This is one of the zombies of education reform. It never really seems to die and keeps coming back to eat your brain. Some schools are trying to adopt it now as it is expected to be used in Common Core Assessments. For those who are unfamiliar with SBG, here are the basics.
Numerical ratings are used rather than letter grades/percents. There are four ratings:
1--Beginning
2--Acquiring the skills/concepts
3--Meeting standard
4--Exceeding standard
Most of us would immediately make the leap to 4=A, 3=B, 2=C and 1=D (note that there is no F as there is no zero in SBG.) But this would be an incorrect assumption on our part. A teacher using standards based grading would not grade a test on which the student scored 34 correct out of 40 total questions as a 3, or 29/40 a 2. A rubric or chart of goals for the test is developed which gives the teacher far more leeway in assigning a grade. This rubric may contain, for example: did the child show improvement over previous tests; did the student use the full amount of time alloted?The teacher could say that 30/40 correct answers shows sufficient mastery of the standard. In college, we called this grading on a curve. In this way, Meeting The Standard becomes highly subjective.
Another aspect of SBG is the focus on getting the right answer. On this surface this appears to be a very logical, even admirable, goal for schooling. But it opens the door for all kinds of gaming of the system. If the focus is for the child to get the right answer with few or no constraints, then tests can be retaken over and over, help can be offered during testing, homework deadlines can be extended or even done away with. After all, the goal is for the child to demonstrate mastery of the material, not be subjected to some random condition like time limits.
Despite all those who say our students are getting dumber, their response to SBG shows exactly the opposite. Why study for a test when you can retake it numerous times until you get a score you like (or the teacher changes the rubric and pronounces you Meeting The Standard?) Why turn in homework when you cannot get a zero for failing to do so? With no means to assess your level of understanding, no low number can be averaged in with your grades. Students figure this out fairly quickly and adjust their behavior to maximize their benefit.
Take the Zero's Aren't Permitted (ZAP) program being used in the Rockwood School District in at least one middle school. The result has been a precipitous decline in students having homework ready to turn in. Those who don't have it by class time are allowed to complete the homework during lunch, under administrative supervision, which the kids gladly do because it means more time to play at home. It means additional staff responsibility to oversee these kids at lunch, but I guess that's all fine so long as we know they are learning, even if it is just learning to work the system.
Deadlines are just so old school. One high school teacher was called on the carpet for expecting students to turn in assignments by specified deadlines. The teacher was told that, with standards based grading, as with things in the real world, there are no deadlines. It didn't set well with the administrator when the teacher responded by saying that if there are no deadlines in the real world it will be okay if she didn't submit her grades by the established deadline.
This appears to be Outcome Based Education come back for another bite at our brains. The focus is on getting the right answer. How students get their answer is of no concern. Just this fall, a math teacher, was called on the carpet and told he couldn't require students to show their work. He had been very specific in example and direction on showing work when they were working with the order of operations. The administrator told him that with standards based grading we only care what students get as an answer, not how they get the answer. If a student gets something wrong, that teacher is left to guess at where the problem lies. The student concludes they "just don't get it" when perhaps a little tweaking or filling in of a small gap in understanding is all that is needed. The focus on getting the right answer is an all or nothing game.
As a teacher using SBG you have the benefit of being able to use a complex rubric which could allow you to score students higher than their actual percentage on a given test, which makes the student and parents happy. However, you also have students who are retaking any number of tests from any point in your curriculum throughout the semester. Keeping track of that is a nightmare. On the one hand it may seem logical to say that a teacher must continue to work on student mastery before moving on to higher level concepts, but this system does little to help the teacher or student accomplish this. While it is difficult to teach more advanced math concepts until the student has mastery of the basic math facts, applying zero pressure to learn those math facts within a specified time limit makes moving on to the more advanced concepts almost impossible.
Additionally, teachers could have two and three times the number of papers to grade as they have to allow students to redo writing assignments that do not show them meeting the standard. There is little a teacher can do when students, who aren't comprehending the concept she/he is teaching, are not learning to master it by doing work at home. The teacher's job is to make that magic happen in the classroom.
Add to this computerized grading systems that weren't set up to recognize a 2 or a 3 causing uninformed parents to flood the teacher with panicked phone calls and you have the makings of an early retirement incentive for some teachers. Eventually parents will be trained to accept 3's and 4's and will be lulled into thinking this means their child is performing well and learning a lot. They won't see that their child got 20/40 questions right. How many of us see our kids tests come home from school any more? That would just be confusing for us because their score for that 20 correct answers could be a 3.
I was going to write a nice conclusion here, but maybe I'll do that later. It's not like there's a deadline or anything.
