Virtual Learning may be the time for Standards-Based Gradebooks to Shine
Those who taught with me a decade ago know that I had an unusual “education” obsession: Standards-Based Grading. As a high school teacher, I sometimes surprised my colleagues with my stance on placing standards in my gradebook rather than assignments. Some argued that it wasn’t very collegial. “They are not going to be graded with standards in college,” I was told, and those colleagues may have been right. For every pro I discovered in constructing my high school gradebook this way, there seemed to be a con. In 2012-2013, I studied the effects of gradebook construction for my doctoral dissertation. And while I would love to share that study in its entirety, my conclusion was this: grades more accurately convey what a student has learned when constructed with standards and students are even more cognizant of what they have or have not learned, BUT constructing gradebooks in this way requires a mindshift for teachers, parents, and many students that would require a great deal of wor