Standards-Based Assessment Redefines Student Success
Teachers, administrators, parents, and students all want school to be a place where learners thrive. We want students to succeed. But what does that mean? And what is the path to helping students attain that success?
There are myriad ways to define success and just as many variables that influence it. Some of those variables rest within the control of a classroom teacher and/or the school and some exist outside of school.
If we’re comprehensive in our approach to considering success, we recognize that school includes countless social opportunities and interactions; our experience of it conditions our behaviors and informs our perspectives. At its best, a successful school experience helps prepare students for rich and rewarding lives.
This said, school success is typically (and narrowly) defined by academics, and academic achievement is the primary measure of how well a student does in school. As such, this post will focus only on in‑school variables that impact academic success and how standards‑based assessment directly supports those variables.
Engagement
The school‑based variable that has the greatest impact on academic success is engagement.
Speaking to what they call the tripartite model of school engagement, which recognizes the importance of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement, Chase et al. (2014) draw from longitudinal data collected from 7,000 students and 3,500 parents from 42 states between 2002 and 2011 to find a correlation between the tripartite variables and academic success (Chase et al., 2014). In other words, it’s the strength inherent in the triangle itself, in this case, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement, that promotes school‑based success for students.
In their recent publication, *The Disengaged Teen*, Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop (2025) assert that the level of student engagement is the most significant factor influencing school success. They state, “extensive evidence shows that increased student engagement leads to a myriad of benefits…[including but not limited to] higher attendance rates and grades, higher achievement, higher graduation rates, higher college attendance, and higher rates of staying in college” (p. xvii).
The authors further introduce four distinct modes of learning—Resister, Passenger, Achiever, and Explorer—as key frameworks for understanding student engagement (Anderson & Winthrop, 2025). It’s tempting to think Achiever mode is highly desirable, but because so many students in this mode seek high marks for their own sake rather than deep learning, it lends itself to the hamster wheel of school and the perennial question of why does this really matter?
Explorer mode is the one we’d like to see all of our students embody as it’s characterized by quizzical and invested learners who seek to satisfy their curiosity and pursue their goals, and, as it happens, typically do well in school.
Agency and Aptitude
Interested in better understanding what leads to doing well in school, or academic success, Lyman et al. (2024) sought the perspective of students themselves. A couple of themes emerged from their work that support the ideas Chase et al. (2014) and Anderson and Winthrop (2025) discuss. The students in their study pointed to agency and aptitude as drivers of academic success in school.
They found that the two strongest indicators of student agency are setting goals and self‑regulation. Students agreed that the act of setting and working toward the achievement of goals promotes academic success. The researchers note that being organized, efficient and maintaining strong self‑discipline are important characteristics that support their ability to work toward their goals (Lyman et al., 2024).
The same students describe self‑evaluation as a way to see their increased aptitude with school-related tasks and feel that engaging in self‑evaluation boosts their academic success. The study describes the motivation affiliated with aptitude as intrinsic and extrinsic, with intrinsic motivation being more impactful. “Extrinsically motivated students were driven to succeed for grades and other external rewards. Intrinsically motivated students reported self‑regulation activities, such as being organized and appreciating a deep approach to learning, that were conducive to achieving their goals” (Lyman et al., 2024, p. 595).
Promoting agency through an emphasis on self‑regulation and goal setting is therefore a deeply important variable in student achievement.
Exploration
Having the freedom and ability to explore is central to the idea of agency in Anderson’s and Winthrop’s (2025) discussion. They note that in elementary schools, less than 10 percent of students have the opportunity to explore in school while in middle and high school that number drops to less than 4 percent.
Exploration includes students developing their own ideas, learning something they are interested in, choosing how to do their work, and having a say about what happens to them (Anderson & Winthrop, 2025). “Excellent teachers strive to provide these opportunities, but they are often held back by the traditional school system, which is designed to transmit knowledge and to sort and rank” (Anderson & Winthrop, 2025, p. 19).
Providing an alternative to this normalized methodology of “sit and git” and using the resulting grades to sort and rank students is foundational to standards‑based teaching and learning.
Standards‑Based Practice
JumpRope’s four Core Values provide a pithy and succinct framework for a standards‑based ideology that turns away from traditional teacher‑centered practices and sorting students, in favor of student‑centered practices that promote exploration to focus on learning. They guide our thinking around student learning and teacher actions.
There are inextricable connections between the above discussion of student success and three of JumpRope’s core values: Clarity, Learner Agency, and Equity of Opportunity to Learn.
Student Self‑Assessment
In a 2021 blog post on Student Self‑Assessment, I explore the relationship between clarity and learner agency. I lead by recognizing that in John Hattie’s list of 150 influences on student achievement, student self‑assessment is right at the top. It’s number one. In a system where the average effect size (ES) for one academic year is 0.40, Hattie reports that the ES for what he calls “self‑reported grades” is 1.44 (Hattie, 2012).
Student Goal‑Setting
Similarly, Student Goal Setting also addresses learner agency and confirms the ideas above in this blog post. The valuable process of student goal setting is a natural outgrowth of student self‑assessment. It takes time and commitment—especially if our aim is to center the learner, honor their own perceptions of their progress, and invite them to take ownership.
Instruction
The instructional path standards‑based practice points a teacher to follow, especially if their intention is to support student self‑assessment and student goal setting, is one that honors the range of learners in the classroom and simultaneously matches instructional strategies to the learning targets.
The practices I detail in Meeting the Range of Students’ Needs and Matching Instructional Strategies to Learning Goals are precisely those suggested by Anderson and Winthrop (2025) in their discussion of helping students become explorers. Student‑explorers are engaged in behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and agentic dimensions. “Students with agentic engagement try to shape a more supportive learning environment for themselves” (Anderson & Winthrop, 2025, p. 110).
It’s no easy task for teachers to help students attain this exceptional state of classroom engagement, but the practices discussed in Meeting the Range of Students’ Needs and Matching Instructional Strategies to Learning Goals are expressly designed to do just that. They were conceived with the core value of equity of opportunity to learn in mind.
Habits of Work and Learning
Finally, a consistent feature of standards‑based practice is separating the assessment and grading of academic achievement from habits of work and learning (HOWLs). Mastery of academic content and the skills and dispositions described in habits of work and learning are different things and therefore should be assessed independently of one another.
As an example, it is possible for a student to complete all their homework assignments and still perform poorly on a math quiz. Conversely, we’ve all encountered the student who inconsistently completes homework assignments and still scores high marks on a math quiz.
Research points to key variables in promoting academic success for students. The most impactful among them stem from providing students with the latitude and support to explore. Students who explore have agency in their learning; we promote their curiosity, help them set goals, and develop perseverance.
If our classrooms more rigorously promoted opportunities consistent with explorer mode, our students would be more universally successful. Standards‑based practice provides that path.
References
- Anderson, J., & Winthrop, R. (2025). The disengaged teen. Crown.
- 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
- Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. Routledge.
- Lynam, S., Cachia, M., & Stock, R. (2024). An evaluation of the factors that influence academic success as defined by engaged students. Educational Review, 76(3), 586–604. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2022.2052808
- Rodriguez, L. F. (2008). “Teachers know you can do more”: Understanding how school cultures of success affect urban high school students. Educational Policy, 22(5), 758–780. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904807307070
- Sakar, C. (2021). Educational and sociological factors influencing students’ academic achievements: The United States of America example. International Journal of Education and Language, 1(2), 12–21.
- Valentine, J. W., & Prater, M. (2011). Instructional, transformational, and managerial leadership and student achievement: High school principals make a difference. NASSP Bulletin, 95(1), 5–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192636511404062
