Over the decades, education curriculums have changed quite a bit. People might even argue that some have been watered down.

But when it comes to giving students grades, should they be given a free pass when the work hasn’t been done?A former teacher of 17 years in Port St. Lucie, Florida doesn’t believe so – a belief that got her fired when she refused to give students a 50% credit for work her students did not complete.

In 2018, Diane Tirado was a 52-year-old educator who was teaching Social Studies to eighth-graders at West Gate K-8 School. During the school year, she assigned her students an explorer’s notebook project with two weeks to complete it.

However, when some of her students failed to turn in the assignment, she was led to give them a mark of zero.That’s when a strange and confusing policy was brought to her attention. In the West Gate student and parent handbook, there is a No Zero policy below the grading outline highlighted in red: “NO ZERO’s – LOWEST POSSIBLE GRADE IS 50%.”

Upon hearing from school administrators that you simply give them a 50 even if they don’t turn anything, Tirado refused saying, “Oh, we don’t. This is not kosher.” (1)