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.

Some districts refer to it as standards-based grading, and other districts refer to it as skills-referenced grading.

If the course uses this type of grading, assignments are associated with specific standards or skills. Standards/skills are grouped together into sets. For these courses, the assignment grades are sorted by standards/skills, and the standards/skills are displayed under the standards set or skill set 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/skill set 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/skill set, a final score is displayed. This is the average of all final scores for each standard set/skill set. The final standard set/skill set score reflects standard set/skill set 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/skill set score is rounded to one decimal place.

• The Calculated Average displays the average of the standard set/skill set 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 skill set from grade calculations. If a skill set has been excluded from grade calculation, any skill scores for the set are not 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, your student's Assignment Skill Grades Trend chart opens in a pop-up window. This is 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.