Pressure Points

When the end-of-semester panic over grades sets in, veteran social studies teacher Steve Armstrong shows slackers in his class little compassion. He holds to a strict policy of offering extra-credit assignments only to students with legitimate excuses for missing classwork. “I generally am not sympathetic to people who slide for the entire semester and, at the last minute, attempt to do a prodigious amount of work that will put them over the top,” he says. Despite Armstrong’s reputation, pleading for a chance to earn extra points is practically a springtime ritual for his students at Manchester High School outside Hartford, Connecticut.

Though teachers have been doling out extra credit for years, critics claim that, in many cases, it is undeserved and unfair and rarely helps students master complex material. What’s more, they worry that grades inflated by extra credit make it hard for policymakers, administrators, and parents to know whether kids are actually learning what they need to. Armstrong says he has watched students’ grades sink once the benefits of extra credit are eliminated. For example, students who earn additional points in his district’s voluntary summer-reading program tend to get A’s in the school year’s first quarter, toward which the points are applied. By the next quarter, their grades come back to earth. The extra credit distorts the picture of a student’s work, Armstrong says. “The kids who got credit for summer reading are great kids, but they...