Extra credit is extra work a teacher can give you to add to your grade to help you a bit or let you make up for missing assignments. The thing about it, though, is that most teachers don’t even offer it, or when they do it’s barely worth anything. The idea of extra credit is amazing, it just isn’t used as well as it can be.

Students, believe it or not, are stressed, and can have a lot of stuff to do in just two days. That means they have to prioritize the more important core classes, as well as honors and AP, over their electives, which can make their grade go down in those neglected classes. These lower grades make it a lot harder to do extracurricular activities, and make you look worse for future colleges or jobs.

Extra credit should be worth about twice or even triple to what it already is so that more students can have faith in the chance of raising their grade without fail. With extra credit, students that are failing classes could be able to raise the grade to a passing average.

Some teachers think it is the student’s fault, and therefore they shouldn’t be able to make up the grade if they didn’t try in the first place. But aren’t teachers supposed to help students succeed no matter what, and not be biased towards a student’s grade? The extra credit may be a little too forgiving for some careless students doing the bare minimum, so the maybe the teachers can help them get the information they “need” from the curriculum.
Extra credit can help students get back on track for their classes, allowing them to work on actual classwork and get their grade to where they’d want it normally.