After schools closed due to the coronavirus, the Philadelphia School District began graded digital instruction on May 4. Although students’ final grades for the year will be an average of their pre-pandemic performance, their work starting from May 4 can raise their grades if they do well—while their lack of participation can lower them. The district says it is trying to factor in students’ individual circumstances at home. While some believe grading is necessary to keep students on track, others argue it is punishing during a crisis.

Teachers need a full baseline to work with students next year.

Most of us will spend at least a dozen years in school starting at age 5. For an increasing share of young adults, the education experience lasts 16 years or more, as the percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds enrolling in college has risen from 35% to 41% since 2000.

Pandemics, mercifully, do not last as long as our school-age years.

Each school year builds on the prior one, so officials must prevent the 2019-20 school year from becoming a lost academic experience for Philadelphia students. Abandoning student grades during the pandemic would put everyone—policymakers, taxpayers, parents, teachers, and students—at a disadvantage next fall.

Thousands of students will return to physical, hybrid, or virtual city classrooms in August. Without some measure of how children finished the year, teachers will not be able to match instruction to each child’s needs.

Philadelphia already put some teachers and families at a disadvantage early on in the pandemic when district officials told teachers to stop offering virtual instruction to any students over equity concerns. District Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. told local media, “If that’s not available to all children, we cannot make that available to some.”

Odd that Hite would make this judgment now. According to a U.S. Department of Education report, nearly 37% of Philadelphia students were “chronically absent” for the 2015-16 school year, missing at least three weeks annually. In a class of 17 students, Philadelphia’s student-teacher ratio, 37% is six children. If equity were more important than success, Philadelphia schools should have stopped teaching years ago.

In Tests, Testing, and Genuine School Reform, Hoover Institute fellow Herbert J. Walberg says research demonstrates that setting clear goals and measuring progress “substantially increase student motivation and performance in learning, sports, and work settings”—motivation that would be valuable to students at present.

This does not mean schools should issue a bunch of tests. Rather, officials should think bigger than grading on a curve. The pandemic offers an opportunity to make meaningful changes to help current and future generations of students.

State lawmakers should grade students consistently, rewarding those who were motivated to show up for online work. For students who did not have internet access or a computer, teachers should make thorough notes about the material that students will need to catch up on over the summer or next year. Educators should be allowed to follow up with these students in the coming months to complete their coursework.

There is still room for policymakers to innovate: With state testing canceled, lawmakers should make comparisons between schools by allowing educators to choose tests that best fit their instructional practices. Standardized tests, such as the Stanford Achievement Test and the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, along with others allowing comparisons between schools, such as the Measures of Academic Progress, could be used to gauge student progress now and help inform teachers next year.

These results will also give policymakers insight into the schools that performed well during trying circumstances, which cannot help but inform future policies. Officials have a unique opportunity to make instruction and measurement more student-centered, making tests more useful to teachers and students.

Truancy data show that Philadelphia already has equity problems. With school paused early on in the pandemic, students have already lost instruction. Easy solutions are hard to come by now. But we should give every child a quality opportunity. Students who do not want to lose a semester of learning shouldn’t have it taken from them.