New policy: NC students can no longer fail class solely based on not showing up

You’ve probably heard of an “F” for a failing grade on a report card; but you might not have heard of an “FF.”

The ambiguous letter grade was often used to denote a student who performed poorly and had attendance issues. But that’s no longer the case, starting this school year.

Students can no longer receive a failing grade solely based on attendance.

The current policy reads: “FF may only be used for a student who does not have a passing grade based on content and also has significant absences.”

However, the State Board of Education is now mulling over additional language to make it abundantly clear for schools and districts across the state.

Come September, school board members will decide whether to add this explicit wording: “A student may not fail a course based solely on attendance.”

Because the FF mark does not have a specific designation, schools can still use it.

“[B]ut it cannot be used to fail a student in a course based on attendance if the student was already passing a course,” NCDPI spokesperson Jeanie McDowell explained via email.

She said many districts did use FF for attendance purposes, but sparingly.

“If a kid is making a B but doesn’t come to school, that’s more of a classroom issue than it is an attendance issue,” said Sneha Shah-Coltrane during last week’s Department of Public Instruction board meeting.

Drew Washington agrees with the new policy. He is the youth organizer with the Education Justice Alliance, a nonprofit focused on education equity in public schools.

“I don’t think that’s fair to the student, for them to be pushed out of school because of things they may not be able to control,” Washington told WRAL. “I think it’s better to meet families where they are.”

However, critics of the change point to chronic absenteeism.

NCDPI tracks chronic absenteeism across the state. It defines chronic absenteeism as the percentage of public K-12 students who missed 10 percent or more of school days in a year.

In North Carolina, 25% of K-12 students fit that definition during the 2023-24 school year. Data shows an increase in chronic absenteeism since COVID. Despite slight declines in 2023 and 2024, numbers are still not where they were before the pandemic.

American Indian and Black students tend to have the highest rates of chronic absenteeism.

“Once in high school, chronically absent students are less likely to graduate and less likely to attend college,” according to the nonprofit myFutureNC.

WRAL reached out to some of the largest school districts in central North Carolina about their policies, including Wake, Chatham, Johnston, Orange, Durham & Chapel Hill-Carrboro, Cumberland and Harnett counties.

“While there has been no specific language prohibiting the issuance of FF’s in local WCPSS policy, many high schools had moved away from the practice prior to the recent update to State Board policy,” Wake County Public Schools System spokesperson Sara Clark wrote in an email.

The state board pushed the vote on the language to its September meeting.