Secondary Standards-Based Grading and Reporting Handbook

 Secondary Standards-Based Grading and Reporting Handbook

 The handbook: Secondary Standards-Based Grading is helpful at understanding standard based grading. I found the section talking about the negative impact of zeros to be the most intriguing, in my humble opinion. I have always felt that giving a student a zero was somewhat not fair. After all, what does a zero score even mean? I wholeheartedly agree that a zero is a depressing grade. What student would want to continue to learn if they say got more than one zero score? I know that I wouldn’t want to learn, and I consider myself an optimistic person. I know that giving students such a score is not effective at all. Teachers need to understand this, and that is why I agree with the handbook: Zeros have such a powerfully negative impact on the average that they can have a debilitating effect on student motivation (effort optimism).

 I believe our students need to be assessed in a way where they can understand their grade and what it means. This seems like what this handbook is trying to say. Teachers need to be assessing students in a way where the student understands what her or she knows or doesn’t know. Because, all too often, our students have no idea why they received an F or a C. Some students think F stands for FANTASTIC! Another section which stood out to me was section 5. The section about homework was spot on: Homework – although a useful tool for learning – should not have an impact on a student’s academic grade within a Standards-Based Grading and Reporting system because it is practice aimed at increasing the student’s capacity to meet standard. I strongly believe this. I think that we need to stop making homework such a big deal when it comes to grades. Because homework, after all, is practice. Thus, I agree with the Standards-Based Grading and Reporting system: Homework should not be graded. Overall, this handbook helped me to understand what Secondary Standards-Based Grading is all about.