Standards-Based Grading

Why? What?How?

Why Grading - Historical

• Original schooling - moral education• Promote virtue, character, and good work habits (Vatterott, 2015)

• Students evaluated by learning content and acquiring skills

• Feedback provided with narrative statements and used for further instruction

• Parents and students had accurate picture of skill and knowledge attainment

• Information helped determine readiness for higher education or apprenticeship (Craig, 2011)

Why Grading - Historical

• Late 19th and Early 20th Century Change• Significant increase in students attending school 1870 – 1910

(Meyer et al., 2009)

• Committee of 10 in 1893

• How could schools and education meet demands of Industrial Revolution (Daggett, 2005)

• Raise standards

• Stratify student achievement and organize students into occupations and roles (Meyer et al., 2009)

Why Grading - Historical

• Earliest Grading (Vatterott, 2015)• 1700s – Yale ranks student performance into four categories.

• Evolved into four-point scale

• Precursor of four-point grade point average

• 1877 – Harvard began classifying students using percentages

• 1897 – Mount Holyoke College adopted descriptive adjectives, percentages, and letters

• A = Excellent, equivalent to 95 – 100 percent

• B = Good, equivalent to 85 – 94 percent

• C = Fair, equivalent to 76 – 84 percent

• D = Passed (barely), equivalent to 75 percent

• E = Failed (below 75%) (Durm, 1993)

Why Grading - Historical

• Earliest Grading – Cont’d (Vatterott, 2015)• 1912 – Research identifies lack of consistency with percentage grades

• Poor inter-rater reliability with 100 point scale

• Movement to five categories A,B,C,D,F – fewer is fairer

• Normal Distribution – The Bell Curve

• Believed appropriate because, at the time, student IQ was normally distributed

• Belief that intelligence was fixed

• Belief that good teachers gave bad grades

• Belief that not everyone deserved an A

• Belief that grades motivated learners

Why Grading - Historical

• Select and Sort Model served Unites States well through most of 20th century (Daggett, 2005)

• Information Age of late 20th century• Economy and world changed

• Select and Sort (talent identification) no longer worked

A Nation at RiskAll, regardless of race or class or economic status, are entitled to a fair chance and to the tools for developing their individual powers of mind and spirit to the utmost. This promise means that all children by virtue of their own efforts, competently guided, can hope to attain the mature and informed judgment needed to secure gainful employment, and to manage their own lives, thereby serving not only their own interests but also the progress of society itself. (Gardner, 1983, p. 4)

Standards• A Nation at Risk - 1983

• First official group of standards

• The Goals 2000 – 1994• Standards and improve education and achievement for all students

• No Child Left Behind – 2001• Added significant accountability and state mandated tests to measure achievement

• Race to the Top – 2009• Complete at least one year of post-secondary education

• Common Core – 2010• K – 12 standards in Mathematics and English Language Arts

Purpose of Education Today

• Ensuring high levels of learning for all students is the fundamental purpose of schools (DuFour and Marzano, 2011)• Select and sort no longer acceptable

• From talent identification to talent development

• Need students with college and career ready skills and dispositions• Motivated to learn independently of external rewards and punishments

• Self-directed learners who know how to assess their own learning needs

• Learners inclined to seek out and use resources to assist them in learning

• Learners exhibit a willingness to try, persist, and believe that effort with pay off with eventual success (www.corestandards.com)

What Works?• “The normal bell-shaped curve describes the distribution of randomly

occurring events when nothing intervenes.” (Guskey, 2011)

• Growth Mindset (Dweck)

• Transition from norm referenced to criterion referenced

• “When the instructional quality is high and well matched to students’ learning needs, the magnitude of the relationship between aptitude / intelligence and school achievement diminishes drastically and approaches zero.” (Guskey, 2011)

• Marzano (2003)

• Visible Learning (Hattie, 2009)

Why Grading Now?

Do we really need to grade?

What Grading• First issue in grading reform is to come to consensus on Foundational

issues including the purpose of grading (Brookhart, 2011)

• Craig (2011) wrote that the purpose of grades is “to inform students and families of the student’s progress toward mastery standards.”

• “The primary and most important purpose of grades should be to provide information or feedback to student and parent, not to rank students” (Marzano)

• Grades should be a vehicle for effective communication (O’Connor, 2009)

What Grading - SBG• Standards-based grading is based on the principle that

grades should convey how well students have achieved standards. In other words, grades are not about what students earn, they are about what students learn.” (Brookhart, 2011, p. 12).

• Brookhart (2011) also referred to the approach as “learning-focused grading” (p. 10).

What Grading - SBG• When teachers combine information from a variety of

sources into one mark the result, according to Brookhart, is “a confusing amalgamation that is impossible to interpret and rarely presents a true picture of a student’s proficiency” Brookhart labeled the result of such a grading process a “hodgepodge grade”.

• Deddeh, Main, Ratzlaff, and Fulkerson (2010) referred to is as “grade fog.”

How SBG• Authors

• O’Connor

• Guskey

• Wormeli

• Marzano

• Brookhart

How SBG• District Models

• Casco Bay, Portland, ME

• Excelsior Spring, MO

• Lindsay, CA

• Renton, WA

• Rockford, MO

• Sandborn, NH

• Sheridan County, WY

• Spokane Public Schools, WA

How SBG• Four Questions…. Well, maybe five

• What do we want students to know, be able to do and be like?

• Power Standards, Learning Targets

• How will we know when they have learned it?

• Assessment (pre, formative, summative), Rubrics,

• What will teaching and learning (instruction) look like?

• Student-Focused Learning Tasks, Whole class, Small Group, Large Group, Individual, Hybrid, Technology Enriched

• What will we do when they have not learned it?

• Differentiation, Personalized Learning, Rti – Tier 2 and Tier 3

• What will we do when they have already learned it?

• Differentiation, Personalized Learning, Extension, Acceleration

Non-Punative FeedbackGrowth MindsetTwo-Way FeedbackLearning Stops when grades are given

How SBG• “In a purely standards-based grading system, only summative assessment “counts”

in the final grade.” (Vatterott, 2015)

• Formative assessment provides feedback and guides the teaching and learning process

• Formative assessment is organized by learning targets

• Formative assessment is assessment for learning. It is not graded because students are not penalized for not knowing initially in the learning process.

• Current consensus is that homework is formative assessment that checks for understanding and helps prepare for summative assessment. Therefore, in SBL system, it should not be graded or count in the final grade.

• Grade only learning and mastery level of the standard or learning target and only the student’s last / best effort to demonstrate learning

• Summative assessment also organized by learning targets

ECCS Grading Principles

• Learners are taught and assessed with intention, purpose, and aligned to rigorous standards

• Assessment and reporting practices communicate the student’s current level of performance and progress toward mastery of standards

• Academic achievement will be reported separately from characteristics and behaviors of a successful learner

• Reporting and assessment reflect current research and best practice

ECCS HS Grading Parameters1. Assessments of student learning align with standardized assessments, local, state and/or national standards.

2. Characteristics and behaviors of successful learners not included in standards will be reported separately from academic grade.

3. All courses will use a common and consistent set of notations to report student grades.

4. All instruction and assessments have established clear learning targets and success criteria that are communicated to the students.

5. Communication and reporting of student progress reflects a consideration of multiple formative and summative assessments.  A student’s final grade reflects standards that have been mastered.  

6. By course, eighty percent or more of the final grade for a class is based on summative performance indicators. Twenty percent or less of the final grade is based on formative assessments.

7. By course, the scale used to determine grades will be communicated in the syllabus.

8. Extra credit will not exist.

9 Students will be allowed more than one attempt to demonstrate learning.

Every department by course will have a policy in their syllabus outlining requirements, parameters and deadlines allowing students to further demonstrate learning for full credit.

ECCS PL / SBG Journey

• Guiding Principles

• HS grading Parameters

• Defining and creating process for Power Standards, Learning Targets and Success Criteria Rubrics

• English 9 Standards-Based Grading

• SBL Rubric

• Grading Model