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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The skills were always what the kids were supposed to be learning.  The grade they used to get just didn't give an accurate picture of of they were learning them or not[/quote]

Mastery based grading is very subjective and doesn't seem to give an accurate picture of anything.[/quote]

Quite the contrary!  Skills based grading requires the teachers (or department team) to define what skills a student will need to learn in a particular subject... and then go about testing or evaluating those skills.  That is far more transparent than the old way of just letting the teacher do whatever he/she felt like doing and grading.

Identify what skills are going to be taught, then practice those skills, then assess those skills, then move on to the next set of skills, etc.

People seem to think that kids are constantly demanding to go back and re-test for skills that were assessed 6 months ago.  That's a strawman.  There is a time where you can prove that you have attained a certain level of mastery... but then the teaching moves on to another topic and you are expected to master that topic.  Kids don't have unlimited opportunities to prove mastery.  But, it also isn't just ONE single opportunity.  I know that for my 10th grader in World Hist II, once you take the assessment on Topic X, that's when the grade book closes for any work you haven't yet submitted that was related to Topic X and "due" during the teaching of Topic X.

For math, it's more inter-related.  So, if you didn't do well on Skill 2 when it was first taught, you might be able to remedy that down the road when Skill 2 is included in a cummulative test that includes Skill 1, 2, 3, and 4.

If you care about kids and want them ultimately to LEARN, this is the system you should support.  If you only care about out-performing the rest of the kids in the class because you are stuck in a competition mindset, then, yep... you probably don't like this.  But schools aren't out to pick the "winner."  Their job is to get kids to learn so that they have the skills to be successful in whatever they choose to do.  [/quote]
You are setting up your own strawman where anyone who disagrees with you has a nefarious motive. No, it's just a view that the traditional grading system is an accurate way to assess and encourage learning. Teachers in a traditional approach also identify, practice, assess during each unit and offer multiple opportunities to show mastery via homework, problem sets, essays, and tests depending on the subject. This is not exclusive to a mastery approach.  It becomes unwieldy when you expect teachers to be able to assess multiple, specific skills for large numbers of students on an ongoing basis. You are forcing teachers to rely on technology packages to make these assessments which may well decreases student engagement. As to whether traditional vs mastery approach allows teachers to do whatever they feel like, the role of subjective teacher assessment is huge in a mastery based approach. [/quote]

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