Standards-Based Grading

Think Thank Thunk just wrote an interesting post about Standards-Based Grading. Here's a few pieces:

Prob­lem: Kids want to play games to get points in order to get an ‘A’. This is a prob­lem because it puts empha­sis on accu­mu­lat­ing points and not on what the points are sup­posed to rep­re­sent: learn­ing. You must migrate your sys­tem of grad­ing away from grad­ing every sin­gle assign­ment sum­ma­tively (that is assign­ing a sta­tic grade for every­thing a kid does), and towards grades that are indexed by content.

Stu­dents could not care less about their score on “Quiz 5″ from last month; they don’t even know what was on that quiz. Don’t put that in your grade­book. Put the indi­vid­ual ideas that that quiz assessed in your grade­book, so that the stu­dents know what it is you care about.

If you switch to Standards-Based Grading, the "What can I do to raise my grade?" question will become much easier to answer. It's not about accumulating points, or doing extra credit to raise your grade. Instead of telling them to study harder for the next test, or giving them an extra credit worksheet (don't get me started about the kids that ask for extra credit!), you can be specific and look at the areas they need to improve.

I've been pretty blessed at my school since I started Standards-Based Grading. The vast majority of my students love it and would never go back to the traditional quizzes and tests that I used to give. I actually have students asking me: "When do we get to take another concept check?"

I'm just sorry I didn't start this sooner.