Why Isn't Standards-Based Grading the Solution to Grade Inflation?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why SBG, despite its theoretical appeal, hasn't solved grade inflation in practice.
Key Takeaways
- SBG should fix this in theory - If grades reflected only mastery, inflation would be impossible
- But implementation tells a different story - In practice, SBG often makes inflation worse by removing the behaviors (completing work, meeting deadlines) that kept students accountable
- The theory-practice gap is enormous - SBG as implemented in most schools looks nothing like the elegant system described in books
Transcript
Why isn't standards-based grading the solution to grade inflation?
In a recent video, I talked about how the University of California system is having to rely on high school GPAs, which are very, very inflated because they're not allowed to use SAT and ACT scores.
And as a result, they're getting a lot of students in the state's flagship universities who are not able to do the work.
They're not academically prepared.
and we have this problem in K-12 as well as in college of grade inflation.
Well, standards-based grading sounds like the perfect solution to that because it says, here are the standards, we're going to give you grades based on whether you meet those standards.
Why is that not working?
I don't know of a single district that switched to standards-based grading and saw grades go down.
And that's how it should work, right?
It should be deflationary to say, now we're not going to grade you based on arbitrary points.
We're not going to grade you based on whether you brought in an extra box of Kleenex.
We're going to grade you strictly based on your mastery of the standards.
How could that not be deflationary on grades?
Well, for some reason, it's not.
And I think it comes down to the temptation and the opportunity to get away with grade inflation when a district switches to standards-based grading, because now they're taking effort out of the equation.
Like if a student is not doing any work, it is not plausible to say, oh yeah, this kid has a 90.
Yeah, absolutely.
Of course not.
The kid's not coming to school.
The kid's not turning in work.
Of course they don't have a 90.
That's obvious in a points-based system that recognizes effort.
Well, if everything is standards-based, there's a lot more wiggle room to fudge.
And I would like to think as a profession that we know better than to do that, that we can resist that temptation to inflate grades and say that a kid is meeting standards when they're not.
But if you look at the data, look at the grades in a district and look at the test scores in a district, and if that district has standards-based grading, guess what you're going to see?
You're going to see that the grades are way up here and the test scores are way down here.
They do not match.
And if you look at a district that uses traditional grading, yes, they may still have grade inflation.
And I think there are lots of things we need to do to combat that.
But for some reason, switching to standards-based grading does not work.
And I think we've just got to let go of that temptation.
And we've got to hold ourselves accountable for looking at test scores too and saying, was I way off base in this grade?
If this kid is not going to pass the test, like what grade goes with that?
And I think it is worth looking at effort.
It is worth looking at participation.
But we also have to be honest with people and not give them a false sense of how prepared for college they are or how much they are learning.
Let me know what you think.