<body><div><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1hgZT7_1GisqO9C00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1hgZT7_1GisqO9C00" width="1280" height="723" >The Sampson County Board of Education has adopted a policy that bars the district and its schools from requiring teachers to give a student a higher grade than the one the student earned. The board gave final approval Oct. 26.The board first approved the change on a 4-3 vote in August. The policy takes effect with the 2027-28 school year.Sampson County Schools enrolls about 8,000 students in 18 schools. Since 2020, principals in the district have been allowed to substitute a grade of 50 for a failing grade.Krystin McPhail, a board member who taught in the district, said teachers were told to use the 50.“For as long as I have been in Sampson County Schools, we were always asked to give a 50 if the minimum grade was lower,” McPhail said. “However, that was never a written policy or procedure.”Under the new policy, the board “shall not establish or require a minimum grade that exceeds the grade actually earned by a student.” No district-wide or school-wide policy, practice, or directive may require a teacher to record a higher grade.The new policy doesn’t take away a principal’s authority under state law to promote, retain, or graduate individual students. Board Chairman Daryll Warren said that authority applies to one student at a time and cannot be used for “the systematic adjustment of grades to a predetermined one.”Vice Chairwoman Jennifer Naylor, who spent 13 years in public education as a teacher and assistant principal, made the motion.“This is not about taking away second chances, and this is not about taking away or not supporting our students,” Naylor said at the Aug. 24 meeting. “Have we actually addressed the learning gap or have we simply made the grade easier to recover?”The August vote split 4-3, with Naylor, McPhail, Warren, and board member Michael Elmore in favor and Eleanor Bradshaw, Glenn Faison, and James Jones opposed.District staff raised concerns at an Aug. 18 work session. Jennifer Daughtry, executive director of high schools, told the board the 50 gives a struggling student a way to still pass the course, and that ending it would likely lower the graduation rate.“We have had many where it did help them, and we have had some where it did not help,” Daughtry said.“I don’t know, again, that there’s a right or wrong answer here,” added Superintendent Jamie King.The idea behind a grade floor is that a zero does more damage than any other score. On a 100-point scale, one zero drags an average down far enough that a student may not be able to pass the grading period no matter what comes after. But critics counter that the floor does its own damage by giving half credit to a student who did nothing for weeks.South Carolina banned the practice statewide this year. Gov. Henry McMaster signed the law in May, and it took effect for the 2026-27 school year. Districts that violate it can lose 10% of their state funding. Texas has prohibited minimum grades on individual assignments since 2009.Bryce Fiedler, director of the Carolinas Academic Leadership Network, wrote in a June Carolina Journal op-ed that a 2025 review of local policies found at least 10 North Carolina districts with some form of grade floor. He said the General Assembly or the Department of Public Instruction should require districts to report whether they use one.A Carolina Journal Poll in May 2025 found nearly 85% of likely voters in the state disapproved of the practice.</div></body>

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The Sampson County Board of Education has adopted a policy that bars the district and its schools from requiring teachers to give a student a higher grade than the one the student earned. The board gave final approval Oct. 26. The board first approved the change on a 4-3 vote...

Sampson County school board bans minimum grades

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The Sampson County Board of Education has adopted a policy that bars the district and its schools from requiring teachers to give a student a higher grade 

Sampson County school board bans minimum grades

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