At a few recent workshops I have facilitated, well-intentioned teachers submitted the following questions:
- How do we hold students accountable for homework?
- What do we do with students who do not want to reassess?
I was delighted to share my personal experience as a teacher and district administrator involved with standards-based grading, however in each case, I started with the following caveat:
That’s a really great question!
Let’s be honest with ourselves though for a moment: these are motivation issues educators are grappling with regardless of their grading system. In other words, standards-based grading is not the problem OR the solution to motivating struggling learners.
For example, ask any secondary teacher using points and percentages in their classroom and they’ll share their struggles motivating some students to complete homework assignments. When homework is repurposed as ungraded practice in a standards-based grading classroom, there’s a temptation for students to not complete it. In both grading systems, our task as educators is to motivate struggling learners. There’s no quick and easy step-by-step answer!
Standards-based grading does often provide educators (and parents) with better information, which in turn can cause us to raise these type of questions with an increased level of concern. That’s a good thing though, right?!
When a few teachers caught me during a break in the workshop, they confirmed they were in favor of moving forward with standards-based grading at their school, however it is possible other teachers may not have this same mindset. If student motivation is used a reason for not moving towards standards-based grading, it may be helpful to remember that often standards-based grading is not the problem or the solution.