While standards-based grading purports to put the focus squarely on learning, practitioners have noted how this is not always the reality. Arthur Chiaravalli points out the ways that SBG “has at times become a stumbling block, frustrating attempts to foster cooperation, accommodate complexity, and respond to the urgent issues of our day.”

Most would consider standards-based grading part of the gradeless continuum. But it has been easier to help people grade less in a traditionally graded system than in a standards-based one. Finding ways to address the ways in which SBG can become unmanageable is well worth our collective efforts.

Putting agency over one’s grades into the hands of learners allows them to exercise metacognitive skills. When students learn to self-assess accurately, it enables them to transfer skills and understanding well beyond the classroom.

Assessment feels like something I practice on my students; something I do to, more than with them. It’s hard for me to remember a time when the struggle to get my thoughts about an education related topic onto the page felt this fraught. 

This episode features an interview with Ken O’Connor, middle education leader, author of the book A Repair Kit for Grading: 15 Fixes for Broken Grades, and Standards Based Grading advocate.

Measurement requires a standard unit, a recognized standard that can be objectively applied in a context. There is no standard unit of measurement to apply to learning. A skill can be demonstrated, progress can be noted, understanding can be communicated and shared, but not reliably or validly measured.

I have lately found myself becoming “tired and sick” of structures fail to account for the richness, complexity, and wonder of teaching and learning. Why standards-based learning is not enough.