Standards-Based Grading

Standards-based grading (SBG) is a system of assessing and reporting that promotes accuracy and content mastery through the assurance of research-based grading practices.

What does SBG look like in the classroom?

• Teachers and students will engage in a process of reteach and reassess to ensure ALL students master the essential content standards.
• Teachers will emphasize the most recent evidence as a means to assess and report a student’s level of proficiency.
• Students will be assigned practice as a means of formative feedback.
• Student mastery will be assessed through the use of a consistent and well-defined proficiency rubric.
• Students will be assigned a zero only as a result of insufficient evidence of learning.
   

SBG will assess students’ skills and knowledge in relation to the specific Arizona State Standards for that particular grade level and content area. SBG seeks to make learning more apparent by showing a student’s level of understanding for each individual standard. This targeted approach to learning will provide teachers with actionable data enabling them to provide specific and timely feedback promoting student growth.

Instead of seeing individual assignments in the gradebook, you will see each standard in the summative category broken down into specific student learning objectives. Each specific learning objective will be graded on a scale of 0-4, with scores of 1-4 considered “passing”. As students continue to work on the learning objectives and standards throughout the year, their scores will be updated to reflect their most recent level of understanding. These scores will not be averaged, so students’ scores will fully reflect their improvement rather than punishing them from beginning with a low score.