A Teacher's Guide to Standards-Based Grading and Reporting

This reading is all about the importance of standards and grading students based standards. I am not sure where I fall when it comes to standards. On the one hand there is not as much wiggle room when it comes to teaching when you are forced to stick to the standards. But, on the other hand, the standards were chosen by professionals and are made to help students learn what they need to learn. It compares students to other students across the state and determines what is best for the students to learn. And having a guideline can be helpful as a teacher. There are pros and cons to both sides, but I don't really have a choice so it is best to learn stragtiegies to teaching standards as best as possible.

The reading says that standards boost the student achievement and motivation to try harder in school. I can see this as the students know they need to reach a certain standard so they are going to try hard to reach that standard. The more progress they make towards that standard, the more motivated they will be. But what if they pass the standard? Will the student stop being motivated?

I believe that students should be graded on their work so that they can see where they are in the class and reaching their standards. If a student misses an assignment, or fails one, I believe that they should get a zero on the assignment. Not putting anything in the grade book and having the students see their grade for the work they did do will make the students less likely to do assignments. And if we only base their final grade on their final assessment, students will be less motivated to do earlier assignments and try throughout the year. Students hsould be graded on most things to see how they did throughout the entire year, not just on the final test. The key to the students not having a bad grade on one assignment they missed or failed is to weight the assignments differently so that it will not affect their grades AS MUCH as a test, but will still affect it.

It is also wierd how the reading says that students' grades should not be averaged, but also says students shouldn't get zeros because this will bring down their average grade. It flip flops a bit on what it wants teachers to do.

Finally I believe that all homework should at the very least be turned in to the teacher to motivate the students to do the homework. I don't think every homework needs to be graded and affect their grades, but I as a teacher want to know that the students are not only doing their assignments but also be able to see  if they are learning the material. This is from a personal stand point as a student: If the hoemwork wasn't graded or needed to be turned in, I wouldn't do it. I want students to be learning and trying while they are in my class.

Standards are always a hot topic when it comes to teaching. It can go either way on if it is beneficial for students, but what I think needs to be the real focus is how you teach the students the standards rather than what you teach them.