Deven Tran was absent for a day of school last year and missed a critical worksheet. His grade dropped from a B- to a flat C, almost a whole letter grade just because he was missed the assignment. This is a common occurrence with the traditional 100-point grading system.

But now things might change.

Tanked grades caused by one assignment are a thing of the past, thanks to the four-point grading system. With it, everything is spaced evenly and one missed or bad assignment won’t ruin an overall grade.

With the four-point grading system, all assignments receive 4 for As, 3 for Bs, 2 for Cs, and so on, so all grades are evenly distributed.

With this system, a ‘0’ score won’t kill a student’s ability to recover, and one bad assignment won’t ruin an otherwise good student’s grade, like Tran’s.

“Students shouldn’t be afraid of it; it’s made to help them,’’ said Kelly Baquero, Social Studies department chairperson. With the four-point grading system, it can’t hurt grades, but mostly will instead give students an advantage.

Most teachers choose not use it at this point because they are uncomfortable with it. Brian VanVelzer, English department chair, said that if more teachers used the it, he would be more likely to use it.

There are minimal problems with the grading system. However,”Changing Power School from the 100 point grading system to the 4 point grading system may be the only problem,” said Dr. John Dixon.

Since then, the social studies department has adopted the four-point grading system and there have been fewer Fs than there were with the 100 point grading system.

“I wish that my teacher would have used the four- point grading system,” Tran said.