A growing number of Iowa schools are striving to improve communication of student learning by implementing standards-based or standards- referenced grading. Building upon the challenges identified by the earliest adopting secondary schools (Peters & Buckmiller, 2014), one recently published study suggests there may be a “second wave” of Iowa high schools considering standards-based grading (Townsley, […]
In standards-based grading, teachers repurpose homework and checks for understanding as ungraded practice. In other words, students should be provided opportunities to make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, and the information resulting from these assessments should be used by teachers to inform their instruction.
Click here for a comprehensive list of books related to standards-based grading, a resource that is updated as new books are published. Note: a separate comprehensive list of scholarly articles related to standards-based grading is maintained here.
The following is a list of some, but likely not all, dissertations and journal articles investigating standards-based grading using quantitative methods. The summaries were copied and pasted from within the published abstract unless noted otherwise. While there was an increase in all grading areas, two showed a significant difference—the Physical Science course content average (p
[Note to readers: This column was recently published in Iowa ASCD’s The Source e-newsletter. My co-authors were Dr. Tom Buckmiller and Dr. Robyn Cooper, both associate professors of education at Drake University] The Second Wave of Standards-Based Grading in Iowa’s Secondary Schools In 2013, the first Iowa standards-based grading conference was held in Cedar Rapids. At that
In the past, I curated and recommended lists of standards-based grading books and articles for practitioners and fellow researchers to read. A bulleted list of links to these lists is below. Top 10 standards-based grading books (pre-2016) Top 5 standards-based grading books (2016-2018) Top 10 standards-based grading articles (pre-2016) Top 10 standards-based grading articles (2016,
The purpose of standards-based grading/reporting is to communicate students’ current strengths and areas for improvement relative to course or grade-level standards. It may seem counter-productive to “go back” to using letter grades once a student’s level of learning has been described using an integer scale (i.e. 1-4) with corresponding descriptions of learning. Because some secondary schools may have a need to determine letter grades and grade point averages, the purpose of this post is to describe several ways to make this happen.
As secondary school leaders consider a shift toward standards-based grading (SBG) practices, they are no doubt weighing the odds of a successful implementation process. This research followed up on a study from 2014 to identify the challenges secondary school leaders experience when changing the currency of the classroom from points to learning. The results indicated
In standards-based grading, teachers have a mastery mindset. In other words, classroom structures and routines are setup to maximize student learning, regardless of when they learn it.
In standards-based grading, teachers communicate goals of learning rather than tasks. In other words, learning is communicated in relation to the course outcomes rather than the activities (homework, quiz, project, essay, etc.) demonstrating the learning outcomes.