Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US campus) a class recitation that is judged to be a total failure.

1827–8		Harvard Register in Hall (1856) 378: One must stand up in the singleness of his ignorance to understand all the mysterious feelings connected with a dead.
1835		Class Poem at Harvard College 10: And fearful of tomorrow’s screw or dead, / Take the book and candle underneath his bed.
1856		B.H. Hall College Words (rev. edn) 148: dead. A complete failure; a declaration that one is not prepared to recite.