Pass/fail grades will be barred for some NC high school courses. See what’s new.
Wake County high school students soon won’t be able to graduate with pass/fail grades on required classes.
Starting this fall, North Carolina high schools will be barred from awarding pass/fail grades in core classes required for graduation such as English and math. The change will impact students across the state, including in Wake County, who had been using credit recovery programs to get pass/fail grades in courses they previously failed.
“Beginning with the 2025-26 school year, any non-elective graduation requirements will require a numerical grade for credit recovery,” Brian Johnson, Wake County’s senior director for secondary regional achievement and school support, told school board members. “Previously we have done pass/fail for that.”
The Wake County school board’s policy approved this week changes to its student promotion policy to reflect the state changes. The school board plans to approve the policy updates in June.
The policy change will not impact high school students who are taking credit recovery during summer school this year. They will still get pass/fail grades for any core courses they’re taking.
Thousands of students use credit recovery
Thousands of North Carolina high school students annually take online credit recovery courses, which allow them to retake parts of classes they failed to earn credits needed for graduation. In Wake County alone, more than 2,800 students used credit recovery during the fall semester.
Historically, the credit recovery course shows up as a pass/fail grade on a student’s transcript. The previous failing grade also remains on the transcript.
Credit recovery has helped raise high school graduation rates. But the program has also raised concerns about whether the results are too good to be true.
In November, the State Board of Education changed the high school transcript policy to say pass/fail grades can only be used in elective courses. The change came after Sneha Shah Coltrane, the state Department of Public Instruction’s director of advanced learning and gifted education, told the board that a student could graduate with only pass/fail courses.
Shah Coltrane said a student using credit recovery could graduate with a 1.6 grade point average, which is equivalent to a C- or D+ grade.
“The point of a credit recovery class is to have a portion of the class redone, not the whole class,” Shah Coltrane said at the October state board meeting.
Developing formula for credit recovery grades
School districts across the state have been revising their policies to comply with the state change.
The original failing grade will no longer be listed on the transcript. Instead, schools have to come up with a new course grade that includes both the original grade and the credit recovery grade.
Johnson, the Wake administrator, said the state is leaving the formula to schools to decide. Administrators will present the school board with options for different grading formulas
Wake school board member Sam Hershey urged staff to come up with a formula that limits the impact of the original grade.
“I don’t want to punish a kid who’s doing all this additional work and then they do a great job on the recovery and then they get dinged and it’s significantly pulled down because of how they did initially,” Hershey said.
This story was originally published May 30, 2025 at 6:45 AM.
