Some students accumulated so many points early on that by the end of the term they knew they didn’t need to do more work and could still get an A. Others — often those who had to work or care for family members after school — would fail to turn in their homework and fall so far behind that they would just stop trying.
This paragraph confused me. The article conflates this "points based" system that is based on the volume of work, with the (to me) traditional grades given on tests, that are simply averaged at the end of a school year. Are such points systems common in the US? I have never encountered even one in my schooling in Europe.
Students are shown that grading is merely a game, so it gets played as a game.
Such discussions as presented here of grading "issues" without deeper pedagogical considerations also regard grading as merely a game, making such discussion pointless to the concern of education.