I’ve been asked to sit on a parent committee regarding the implementation of standard based grading at the high school level. I have done a little research, but as a parent who has been through the college admissions process a couple of times, I would like my role to focus on how the transition and implementation of this type of grading affects GPA in regard to college admissions and qualification for merit-based scholarships that are awarded based on a minimum GPA.
I don’t intend for this thread to be a place to debate the merits of this particular method of grading, which the school district has already committed to and begun to implement, although with vague ideas on how to share it on transcripts, etc. I have mixed feelings about it myself, but I’m interested more in the role I outlined above.
Does anyone have experience with this type of grading and whether AOs/scholarship committees seemed to understand the concept and treat the GPAs according to its intentions? Does a “mixed” scale (where some classes are graded on the content based grading plan and others are not during the transition) even get recognized by AOs? Any other feedback along those lines I can share with the committee?
For background: I am new to this concept, but my understanding is that each classroom teacher or cohort of teachers for the same subject sets course standards. Grades will then be based on student mastery of each content standard on a scale of 1-4, where 1 means that even with teacher assistance the student does not demonstrate understanding of the content and 4 means the student has gone beyond mastery of the content in some measurable way. A 3 indicates mastery. Letter grades will be assigned and 3-3.5 is an A- while a 3.51-4 is an A. So mastery of the content earns a student an A-, or a 3.67 on the school’s 4.0 grading scale (for non AP classes). Students taking one of the few AP courses at the school will earn an extra point on the 4.0 scale if they complete the course and take the AP test. The school would provide some sort of explanation of the standard based grading scale with transcripts, but the exact form of that explanation has not been decided.
Again, I may not have this exactly right, but the idea seems to be that the goal of education is not to test rote memory but to ensure students know what they need to know about a subject, and that a student can progress from a 1 at the beginning of a semester to a 3 or 4 at the end of a semester for a particular standard, either by repeating assignments/tests as needed or by increasing mastery as measured by new assignments/tests.
So how would “standards based grading” be different from what teachers are currently doing? I bet they are doing the same thing but just not calling it that. Typically getting an A requires that you have gone beyond mastery. But now they need a committee to issue a report to suggest that something new is happening when perhaps it isn’t. I’ve been on those types of committees.
Is the really new policy the one about the AP class requiring that they take the AP test?
I’m not sure if system - Standards-based grading - matters are much but the scale used. It just seems with a 1-4 scale you are going to see more clumping due to the limited range. At my D’s school they have something similar but as far as how GPAs are effected it’s more in the fact that students can only get whole letter grades A, B, C, etc. You don’t see as much variation in GPAs.
@CheddarcheeseMN To me, it appears the main difference in regard to GPA is that mastery of a subject is a 3.67 instead of a 4.0 in regard to GPA, so a student who normally achieves a high GPA could find themselves out of the running for scholarships or programs requiring a high GPA. Just to pull an example from one popular program on CC, consideration for the Academic Elite Scholarships at Alabama requires a 3.8 HS GPA. Demonstrating mastery, but not going beyond mastery, in several classes could put a student below that minimum.
I also think there is a concern that AOs will not care about, understand or have the time to distinguish between mastery on the new scale and mastery on the traditional scale, especially when one or two courses are being graded in this manner while the other five or six are not for the semester, during the transition time.
But perhaps you’re correct and it’s not that different. Exactly why I asked.
So, if I understand this correctly, grades and GPA will be reported numerically using a non-standard scale that looks similar to the usual 4-point scale but results in lower GPAs than the usual 4-point scale?
Or will all numerical grades be converted to letter grades so that GPA can be calculated on the usual 4-point scale?
@ucbalumnus My understanding (from piecing together three or four different communications) is the latter, but that the resulting GPA for the same work will be lower using standards based grading.
Here is an example: A student demonstrates mastery plus a little beyond for all the standards set forth for a semester of calculus, and earns a 3.3 as a semester grade. (It remains to be seen exactly how a student would go beyond mastery in calculus to earn anything higher than a 3.) That 3.3 is equivalent to an A-. The school uses a graduated 4.0 scale with - and +, so the A- translates to 3.67 grade point for the class.
That same student, turning in identical work, would previously have earned a numeric grade of 100+ for demonstrating mastery plus a little more for a semester of calculus. That 100+ would have translated to an A, or 4.0 on the school’s grading scale.
It seems like a small difference, but the concern is a student who demonstrates mastery is really at a disadvantage compared to students from other high schools in a competitive admissions environment.
This does not seem to be about “mastery” (assuming that the courses are otherwise identical in content and work expected of the student), but about grade deflation (or dialing back grade inflation).
Many colleges do recalculate high school GPA without +/-, so grade deflation would not harm in the A -> A- situation, but would harm more in the A- -> B+ situation.
In terms of existing grade inflation or lack thereof, how do grades in the courses correspond to performance in external standardized tests? I.e. how do A students in AP courses do on the corresponding AP tests, and how do A students in other courses do on the corresponding SAT subject tests?
Our school did something similar but kept traditional letter grades. The biggest issue was that to get an A the student had to show work beyond the class which meant every class had a huge project kids had to do to get an A. These were all due at the same time and it completely stressed kids out. Everyone had to do the project in the end because some of the kids needed the extra credit to improve grades that were generally lower. They also offered a regular test for each class and a supplemental test that kids could use to show greater mastery. This meant more class time was lost to testing. This started here 5 or 6 years ago and they are edging away from it now at the HS level. I think they are still using it for ES which is not graded here it’s all the 1-3 type stuff.
Hello, our school is currently transitioning our junior class to standard based grades for some classes and the traditional 1-100 scale for others. I am curious of what you ended up finding out from your original post about the GPAs. My son will be applying to colleges next year and with this dual grading system I worry that his GPA will be hurt. He currently has 3 classes that grade on the 1-100 scale with As in them. He also has 2 classes that are standard-based and he has 3s in them. In our school the 3 will equal an 87% on the back end for GPA purposes. Well you just took a kid who has been high honors for 2 years straight and hurt is GPA. Interested in what you found out! thanks.
@TabRich Wow. A blast from the past. It worked out fine in my S’s case. His GPA wasn’t hurt at all. However, each instructor implemented content based grading differently. In an AP Lang class, he had to do a little extra work but received full credit; in calc, full credit was awarded pretty much as it had been in the past as that instructor felt like you either could do the math or you couldn’t; another teacher had students write reports over news articles to show mastery of content standards and if they did well, they didn’t have to take the tests.
They all provided grades based on a continuum though. So, midway through a quarter, he might have 80% or 85% showing as a grade because he hadn’t shown mastery of some of the content standards yet, because the class hadn’t covered them or he hadn’t had to prove it yet through a test or classwork. But by the end of the quarter, he was up to his usual grades because they’d covered more of the material. I don’t know if that makes a ton of sense the way I explained it.
My best advice would be to have your S discuss with each teacher who is using standard based grading on how he can move his grade up to whatever percentage would be equivalent to an A (90%?) by the end of the grading period. If he is capable of doing the work for each class, my guess is that he will come out OK by the time grades are final.
"standard based grading " sounds like the latest educational fad that will further the inability of colleges to compare students from different districts, thus placing more emphasis on the ACT/SAT.