Step #1 for Implementing Standards-Based Grading: Understanding, Reorganizing, and Unpacking Curricular Competencies

Many BC educators I've spoken to are intrigued by standards-based grading (SBG). They've heard of it. They like the idea of it. But, they have no idea where to start with it. The intent behind this series of blog posts is to provide those same educators with a step-by-step guide for implementing SBG into their own classrooms. I don't claim to be an expert, but I've had plenty of trial and error over the years with it. Also, my assessment, including my SBG practices, has been substantially informed and inspired by many true experts in the field, including Tom Schimmer, Katie White, Matt Townsley, Myron Dueck, Emily Rinkema, Stan Williams, and many others. I'll publish a later blog post with reading recommendations (Those folks are a great place to start though!).

These past few years, I've gradually made the transition from having what Tom Schimmer would call the "standards based mindset" to having true SBG secondary ELA and Humanities classrooms. I think it's no coincidence that this is the most positive I've felt about my assessment practices. I now believe my assessment promotes student learning at every turn. I too believe BC's Revised Curriculum, including the Ministry of Education's recent encouragement of proficiency language, aligns well with SBG practices.

So, what exactly is standards-based grading and why is it useful in the BCEd context?

Standards-based grading (or SBG), as defined by educational researcher Robert Marzano, is a system of assessment that measures students' learning in relation to a specific set of standards. In BC, those standards are the curricular competencies (CCs). Quite often in an SBG classroom, a student's level of proficiency for any given standard is assessed using a 4 point scale. That 4 point philosophy aligns well with BC's proficiency language descriptors: emerging, developing, proficient, and extending. Therefore, implementing SBG is also a surefire means for implementing proficiency language.

Full disclosure, I attempted to explain my SBG practices in a single concise blog post. I failed. I failed bad. Sentences turned into paragraphs, which quickly turned into sections. SBG demands meticulous and methodical description. So, I now plan on publishing a series of blog posts that thoroughly articulate the steps I've taken to make my SBG classroom a reality. I'm writing as a secondary ELA and Humanities teacher, so I can't guarantee all or even many of my SBG practices will translate smoothly into your teaching context. But I hope some of them could.

Step #1: Understanding, Reorganizing, and Unpacking Curricular Competencies

I believe the better you understand your courses' curricula, and their components, the better you will teach students to understand them too. I've spent a staggering number of hours deciphering BC's English Language Arts curriculum. To put it gently, the curriculum's vague wording, especially that of its CCs, can leave much to interpretation. So, I'd suggest kicking off your SBG journey by doing your best to understand what those sometimes perplexing CCs mean, or at least an approximation. 

Early in my assessment journey, I received sage advice from Myron Dueck, one of BC's assessment leaders, on how to engage with CCs: "Start with the verbs and nouns." His idea being that doing so will help you avoid being bogged down and potentially discouraged by their nebulous language. You can bypass the vagueness and begin to understand the CC's intention. Discussing them with colleagues makes for lighter and often more fruitful work. So, pour a strong coffee, print off some curricular documents, and get discussing!

When you start to feel confident about the meaning of a course's respective CCs, you may wish to consider reorganizing them into priority and secondary standards. I know you're now thinking, "He's lost me now. Time to cut this reading short." But just hear me out! The often lengthy list of a curriculum's CCs can be overwhelming at first. For example, Literary Studies 11 has twenty-four of them; whereas, Social Justice 12 has a more manageable seven. So, for courses, like ELA, sorting CCs into priority and secondary standards becomes more of a necessity than an option.

So what exactly do I mean by priority and secondary standards? Larry Ainsworth, a teacher author, described priority standards as having endurance (They maintain their relevance throughout a student's lifetime.), leverage (They're useful in multiple teaching disciplines.), and essentiality (They focus on knowledge and skills required in later grades.). These priority standards will be present in all of your department's curricula. One such ELA CC, has students "express and support an opinion with evidence." That CC definitely transcends the ELA classroom; in fact, it's vitality undoubtedly extends to both other academic disciplines and our students' lives outside the classroom. Don't you wish all of society could proficiently express and support reasoned opinions with evidence?

 

So, priority standards are- well- a priority. But, what does that make secondary ones? I want to make something absolutely clear: by no means am I saying secondary standards aren't important in my SBG classroom. They're simply important in another way. Unlike the priority standards, the secondary ones I assess are dependent on both content focus and text. For instance, the Literary Studies 11 curriculum has students "understand the influence of land/place in First Peoples and other Canadian texts." Though that CC may not meet those priority standard criteria set out by Ainsworth, it does become the focal point of its own project.

Below is a partial single column rubric from a project I created that focused on developing my students' ability to "understand the influence of land/place in First Peoples and other Canadian texts.":

So, how do you organize your assessment around priority and secondary standards? My advice: First, do your best to assess each priority standard more than once in a learning period. I tend to create projects that assess one or two of them alongside a secondary one. Meanwhile, for those secondary standards, assessing them even once a piece may prove to be a lofty goal. Because honestly, how many projects or assessments can you possibly squeeze into a learning period? Potentially not enough to meaningfully teach and assess all the CCs in most of BC's curricula.

 

So, now that you've defined your CCs and reorganized them into priority and secondary standards, you should create proficiency sequences that describe what a student's learning should look like at each of those previously mentioned levels of proficiency. This will take time. I won't try to sugar coat it. Start with those CCs you deemed priority standards and go from there. The act of creating a proficiency sequence involves first rewording the CC into language that mirrors the expectations of complexity for each level of proficiency: What does a proficient understanding of expressing and supporting an opinion with evidence look like? How about developing? Extending?

 

Afterwards, you should unpack that same CC into more manageable and student friendly "success criteria." Those "success criteria" are the sub-skills students must master to proficiently demonstrate any given standard. For example, that aforementioned priority standard from the ELA 11 curriculum wants students to be able to "express and support an opinion with evidence." That particular CC demands two distinct actions: first the student must express an opinion and then, and only then, they must support their opinion with evidence. Therefore, you must create at least two "success criteria" for that CC. Students can then learn isolated sub-skills prior to engaging with the CC in its entirety. This will help ensure students better understand the nuances of each CC, which may result in greater complexity achieved down the road.

Here's a proficiency sequence example, I constructed for that "express and support an opinion with evidence" CC. Note the strength based language: The focus is on what students can do rather than what they can't. These proficiency sequences, at their best, are worded in a task neutral manner. The proficiency column can easily be copy & pasted into the single column rubric for any relevant projects. So, though these proficiency sequences take substantial time to create in the present, they will save you more time in the long run. I, for one, don't miss cobbling together project specific rubrics.

Step #1 of this SBG journey will probably prove to be the most time consuming and it will definitely prove to be the most mentally exhausting. But don't be discouraged and don't rush it. The juice is worth the squeeze. Some of my most rewarding collegial conversations and professional development took place in this step

Final Words!

If you've made it this far, I appreciate your commitment. My next blog post will focus on how to create projects that assess those isolated curricular competencies. Good luck on your own SBG journey!

Thanks for reading. If you'd like a copy of any resources I mentioned in this post, just let me know.