Standards Based Grading
(the following is an excerpt from an article by Dan Meyer, well-known math education leader. To read the full article, click HERE.)
How Things Used To Be
How Things Used To Be
- Textbook manufacturers directed assessment, issuing lengthy tests at the end of their chapters, tests long enough to both intimidate students and make their percent grade totally indescriptive of what they know and don’t know. (I.e. two months down the line, what does a 67% on “Chapter 6 Test” really mean?)
- Assessment was the same for every student with every student receiving the same test no matter how many times they’d demonstrated competence on an assessment.
- Students hated tests. They complained about them. They scheduled absences around them. They cheated on them. And who could blame them? The tests covered broad chunks of texts, with trick questions seeded every few pages. If you did poorly on a test there was little ability or incentive to improve. The class moved on.
- Learning directs assessment. Learning breaks across skills, not chapter units. Instead of assessing at the end of chapters, we assess at the completion of a significant skill. Instead of lumping all the skills together under one grade (making that grade useless beyond a “did well” or “did poorly” level) we track each skill separately in our grade book.
- Assessment is different for each student. Once a student demonstrates competence in a skill, they achieve “mastery” and can skip that skill on every test thereon.
- Students like assessment. Most do, anyway, and I’m not even playing with you here. Students like the process. They know which skills they need to improve (because we track them separately — me and them, both), they know how they can improve them (by studying or coming in for tutoring), and they know they’ll be rewarded for their efforts (I’ll increase their skill grade in my grade book if they demonstrate improvement).