Im an NYC teacher grading equity is destroying our schools

As a New York City public high-school teacher, I’m all too aware that our grading standards have been crumbling. But even I was stunned when I heard of a student at a friend’s school who received credit for all his classes despite failing to show up for an entire semester — with an English credit, for example, awarded based merely on poems he’d written at home.It’s an extreme example, but hardly an isolated one.Our schools have been corrupted by lenient policies ostensibly intended to make grading more “equitable,” but are in truth a means of artificially boosting graduation rates.Kamar Samuels, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new schools chancellor, has made vague promises to bring “rigor” back to the city’s education system.If that’s true, he must undo the attendance and grading mess his predecessors have left him.Ever since the COVID pandemic, the Department of Education has essentially made attendance optional, by forbidding teachers from factoring it into students’ grades. It’s a policy that somehow remained after students returned to the classroom, even though it no longer made sense.Meanwhile, many schools have eliminated zeros and imposed an artificial minimum grade — usually 55% — for all assignments and assessments. Some have even eliminated late penalties, allowing work to be turned in months after the due date for full credit.Taken alone, each policy is damaging.Combined, they are disastrous. Students now can skip months of class and still pass with a minimum of work, especially if they rely on artificial intelligence to complete missed assignments (as many, many do). And with no minimum attendance requirement, teachers lack an important check on administrative pressure to inflate passing rates.Class-cutting has exploded under these perverse incentives, as students pick and choose which classes they feel like attending.But you’ll have to take my word for it: The DOE-released data shows only the percentage of students present...