Bridge Event: Standards-Based Grading Research and New Approaches — REL Northeast and Islands Boston, MA – On May 30, the Northeast College and Career Readiness Research Alliance (NCCRA) hosted a Bridge Event to explore the research on grading and to learn new approaches to making grading policies more effective and reflective of student mastery of learning. “We are going to take on the nastiest and dirtiest issue there is in education today—that whole idea of grading,” said featured presenter Dr. Thomas Guskey, professor of educational psychology of the University of Kentucky. Research shows that teachers, including those within the same schools or districts, do not agree on the purposes of grades or report cards, Guskey said. Educators disagree on what elements to use in determining student grades, resulting in inconsistencies of grading practices and confusion among students. Two additional important research findings are that grading is not essential to the instructional process and that grading should always be done in reference to learning criteria and never on a curve.
Standards-Based Grading and Reporting: A Model for Special Education - Education News By Jung, Lee Ann Guskey, Thomas R One of the most important functions of report cards and grades is to give families information on their children’s progress in school. Families need to know their children’s strengths and deficiencies, and interventions that can be undertaken at home to promote success. Recognizing the need for meaningful progress reporting, many schools have begun implementing “standards-based” grading and reporting practices (Guskey, 2001). In recent years a marked increase has occurred in both the number of students with disabilities included in general education classes as well as the amount of time they spend there (Handler, 2003). A common strategy for grading students who are included involves the general education teacher’s taking responsibility for all areas on the regular report card and the special education teacher’s taking responsibility for reporting on progress toward IEP goals. Grading Adaptations Implications of Standards-Based Grading 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Grading Exceptional and Struggling Learners Letter grades exchanged for standards-based report cards Los Angeles, CA – (October 19, 2011) — Remember the old report cards filled with A's, B's and C's? In more and more areas of the country, those letter-based report cards are being replaced with standards-based reporting. At the forefront of the grading revolution is educational expert, Thomas R. Guskey, a professor at Georgetown College in Kentucky and co-author (with Dr. "Because standards-based report cards measure students against a stated set of criteria, they are a more accurate assessment of how the student is actually progressing," says Dr. Guskey and Jung's newest book not only provides guidance for general standards-based grading, it focuses on fair grading of exceptional students, those with disabilities, English learners and those receiving services through a response-to-intervention (RTI) process. "As schools move toward common state standards, student assessment is the one element that remains misaligned.