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About Standards-Based/Skills-Referenced Grading

Courses in some districts are set up to use standards-based grading or skills-referenced grading. If you are unsure if this applies to your student's courses, contact your student's campus for more information.

Standards-based grading and skills-referenced grading are different names for the same type of grading. Some districts refer to it as standards-based grading, and other districts refer to it as skills-referenced grading.

If the course uses the standards-based or skills-referenced type of grading, assignments are associated with specific standards or skills. The standards/skills are grouped together into standard sets/skillsets. For these courses, the assignment grades are sorted by standards/skills, and the standards/skills are displayed under the standards set/skillset heading. Note that an assignment may be associated with more than one standard/skill, so you may see the same assignment under multiple standard set/skillset headings.

Tips:

For each standard/skill, a final score is displayed. This is the student's current average for the standard/skill, which is calculated by adding all scores for all assignments associated with the standard/skill throughout the semester, and dividing by the number of assignments. The final standard/skill score reflects skill scores for all cycles in the semester, even though only one cycle is displayed at a time.

For each standard set/skillset, a final score is displayed. This is the average of all final scores for each standard set/skillset. The final standard set/skillset score reflects standard set/skillset scores for all cycles in the semester, even though only one cycle is displayed at a time. The average does not include scores of zero, unless zero is a valid grade for the campus. The final standard set/skillset score is rounded to one decimal place.

The Calculated Average field at the bottom displays the average of the standard set/skillset final scores, which takes into account all cycles in the semester. This grade will be converted to a standard 100%-based grade using a conversion chart established by the district.

For some campuses, the following applies:

A district may choose to exclude a particular skillset from grade calculations. If a skillset has been excluded from grade calculation, any skill scores for the skillset will not be included in the student's grade average; however, the grades will be displayed.

A campus may choose to specify a specific score to use for student grades in all courses that uses skills-referenced grading (Mode and average, Power Law and average, Mode and Power Law, or All). If the campus has specified a specific score, that score is used as the students' average. If All is selected, the highest of the scores is used.

For courses that use skills-referenced grading, a campus-wide option determines how a grade of M (i.e., missing) is calculated in your student's average:

The grade M may be set to equal zero (or the lowest grade allowed) when the student's average is calculated. If a student receives a grade of M, the grade can be changed when the student completes the work.

If grade M is not set to equal zero when the student's average is calculated, the grade is bypassed.

If you click a standard/skill, the Assignment Skill Grades Trend dialog box opens. This displays a line chart depicting the student's progress for the standard/skill. The vertical line represents the standard scores as established by the district, and the horizontal line represents the assignments that are associated with the selected standard/skill. Click Close to close the dialog box.