The State Board of Education last week updated its policy so that students can no longer pass or fail core courses.

The new state policy explicitly states that “passing” grades cannot be assigned to non-elective courses required for graduation, such as math and English. Some school districts granted passes for non-elective courses as part of credit recovery programs, when a student attempted to make up a course he or she had failed.

Sneha Shah Coltrane, director of advanced learning and gifted education for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, told the board in October that the current policy technically allows a student to graduate with only “pass” grades in core courses.

She said it was unclear whether such an incident had actually occurred, but it was important to change the policy to gain clarity.

“We want to make sure that if we find out something about when a student could potentially graduate with a 1.6 (GPA), we want to help our districts understand that, in particular, the graduation requirements of a non-elective degree cannot be accepted,” Shah Coltrane said.

She emphasized that credit recovery programs should only be used to help students review parts of a course syllabus, not the entire course. The board passed it without any further discussion. The new policy will go into effect next school year.