86: Standards Based Grading

Chapter 8 in Berger, Ron, Leah Rugen, and Libby Woodfin.  Leaders of Their Own Learning: Transforming School through Student-engaged Assessment. Print.

• Tie grades to specific understandings and learning
• Communicate progress to students & their families about progress towards concrete goals (transparency)
• Measures mastery at closure of grading period – not on average over the period
• Make connection between work habits and skills more clear

• Grades describe student’s progress and current level of achievement.  This involves:
  • considering trends in student work – especially most recent ones because these reflect more time to develop mastery
  • multiple opportunities for students to show mastery
• Habits of scholarship are reported separately from content mastery grades.  This involves:
  • keeping separate grades  for assessments of character learning targets (in New Tech schools – this may be covered by showing the learning outcome grades separate from the content grades)
  • scaffolding and assess character learning targets, just as one does for academic learning targets
• Grades communicate (not motivate or punish).  This involves:
  • knowing that low grades are not a motivation for better habits
  • early communication of grading criteria
• Student engagement is the key to success.  This involves:
  • teaching students how to effectively self assess their knowledge and use it to plan next steps
  • knowing that effective self assessment leads to more feelings of self-efficacy
  • believing that all students can succeed with the right supports
  • comparing work to standards not to other students’ work
• Communicating clearly about achievement.  This involves:
  • realistic accounting for early mistakes
  • opportunities to learn and improve
• Engaging students.  This involves:
  • students playing an active role in understanding and assessing learning targets
• Holding students accountable.  This involves:
  • holding students accountable to academic AND character learning targets
  • having frequent conversations about what that accountability means and using those conversations to guide learning

• developing and using learning targets to guide curriculum, instruction and assessment
  • building supporting learning targets that build towards long term learning targets
• defining clear character learning targets based on school-wide behavior expectations
• committing to student-engaged assessment practices

• formulating and communicating school-wide grading guidelines to ensure school-wide consistent grading. These include expectations for …
  • building body of evidence for mastery
  • using formative and summative assessments
  • fine tuning instruction in response to assessments
• vertically aligning curriculum that prioritizing essential standards and shows a clear progression from grade level to grade level
• developing consistent criteria for meeting or exceeding proficiency on learning targets
• professional development on good practices relating to writing, scaffolding and assessing learning targets

• 1 = Does not meet standards.  Does not demonstrate substantive progress towards learning target over the course of several assessments.
• 2  = Approaches the standards.  Substantive progress towards learning target, but more time needed for mastery
• 3 = Meets the standards.  Demonstrates competency in learning target.
• 4 = Exceeds standards.  Demonstrates deeper level of understanding / skill than learning target required.

• Break long-term learning targets into several supporting learning targets that scaffold up to long term targets
• Create assessments built on supporting learning targets
• Assess long term target over the course of several assessments tied to relating supporting learning targets
• Require students to demonstrate long term target RELIABLY not PERFECTLY
• Value and reward long term progression towards mastery of long term learning targets over early demonstrations of mastery that can not be reproduced reliably later
• Base mastery of long term learning targets on multiple summative assessments

• Base passing grade on average grade over all learning targets
• Passing course can only occur if student passes ALL learning targets.  Scores 3 or above (see above) on all learning targets.  (Casco Bay HS approach)

• Consistent school-wides standards for assessing and reporting grades on character learning targets
  • Interesting features of Casco Bay example:
    • Uses 1-4 grading scale on character learning targets (similar to academic learning targets)
    • HOW honor roll for students who earn 3 or above on all character learning targets
    • HOW scores of 3 or above on all character learning targets can NOT fail.  Instead get an incomplete and extra support and time (2 wks) to meet academic learning target criteria
• Structures for supporting students who don’t meet character learning targets.  This can include:
  • Team teacher meetings that brainstorm how to provide support to students who are struggling to meet targets
  • Regular student opportunities for self assessment on character learning targets
  • More formal individualized intervention programs for students who are still failing to meet standards by the end of the grading period

• Regular formative assessments
• Descriptive feedback that supports multiple revisions of work
• Formal presentations of learning
• Passage presentations – students present their progress to an audience
• Assessments tied to meaningful work
• Peer and self assessments made by comparing work to established criteria tied to learning targets

• Learning targets are high quality:
  • aligned to standards
  • includes ONLY ONE clear, aligned verb
  • divided into long term and supporting standards
  • student friendly language
  • I can … format
  • collection includes variety: reasoning, knowledge & skills targets
  • knowledge and skills targets build up to reasoning targets
  • collection includes prioritized collection of content, literacy, numeracy & character learning target
• Summative Assessments:
  • multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery of long-term learning targets
  • clear assessment tools used to measure mastery
  • learning targets and assessment tools align
  • collection is varied in format and type
  • motivate students
  • includes smaller formative assessments
  • aligned to standards
• Formative Assessments:
  • formative assessments for each supportive learning target
  • prepare students for summative assessments
  • accommodates multiple learning styles
  • motivate students
  • clearly communicate learning target and means to achieve them
  • involve self & peer assessment and reflections

• Intensives
  • 4-8 day remediation courses
  • intense focused study on learning targets not met
  • students who don’t need these have menu of electives to choose from
  • earns back lost credit
  • involves 1-on-1 conferences, small group instructions, lots of formative feedback
• Block seven
  • extra study hall period with teacher support
• Mud season school
  • opportunity to earn 3’s on character learning targets and 2+’s on academic learning target
• Summer standards intensives
  • See above.   Takes place in summer instead of school year.
• Out of class tutorials
  • afterschool, before school, Saturday, etc

• better communication of what students are actually learning
• better means to target support
• assessments that reward reliable knowledge built over time instead of averages over instances of learning that may or may not be reliable
• clear separation between scaffolding, assessments and consequences (both good and bad) for academic and character learning targets
• school-wide consistency on how grades are assigned
• school-wide consistency on how students are supported in their efforts to achieve mastery
• stronger professional culture in staff that emerges from school-wide agreements, training, & experimentation related to meaningful assessment practices

• Identify a team of guinea big teachers who are willing to commit to building prototype systems that lay the foundation for this strategy.  These systems:
  • break up courses into long term and supporting learning targets
  • establish agreements on high priority character learning targets and develop long term and supporting targets for these
  • define consistent means for assessing long term and supporting learning targets
• Conducting classroom trials to test and refine these systems

• Guinea pig team of teachers implement and refine prototype systems described above
• Consolidate tested strategies into a Faculty Standards Based Grading Guide

• Wide implementation of Standards Based grading based on field guide and related professional development sessions
• School-wide agreements are made and supported that relate to grading and support structures

• See all related articles in the By the Book list by Leaders of their Own Learning
• Assessment articles
• Grading articles