The New Grading Standard

This article is part seven of a series on assessment. Click here to read the intro article, the second article, the third, the fourth, the fifth and the sixth.

I hope you and your teaching team have been able to utilize the posts from this grading blog series for productive discussion. But I am guessing that somewhere along the way, you probably ran into at least one (or seven) roadblocks regarding varying grading practices.

The past six articles in this series and all of that productive discussion and debate were meant to create the foundation for this final article. 

When we as educators understand the true purpose of a grade (clear communication about each student’s learning at that moment), AND when we unearth the slew of current grading practices that are inconsistent not only in communicating student learning, but with the practices of other teachers in our building, we recognize the urgency for grading reform.

According to educational researcher Robert Marzano, “traditional grading has been used for over 100 years with no meaningful research to support it” (2000). This reform requires a change in practice from traditional grading to standards-based grading (SBG).

Standards-based Grading Basics

The basic principles of SBG are listed below:

1. All assessments given connect to a specific standard or learning outcome, often using a proficiency scale.

2. All assessments provide meaningful feedback to students, teachers, and parents.

3. All assessments help teachers understand what instructional needs students need next.

4. Students are given multiple opportunities to demonstrate their proficiency level for each standard. 

5. The grade is based only on the most recent evidence of student learning; grades are not averaged.

6. All non-academic behaviors are removed from communicating student learning (homework completion, participation, extra credit, etc).

TeacherEase.com created the images below to visualize the difference between traditional and standards-based grading for report card and grading scale communication:

Lessons I’ve Learned

After 21 years of using traditional grading, I finally decided to pseudo-transition to using SBG for my American literature classes this past school year. I use the prefix “pseudo” because our online grading system did not support SBG, so I still needed to convert proficiencies scores to percentages.

I learned 3 lessons:

1. Collaboration is the key to success. Making this transition independently did not allow me to bounce ideas and questions off colleagues during the year. While I worked my way through it, collaboration would have made the process less intense. Rather than making an entire schoolwide shift, I would encourage schools to first choose a small team of teachers who are interested in implementing SBG at your school.  They can then become advocates of the process for other teachers.

2. Clarity and transparency improved. The student feedback on my end-of-course survey this year featured multiple comments connected to “having a better understanding about what I need to learn” and “the assessments gave me feedback about how I can improve my learning.” But even more importantly, I gained clarity about the most important skills my students should know and be able to do. It helped remove any curricular, instructional, or assessment fluff from the course. 

3. Students were motivated in their learning. Once the pressure of  letter grades and percentages were removed, I saw increased levels of student learning. Assessment discussion shifted from students arguing for arbitrary points to collaborative conversations with students about increasing their learning throughout their learning journey. Also, students were not satisfied with a “proficient” score, and often wanted to challenge themselves to reach the “advanced proficiency” level. This means that students were intrinsically motivated to perform at least one (sometimes multiple) level(s) above the standard!

Take Away the Matches

When consulting with school leaders, my wife often helps clients realize the best solution to a problem using this analogy: instead of putting out fires…take away the matches!

Regarding grading practices, schools can alleviate the perpetual fires of frustrations from students, teachers, administrators, and parents by taking away the traditional grading system matches and making SBG the new standard in schools. 

When implemented correctly, standards-based grading could be the key to solving your school’s grading frustrations and igniting (pun fully intended) higher levels of student learning.

Questions for Faculty Discussion

1. How do you currently see the limitations of traditional grading in your classroom or school?

2. Examine the SBG Report Card from TeacherEase.com. What clear communication does it provide regarding the student’s learning needs?

3. What concerns do you have about moving to a standards-based grading system? How might these be addressed?

4. How do you think removing non-academic behaviors from grades (e.g., homework completion, participation) will impact student motivation and behavior?

5. What is one small change you can make in your grading practices this summer to move towards SBG?

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