Standards Based Grading

But, the transition to standards-based education and grading in 2011 came with a promise — that the district would listen to input from staff and parents and use it to fine-tune the system.

Following refinement of the initial implementation of SBE, the district has reworked the process for calculating grades based on parent, staff, student and administrator input.

With standards-based grading and reporting, student grades are directly linked to what students should know and be able to do (standards). SBGR gives students the practice they need, and more than one opportunity, to show success of standards. This ensures students and parents know what is the next step is in mastery toward being career and college ready

 In traditional grading, students are measured by the percentage of work completed, not mastery of standards. SBGR grading is based on mastery of standards. Each student’s work is measured against the standard, not other students or other characteristics such as work completion, cooperation, participation, and effort. These characteristics are important in the world of work, which is why in SBGR we report it separately. This helps to ensure accuracy and decrease inflation or deflation of a student’s grade.

The letter grade or percent alone is not what motivates students. Research says students are more motivated by the use of timely verbal and written feedback to help them learn with an accurate grade that accompanies the feedback.

Research tells us a decrease in the number of score categories (number of scales/levels — 4 pt., 8 pt.) increases the consistency and validity of grades across classrooms.

 In early March 2018, FWPS organized a district and community wide college admissions panel discussion and invited all parents and community for this event. We wanted to know how our grading system aligned to college admissions practices. This panel included admissions officers from seven colleges, including, University of Washington, Western Washington University, Renton Technical College, Green River College, University of Puget Sound, Eastern Washington University, and Seattle Colleges.  Admissions officers shared with us they base admissions on their own calibration of each district’s grading system across the country because no school district shares a similar GPA calculation. Admissions officers also indicated no FWPS scholar has been denied admission into their university or college as a result of our grading system.