[ryandrake]

This seems like a far-fetched justification. What's more likely?

1. The teacher understands (and is expecting 9 year olds to learn) the pedantic difference between equivalence and equality. Keep in mind, this being elementary school, the teacher likely is a generalist and also teaches reading, science, and social studies.

OR

2. The teacher has a very rigid grading guide that specifies how much credit is given for any given answer/technique, and is simply blowing through 50+ tests at 1AM, applying this standard grading. Ironically, in this scenario, the teacher is just as pointlessly constrained to "following the rules" as the students. He/she may even agree that it's ridiculous to deduct a point.

[lucio]

If "He/she may even agree that it's ridiculous to deduct a point", then don't deduct it.

[ryandrake]

And get in trouble for not applying the government-mandated grading guide fairly to all students?