It’s Time for Grade Floors to Go

For South Carolina schools and school districts, one of the most important goals is to do well on the SC School Report Card. This state school report card is built to evaluate schools based on their standardized test performance, teacher qualifications, safety, awards, parent involvement, and other factors. The Report Card aims to inspire schools to improve and students to be more prepared for college, work, and life. However, the incentives the Report Card creates are often not the behavior the state intends to encourage.  

In order to improve School Report Card scores, some South Carolina schools have adopted what are known as “grade floors.” However well-intentioned, the true impact of grade floors is to send the message that effort doesn’t matter. 

What are grade floors?

The Grade Floor is a policy where students cannot receive a grade lower than an agreed-upon number (most commonly 50 or 60). The floor can apply on a per-assignment basis or for a course as a whole. Schools have embraced this concept as a positive move to encourage students to complete their work and not to feel discouraged by receiving a grade of 0.  

But in reality, this practice provides half credit for assignments that are never completed. With a Grade Floor, a student can coast through a class and still earn a 60 (a failing grade, sure, but much better for their GPA than a 0). Generally, grading floor policies are set by the district and left to the individual schools for implementation. 

The Sumter, South Carolina School District made headlines in 2024 for their choice to remove its 50% grading floor. The vote was close, 5-3. Many board members were concerned that the current policy was getting taken advantage of by students as permission to do just enough to get by. “The thing that frightens me about that policy is that it seemed to suggest that you don’t have to do your best,” said then Sumter County School Board Chairman Ralph Canty. “Education should not be as much about a second chance as it is about a privilege. I believe that every student needs to be committed to the educational process.” 

But in the last few weeks, the Sumter School Board (with new members and a new board chair after November’s elections), has been attempting to reinstate a grading floor. After a contentious and widely publicized debate, both in board meetings and on social media, the Board voted to reinstate the grading floor policy on first reading. But on April 7, 2025, it failed upon its second reading 4-4. One board member abstained. 

Despite this win in Sumter, grade floor policies throughout the state are not uncommon.

Districts with grade floor policies:  

• The School District of Greenville County sets 50 as the grade minimum for elementary, middle, and high school students (see pg. 13 of their handbook).  
• Dillion Four has a grading floor of 50% given to grades 1st-6th for each nine-week grading period. However, grades 7th-8th have a grading floor only for the first semester and grades 9th-12th have it for the first grading period of each semester course. 
• Oconee County has a policy with a grading floor of 50% for highschoolers and middle schoolers taking credit bearing classes for the first half a course, and the 50% grade floor is extended for the whole course for elementary students and other middle schoolers.  
• In Dorchester 2, grades 3rd-5th have a 50% grade floor on quarterly and yearly grades, however a comment will be left next to the grade floor notifying parents that the actual grade was lower (the actual grade is never provided). Grades 6th-8th will receive a grading floor with just quarterly grades with a comment notated if their actual grade fell below 50%. 
• McCormick County School District appears to have a grading floor as well of 50% for all four grading periods with the inclusion of a notation that the actual grade falls below this floor. However, the language used is very vague in this policy. 
• Richland One seems to have a grading floor of 50% across all report cards for students.  

Additionally, although we cannot find online grading policies for these districts, a survey of South Carolina School Board Association members provided to Palmetto Promise found that the following districts have high school grade floor policies of varying levels: Darlington, Dorchester 4, Lee, Lexington, Marlboro, Newberry, Orangeburg, Saluda, Spartanburg 2, Spartanburg 7, Union, and York 4.

Some grade floors are adopted by individual schools, rather than the district, like in Lexington-Richland 5 where Spring Hill High School has a grade floor of 25, and Chapin Middle School, Dutch Fork Middle School, and Irmo Middle School each have a grade floor of 50. Kershaw County is another example that lacks an official policy on grade flooring, but no grades under 50% are received on report cards. 

Grading floor policies are difficult to research, because, in many districts, these floors exist in only in custom, enforced by school administrators desperate to boost their State Report Card score. An Academic Second Chance Policy in the Georgetown County School District allows students to make up half the points missed on a major assignment, boosting their score up to a ceiling of 80. 

What’s the Issue? 

The South Carolina Department of Education ensures that South Carolina schools have a consistent grading scale so they can compare students and schools across the state. But grading floors have the effect of skewing data to make certain districts look better than they are.  

Grading floors also negatively impact students, as they neglect to teach students the importance of turning in work and doing so on time. If a student can do no work and still earn half-credit, it sends a message that effort and mastery of the material are optional. This not only devalues the work of students who engage meaningfully but also fails to provide struggling students with an honest picture of their academic standing—a participation trophy of sorts. 

Teachers are frustrated by giving students grades they don’t earn and seeing students disincentivized from doing their work. This is a rare issue where the lefty SCEA and conservative Palmetto Promise are in agreement. It’s policies like these, passing students through the school year without ever making them do the work and learn, that lead to lawsuits like this one recently filed in Tennessee, where a special needs student graduated from high school without being taught to read. In the long run, grading floors can lead to a cycle of passed-along (“socially-promoted”) students who are ill-prepared for future coursework, college, work, or life. 

Proposed Legislation 

South Carolina legislators from Sumter County have filed companion bills in the House and the Senate to clearly state in law that grading floor policies are banned. S.537 by Senator Jeff Zell (R-Sumter) and H.4306 by Representative Fawn Pedalino (R-Manning) restrict any South Carolina school district from requiring a teacher to assign a minimum grade or score, effectively ending grading floors, whether official or unofficial. If a school were to break this law, they would lose 10 percent of a school district’s State Aid to Classroom funding, a harsh penalty that should deter any districts or school administrators from attempting to artificially inflate their school’s grades. 

The grading floor issue should cause advocates, parents, and lawmakers to take a close look at South Carolina’s Uniform Grading Policy as a whole; there are a number of issues with how grades are calculated, including, but not limited to, the GPA rules for a WF, which allow a failing grade to be calculated for GPA purposes as a 50 rather than a 0.  

Conclusion 

South Carolina is on a path toward improving education across our state. To keep heading in the right direction, we must keep our standards high and combat grade inflation. Current grade floor policies in districts that have them— by rule or by custom— work against the expectations that South Carolina needs to move up from the bottom. But more than that, we should always incentivize hard work. 

We hope to see a statewide ban on grading floors pass into law from the General Assembly or be adopted by the State Board of Education. South Carolina needs a clear, codified restriction on any policy requiring teachers to assign minimum grades/scores. To allow grading floors is to promote distorted thinking and defraud our most precious resource. 

Thank you to our partners at the Carolinas Academic Leadership Network for their contributions to this research.