Standards-Based Assessment (SBA) is a method of evaluating student skill mastery. SBA is intended to help students, families, and teachers understand accurately how students are doing as they work on developing their skills. It is not an assignment-based or productivity-mindset way of understanding what children can do.

Discovery was the first elementary school in Arlington to implement this assessment model, rooted in the assessment theory of “omnimodality,” described below. Following four successful years, Arlington Public Schools has adopted the model county-wide.

Traditional grading does not consistently describe student skill. “ABCDF” grading drives students toward “A,” and leaves no room to differentiate exceptional skill levels, and can inadvertently create conditions of comparison and judgment that are counterproductive to learning.

“Why…would anyone want to change current grading practices? The answer is quite simple: grades are so imprecise that they are almost meaningless.”

– Robert Marzano

At Discovery, we use research-best practices-based descriptions to report a student’s skill for each standard required by the Virginia Department of Education and the Arlington Public Schools. Discovery uses four Performance Level Descriptors (PLDs) to specify whether or not a student is currently meeting the standard, achieving the level of performance the teacher and team have determined constitutes a developmentally appropriate level at the time of the progress report. Discovery also uses two additional codes to describe a situation in which the empirical evidence a teacher has is insufficient to make an appropriate, reliable determination of mastery, and while rare, those situations should not be forced into saying something that can’t accurately be said as well as if a concept has not yet been taught. Consequently, the six codes (four PLDs and two codes) that you could see on a Discovery standards-based progress report are:

For each standard, in each grade level, the Discovery Collaborative Learning Teams (CLTs) at each grade level create meaningful, clear benchmarks students will reach to show they have met the standard established by Virginia and Arlington.

Journey Toward Mastery

Schools in Arlington, like all in Virginia, are tasked with ensuring that all students master the skills and acquire the content knowledge outlined in the Virginia Standards of Learning, or SOLs.

SBA differs from traditional “grading” by eliminating problematic “Fail” and “zero” indicators. Instead of starting from “zero,” students begin with the accurate description of “no evidence,” meaning students simply have not yet gotten to that part of learning. Most students will move through “Approaching Mastery” as they learn and develop their skills.

In fact, most students will spend most of their time during the course of learning at the “Developing the Standard” and “Approaching the Standard” stage, as they are developing skills and content knowledge fluency.

Once a student meets the standard of skill established by Virginia and Arlington, the student’s skill is reported accurately as “Meeting Standard.”

In some instances, a student will demonstrate that they have met and extended their understanding of the standard, showing in-depth understanding and application of the standard and the student’s skill will be reported as “Extending Standard.”

Because every student is unique, SBA accepts any demonstration of skill as valid, so Discovery teachers use a wide array of student work examples, artifacts, conferences, and analyses to meaningfully understand each learner. Discovery seeks to create authentic learning experiences and to help students create demonstrations of their skills within authentic contexts.

This “omnimodal” assessment method allows any student to demonstrate skill mastery in any way. It accounts for student uniqueness and promotes nonjudgmental, noncompetitive learning, and conforms with the standards-based instructional methods we use at Discovery, such as with the Teacher’s College Reading and Writing Units of Study.

It is developmentally inaccurate to think that all children are maximally gifted or skilled in all areas at all times. Teachers will always provide opportunities to extend and deepen knowledge and mastery, to encourage flourishing students to create new and innovative ways of showing exceptional mastery in areas that interest them. Because we utilize omnimodal assessment methods, the ways in which students create something new will vary from child to child, based on their talents, preferences, interests, personalities, and original ideas.

Conclusion

Both the literature on assessment and our educational philosophy at Discovery values each unique child. Standards-Based Assessment eliminates unhealthy, stressful, and inaccurate extrinsic motivation frameworks like traditional grading in favor of accurate, low-stakes reporting of student skill mastery.

References

“The Case Against Grades” by Alfie Kohn: https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/case-grades/

“The Case Against Rewards and Praise” by Harvard Education Letter: https://hepg.org/hel-home/issues/10_2/helarticle/the-case-against-rewards-and-praise

“The Case Against Grades” by Michael Thomsen: https://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/05/the_case_against_grades_they_lower_self_esteem_discourage_creativity_and.html

“Self-esteem based on external sources has mental health consequences,” American Psychological Association: https://www.apa.org/monitor/dec02/selfesteem.aspx

“A is the Best One” by Caroline Greig

“Predictivity of Standards-Based Report Card Models for Standardized Test Scores: A Taxonomic Mixed Methods Study” by Keith David Reeves: https://www.proquest.com/dissertations/docview/2617318405/CCCC4C1B703D412EPQ

Last updated September 10, 2024.