Principal's Message on Standards Based Grading and Mastery Connect Reporting
As you know over that last few years our district has made a move toward Standard Based Education. Simply put, Standards Based Education consists of 4 major components; Instruction, Assessment, Grading and Reporting. Below is a brief summary of each component of Standards Based Education.
- Standards Based Instruction: Instruction that begins with a predetermined standard. In Standards Based Instruction, teachers ask what it is the students are supposed to learn and determine the most efficient and effective way to deliver the instruction. This allows the teacher to begin with the end in mind. Having a predetermined target. In Kentucky, we use Kentucky Academic Standards.
- Standards Based Assessment: Assessment that intentionally measures a students ability to demonstrate knowledge or perform a given task as referenced by the standard. In Standard Based Assessment, every question, activity, skill, presentation etc is directly related to the given standard. This applies to both formative and summative assessment.
- Standards Based Grading: Grading that reflects the level of mastery toward a given standard. In Standards Based Grading, teachers must evaluate, reflect and observe student performance on Standards Based Assessment. The culmination of these evaluations results in an assigned level of mastery. Our school district currently uses 3 levels; Mastery, Near Mastery and Remediation. A key to keep in mind is Standards Based Grades are fluid and can change as the student demonstrates new learning.
- Standards Based Reporting: Reporting that organizes a student's progress toward mastery on multiple standards. Our district currently uses MasteryConnect as our reporting tool. Basically, a look at MasteryConnect should reveal your student's progress toward mastery on multiple standards at once.
*** Please see our links to the right for MasteryConnect Tutorials and Standards Based Education information***