They have this here. It leads to kids getting 70%s or whatever for 3 quarters. For the fourth quarter they never show up to school since 70, 70, 70, 50 / 4 = 65% and that is the minimum passing grade. Instead they enroll in "Life experiences Internship 101" for that spring 4th quarter which appears to mostly consist of shooting each other and hassling law abiding citizens when they should be in school. And then we end up having to pay the consequences when they flunk out or get a job. I wish the kids would put the thought and effort into school or work that they do in avoiding it.

No work? Get a zero. That's how it should be.

A minimum 50% policy makes some sense to me. Here's why:

 Say you have a multiple choice exam of 100 questions - you have an error bandwith around 10 points (sometimes less) to get an A (90-100). Very similar for B, C, and D.

However for failure, you have a 59 point pool to try and wade out of. What this means is that for any particular exam you fail, that failure is going to disproportionally affect other graded material*. The system in other words is weighted towards getting an F.

[OT: I typed all that up and THEN read the USA today article which makes the same exact point..bah]

The true solution of course is to do away with the numbers (which is what is provoking the shenanigans in the first place) and utilize letter grade averaging instead i.e. an F is an F regardless of how 'F' it is.

Memory is a strange bell, jubilee and knell.

In my opinion, there is another way to give students a chance to succeed, other than to award them a higher grade than they have actually earned.  They can take that class again, or if necessary, they could take an entire school year again.  That is the old-fashioned way of giving students another chance.

So, what if students do so poorly in the first half of the year that it becomes impossible for them to pass in the second half?  Let such students use the time to prepare themselves to do better, the next time they take that course.  They'll have twice as much time to study the material as the regular students have.  Alternatively, their excessively low test results in the first half of the year may mean that they really do not care if they pass or fail, and that they have no interest in the subject, and perhaps they are only in school to avoid being arrested for truancy.  In such cases, the free 50% grade is wasted upon them.  They will still fail.  

But then, why keep them in the class?  It's boring for them and probably disruptive for the other students.  The solution (which I have suggested in previous discussions) is to have a computer game room in the school, in which students who are not interested in studying can amuse themselves and perhaps improve their hand-eye coordination.  It will help keep them off the streets.

Surely the intent of this program could be better met by another marking approach?  

This scheme is wide open for abuse, and really disincentivizes showing up for the last quarter, as noted by a previous poster.  

If the goal is to allow students a chance to recover and learn the material and pass the course despite poor results in the first bit, why not use the marking strategy that got used at my junior high and high school:  your final mark is the higher of a weighted average of your results on schoolwork and tests throughout the year, or your score on the final.  

Even a fair number of my university courses worked like this.