Standards-Based Grading vs Assessment-Based Grading

Rick Wormeli ends his video “Defining Mastery” talking about what grades are supposed to report: what a student has specifically learned. He discusses how grades are far too transactional; if a student does X the teacher will give him Y. If we follow standards-based grading and get specific with the verbs that we want from our students (Ex. Students will be able to create a 3-dimensional paper airplane. Students will be able to define dictatorship and describe an example in their own words.) then we have more evidence-based and standards-based grading. This is asking us to get detailed with what we are looking for from the students and reminded me of the lessons I have had on student objectives. We have to be asking them something that is measurable. We can’t just say that the student will learn this or understand that, how will we know if that is even true? But if we have them define, describe, analyze, something along those lines, then we can measure whether or not they have learned or understood the lesson.

 

To learn more about Wormeli’s thoughts on grading and standards-based grading, I searched for more of his videos. His video “Standards-Based Grading” criticizes the 100 point scale and talks about how smaller grading scales are better for gauging what students have learned and how it translates across departments and schools. The 100 point scale leaves such a large gap for failure that it is not instructional for students. Plus, everyone has their own concept for how good and bad each number on said scale is. While the 4 point scales are not as specific and are more of a general scale on how students did, it makes grades less subjective.

Still, while I enjoyed his explanations, I felt like I was missing something. Of course what he was saying made sense, but I did not quite understand what I should be comparing it to to know why standards-based grading was important and not being used. I did another search and found a video from Matt Townsley that compared standard-based grading to assessment-based grading, which up until this video, I thought were synonyms for each other. Isn’t assessment how we figure out what a student has learned?

 Assessment-based grading is very different than standard-based grading. The 100 point scale and percentage grading is more subjective in that if 3 out of 5 questions were answered correctly, the grade will reflect that as a 60. However, that does not tell us whether the student didn’t catch the main idea. By using standard-based grading, we are able to assess whether or not the student understood the big picture by looking for specifics in the objectives to gauge their level of understanding.

Focusing on the student’s understanding and not just what they hand in and fill out changes the dynamics of the classroom. Assessment-based grading reflects what was done correctly on assessments, but also if all of the grades are averaged out. Standards-based grading reflects the student’s level of understanding. Townsley gives a great example when he talks about how a student getting a B in one class could mean they understood most of the main ideas, but in another class they understood all of the main ideas but missed an assignment, bringing down their grade.  

I like this concept of standards-based grading because I feel that we should be focusing on our students’ levels of understanding, but there are some ideas I struggle with. I feel that even if they do understand the concepts, if they purposefully miss assignments then that should be reflected in their grade. If they are not doing all of the work that the other students are and there isn’t something preventing them from doing so, they should have some kind of penalty. Perhaps to stick along with this concept, we could combine it. They should have a grade that reflects their understanding, but not doing certain assignments should result in their overall grade for the class getting effected.