Secondary teachers- can you explain standards based grading?

[Anonymous]

I’m a teacher at the elementary level so this is throwing me for a loop. My kids are senior and sophmore and both their English grades went from 85 and 83 to 50 and 23% overnight. How does it work? One grade just replaces the previous one? Help!

[Anonymous]

Every school/department implements it differently. You’ll have to be more specific.

[Anonymous]

I’m going to take a guess here, but if a grade dropped that much there was a big project, test or paper that wasn’t taken or turned in and a zero has been entered in the gradebook.

[Anonymous]

That is what’s confusing- it wasn’t a big project or test. It was a smallish assignment that seems to have replaced all previous grades.

[Anonymous]

Traditional grading schemes used in the past have been shown, through research, to lead to non-equitable outcomes. Hence, the requirement for implementation of a different grading standard.

[Anonymous]

SBG is designed to move students' focus from grades to learning. It does this by making grades arbitrary, unpredictable, and lower than traditional grades at the high end. So it's working as intended.

What is not acknowledged is why students focus on grades. Lowering grades won't fix that, it will just make students more stressed.

[Anonymous]

Standards-based grading will never work if we try to translate it into a traditional grading scale. Look up Mastery Transcript and other similar standards-based transcripts. The focus is actually on the learning and there are no letter grades. But until colleges are willing to look at such transcripts it won't ever really work.

[Anonymous]

But isn’t standards based grading going away for something else and will be rolling grade book? Or is it rolling grade book with standards?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:SBG is designed to move students' focus from grades to learning. It does this by making grades arbitrary, unpredictable, and lower than traditional grades at the high end. So it's working as intended.

What is not acknowledged is why students focus on grades. Lowering grades won't fix that, it will just make students more stressed.

Yes, exactly. Grades at the high-end are lowered by the new standards-based grading.

Lowering grades at the top end is an effective method for helping to close the achievement gap.

[Anonymous]

Yep, experiencing this at the middle school level.

Every teacher seems to do it a little differently. Some seem to take every standard and give assignment, tests, projects on that assignment. Each assignment can get a 4 (100%), a 3 (86%), a 2 (72%), a 1 (66%), or a zero or 50%. But those are the only grade options- nothing in between. Then those grades get averaged for a final grade on the standard.

Other teachers look at each individual standard and "replace" grades. So, for instance, my kid didn't do well on a practice test for a grammar skill in English. He was told he doesn't need to retake it because once the teacher sees he is using the grammar skill correctly in his daily writing, she'll just replace the grade for that standard.

I don't like either option. But every teacher at our middle school is required to use it this year, at least for 8th grade. I hope that isn't the case at our high school. But two of my kid's classes are for high school credit this year, so I've been paying attention.

[Anonymous]

Is THAT what happened? I can’t figure it out for the life of me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yep, experiencing this at the middle school level.

Every teacher seems to do it a little differently. Some seem to take every standard and give assignment, tests, projects on that assignment. Each assignment can get a 4 (100%), a 3 (86%), a 2 (72%), a 1 (66%), or a zero or 50%. But those are the only grade options- nothing in between. Then those grades get averaged for a final grade on the standard.

Other teachers look at each individual standard and "replace" grades. So, for instance, my kid didn't do well on a practice test for a grammar skill in English. He was told he doesn't need to retake it because once the teacher sees he is using the grammar skill correctly in his daily writing, she'll just replace the grade for that standard.

I don't like either option. But every teacher at our middle school is required to use it this year, at least for 8th grade. I hope that isn't the case at our high school. But two of my kid's classes are for high school credit this year, so I've been paying attention.

Whatever the heck all this is, DD's MS is not doing it. I'm thankful, because she will need to be prepared for something like this. Otherwise, she will have a heart attack when she looks at StudentVue and finds her grades to be nothing like she expects.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But isn’t standards based grading going away for something else and will be rolling grade book? Or is it rolling grade book with standards?

It is not going away. In fact is is being expanded to more schools. Right now it is in the pilot phase at some schools. I will be happier when every school has it because right now it is the opposite of equity, the kids who have it are grossly disadvantaged in college admissions.

[Anonymous]

DP
It seems different from the standards based grading at the ES level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DP
It seems different from the standards based grading at the ES level.

It’s a similar idea but it gets all messed up when they try to also use a 100 point scale.

And I feel that SBG is appropriate for the elementary school crowd but really isn’t in secondary schools.