By Adri Yarkin, Copy Editor
Last year, the English department took an excited leap into Standards-Based Grading (SBG). This year, they have drawn back.
While the English department currently utilizes a system which combines the traditional and standards-based systems, 10 teachers, including those in the math and CTE departments, have taken on SBG this school year.
The model of SBG that is being enacted was developed by education policy think tank Marzano Research. VHS has invested large amounts of time into professional development over the past year and a half in order to instruct teachers on its implementation.
SBG is a method of grading in which students are measured in a four-point scale, where a 3 marks the targeted learning goal for the class. A teacher will generally have four or five separate scales for each aspect of a given class, each of which denotes how a student can demonstrate their ability to perform at various levels.
“Getting a good grade is not the same as learning,” math teacher Andy Callender said. “[In SBG] students have to focus more on the content than just what their grade is at the end.”
In a thoroughly implemented model of SBG, students will not receive an overall grade for a class, but rather see many distinct grades — each corresponding to a different aspect of the class. Value is placed on growth over time.
Teachers have run into conflict with the incompatibility between SBG and the systems which are currently in place such as Skyward, which is not set up for SBG, and the state requirement of a final letter grade.
In traditional grading, doing everything right means getting an A. In SBG, the standard for learning is a 3. In order to get a 4, students are asked to perform at a level not necessarily taught in class. They must go above and beyond.
In the current scale, a 3 is an A minus. It is far more difficult however to go from a 3 to a 3.5 or 4 in SBG than it is to go from an A minus to an A in traditional grading.
Going from an A minus to an A is defined as within grade level ability, yet both a 3.5 and a 4 on the SBG scale are above grade level ability. The lack of overlap here is not reflected in the scale teachers use to convert between the two grading systems, creating a pitfall for students who are working for an A.
“SBG makes it much harder for good students to get good grades,” senior Kate Lande said. “I have to work twice as hard to get an A that would have been easy for me to get without this grading system.”
For now, a letter grade is the official result and appears on a student’s transcript. The faculty is facing the challenge of how they can reconcile SBG’s emphasis on learning and engagement, while not compromising students’ ability to get into more selective colleges.
The English department has switched their grading back to the traditional system following their trial last year, though the same scales for meeting standards which they created last year are being used — this time in accordance with the 100-point system. Part of the reasoning behind this is that as long as both systems are in place, students are going to be focused on the letter grade they ultimately will receive.
A favorable effect of SBG in the eyes of many students and parents is that there is less incentive for teachers to provide students with busy work, which is often graded based on completion.
“[Traditional grading] lends itself to teachers not to measure learning, but to measure activities,” Principle Danny Rock said. “They end up manufacturing a whole bunch of assignments … because they need the gradebook to be based on more than three assignments.”
The 100-point (traditional) grading system was created over two hundred years ago, during the Industrial Revolution, according to Mark W. Derm of Indiana University Bloomington. It was originally a sorting system to determine the 60 percent of people who shouldn’t continue in school, according to Rock. Now, everyone is expected to succeed in that same system.
A hallmark of SBG is that students have multiple opportunities to demonstrate their understanding in a variety of ways. They are not penalized for testing poorly. Rather, a student who fails a concept on a test and masters that concept later can demonstrate competency at a later point during the semester. Their grade is reflected in that growth.
“Last year in geometry [using SBG] I could tell that students were more on top of knowing where they were as opposed to just waiting for me to grade the test and pass it back,” Callender said.
Proponents of SBG say this fosters a growth mindset, which is not only a major focus of the school, but it also allows students to learn how to pursue their work in order to be successful. It teaches students to keep attempting to master a concept even when they miss it the first time — just as one must in life.
Currently, SBG has been fully incorporated into all of Chautauqua, as well as into McMurray’s science and fine arts programs.
Dr. Stephanie Spencer, Director of Teaching and Learning for VISD, has been investigating the possibility of VHS switching over to SBG completely.
Spencer has made inquiries to colleges as to how they accept students coming from a school without a GPA — whether it would hinder a student’s qualification for academic programs, financial aid, or even being accepted into a school in the first place. Of the 13 colleges that have responded, only Montana State said that this method of grading hurt applicants, while the rest, such as Harvard University and the University of Washington, returned encouraging responses.
Either way, students and parents should remember that VHS is viewed as a rigorous and high-quality school in the eyes of admissions officers.
Teachers have asked for patience during this process, as they believe that it is a shift towards better education.
“It’s probably going to feel messy over the next few years because we’re not living in one world or the other,” Spencer said. “We’re living in both worlds right now.”