'It is changing the whole culture, and parents are just not ready for that big leap of change,' O'Mara said. Parents don't understand it necessarily, and colleges certainly don't accept it as a kind of a benchmark for distinguishing student performance,' said Argo Community High School District 217 Superintendent Kevin O'Mara, president of the High School District Organization of Illinois. 'I don't know of a single high school, at least in Illinois, that does it. What matters is how they are doing compared to the standards for learning,' Guskey said.īut in the competitive world of high school, a standards-based report card with no letter grades likely wouldn't fly. Students do tasks and assignments to meet the standards at their grade level, such as determining the theme of a story from details in the text, using ratios to solve problems or conducting an investigation to provide evidence that living things are made from cells.Īn individual student's mastery of standards is paramount in the process. The goals kids have to meet in Illinois are drawn from the current Common Core standards for math and English language arts that emphasize critical thinking and problem-solving, as well as the Next Generation Science Standards for science instruction. Or simple phrases can be used, such as 'exceeding standards' or 'progressing toward standards' on student report cards.

Instead, numbers such as 1 to 4 would describe how students are meeting or working toward meeting specific standards. In standards-based grading, work and study habits are usually judged separately from student achievement, and grades usually won't be letters derived by throwing together points for tests, quizzes and homework assignments. Grading on a curve or giving points to students for extra credit also departs from whether a student is mastering specific academic standards, studies show.

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