Carleton has adopted a mandatory Satisfactory/Credit/No Credit (S/Cr/NC) grading policy for Spring Term 2020 due to the disruptive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The new policy was announced to students, faculty and staff in an email from Dean of the College Beverly Nagel on April 3, the Friday before the term began.

Under the new policy, no letter grades will be awarded for any course taken during Spring term. Instead, all courses will be graded on a S/Cr/NC basis, with “S” corresponding to letter grades A through C-, “Cr” to letter grades D+ through D-, and “NC” to a failing grade. 

According to Carleton’s handbook, the S/Cr/NC option intends to “encourage exploration into unfamiliar, risky areas of the curriculum.” Many students also take classes S/Cr/NC to manage workload and stress levels. S/Cr/NC grades are not factored into a student’s GPA.

Students are typically allowed to take six credits on a S/Cr/NC basis in any given term, with a maximum of 30 S/Cr/NC credits permitted during a student’s time at Carleton. Under the new policy, a student’s Spring-term credits will not be deducted from their 30-credit limit. In addition, for this term only, classes taken on a S/Cr/NC basis can be counted towards a student’s major and minor. 

Carleton’s decision comes as colleges and universities across the country are adopting alternate grading policies after choosing to move classes online and send students home to minimize the spread of COVID-19. Carleton announced on March 12 that the first half of Spring Term would take place online, and on April 10 informed students that the entirety of the term would be held remotely.

Initial discussion: Student activism and the ECC 

The grading policy issue was discussed informally among faculty members as soon as other institutions announced new policies, but formal discussion did not begin until halfway through Carleton’s Spring break, according to Professor Dev Gupta, Chair of the Political Science Department and Co-Chair of the Education and Curriculum Committee (ECC).

The first public discussion took place on Friday, March 27—ten days before the beginning of Spring term—when department chairs, along with directors of academic programs such as FOCUS, convened for a previously scheduled meeting.

At the meeting, Gupta brought up the issue along with Dean of the College Beverly Nagel, who serves as the second co-chair of the ECC. 

“The administration was certainly cognizant of questions about grading policy,” Nagel wrote in an email interview with the Carletonian. “The Chairs and Directors meeting was the first opportunity that we had to discuss this issue with a broad faculty group.”

The Carleton Student Association (CSA) Senate began informal discussion of grading policy about a week earlier. CSA Senate, which typically meets only during the Carleton term, held two non-mandatory virtual meetings over Spring break, on March 21 and March 27. The meetings were convened by newly elected CSA President Andrew Farias ’21 and Vice President Brittany Dominguez ’21, who assumed their roles at the end of Winter Term.

Farias said he put grading policy on the agenda for the March 21 meeting after being contacted by a student, Win Wen Ooi ’22, who was advocating for Carleton to adopt a “Universal Pass or Universal A’s” grading system in light of the pandemic. Under these systems, students would receive either a Pass or an A in all classes, with no possibility for any student to fail a class. 

Ooi first heard about petitions for such policies from a friend at Yale University. As an international student, she said, she was drawn to the Universal Pass idea because of how the pandemic was disproportionately affecting students from abroad. Ooi was directed to the National Intercollegiate COVID-19 Coalition, a coalition of college students from across the country who were petitioning for Universal Pass policies, improved student worker rights, and other pandemic-related student issues.

The March 21 meeting was attended by a subset of CSA Senate members as well as Ooi. According to the minutes, it included discussion of the universal options along with other policies such as Mandatory S/Cr/NC—the choice later adopted by Carleton—and Optional S/Cr/NC, which would allow students to choose whether to take classes for S/Cr/NC or for letter grades.

A grading policy working group met virtually during the following week. The group included Farias and Dominguez along with Public Relations Officer Leander Cohen ’22, College Council Liaison Sid Hirshberg ’21, Class of 2021 Representative Cole DiIanni, Class of 2022 Representatives Molly Zuckerberg and Ozzy Cota, and Disability Services Liaison Maya Rogers ’22. Ooi and Madhav Mohan ’22, who are not members of CSA Senate, also joined the group.

The grading issue was brought to the attention of the wider student body on Monday, March 23, when Farias sent an all-student email with several updates from CSA, including information about the grading policy discussion. 

“We have been in discussion about advocating for a pass/fail or universal pass grading system during the Spring term to ensure that grading is as equitable as possible,” Farias wrote. “We do this with the understanding that many students live in difficult and varying circumstances at home and have been put under a significant amount of stress.” 

The email asked students to fill out an anonymous survey where they could provide feedback on the Universal Pass, Universal A’s, Mandatory Pass/Fail, and Optional Pass/Fail options. Also included was an FAQ sheet—adapted from a document used by students at Yale—that addressed questions and concerns about Universal Pass and Mandatory Pass/Fail.

The survey first asked students to indicate which of the policies they would support, with respondents being allowed to select multiple options. Students were then asked to list which option was their top choice.

The survey garnered 787 student responses—just under 40% of the student body—with the Universal A’s option being the most popular. About 61% of respondents said they would support that option, with 38% of respondents indicating that it was their top choice. Just over a quarter of students listed Optional Pass/Fail as their top choice, 21% listed Mandatory Pass/Fail, 12% listed Universal Pass, and 6% said that Carleton should keep its normal grading system.

Nearly half of the respondents indicated that they would not support Universal Pass or Mandatory Pass/Fail. By comparison, about 30% said they would not support Optional Pass/Fail. The remaining 70% who said they would support Optional Pass/Fail were divided between whether Pass/Fail or letter grades should be the default.

In the days following the March 21 meeting, the CSA working group emailed professors they knew personally, as well as members of the ECC Board, to get their opinions on different grading policies. The emails were open-ended and simply asked faculty to share their thoughts, Dominguez said. The group contacted 36 professors and heard back from many of them, according to Farias.

Many faculty members who responded expressed significant concerns about the feasibility of the Universal Pass and Universal A’s options, Dominguez said. This led many students on the working group to move towards advocating for Mandatory S/Cr/NC as a more attainable goal, she explained.

One professor even explained that he did not believe that Carleton could remain an accredited institution if it adopted a Universal Pass or Universal A’s system, according to DiIanni, who declined to share the professor’s name. The professor cited the accreditation criteria for the Higher Learning Commission—the body that accredits Carletonn—which state that institutions can only be accredited if “courses and programs are current and require levels of performance by students appropriate to the degree or certificate awarded.”

At CSA’s second spring-break meeting on March 28, the discussion honed in on several possible variations of a Mandatory S/Cr/NC policy, according to the minutes. Some attendees advocated for allowing students to petition to receive grades, or to opt out of a default S/Cr/NC policy.

At the meeting, Dominguez told attendees that she was in contact with Gupta, who had informed her of the discussion from the previous day’s Department Chairs and Programs Directors Meeting. Dominguez also reported that the administration hoped to make a policy decision within the following week, before classes began. There would be an emergency ECC meeting the next week to discuss the issue, she mentioned, but she did not have any details.

After the March 28 meeting, the working group was planning to bring a proposal for Mandatory S/Cr/NC—possibly including a petition process for extenuating circumstances—to the wider CSA Senate body, Dominguez said. The group never had a chance to make that proposal.

“Option A” vs. “Option B”: Divisive debate via Moodle forums

The following evening, just before 8 p.m. on Sunday, March 29, Farias and Dominguez received an email from Gupta asking them to publicize a student Moodle forum that the ECC would use to collect feedback on the grading issue. The forum would close the following day at 1 p.m., Gupta told them, so that the results could be discussed at an emergency ECC meeting that same afternoon.

The email, and the short timeframe for students to respond within, took Farias and Dominguez by surprise. “It was very unexpected,” Farias said.

“That didn’t give us a lot of time to think, or to bring it up to anyone,” said Dominguez. “We just had to get it out to students as fast as we possibly could, to make sure that students had as much time as possible.”

At 9:14 p.m. that evening, Farias sent an email to the student body, notifying students of the forum and asking them to weigh in by 1 p.m. the following day.

The college also opened a similar Moodle forum for faculty within the same time interval, Gupta said. Students and faculty could not view each others’ forums. 

The forums asked students and faculty to discuss two possible changes to the current grading policy. Under “Option A,” the college would adopt a more flexible S/Cr/NC policy. This could include allowing students to opt into S/Cr/NC for all classes without deducting from their 30-credit limit, counting S/Cr/NC classes towards majors and minors, and extending the deadline to opt into S/Cr/NC grading. Meanwhile, under “Option B,” all Spring Term classes would be offered solely on a S/Cr/NC basis.

Soon after the forums opened, Farias and Gupta received emails from students and faculty reporting that Moodle had crashed and they were unable to access the forums. This was likely due to the high traffic of people attempting to post, Farias said. The issue was resolved later that evening.

Farias and Dominguez said they disagreed with the ECC’s decision to ask CSA executives to announce the forum to the student body. In retrospect, Farias said, he wishes that he had replied requesting that the ECC send out the email instead.

“A more official response from the Dean of the College probably would have gone over better,” Farias said. “We as CSA didn’t have any input on doing this Moodle forum at all. It was just sent to us.”

According to Gupta, the ECC thought that Farias and Dominguez, as CSA executives, would be able to get the message to the student body more effectively. In a similar manner, the Faculty President announced the forum to the faculty, she explained.

“There wasn’t any particular intent to try to put them in the crosshairs of anything,” Gupta said. “If that is the impact then I think that’s really regrettable, and I’m sorry that the choice made that happen.”

Some of the discussion in the student forum was intense and divisive, with students split between Options A and B. While some of the debate was productive, some students who viewed the forum reported that it included personal attacks on fellow students.

Farias and Dominguez both expressed dismay with how the student forum played out. They argued that the ECC should have instead allowed students to provide feedback privately, such as through an online survey.

The choice of a public discussion forum “backfired quite a bit,” Farias said. “I think it was good to have some of those civil discussions, but I felt like they were few and far between.” 

“I was just so shocked with some of the responses I was seeing,” he continued. “I got the same commentary from so many other students. They were just like, ‘this isn’t working, all you’re seeing is arguing, and if anything it’s not bringing anyone together, it’s dividing us quite a bit.’” 

Dominguez, for her part, said that she was “completely heartbroken” by some of the discourse she saw.

In addition, Farias noted that some students might have felt obligated to share deeply personal information—about issues like their mental health or unstable living situations at home—to justify why they were advocating for a certain policy. He added that divisive discussion of the two options extended outside of the forum onto Carleton social media pages.

According to Gupta, the ECC did not deeply consider whether student feedback should be collected via a forum or a private survey. On the faculty side, a forum was the obvious choice, she explained, as such a discussion would normally take place during an in-person faculty meeting. A parallel decision, in essence, was made for students. 

Gupta said she was surprised by the divisiveness of the student forum. “There were divisions in the faculty discussion too, but it did not feel like the student discussion did,” she explained. 

She added that although tensions are understandable given the uncertain and stressful circumstances, “we would have hoped that the discussion would have been civil.”

A particular point of tension concerned students who posted in the forum anonymously. 

According to Farias, Gupta initially told him that the student forum would not permit anonymous posts. He and Dominguez were concerned that this would discourage some students from weighing in. They contacted Gupta before announcing the forum, requesting that all posts in the discussion be anonymized. The forum was eventually released with the option for students to post with their names or without. The faculty forum, meanwhile, did not permit anonymous posts.

Dominguez acknowledged the disadvantages of the anonymous option but defended the decision. “We knew what the bad part of anonymity is, because it gives a lot of people power when you’re anonymous,” she said. “But at the same time, we realized that some voices were going to be completely silenced if there wasn’t an anonymous option.”

“We wanted all voices to be heard, not just one particular subset of the argument,” Farias added.

The student forum garnered over 850 comments, with some students posting multiple times. Gupta and Nagel, as ECC co-chairs, could view the forum, along with Faculty President George Shuffelton and faculty members of the ECC. 

Gupta read all the posts and wrote a three-page summary of student positions in time for the afternoon ECC meeting on Monday, March 30. She verified the accuracy of the summary with student members of the ECC, including Dominguez, who attended the meeting in her Winter Term capacity as CSA’s ECC Liaison. The summary was later provided to all members of the faculty.

“Students seem almost evenly split down the middle between optional S/CR/NC and mandatory S/CR/NC,” Gupta wrote in the summary, noting that an exact count was impossible due to the anonymous option. 

The summary states that students supporting Mandatory S/Cr/NC focused on equity arguments. They were “worried that students’ ability to choose a grade vs. S/Cr/Nc was not equal across the student body,” given that some students would be disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

According to the summary, students supported Optional S/Cr/NC for a wider variety of reasons, including concerns about GPA, graduate and professional school applications, overcoming poor performance from past terms, keeping up motivation to study, and maintaining grade-based scholarships. Many Optional S/Cr/NC supporters “strongly dislike the idea of having choice taken away from them,” Gupta wrote.

Alternative Options: Universal Pass and Universal A’s

While the initial CSA survey included a range of grading systems for students to comment on, the Moodle student forum asked students to comment on only two options, Mandatory S/Cr/NC and Optional S/Cr/NC. Notably absent were the Universal Pass and Universal A’s options. Some CSA working group members and other students had advocated for these options, saying that students should not have to face the prospect of failing classes due to a pandemic.

Gupta said that these options were unpopular among the faculty and were not considered further. “Universal A and a Universal Pass would not have gotten past the faculty,” she said. “And if it had gotten past the faculty, it would not have gotten past the Board of Trustees.” 

“Ultimately we want people to learn things, and certifying in advance that they’ve learned things without any evidence of that, would be a hard thing to swallow for a lot of faculty,” she explained.

Nagel expressed further concern with the two options. “These are not grading policies,” she said. “No evaluation of student work or even verification of completion of a course is involved in these options.”

Ooi said she was glad that Mandatory S/Cr/NC was selected over Optional S/Cr/NC, but she believes that Universal Pass would have been the best choice. Students should not have to risk failing a class due to circumstances that are not their fault, she argued. 

“One thing that I personally would be thinking a lot about is, moving forward, to what extent should all kinds of grading take into consideration contextual factors that would impact the student’s performance, that can’t really be measured on such a strict scale,” Ooi explained.

According to the Carletonian’s research, no American college or university has adopted a Universal Pass or Universal A’s system this spring. Pomona College, however, voted on April 17 to adopt a similar Pass/No Record/Incomplete policy, under which an incomplete grade would not appear on a student’s transcript. There are ongoing student petitions at many institutions advocating for Universal Pass and Universal A’s policies.

According to Gupta, there was also some discussion of whether Carleton should use the S/Cr/NC system or a more traditional Pass/Fail system for Spring term. The administration decided to continue with S/Cr/NC for simplicity, as it is well-understood and recognized by faculty and students.

Education and Curriculum Committee deliberation

The emergency ECC meeting was held on the afternoon of Monday, March 30. 

According to Gupta, it was necessary to meet on Monday to have a decision by the end of the week. On academic policy issues such as this one, the ECC sends recommendations to the faculty, and the issue is then decided by majority faculty vote with approval from the Board of Trustees. Under normal circumstances, the faculty would meet twice before a decision was made, once to discuss and once to vote. 

With in-person meetings impossible, the ECC and Faculty President George Shuffelton opted to give faculty 24 hours for virtual discussions after receiving recommendations from the ECC, followed by 24 hours of online voting.

According to Nagel, the ECC discussed both the Mandatory and Optional S/Cr/NC systems in-depth, including issues like “student access and equity, flexibility and choice, concerns about how graduate and professional schools would evaluate mandatory or student-elected S/Cr/NC grades in admissions, and how lack of the opportunity to improve GPA might affect students in applications for fellowships, internships, or post-Carleton admissions.”

The ECC consulted with several different offices and staff members at Carleton to gather more information about the policies’ potential effects, as well as looking at policies adopted by peer institutions and graduate schools. According to Gupta, the committee’s research quelled many concerns about the potential negative impacts of the Mandatory S/Cr/NC option. 

Concerns about the implications of S/Cr/NC for graduate and professional school admissions were discussed at length. According to Gupta, the ECC noted that some institutions, including Harvard Medical School, had announced that they would be understanding of pass/fail grades received due to a schoolwide mandate, but would look less favorably on a student who personally chose to opt into pass/fail.

Under an Optional S/Cr/NC policy, this would mean that students who opted into S/Cr/NC could be penalized for that decision in graduate admissions. That “leaves certain people vulnerable in a way that didn’t feel quite right to a lot of faculty,” Gupta said.

DiIanni, a CSA working group member who had originally been skeptical of Mandatory S/Cr/NC, emphasized that this was the point that ultimately convinced him to support it. He wishes that more students had known about this aspect, he said.

Among graduate school concerns mentioned in the student forum, medical school admissions was brought up most frequently by far, Gupta explained. Because of this, the ECC consulted with Pam Middleton, Carleton’s pre-medical advisor, as well as with departments that send many students on to medical school. 

Middleton told the ECC that medical schools would be understanding of this term’s extenuating circumstances. She said that she could use the committee letter—an introductory piece that she composes for each medical school applicant to frame their application—to speak to the situation. It will be important that student transcripts indicate that S/Cr/NC grades were mandatory, she added.

“The majority of medical schools understand that this is a trying time for everybody and will accept whatever decision students and faculty come to,” Middleton explained. She argued that the effects of the decision will be minimal. 

“The system that Carleton has adopted will be fine,” Middleton said. “Students should not worry about the impact that pass/fail grading this term will have on their medical school prospects.”

The ECC also considered other reasons why a student might need a GPA for Spring Term. According to Gupta, the committee researched whether a GPA would be required for students to retain DACA status, a concern mentioned in the student forum. They found that Carleton simply needs to show that DACA students are enrolled and in good standing, something that is still possible under a pass/fail system. 

Similarly, Gupta said, the ECC reached out to the Office of Intercultural and International Life and confirmed that the lack of a Spring-term GPA would not prevent international students from demonstrating visa eligibility.

The committee also consulted with the Student Financial Services Office about GPA-based scholarships, she added. The office informed them that many national scholarships have already indicated flexibility for this term. For more local scholarships, Financial Services said it would contact the organizations to advocate on a student’s behalf if necessary, and would work with the student to cover the financial gap if a scholarship was lost due to a Mandatory S/Cr/NC policy.

The possibility of allowing students with extenuating circumstances to petition for grades within the Mandatory S/Cr/NC system was discussed but vetoed during the meeting. According to Dominguez, the issue was brought up by students in the meeting. The proposal was met with faculty concerns that it would be difficult to teach a class on a S/Cr/NC basis while also keeping track of grades for a small minority of students. 

Gupta pointed out that many faculty members would likely design different types of assignments and exams under a S/Cr/NC system—which is also one reason the college wanted to announce a decision on grading policy before the term began.

Equity, grad school, and “process”: Final Decisions

Following the ECC meeting, faculty were provided with the committee’s recommendations and given a 24-hour window for discussion. A virtual faculty meeting was convened during this period. The discussion was followed by 24 hours of online voting before the results of the vote were presented to the Board of Trustees. 

According to Gupta, the faculty first had to vote on whether Carleton’s grading policy should be changed at all. An overwhelming majority voted in favor of a change, she said.

The faculty then continued on to vote between the two proposed changes. According to Nagel, about 60% of faculty voted for Mandatory S/Cr/NC and 40% for Optional S/Cr/NC.

Shuffelton provided the Carletonian with a summary of the faculty decision, which he had originally sent to an interested student who inquired after the decision was announced.

Shuffelton noted that the uncertainty of the COVID-19 situation was a major factor influencing faculty members’ thoughts. “There’s really no way for us to be sure how Spring Term will unfold, or what kind of situation we’re going to be in in 2 weeks, or a month, or 8 weeks from now,” he wrote. “Given that extreme uncertainty, faculty wanted to reduce the academic risks for students to the extent possible.” 

He also echoed concerns about equity. “Normally, in our residential setting here on campus, we are able to ensure the teaching and learning environment is as fair as possible for everyone. That is no longer the case,” he wrote. 

Shuffelton noted that some students now lack a quiet study spot, or are sharing a small living space with many family members. “Some students will have quiet rooms, computers all to themselves, and the time and space needed for concentration. But not everyone,” he said.

He added that the faculty believe that graduate and professional schools will recognize the special circumstances of this term and will not punish students for taking classes on a S/Cr/NC basis, especially since Carleton transcripts will include a note explaining that S/Cr/NC was mandatory.

In addition, he continued, from the faculty perspective, “classes this term won’t really be comparable to previous or future versions of the same course. So a grade in the course this term wouldn’t really be the same as a grade in any other term.”

“Faculty know that many students may be upset by this decision, and we care deeply about making this term work for everyone,” he added. “We’re committed to addressing—as best we can—the anxiety students may feel about the term ahead, and how it might affect their future plans.”

The results of the faculty vote were presented to the Board of Trustees, which has ultimate responsibility for college operations, according to Nagel. The Academic Affairs Committee of the Board discussed the faculty vote on Thursday, April 2, and accepted the results.

Wally Weitz, chair of the Board of Trustees, told the Carletonian, “These are complicated times, and this was a tough call, but I can assure you that ‘process’ is very important to the Board, the administration, the faculty, and the broader Carleton community, and that this decision was not taken lightly.”

On the morning of Friday, April 3, three days before the beginning of the term, Nagel announced the Mandatory S/Cr/NC policy to faculty, staff and students via email.

Going forward, a note about the policy will appear on student transcripts for Spring Term. The language for this note has not yet been decided, according to Registrar Emy Farley.

The adoption of Mandatory S/Cr/NC has not had any significant effect on early graduation statistics, Farley said. Only five seniors petitioned to graduate early after the announcement of the policy, she explained, and all of these students had been in discussions about accelerated graduation before the announcement was made.

According to Gupta’s summary of the student forum, some students suggested that they might take Spring Term off if they could not receive letter grades. These students “didn’t see the point of taking classes this coming term if they could only get S/CR/NC grades,” Gupta wrote. The announcement of the Mandatory S/Cr/NC policy on the Friday before the term began would likely have given such students enough time to request a leave of absence. 

According to Carleton’s Campus Handbook, leave of absence requests for personal, non-medical reasons must be submitted to the Dean of Students Office before the term begins. If the request is submitted in time, the student is eligible for a full tuition refund, according to the Handbook.

Among the students in the forum who said they might take Spring Term off if Mandatory S/Cr/NC was implemented, a few expressed that with the amount of tuition they pay, they deserve the opportunity to receive letter grades, Gupta wrote in her summary. “One student hinted that parents would be unhappy and lawsuits could happen,” the summary continued.

Dean of Students Carolyn Livingston did not respond to inquiries about what feedback her office has received from students and parents on the policy, or to requests for information about students taking a leave of absence due to Mandatory S/Cr/NC.

Policies at peer schools: Institutional comparison

The Carletonian collected data on alternate grading policies fellow colleges and universities have adopted this spring. We first looked at the top 100 institutions in the Forbes 2019 undergraduate rankings, in which Carleton is ranked at #52. In addition, we considered a set of 25 liberal arts colleges—many also included in the top 100 from Forbes—which Carleton considers to be peer institutions for comparative purposes, according to the Institutional Research and Assessment website.

The data presented are subject to change, especially as many institutions face ongoing student petitions advocating for Universal Pass or Mandatory Pass/Fail policies.

Most institutions we looked at have chosen to adopt non-universal pass/fail policies, many of which are similar to the Optional S/Cr/NC policy discussed at Carleton. Such policies are being implemented at 74 of the Forbes top 100 institutions, and 18 of the 25 peer liberal arts colleges. 

Variants of these policies include allowing students to opt into pass/fail, allowing them to opt into letter grades, and permitting them to choose between the two once they receive their grades. A few schools are allowing professors to choose whether to grade their classes on a pass/fail basis.

Meanwhile, universal pass/fail policies similar to Carleton’s Mandatory S/Cr/NC system have been adopted at 16 of the Forbes top 100 institutions, and by a quarter of colleges in the peer institution group. In general, choice of this policy appears to be skewed towards the most elite institutions, with seven of the top 15 Forbes institutions opting for a universal pass/fail policy.

In contrast, seven institutions in the top 100—most notably, members of the University System of Georgia as well as the United States military academies—have chosen not to expand or alter their pass/fail policies in any way.

According to Gupta, information from peer institutions was one factor that the ECC considered in its decision. The Registrar provided them with data about forty or fifty schools, she said, including both public and private institutions. The document also featured information on how the schools would indicate the special circumstances on students’ transcripts.

According to Shuffelton, the fact that other highly competitive schools—including Columbia, MIT, Smith and Wellesley—have adopted policies similar to Mandatory S/Cr/NC was an important factor in the faculty decision.

Carleton, as a trimester school, faced a different situation compared to its semester-system peers, who were making decisions to change grading policy mid-semester. The trimester system, Nagel noted, means that Carleton faculty can design an entire course for S/Cr/NC grading under the Mandatory S/Cr/NC policy. The Carletonian’s data, however, does not indicate that schools on trimester or quarter systems have disproportionately adopted universal pass/fail grading.