Standards Based Grading – Its effect on students and my position on it

Regarding Standards-Based Grading (SBG), an article by Joy Pullmann entitled “Common Core Even Affects Letter Grades” reveals:

 “Teachers have used standards-based grading almost as long as U.S. schools have been required to conform to centrally determined standards, or for approximately 20 years. But the practice—in which teachers give students not the familiar A-F letter grades or 0-100 percentile grades, but numbers or letters like 1 through 4 or S, M, P—has ticked upwards since 46 states adopted national standards in 2010, says said Ken O’Connor, a Canadian consultant who has worked with hundreds of schools across North America on this topic.”

…O’Connor also said that “In a pure standards-based system you would have only two levels: proficient and not proficient.”

Another educator dubbed it “UNgrading”.

In her October 6, 2014 comments to the U-46 school board, parent Colleen Ottens described a teacher who supported SBG, who observed that “In his traditional method of grading, he had some of grades from As to Fs. When he changed to SBG, his grades all tended toward the mean. While he got rid of his Fs, he also got rid of all As and most Bs, with most students receiving Cs.”

The tendency for SBG to push all students to the middle, or average, is a well recognized drawback of SBG. With its tendency toward egalitarianism, it is no wonder why so many high performing U-46 students, including U-46 student board member Megha Bhattacharya, find it objectionable. Megha’s peers at other U-46 schools also voiced their objections. Streamwood Senior Hunter Roark came to the board representing 200 of his fellow classmates, with similar comments. Further, as reported by Dave Gathman at The Courier News,

“South Elgin High sophomore Allie Dunsing complained to the board at its last meeting that “with the new system, it’s almost impossible to get A’s.” 

“… Jordan Stibal, a Streamwood High senior, complained that she recently finished one assignment, got zero items wrong on it, but still earned only a “3” grade on it because the teacher said that a “4” would indicate a mastery of the entire course content.

“Being in the top 10 (of her graduating class) means the world to me. But this grading system has made it impossible to get 4’s,” Stibal said. “This is making my life an utter mess.”

Nick Del Giudice of Streamwood High said the system will hurt U46 students trying to get into desirable colleges because they will be competing against students from schools where A’s apparently are easier to earn.”

Students at U-46 and across the country (here is an example in a Minnesota school district) rightly complain that it is harder to achieve high grades, not because they are not willing to work hard, but because of how the system is set up. And this in turn is affecting them at a time in their lives when they are trying to get their lives launched by getting into the colleges of their choice. One parent posted a letter from the University of Kentucky she received regarding the important of un-weighted GPA in college admissions, indicating that U-46 students receiving lower SGB grades will be competing with students across the country NOT having to deal with them.

Despite the objections voiced, board members Amy Kerber, Traci O’Neal Ellis and Jennifer Shroder re-affirmed their support of SBG at the September 29, 2016 U-46 board meeting. Interestingly, one local superintendent told me that his district ISN’T implementing SBG, and that SBG ISN’T required to meet Common Core standards.  

I haven’t even gone into depth regarding other objections to SBG, that it discounts homework (I was told by one U-46 teacher that next year, it is likely in U-46 that homework will not count toward student grades at all), that kids and parents don’t understand what the grades mean, that, like the previous short-lived 50% grade for zero effort system, it also arbitrarily pulls up students who are not performing. (One student commented that his peers could basically turn in “anything” and get a “1”).

But my biggest objection to the way SBG has been implemented here is its tendency to pull student grades to the “average” or middle, to make everyone the same, more or less. This kills incentive on both ends - the high performing and the low performing. It’s like everyone getting the same prize when finishing a race, even though everyone knows who came in first and who came in last. There is no incentive to reach for anything.

The old system of percentages and A, B, C, D, F grades wasn’t perfect. It was unequally implemented (like SBG!). But high performance was usually rewarded. Non-performance was usually penalized. And when those outcomes didn’t happen, parents and educators had a common ground on which to converse. Given the collateral damage to students in this district, especially highly motivated, highly performing ones, I believe a temporary or perhaps permanent return to traditional grading is in order - if not permanent, at least for long enough for proper change management to be implemented by a competent board.