A Beginner’s Guide to Standards-Based Grading: Bonus Tips for New Teachers
If you read last month’s post Standards-Based Grading for New Teachers: 10 Essential Tips, you might recall that I promised to share some bonus tips my AI and I came up with when we first began this conversation. Voila! I mentioned in the latter portion of that post that knowing your students well and developing a clear understanding of why the practice is valuable must comprise the first five steps in making the transition to standards-based grading. Steps 6–10, focused on instruction, can be adopted and implemented by teachers and schools in the sequence that feels right to them. Steps 11–15 in the final phase of implementation are all focused on grading, and like steps 6–10, the sequence of their adoption and implementation is variable.
Grades as a Reflection of Current Learning
- Grades in a standards-based system necessarily represent current or most recent learning. Teachers should therefore shift from accumulation of points over time, or averaging of scores over time, as an indication of what students learned. Guskey (2014) and O’Connor (2018) remind us to focus on the quality of learning demonstrated rather than the average of scores across time. The necessary partner to this shift is the recognition that formative feedback is more powerful than grades. In this 2020 post, I write about providing feedback. Authors like Brookhart (2008), Black and Wiliam (1998), and Wormeli (2018) help us understand that formative assessment provides students structured and targeted opportunities to learn, reconsider, and try again. When teachers provide those opportunities en route to the summative assessment, learning is deeper and the evidence generated by the summative assessment is stronger and more meaningful.
Using Scales and Rubrics to Ensure Fair, Reliable Grades
- Grades are the currency we use to communicate what has been learned and as such our currency needs to be as clear and unbiased as possible. Panadero and Jonsson (2020) make a strong case for the use of scales with ranges more limited than the traditional 0–100 scale or letters ABCDF with plusses and minuses. They suggest that using proficiency scales or rubrics is less precise than the use of numerical measures, like 23/25 correct on a quiz, but that it is consistently more precise and reliable than assessments made in the absence of identified criteria. In other words, in situations where there is a clear correct or incorrect answer, a raw number indicating proficiency is most precise, but since complex conceptual or skill-based learning is not easily measured in terms of right/wrong, using well-defined ranges of scores, such as exceeds, meets, partially meets, does not yet meet, or 1–4 allows for more accurate grading than other methods. Such a scale, with a limited range and clearly defined criteria, helps mitigate bias.
Separating Academic Mastery from Habits of Work
- Mastery of academic content and the skills and dispositions described in behavior or habits of work and learning are different things and therefore should be assessed independently of one another. As an example, it is very possible for a student to complete all their homework assignments and still perform poorly on a math quiz. Conversely, we’ve all been vexed by the student who inconsistently completes homework assignments and still scores high marks on the math quiz. This said, teachers instinctively sense the correlation between the development of good work habits and academic success in school. Chase et al. (2014) determined that “the greatest predictor of GPA…was behavioral school engagement” (p. 891). Their findings support previous studies and conclude that, “Youth who display appropriate behaviors of successful students (such as doing homework and participating in class) earn higher GPAs” (Chase et al., p. 891). For more on this topic, see Guskey (2014), O’Connor (2008), and Wormeli (2018).
Eliminating Bias: Grade Individual Learning, Not Group Performance
- The final tip I’ll offer in the realm of limiting bias in grades is to consider only an individual student’s performance, not a group’s performance. If grades are the currency we use to indicate what a student has learned, it’s nonsensical for those grades to even partially represent what their peers have learned. Of course the learning itself can, and arguably should, include collaboration and teamwork, and those things in and of themselves can be assessed. Each student’s grades, however, the currency communicating what has been learned, should reflect only the individual student’s achievement. For more on this topic, see O’Connor (2018).
Communicating Clearly with Students and Families
- Our final tip is to understand that all correspondence with students and families must be transparent and useful – this includes, but is not limited to – grades. Communication also should include dedicated explanation of things like expectations, the standards themselves, and choices made for the grading practice itself. This idea brings us back to the very beginning of Standards-Based Grading for New Teachers: 10 Essential Tips, the post immediately preceding this one. That post and Guskey (2014) and O’Connor (2018) establish that we should begin with the “why.” If you, the practitioner, understand and embrace the “why” undergirding the practice of standards-based grading, you will be more successful in explaining it to others.
References
- Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2), 139–148.
- Brookhart, S. M. (2008). How to give effective feedback to your students. ASCD.
- Chase, P. A., Hilliard, L. J., Geldhof, G. J., Warren, D. J. A., & Lerner, R. M. (2014). Academic achievement in the high school years: The changing role of school engagement. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 43(6), 884–896. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-013-0085-4
- Guskey, T. R. (2014). On your mark: Challenging the conventions of grading and reporting. Solution Tree Press.
- O’Connor, K. (2018). A repair kit for grading: Fifteen fixes for broken grades (2nd ed.). Pearson ATI.
- Panadero, E., & Jonsson, A. (2020). A critical review of the arguments against the use of rubrics. Educational Research Review, 30, Article 100329. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2020.100329
- Wormeli, R. (2018). Fair isn’t always equal: Assessing & grading in the differentiated classroom (2nd ed.). Stenhouse Publishers.
