Many students this year have been complaining about teachers grading based on a students' attendance of the class. The main argument is the assumption that there is a law against attendance-based grading policies. According to the Washington State Board of Education's website, there is no such law.

"Teachers should be allowed to grade based on attendance. Any reasonable teacher will make exceptions for outstanding circumstances (family death, extreme illness, etc.) but if you don't want to wake up for class every day, the solution is simple: "take an online class," says Cassie Kelsey, an EVCC student from Marysville. Teachers become teachers because they want to teach! If, as students, we have caused them to believe that it will take class points for us to come to class and be taught, then there is something wrong with us." Not very many students share her opinion though. Kari Forsberg, a sophomore at EvCC, said, "Students shouldn't be graded based on attendance because they are paying for their classes. If they fail the class because they don't get the knowledge, then that is their problem, but the teacher should not base their grade on if they decide to wake up for class."

According to the Everett Community College Student Handbook for 2008-2009, "(5) Students. are expected to attend such classes per the class instructor's attendance expectations as stated in the syllabus for the course." By this rule, as long as teachers inform students that they will be grading based on attendance in their syllabus, then they have the right to do so. Many teachers have begun to grade based on attendance but instead of having point values based on days attended, they give extra credit points for missing fewer than a specified amount of days.

At the beginning of each quarter, most teachers lay down ground rules for the students through their syllabus, usually mentioning something about their own attendance policy for the class. Many teachers are more than willing to make exceptions for absences as long as there is a legitimate reason to accompany the absence. Most of them will also allow you to take tests early or a day late if you tell them that you are going to miss a class in advance. In many classes, the lowest test scores are dropped to accommodate missed tests. Teachers are willing to accommodate to legitimate needs of their students as long as they are given advanced notice.

Of 40 Everett Community College students polled, 23 said that they had a teacher who had attendance as part of the base grade and of the 17 who didn't, nine had a teacher who added extra credit points on at the end of the quarter for good attendance. Also, out of the 40, 21 said that they didn't agree with a teacher grading on attendance and only four said that they thought that teachers should grade on attendance. The other 15 did not have an opinion either way.

Many students believe that the teachers should allow them to miss class whenever they want to without consequence outside of missing a lecture day. They would argue that if missing class hurts their grade, it would show up in test scores and homework. The professor should not ruin their grade just because they don't need to come to class. However, since there is no law concerning attendance-based grading in colleges either way, the argument will persist from both sides of the fence.