To prevent the current racial disparity in students failing courses and to increase individualized opportunities for students to improve their semester grades, PAUSD is encouraging teachers to replace Fs on students’ transcripts with No Marks and Ds with Pass. No Mark is signified by NM and Pass is signified by P.
The Campanile applauds this move by the district and wishes there were a way to require all teachers to use such a system.
According to Principal Brent Kline, the use of NM on transcripts would indicate a student has not completed enough of the course requirements to receive a letter grade indicative of their abilities, course knowledge and academic performance. An NM, like a P, does not figure into a student’s GPA.
Klein also said the bar to pass a class is always up to individual teachers. As such, teachers have the final say about whether to offer a student an NM or an F (or a P or D).
Because the use of NMs and Ps provides students with a second chance to improve their GPAs in a competitive school environment and also individualizes support for those who need extra time to complete a course because they have been unable to attend school for whatever reason, we don’t see why every teacher wouldn’t offer this to all students.
In fact, the NM has been available for teachers to use for at least three years, but in the past, parents and students would individually reach out to teachers and ask to use this option.
But as Board of Education Trustee Jennifer DiBrienza recently pointed out, Latinx students were six times more likely to receive a grade of F than “No Mark” compared to their white counterparts, leading district officials to try to change this gap.
The Campanile praises the district for working to level the playing field when it comes to the use of NM. In addition, we call on teachers and administrators to look into why the bar to pass classes at Paly is so high that so many students need a second chance to pass.
While Paly accepts a D as a passing grade, the University of California system and the California State University system do not. And while PAUSD allowing students to pass with a D and allowing students to retake a No Mark class might be viewed as a way of inflating average GPA or making courses easier, The Campanile thinks these policies are necessary for helping all students meet Paly’s rigorous requirements.
It might not seem related, but the rigorous courses at Paly blur the lines as to what constitutes an A, B or C. A student performing at C-level at Paly might receive Bs at other schools.
And we think that a better use of PAUSD resources is not just creating more opportunities for students who are on the verge of failing a class but examining why so many students are ending up in this position in the first place. According to Paly’s 2024 Mid-cycle WASC Progress Report, 979 students took at least one AP exam in 2023, of which 95% received a passing score of 3 or above compared to the national average of roughly 62.5%.
Additionally, 53% of Paly’s AP test takers in 2023 received a score of 5, indicating that AP courses at Paly set students up for success in exams.
But attempting to teach students to score a 5 on AP exams forces them to catch up to standards they otherwise wouldn’t be held to in other schools.
As such, we think giving students a second chance to reflect on and improve their grades is a worthwhile endeavor, and should be offered to all students as an option when they’re in a position to receive an F at the end of the semester. But even more important is looking at why Paly’s standards are so much higher than some other schools in the state and how that is affecting our struggling learners.
While some may argue that it is unfair for students who originally received a high letter grade in a class to potentially end up with the same GPA as students who retake the course for a better grade, the No Mark forever remains on a student’s transcript, even when the NM is replaced by a different score once the class is retaken.
So we encourage all teachers to present the option to convert an F to an NM and a D to a P, and we also encourage administrators to take the effects of the rigor of Paly more seriously, understand that even though an NM is a good safeguard as a replacement for failing, the threshold for meeting Paly standards is far higher than the national one, putting less privileged students at a significant disadvantage.
