[Bjartr]

The strawman here is the ticket & fine argument. Great that you can make an argument for how we should handle them, but it's not a productive argument because the goals of tickets & fines and grades are too different. Tickets & fines have (usually and for the most part, I don't doubt you could find some kind of counterexample) one goal, disincentivize the behavior that was ticketed. Grades serve multiple goals (and not everyone will even agree on the relative priority, and the two I mention are not comprehensive): First to measure attained level of skill, and second to incentiveize improving those skills over time. Both of these serve the higher level goal of actually educating students in a manner that results in them being productive members of society. If we acurately measure that half of all students are not adequately prepared we have failed them. So rather than throw around talk of zero tolerance policies, let's talk about how we might change things so that students will be better prepared for contributing to society, which is not well served by instilling in students a feeling of futility.

[rtpg]

I would say that even in the case of tickets, you can instill futility with the fines.

Many Americans spend basically their entire adult lives with outstanding fines against them, if only because it's not possible for them to ever pay the cumulative fines + subsequent punishments. Throw on issues like bail and you've built a system someone can fall into and never get out of