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Orange County schools made 50 the new zero, Jeb Bush says

 
Published Nov. 24, 2014

In a high-profile summit on education last week, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said we shouldn't worry so much about students' self-esteem when it comes to setting grades.

"This morning, over 213 million Chinese students went to school and nobody debated whether academic expectations should be lowered in order to protect their students' self-esteem," he said Thursday at the National Summit on Education Reform. "Yet in Orange County, Fla., last week I read that debate actually did occur at a School Board meeting. The School Board voted to make it impossible for a student to receive a grade below 50. You get 50 out of 100 just for showing up and signing your name. This was done — and I quote here from a local official — 'so that the students do not lose all hope.' "

Bush went on to cite statistics showing students in Shanghai far outrank peers in the United States in reading and math. "An overriding concern for self-esteem instead of high expectations does not get you to No. 1," he added. "It gets you to No. 21."

Is 50 the new zero in Orange County? We couldn't resist checking whether that was accurate and asking education experts about the move.

The School Board there did vote 7-1 on Nov. 11 for a new policy that would ban grades lower than a 50 for the nine-week quarter or semester. Grades below a 50 would still be possible on individual assignments.

The goal is to give students some hope that if they are failing early in the year, they can catch up and ultimately pass. Last year, 43 percent of students in the county who got an F for the first quarter ended up failing the class.

"It is still very difficult for children to recover if that nine-week grade is an F," superintendent Barbara Jenkins told the board. "However, stopping them at 50 does not bury them so deep that they lose all hope and have no reason to continue for the rest of year."

Some teachers opposed the policy. "Are we really helping students by inflating grades, or are we harming them?" high school teacher Wendy Doromal asked. "I say we are harming them by conditioning them to think they can skate by with little effort."

Board members who supported the plan said it was a way to give students one last chance to pull their grades out of a failing mark. "It's just to help kids dig themselves out of a hole," School Board member Daryl Flynn said.

Orange County school officials said their grading plan follows state law, but the state Department of Education hasn't weighed in yet. In 2009, the state's public schools chancellor wrote a memo to superintendents raising concerns that some were not using the 0-59 scale set in state law.

Florida statute sets grade ranges as follows:

90-100 is an A

80-89 is a B

70-79 is a C

60-69 is a D

0-59 is an F

Many districts, including Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas, follow those guidelines and haven't added any rules setting 50 as a minimum standard for report cards.

"We give kids the grade they earn," Hillsborough spokesman Stephen Hegarty told PolitiFact Florida. "If it's below 50, then you get a 30 or a zero, or whatever score you earn."

The topic of setting a minimum number for an F grade has been hotly contested nationwide. But experts said the main concern about grade inflation hasn't been about making F students into D students. It's actually been about making A the most common grade in high schools and colleges, said Stuart Rojstaczer, a former Duke University professor who researched grading.

"The impact of even a nationwide policy of 'no less than 50' on GPAs would be tiny," he said. "We're taking Joe and Jane Averages and making their parents believe they are Joe and Jane Geniuses. The Joe and Jane Flunkers are still flunking out of school."

As for Bush's statement, Rojstaczer said, "A 'no less than 50' policy isn't about self esteem. It's about trying to make it possible for a small percentage of students to barely cross over the bar and graduate."

Overall, though, Bush is right that the Orange County school board set 50 as the minimum grade for quarters and semesters, though it's still possible to get a lower grade on an individual assignment or test. We rate his statement Mostly True.

This report has been edited for print. See the full version at politifact.com/florida.