- March 3, 2025
A students with four A’s and four F’s, Matanzas High School Principal Dr. Chris Pryor said at a Flagler County School Board workshop on Tuesday, really should receive a C. But if they’re graded on a percentage scale and those F’s are zeros, they won’t. They’ll get an F.
Pryor spoke in defense of a controversial grading policy at his school: Students who fail an assignment at Matanzas, or fail to turn one in, will get a grade of 50%.
“We’re trying to mitigate the zero,” he said. “There is a lot of research that says that this is harmful to kids.” He said zeroes make it hard for students to recover from even one missed assignment.
The School Board appeared to be satisfied with the thoroughness of Pryor's analysis. School Board member Colleen Conklin said the presentation quality was "excellent."
However, the board noted the large difference between Matanzas' and Flagler Palm Coast High School's policies. FPC does not have a 50% policy for missing work. There was no discussion about adopting a districtwide policy.
An F scored as a zero has a disproportionate impact on a student’s grade, Pryor said, because the point range for an F runs from 0 to 59, while an A, for instance, only has a 10-point range, from 90% to 100%. An F marked as a zero hurts a student’s grade much more than a 100% helps it.
And when kids get to a point where nothing they can do — even getting straight A’s for the remainder of a term — will turn their grade around, many give up, he said.
“We’ve got to do something to give these students hope,” he said. “Bad grades do not motivate kids. Good grades might.”
Pryor said much of the criticism of the school’s grading system comes from a misperception that the school is giving students something for nothing.
“They’re thinking of 50% as half credit,” he said. "It’s not. It’s an F. We’re simply equalizing the value of every grade in the grade scale.”
