High school students in Grand Rapids, Michigan will soon have a new grade category on their report cards. Beginning this trimester, the school district is adding “H” to the traditional “A,” “B,” “C,” and “D.” If you’re thinking “F” is missing from this list, well, you’re right. But that’s only because it’s also missing from the report cards.

Yes, in a purported effort to boost student achievement and lower dropout rates, school officials have decided to forego failing marks in favor of less dispiriting “helds.”

As the Grand Rapids Press explains:

Students will have the option of repeating the course, taking it as an online class on Saturdays or evenings and working with tutors.

Students who have an “incomplete” grade can turn in missing assignments.

The work has to be made up by the end of the new trimester. Students also can decide to accept the failing grade.

According to Superintendent Bernard Taylor, the decision comes as part of the district’s “Success Only Option,” which embraces the warm and fuzzy philosophy of giving students not only several ways but also several chances to demonstrate their knowledge of class materials. Observing that individuals get three tries to pass a driver’s license exam and that lawyers in some states can take the bar exam multiple times on the road to passing it, Taylor notes, “The only time we insist on failure if you don’t get it the first time is with children in high school…. Our children are our precious gifts and, if sometimes they need a little longer for their light to shine, let’s let them do it.”

Touching philosophy – but utterly flawed.

High school children are hardly alone in their exposure to failure. Actors don’t enjoy multiple auditions until they land the part. Athletes can’t replay the game until they win. Public relations professionals don’t have the luxury of pitching – and re-pitching – their proposals to clients until they say yes.

Yet, far from being harmful to achievement, failure – and even the knowledge that failure is an option – often is the very thing that spurs individuals to succeed. If there is no chance of failure, why put forth the effort to achieve?

At least one parent agrees, and Diana Brazier-Thomas told Michigan’s WWMT News Channel 3 she is “all for failing.” She believes if her 16-year old daughter doesn’t do the work, an “F” is not only warranted but also expected. “I mean if that’s what it takes,” Brazier-Thomas says. “That is how it is, you know when you go in at the beginning what the expectations are…. When they get to the point where they don’t fail them, what’s the point of the classroom?”

Leaders in the teachers union also concur, noting what should be obvious to all: the school district’s decision undercuts teachers’ ability to motivate students.

Indeed, teachers are well justified in their frustration as, apparently, this gradation towards de-grading is not new in the district. According to the Press, “Late in the spring semester, administrators offered students a chance to improve scores by handing in missing work. Then, in the last days of the school year, teachers were prohibited from docking points for excessive absences or poor behavior.”

Unfortunately, the district’s actions over this past year are just the latest illustration of an increasingly popular educational philosophy that cares not for student achievement but for student feelings. And regardless of the long-term educational and professional harm that invariably results from the obliteration of objective educational standards – harm that, incidentally, has national implications as America seeks to compete in an increasingly global economy – advocates of this philosophy are determined to spare the child in the short run even if it means destroying him in the long run.

The true limitation on student achievement is not standards but rather the attitude that students are not capable of meeting them.

The Grand Rapids school district might argue it is acting in students’ best interests, but in reality, by depriving students of failure, the district is actually robbing them of success.