Standards-Based Grading

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Why it works

Traditional grades often mix achievement with compliance, homework completion, and penalties, producing a number that is hard to interpret. Standards-based approaches report progress against specific learning goals and separate behavior from achievement, giving more accurate and more useful information to students, families, and teachers.

The research: Guskey and Marzano on standards-based grading.

The run-of-show

Choose your slot. The agenda, timings, and length update to match.

The core activity: grade one unit against its standards

Teachers leave with one unit mapped to its standards and a plan to report achievement cleanly.

Pick a unit and list its two to four key standards.
Decide how students will show evidence for each.
Separate achievement from behavior and timing.
Decide how you will report progress, not just one blended percentage.

Separate what they know from how they behaveBlending achievement, effort, and lateness into one number hides what a student actually knows. Report the learning and the behavior separately.

Facilitator notes

Start small, with one unit.
Separate behavior from achievement.
Weight recent evidence, and communicate the change to families.

Do not blend everything into one numberA grade that mixes a late penalty, a homework zero, and a test score tells no one what the student learned. Keep achievement clean.

Adapt it

Elementary: standards-based report cards and clear 'I can' progress.
Secondary: standards in the gradebook with separate behavior marks.
Students who need support: clear evidence options for each standard.

Participant handout

One page for every teacher. Print it, or save it as a PDF.

K12 Academics · Professional Learning

Standards-Based Grading: report what they know

Grade the learning, separately from behavior: standards, evidence, and clean reporting.

The unit and its two to four standards:
How students show evidence:
How I separate achievement from behavior:
How I report progress:
My first small step:

Make it stick

Start small and keep it clean:

Start with one unit.
Keep achievement separate from behavior.
Bring a cleaner grade picture to the next PLC.

Common questions

Does standards-based grading mean no zeros or deadlines?

It means separating behavior from achievement. Deadlines and work habits still matter; they are just reported separately from what a student knows.

Isn't this a huge change to my whole gradebook?

You can start small: grade one unit against its standards, or separate a behavior mark from the achievement mark. It does not have to be all at once.

How do I average standards grades?

Often you do not average. Recent evidence of learning usually matters more than early attempts, so many teachers weight toward the most recent demonstration.