of educational assessment. For simplicity of reference, I will refer to the common, USA standard of education where failure to turn in assignments merits a 0 (or equivalent) as the traditional grading model, contrasting with the No Zero grading model. The flaws, issues, and challenges of educational assessment are numerous, and at times, complex. The traditional method of grading mixes a large number of factors into a single grade: Academic: The student"s demonstrated knowledge of a subject The student"s demonstrated skill with a subject Behavioural factors: The student"s willingness to do extra credit work The student"s attendance record (often schools will have various grade rewards/punishments for attendance related issues) "A for Effort! " (directly giving grade boosts based on effort / behaviour) Participation marks. Failure to turn in assignments. Specifically, this debate will concern the above. However, I will quickly list out a few other concerns with grading: teacher consistency (different teachers giving different grades), the lack of complex skill testing in standardized testing, the lack of simple, unmarked feedback that improves grades (called formative assessment) due to the prevalence of work marked for grades. And so on - again, the list of concerns is fairly extensive, but doesn"t immediately relate to the debate. Here"s an example of why it"s a problem. Say you have two kids, Adam and Bob. Adam is absolutely brilliant, academically perfect, but the kid is arrogant, defiant, and refuses to cooperate to any degree. Bob is below average, but the kid tries his hardest, always doing his best. Adam"s grades are either 0 (for missed assignments) or 98-100%. Bob"s grades hover around 70%. With all of Adam"s long list of missed assignments (but doing just enough to pass), he gets a final grade of 70% - just like Bob! They both have the same grade, now. But in what sense are they the same? They"re not the same academically, behaviourally, or in pretty much any sense at all. So what does that grade of "70%" even mean? It tells you virtually nothing - this kid is, in some unknown fashion, imperfect. Maybe the kid is brilliant but lazy, maybe the kid is average, maybe the kid can barely pass a test to save his life, but gets lots of extra credit work" and it all works out to be the same. Parents and universities care about the grades, but from a teaching standpoint, it"s just north of useless. The fundamental purpose of the No Zero policy is to attempt to start the process of splitting the idea of "grades" into multiple categories. Advocates of the No Zero policy are starting by attempting to remove behavioural aspects from the grading system - in other words, let"s have grades mean just one thing: academic ability. By removing the behavioural aspects from the grading system, it becomes possible to begin introducing a behavioural grade (whatever it ends up being called). Since there"s a long standing grade system in place, it was relatively easy to make this tiny change (the No Zero policy"s very, very simple to implement), but addressing behavioural problems needs its own framework. A common complaint about the No Zero policy is that it"s not like work, where failing to do an assignment isn"t okay. That"s simply not true. In work, there"s a huge difference between an awful bit of work and failing to do it entirely. Real life jobs don"t "average out" the good projects with the missing ones - if you don"t do something you need to do, that"s a serious offense, a serious behaviour problem, that can very quickly get you outright fired. It"s giving zero"s for missing assignments that"s not like the real world. Missing assignments needs to be addressed far more seriously than just giving a low grade. In short, the purpose of the No Zero policy is to separate academic achievement from behavioural achievement in the grading system, allowing (and perhaps forcing) schools to address missing assignments as what they actually are - a serious behavioural issue.