The grades that students receive in high school and college can decide their futures. High school grades shape students’ overall GPA, class rank and the transcripts that colleges read. They can determine who makes the college sports team and who earns the scholarship.

Yet some parents may not realize that in a rising number of U.S. schools, students will never receive a score of zero – even if they never turn in a paper or answer every question wrong on an exam.

Thousands of U.S. schools have adopted some form of “no-zero,” or minimum-grade policy, in recent years. No-zero grading policies prevent teachers from giving zeros on any assignment or test. They also set a grade floor, meaning that teachers cannot assign a score below a certain number, usually 50 or 60 points.

No-zero grading policies have more than doubled over the past decade. While some estimates vary, about half of K-12 teachers in one 2025 study said that their schools had adopted some version of this policy.

In Washington state alone, about 30 of the nearly 70 districts use no-zero grading policies. Across South Carolina, at least 18 districts out of 72 overall districts have adopted a version of this policy.

Those standards are now being upended, as South Carolina recently became the first state to officially restrict no-zero grading policies. The new law, which went into effect on July 1, 2026, bars districts from requiring a minimum grade and allows teachers to assign grades that reflect a student’s actual performance, including a zero when no work is submitted. Districts that require teachers to raise grades........

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