Late Penalties In High School

Students should be graded on the actual quality of the work they produce, not on their punctuality. The ability to turn in an assignment on time has nothing to do with learning concepts and meeting standards, which is ultimately what the grade should be an accurate and meaningful reflection of. Grades are supposed to show the student's achievement in the given subject matter, and should indicate what they know and what they have learned. Education author, speaker, and advisor Tom Schimmer said:

Here is my issue with Late Penalties being applied to student work. If we are going to reduce an entire course worth of work down to one symbol for the purpose of reporting, should we not at the very least ensure that the grade is accurate? Late Penalties

It’s impossible for any one teacher to know what every single student of theirs is going through, especially when many of the struggles they may be facing are highly personal. Students should always be provided with support and encouragement. What they absolutely do not need is to be discounted because of whatever they are fighting. They unquestionably need to be encouraged to continue learning and improving in school, and the grading system should be supportive as they try to do so.

Additionally, assigning a zero on every late assignment takes away the credit that the student rightfully deserves on work that they actually completed. All that a no late work policies teaches is that once the work is late, they might as well not do it at all. If there is no longer value in the teacher grading it, why is there any value in the student finishing it? The homework is no longer meaningful, the policy does not support learning, and it takes away all value of doing the assignment at all. This is not the lesson that we want to be teaching in

Traditional methods of using grades to motivate students often don’t work as we hope they will (Stiggins et al. 38).

It is often argued that enforcing an absolute no late work policy prepares students for the real world where conforming to strict deadlines and being responsible is important. It develops further discipline, and teaches the student to be accountable for their actions. Admittedly, these are very important lessons to learn in high school, however, in the adult world, when someone misses a deadline, he or she must demonstrate responsibility by fixing the problem that they created. It would be inexcusable to walk away from it.

This method ranks timeliness over actual learning, and teaches backwards values. The goal of any class is to learn the curriculum, and an absolute no late work policy takes away the chance to do so as soon as one begins to fall behind. In the real world, improvement isn’t always on a timeline. You can’t schedule improvement on a