Moving into Standards-based Grading and Reporting

Our school took the plunge into standards-based grading and reporting this year. Oh, we've had standards for years, and our UbD unit planning has ensured that we at least knew which standards connected to the unit. But until the grade book and report card demanded that we specifically connect a grade to a standard, we continued on our merry way hoping our assessments captured at least some of the standards, much like flinging a handful of pebbles at a target, hoping some will hit.

We took a middle road, though: we don't have to report on every standard, just on "strands". For English Language Arts, we settled on Reading, Writing, and Listening & Speaking. They make sense to us and how our standards are organized... until we get to those units where we are using our reading to inform our writing content (e.g., literary essay and research reports), or have cross-disciplinary projects (e.g., investigative journalism about environmental issues).

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So this is our first Professional Learning Team (PLT) investigation: How can you use one assessment to grade and report on more than one standard strand?

There are a few sub-questions here: 

• Is it fair to "double dip" (in other words, can one assessment be counted twice)?
• How specific should we be about dividing up the assessment into "strands"? Could we just use one holistic score and put it in two strands? Or do we have to identify which section goes into which strand and keep track of it that way?
• Do we even know which specific standards are being assessed on the assessment? If we were called on by a parent or administrator, could we justify the grade based on the standards assessed?
• Does going to standards-based grading and reporting mean that we have to create more assessments, such as "artificial" tests and quizzes that get us away from our authentic assessments, so that we have enough evidence for the grade in a particular strand?

My inclination is to go for specifics, analyzing the assessment to identify where each standard is assessed and then tracking those parts for depth of student learning. This would be possible with a fairly simple template, though it would take more time before and after the assessment. Doing this kind of analysis would ensure that all the standards got assessed (and yes, we may need some more assessments, or expand the ones we have, to include all standards) and that the grade reported is actually reflective of achievement on the standards.

cc by ePublicist on Flickr

As our PLT moves through our cycle of continuous learning, we will be wrestling with these questions and others that come up. I hope we will be able to look at some models from other schools and settle on a system that makes sense for our school. 

We would love to hear feedback about what has worked in other schools. If you have a suggestion, please leave a comment!