What makes an A an A? What does the grade a student receives from your class tell someone about that student? Does it indicate mastery of skills and concepts? Does it indicate how compliant the student is? Does it indicate how quickly the student can learn? Does it indicate how much extra credit the student was willing to do? These are some of the questions that haunted me for the better part of my past 33 years in the teaching profession. I had always used a point-system. Then I came across Standards-Referenced-Grading (SRG for short) a few years ago and started to research it. In short, SBG is a system that tracks each student's level of proficiency in mastering the Learning Targets of the course. Feedback is "Target Specific" and students are encouraged to re-assess until they master the target. The eventual letter grade indicates the student's levels of proficiency at the end of the grading period. In this session I will share my experiences implementing SBG in my classes over the past 2 years. I'll share how it has changed my classroom and my teaching.
