Standards Based Reporting

Over the past 3 years, we have seen a lot of interest in the standards based grading (SBR) report card and collected evidence that suggests that both teachers and parents find this method a better mechanism for accurately reporting student achievement. Funding for this proposal will be used to work with districts at the elementary, middle and secondary levels to develop models of practice that that will enable schools to use the SBR with fidelity. We have observed a number of cases where, with all good intention, schools have sought to embark on SBR initiatives, but stumbled on some of the more nuanced facets of implementation. We would like to work intensely with four of these schools representative of the elementary, middle and secondary levels to implement SBR in the 2012-2013 academic year. This will include leadership and teacher training as well as coaching and consultation via face-to-face and online, report card design, and technical support for the use of the reporting tool. It will be equally important to study the various ways teachers collect, select and aggregate evidence to determine grades and to use these findings to create exemplar cases that would provide districts a number of ways to implement SBR in their own instructional and regional context. We propose working with focus groups of teachers that we would follow throughout the project. The focus group would include 6-8 teachers per core subject area (English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies). Teachers would be asked to: • Attend two face-to-face meetings; • Document student work and grading practices online throughout the project period; • Collect student work for group scoring; • Analyze his/her own grade book practices.