Lindbergh School District’s grading strategies were presented to the Board of Education Sept. 16 in an effort to educate the board on standards-based grading in kindergarten through fifth grade.
Standards-based grading sets out specific check points for grading students, so anybody looking at a report card can see what a student did well or poorly on, as opposed to the standard A, B, C, D, F format. An example shown at the meeting displayed “determining the area of a triangle” as a specific checkpoint students could strive for.
Executive Director of Elementary Education Craig Hamby said there are priority standards and essential skills where a student’s progress can be tracked over time.
“It’s a checklist where I can sit down with a student or parents and show you ‘Here’s where we are and here’s where we need to go,’” Hamby said. “It is a much more informative way of determining where a student is in their learning.”
Students grades sixth through 12th at Lindbergh do not use standards-based grading because colleges may look at grade point averages when evaluating students.
Executive Director of Secondary Education Ronni Zagora said those higher grade levels are on their way to a more standards-based approach, but there isn’t a specific time frame for the change.
Zagora said students across the country have been brought up in a system that values grades over actual learning.
“If a student takes a quiz or test and they don’t perform well … and we move on, are we sending the message that it wasn’t worth learning if they don’t learn it the first time?” Zagora asked.
She said going forward she wants a system that allows faster and slower learning students to benefit. She hopes students will learn what grades and learning really mean through standards-based grading before they get to sixth grade — grades should be less about the final letter grades and more about what a student took away from a class.