What is SBG?

So, what exactly is standards based grading? 

Standards Based Grading (SBG) is a grading method that measures a student's progress by their mastery of the content or skill. Any skill or learning objective that a student has not mastered can be reassessed during learning center or a scheduled tutoring time. Reassessments allow for the student to try again to demonstrate their understanding.

There are three principles that my professional learning community has established through our implementation: 

• Grades should have meaning
• Students should be given multiple opportunities to demonstrate learning based on feedback
• Non-academic behaviors should not be included in academic grades

What does SBG look like?

Align Content with State Standards

Conveniently, you already do this! We are required to teach specific state standards to students and align our lessons with them. You already teach the material - just need to determine what standard aligns with your assignments and assessments to measure your students' mastery levels.

Standards are Built into Classroom Culture

Students write down their mastery levels of each of the standards on a tracking sheet. This is NOT a requirement for SBG but does make implementation easier.

Assessments are Written Based on Standards

Pick the standards that you want to assess and ask a few question per standard. You should provide a rubric or another method of communication what mastery look like for that specific standard. Try to give a good mix of formative and summative assessments - formative assessments allow for teachers to give specific feedback that will help that student show mastery.

Grades are Tracked By Standard 

Each standard receives a grade and has feedback for how to achieve mastery if the student did not. This is where data trackers would be incredibly helpful (but again, not required). They help your students visualize and track their progress. Depending on the what reporting system you are using, the reporting of grades can vary greatly. 

  

In my PLC, we have decided to report grades to students and parents using this scale:

Numeric Score	What does that mean?
3	MASTERY Student has met or exceeded the expectation for skill and can tutor or assist others.
2	ROUGH MASTERY: student has met the expectation for skill, but can only do so with assistance from other students, teacher, or supplementary materials.
1	NOT YET Student has not provided any evidence that he or she understands the skill. They can and need to reassess the assignment or skill for a higher grade.

We use PowerTeacherPro in my district and this is what a student's view looks like: 

If you are interested in implementing this grading system or have any questions, please send me an email through the site!