Why is a Grading System Touted as More Accurate, Equitable So Hard to Implement?

This reporting is based on an original story by Amanda Geduld in The 74

As schools across the country work to address pandemic learning gaps, a growing number are turning to an alternative grading system called “standards-based grading.” The goal is to more accurately communicate what students have learned and provide a clearer picture to parents and colleges. But as The 74 reports, the implementation has been messy, with many schools and consultants getting it wrong.

When education researcher Thomas Guskey was a middle school math teacher decades ago, he had an eye-opening interaction with one of his top students. The 8th grader revealed she had calculated exactly what test score she needed to get an A in the class, down to the tenth decimal place. “I only need a 50.2 to get an A,” she told Guskey nonchalantly. “I don’t need to study for a 50.2.” Guskey thought, “Wow. What have I done?”

For this student – and so many others – school had devolved into a Numbers game about scoring well rather than a passion for true learning. Traditional grading systems conflate academic mastery with factors like behavior, effort, attendance, and homework completion, muddying the meaning of a single grade.

Standards-based grading aims to pull these elements apart – reporting academics, work habits, and other factors individually on a kind of “dashboard.” Laura Link, an associate professor of teaching and leadership at the University of North Dakota, says this segregated reporting provides much clearer insight.

“By giving this kind of multi-metric dashboard of information,” she explained, “it helps parents, colleges, trade schools, military recruiters and others have a deeper understanding of what kind of students they’re looking at – their academic strengths, but also those habits and behaviors that enable student learning.”

Link has been working with schools like Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to implement the model, which separates out academic grades on a 0-4 scale from behavioral factors like attendance, work ethic, and responsibility. But the nationwide push to adopt standards-based grading has vastly outpaced teacher training.

Thomas Guskey, now a professor emeritus of education at the University of Kentucky, warns that lack of preparation is proving disastrous. “So many districts are getting into this and they’re failing miserably,” he said. “Schools are jumping into this without a clear notion of what they’re doing and what the prerequisites are to being standards based. And then when problems arise, they have no recourse except to abandon it completely.”

Link and Guskey warn there is no consensus on what “standards-based grading” even means, with a slew of grading book authors, consultants, and self-proclaimed experts providing inconsistent, often unproven advice that derails implementation efforts.

One particularly controversial piece of advice is that students should get unlimited opportunities to re-do assignments until they’ve mastered the content. Link says that goes too far. “This is where a lot of non-academic proponents encourage that standards-based grading means you give as many retakes as it takes for mastery. Not true. That’s an assessment issue, not a grading issue.”

One New York City parent, Talia Matz, is concerned her son’s high school has taken retakes and other elements of standards-based grading to an extreme. At the School of the Future High School in Manhattan, she says meaningless assignments, endless re-dos with no consequences for missed deadlines, and conversions of standards-based grades back to percentages have undermined academic motivation.

“It doesn’t seem like there’s any love of learning,” Matz lamented. “It’s just kind of to get it done and move on.” She worries her son will be unprepared for college expectations around self-directed study.

But some districts have had much more success taking a phased, thoughtful approach to standards-based grading implementation and teacher training. In the Grandview district near Kansas City, Superintendent Kenny Rodrequez says it has been a multi-year process of gradual rollouts.

“Our challenge is, nationally we still have a system that’s so entrenched and based upon our traditional letter grades,” Rodrequez said. “And that system’s been around for so long and never was designed to do what we’re now trying to get it to do.”

Despite the bumps, standards-based grading proponents insist the major overhaul is worthwhile to provide a clearer window into student learning versus just piling up points and percentages. Link says it’s a long road, but a critical one:

“This is not something we’re going to fix in just a year or two years. It will have to be an extended period of time of training, of implementation challenges, of getting the community buy-in. But it’s so important for us to get it right ultimately.”

Matt Townsley, an assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of Northern Iowa, agrees standards-based grading corrects for equity issues baked into traditional grades.

“If we award points for assignments completed outside of class – called homework – we can imagine scenarios where some families are more privileged in their ability to complete that work, with things like quiet study spaces, tutors, parents able to help. So in that way, we may be grading for access to resources rather than learning.”

While a handful of schools were early standards-based grading adopters, post-pandemic interest appears to be surging, according to Cathy Vatterott, who wrote the book Rethinking Grading: Meaningful Assessment for Standards-Based Learning.

“After we got through COVID, all of a sudden I started getting offers to come and speak to people about standards-based grading,” said Vatterott, a professor emeritus of education at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. “There seems to be new momentum building nationally.”

Critics argue the model is too complex, relies too heavily on teacher judgment, and eliminates helpful accountability measures like class rank and GPA calculations. But for proponents, standards-based grading is realigning classroom grading with its original intent – to uphold high academic standards and provide meaningful feedback to students and families.