By Alli Kaufman
Sports Editor

If an employee doesn’t show up for work should they still get half of their pay check? If a student skips school should they still get half of their diploma? The answer to both of these questions is very simply, and very obviously, no. So should a student get a 50 percent on an assignment they don’t do? Again, the answer would appear to be no.

Pennsbury High School, along with many other high schools around the country, no longer agree.

In a new policy that has been instated this year and approved by the Pennsbury Education Committee, students will now receive half credit on assignments they do not turn in. Students are now receiving 50 percent of the points for 0 percent of the work.

Superintendent of the Pennsbury School District, Dr. Kevin McHugh, thinks this policy is helping the students, “Once they get a zero, they can’t climb out of that hole. [The students] then have no incentive to keep learning,” McHugh said in an interview with Levittown Now. Following McHugh’s argument that this policy is giving student’s an incentive to learn, where is there incentive to do their work? And to continue, what learning is really taking place with the implementation of this policy? In most districts and classrooms students may receive partial credit for work by turning it in late but in the Pennsbury School District, and increasingly more schools, they don’t have to do anything it at all. The point of an assignment is to reteach or reinforce learning that takes place in the classroom, so by giving the students points for the assignments without having to do them there is no incentive to actually learn.

Pennsbury isn’t the only school implementing this policy. The Orange County School Board of Orlando, Fl. plans to vote on a similar policy for the 2014-2015 school year. As more schools explore this policy it may be only a matter of time before the Neshaminy School Board proposes a similar grading system. Implementing a system like this would be detrimental to the quality of education received by students.

“Rewarding laziness is asinine and will only make kids more entitled. It’s equivalent to participation trophies in little league,” Neshaminy senior and AP student Jasper Nelson said in response to this new policy. The policy is teaching students that they can get through life doing the bare minimum—and in the case of Pennsbury, the bare minimum is doing virtually nothing.

The district is using this new policy to keep kids in school and to keep juniors and seniors from dropping out. The policy allows students to graduate barely passing classes, making the district look better as a whole by raising their graduation statistics. Regardless of the intent of the Pennsbury School District, what it really comes down to is the students and it would appear this policy is doing nothing to benefit the students except falsely inflating their GPAs.

Sure the schools can argue that a 50 percent is still a failing grade but a student only needs a 60 percent to pass. Allowing students to easily pass a class may help them superficially, but in the long term this policy is only hurting them—and hurting the quality of education received by students.