What’s in a grade?
On its surface, a letter or number grade would appear to be a fixed measure of a student’s performance on a given assessment: a test, essay, project, or other tangible piece of work.
Ideally, a grade should “accurately reflect a student’s current understanding of the course content, free from biases,” according to Joe Feldman, an educational consultant, former teacher, principal, and author of the book Grading for Equity. But what about when students or parents ask, and are granted requests to change grades?
This practice, unflatteringly referred to as “grade grubbing,” has become increasingly common, according to recent data on the topic and anecdotal evidence from educators like Frank Trunk, a former music teacher in the Greater Atlanta area who told Education Week: “In the schools I worked, the principals always took the parents’ and the kids’ side. Had to change out many a D and F to a C, which wasn’t fair to my students who always excelled.”
Here’s a look at how grades became increasingly open to debate, what happens when teachers feel pressured to change grades, and ways that some schools prevent demands by students or parents to change marks.
The rise of grade-request changes
Just how common is it for students to request a grade change? The practice, as well as who’s making the request, appears to depend on the setting.
Results of a 2023 survey by Intelligent.com of 288 high school teachers and college professors found the practice to be very common. Among respondents, 44 percent said students “often” ask for a grade bump, and 82 percent reported they acquiesce. Perhaps it’s just easier to give in than argue over it: 38 percent of the educators surveyed reported facing harassment from students, and 33 percent from parents, over grades. Just 6 percent of respondents noted that students “never” ask them to improve their grades.
Notably, the survey data included several responses from educators at the college level, where grade grubbing and grade inflation are not new phenomena, according to experts. In a 2003 op-ed in the Washington Post, for instance, then-Duke University professor Stuart Rojstaczer referred to a grade of C as an “endangered species” and observed that A’s had replaced B’s as the most popular grade at universities and colleges.
Grade grubbing has not hit public K-12 schools as hard, at least according to evidence from a December 2024 nationally representative EdWeek Research Center survey of 990 K-12 educators, including 759 teachers. Among teachers surveyed, 44 percent said they never changed a grade after a student has seen it, and among those who have, 8 and 6 percent do so because a student or parent requested the grade change, respectively. High school teachers reported that students were more likely than parents to make requests to change grades, while parent requests or administrative pressure stemming from parent complaints drove grade change requests at the elementary level, the survey found.
In general, parents drive the grade-change requests—either by asking themselves or pushing their children to do so. Experts blame the phenomenon on “helicopter parenting,” also referred to as overparenting, a parenting style marked by fierce protection and extreme involvement in the lives of one’s children.
While those who indulge in overparenting generally are well-meaning, it has been linked to an increase in anxiety and depression among children, according to a 2022 review of multiple studies on the practice.
The impact of grade grubbing on teachers
The practice isn’t healthy for teachers, either. Educators who fall prey to grade grubbing and other behaviors associated with overparenting report feeling uncomfortable, undervalued, and unappreciated, according to results of a 2024 study that surveyed middle school and high school teachers in an independent school in the southeast United States.
Further, many teachers don’t feel like their administration supports them when a student or parent requests a grade change.
That’s according to an unscientific social media poll by Education Week this March that asked teachers how supported they feel by their principal when a student or parent disagrees with how they graded an assignment.
Among 574 respondents, 51 percent reported feeling “not at all” supported or only “somewhat” supported by their principals; 49 percent said they feel “very supported.”
As the results from the EdWeek survey suggest, there’s no single playbook when it comes to responding to grade-change requests.
Teachers’ responses to grade-change requests vary widely
Here’s what some teachers who responded to the EdWeek poll had to say about if and when they honor such requests:
This sample of responses suggests that there’s no one way for teachers to respond to grade-request changes. But there are things that administrators are doing to minimize them altogether.
Leaders offer strategies for reducing grade-change ‘asks’
Some schools curb requests to change grades by implementing formal policies that may make students or parents think twice before haphazardly asking for a redo or new grade.
At Fairfield Central High School in Winnsboro, S.C., teachers and administrators play a role in their grade-change policy, a multistep process that involves documenting all grade-change requests, including the reason for the request; formally reviewing the request; and, when deemed warranted, officially changing the grade, according to Tracie Anderson Swilley, the school’s principal.
“We’re not just going to change a grade haphazardly because someone requested it,” said Swilley, the 2025 National High School Principal of the Year. “We have protocols in place so we can make certain that we have checks and balances for the grade change.”
Swilley also pushes for early and open communication with parents to avoid late-semester surprises that may lead to impulsive grade-change requests. Town hall-style meetings, parent conferences, and an online portal where parents can review their children’s grades at any point during the school year provide multiple ways to stay informed.
While relatively low-lift strategies such as these can be effective in curbing grade-change requests, some schools are shifting to an entirely different grading system that inherently reduces the likelihood of these asks by students or parents at all.
In Vermont, recent legislation to adopt proficiency-based learning states that schools “must provide students with flexible and personalized pathways for progressing through grade levels and to graduation.” By design, proficiency-based learning dismantles the traditional grading system, subsequently reducing student or parent demand for grade changes.
Chris Young is the principal of North Country Union High School in Newport, Vt., and an early adopter of the new state legislation.
“We don’t have letter grades or a 100-point scale any longer, and that is entirely based on the idea that we are not summatively assessing and averaging grades for an end-of-the-year total,” Young said. “We are approaching learning as more of a progressive approach.”
That means students have multiple opportunities throughout the school year to demonstrate how they’ve met specific learning goals, he explains.
The approach lends itself to more retakes and redos of assignments. But in this environment, it’s often teachers who are encouraging students to retake or resubmit assignments to show progress—not the other way around, Young said.
“It lends itself to students submitting additional pieces of evidence that would help determine whether or not they have met the standards,” he said.
“It’s much less about, ‘OK, we’ve taken a test. You don’t like your grade. Can you do a redo before we move on?’ and more about ‘OK, I see that you’re having trouble with this concept. Why don’t you just redo this piece of it and show me that, after some help, you got it, and then we can go back and make an adjustment.’”
