During Gigi Segal’s first year at the California Polytechnic State University, she received several failing grades in her botany class, and to hear her tell it, she had Montgomery County Public Schools to thank.
Segal grew up in Montgomery County and was a 2022 graduate of Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring.
“We always had lab quizzes, and sometimes I would get a one out of 10 on the quiz,” Segal said about her college botany lab. “That was really jarring.”
The school district’s 50% grading rule – which basically means no student can get less than 50% on any 100-point assignment – hasn’t properly set its students up for success.
“What I observed as a parent in the system, an advocate in the system, and a teacher in the system is that the 50% rule did not prepare students for anything outside of MCPS,” said Lynne Harris, the former At-Large member and Vice President of the Montgomery County Public Schools Board of Education.
Montgomery County introduced the 50% grading rule in 2006. This rule allows students to receive at least 50% on any missing or attempted assignments; just a student’s signature is deemed as an attempt. This rule was also reemphasized during the COVID-19 pandemic when classes went virtual, according to Harris.
“I think what initially started off as a movement to benefit students became something that just made it easier for unmotivated students to do as little work as possible,” said Elizabeth Colson, an English teacher at Albert Einstein High School in Kensington.
Aside from being a teacher, Colson is also a mother to two sons who grew up in the Montgomery County school system. Her oldest son graduated from Wheaton High School in 2019 and her youngest from Northwood High School in 2022.
Many parents have voiced their opinions and frustrations since the implementation of this rule.
“I think it’s terrible,” said Athena Gaalswyk, a teacher at a Montessori school and a mother to two Montgomery County graduates. “I honestly don’t even understand the motivation behind it.”
It’s difficult to understand the motivation behind something that was never clearly spelled out.
“I just never could get anybody to give me a reasonable, objective explanation for the 50% rule,” Harris said.
“I don’t feel like it was ever explained to us, I just sort of heard about it through the grapevine and pieced together the tidbits,” Gaalswyk said.
A similar rule was implemented in Prince George’s County Public Schools before the 50% rule was enacted in Montgomery County. The rationale behind Prince George’s County’s rule was that if students received too many failing grades, they would be disheartened and feel they could never recoup their losses. County officials thought this rule would help motivate students. However it transformed into something completely different, according to Colson.
This rule still stands in Prince George’s County Public Schools.
“I felt like I understood the parents’ position of trying to help and seeing their student struggling, as a parent myself,” Colson said about Prince George’s County parents. “However, I think my parenting style is a little different and it’s important to take accountability for your actions.”
According to Harris, the 50% rule has not taught students how to take responsibility for their own actions and their own work.
In January 2024, Montgomery County implemented an additional grading criteria to the pre-existing 50% rule. Students may now receive a 0% on assignments once their teacher has intervened and provided additional support. Previously, teachers were only able to give out zeros after they successfully contacted the parents of the students and provided additional resources to help boost the student’s grade.
Despite the amendment’s goal to better the 50% rule, it hasn’t quite achieved that.
“It’s putting much more onus on the teacher,” Colson said. “And it doesn’t put a lot of agency and responsibility on the student.”
Even after the rule was changed in January, there was still little explanation about what these new guidelines meant for students.
“We were told about it in homeroom,” said Declan Ritchotte, a senior at Northwood High School. “They kinda skimmed over it and said the 50% rule has been changed, but we didn’t really get much information on what the changes were.”
Teachers and students alike feel that Montgomery County’s grading policy missed its mark. The school district’s policies have placed more emphasis on the teacher’s efforts and allowed students to play the grade game.
“Students are so smart and so savvy, they’re going to game the damn system,” Harris said.
Colson shares this sentiment.
“What became an incentive for students to do work and do well became an incentive to do just enough,” Colson said. “And that’s not necessarily learning.”
Current and past Montgomery County students who have grown up with this rule have learned how to use it to their advantage. But Ritchotte says it’s actually to their disadvantage.
“I think for some people that really use it and abuse it, I would say it’s gonna definitely affect them a lot, in a pretty negative way,” Ritchotte said. “And I think they’re gonna miss a lot of their deadlines and due dates in college.”
This rule will not only negatively affect those students after they graduate but it has also altered the way teachers are giving out grades.
“A lot of teachers will still just give you 50% because they don’t want to go through all the work to give a kid zero on an assignment,” said Charlotte Case, another senior at Northwood High School.
This rule goes beyond Montgomery County classrooms, the standards it sets lingers among its former students.
“If you don’t want to learn how to study, there’s nothing forcing you to do that,” Segal said while reflecting on her time in the district’s school system.
According to Montgomery County Public Schools, students also do not have to take midterms or finals, they were eliminated in 2015-2016. They were replaced by smaller assessments given throughout the year.
College grading and testing culture eventually came as a shock to those students who only wrote their names on assignments and never took the time to study. Many Montgomery County students ignorantly expect the same grading policies to be in place at their colleges, meaning they are in for a rude awakening.
Rather than coming out of high school ready for a harsher grading system, students come out blind to the fact that they can no longer slip by with an “attempt.”
“I’m outraged by that,” Harris said. “That means we served students poorly because we didn’t get them ready for what’s next, and there’s no excuse for that.”
Segal seconds this.
“I feel like it can be shocking to leave MCPS,” Segal said. “It just makes college a lot harder, because you actually have to teach yourself to study and prepare for stuff and turn things in and be on top of your work, or you will genuinely fail.”
Nevertheless, past and current students feel there should be some sort of exception to the rule when it comes to Advanced Placement classes. These classes are much more rigorous and ask a lot more of students, leniency for grading in those classes seems to be a better option according to Northwood students.
However, Harris disagrees with this.
“If you’re seriously trying in a class, you shouldn’t be worried about the 50% rule,” Harris said. “I just don’t see how anybody who is legitimately doing the work and trying their best is going to be in a place where they’re failing.”
Despite the difference in opinions between Harris and students on Advanced Placement class grading, they can agree on one thing: the rule ultimately should go.
“I think they should get rid of the 50% rule if you don’t do any work,” said Luc Girardot, another senior at Northwood High School. “I think rewarding someone for not doing an assignment or not even trying is not fair to other students who do try.”
This rule has several layers, it not only establishes a faulty reward system for unmotivated students, but the rules’ flaws also seep into the student’s basis of knowledge.
“In addition to just not being a fair representation, it also sells the student short,” Gaalswyk said. “When you lower your expectations for people, often their work will sink to match those expectations.”
Gaalswyk, Colson, and Harris all emphasize how this rule ultimately leaves students unprepared for the world outside of Montgomery County.
The recent change to the 50% rule is a step in the right direction, according to Case, but there are still larger issues at hand that need to be addressed.
“I think part of it was the system looking to create cosmetic data to make our school system’s outcomes look better,” Harris said. “And there’s no excuse for that, except for hubris and ego and wanting MCPS to look great.”
According to the Montgomery County Public Schools website, in 2023, all 25 Montgomery County public high schools earned spots on the 2023 Best High Schools list published by the U.S. News & World Report. Five high schools ranked in the top 500 nationally, and nine were ranked in the top 30 in Maryland.
According to the Maryland State Board of Education, information on Maryland’s 24 school district’s grading polcies was gathered in a local grading policy analysis in 2018. One of the factors that was examined was weather or not each district considered a falling grade to be lower than 50%: the results varied and so did the rule’s interpretation.
“I could see very directly we have a policy about grading that seemed quite clear but the implementation school to school was incredibly variable,” Harris emphasized. “There was no attempt at this at the central level to set clear expectations and hold people accountable to them.”
In 2024, Maryland was ranked as the third best school system in the United States by WalletHub. However, the accuracy of these rankings is questionable given the county’s current grading standards.
“I don’t even understand the origin of the confusion, the lack of consistency, the lack of clariry,” Harris said. “But the policy always said if a student didn’t try then they get a 0.”
Students, parents, and teachers alike think changes need to be made to better prepare students for what’s ahead.
“I think the grading system needs to be reformed,” Colson said.
Harris concurs.
“The lack of direction, clarity, and fidelity in the school system has made this, and let’s be clear, among so many other issues in MCPS, the Wild West,” Harris said.
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