Mastery Based Grading?

My school has asked me to pilot using mastery based grading, using MasteryConnect for my courses next year. Is anyone else doing this?

@brook is there any mapping of assessment questions to standards available? When we can download assessment results will that spreadsheet include standards? If yes, maybe I can work with you and we can make sure the format makes it easy to upload into a standards based LMS/gradebook.

Thanks!

I’m attempting mastery based (or standards based) grading this year with CSP. I’m still making it up as I go along.

I plan to break everything down into my own set of standards and align every quiz question and PT rubric criteria to a standard.

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Hi Frank,

Glad to know someone else is trying this! Are you using any tools to help track data? We have MasteryConnect and Schoology. Are you using 1-3 or 1-4 scale?

I’m thinking of using the Learning Objective under the Big Ideas starting on Page 12 of the Purple Book.

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I’m working on it as well. I’m going to try using “Enduring Understandings” as the main standard, and then nest the Learning Objects under them as I go. Part of it is the LMS that we are using doesn’t allow me to group them in the way that I want, so, this is the first iteration of this. If anyone has any further ideas.

@frank_w_lee – we should talk more about this Sept 10th.

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I’ve been searching through the forum for any resources or experiences with standards-based grading in CSP and stumbled upon this thread. @cmeeks or @frank_w_lee, can you share successes or challenges you’ve had in this arena?

Hi @emily.dunbar,

In terms of successes, I’ve gotten comfortable assessing my students’ learning based on pretty standard quizzes (often ones I made myself) as well as any of the assignments involving rubrics. I feel those are relatively straightforward in terms of grading, and they are reasonable representations of student learning.

In terms of challenges, I still have trouble entering grades frequently enough. My district requires basically at least one grade per week, but even without that requirement, I myself would like relatively frequent tangible evidence of student learning - at least more frequent than the quizzes and rubric-assessed assignments that happen roughly every 2 weeks (probably 1/week at most).

I end up putting some loose “participation” grades in between, but that’s really a band-aid solution. I feel it is somewhat relevant since I base this grade on whether students are actually completing the exploration activities, reflecting on concepts verbally or in writing, or showing they’re processing the concepts by writing down their protocol, etc. It probably doesn’t align with standards-based grading in the strictest sense, but it’s what I’ve been using to “fill in the gaps”.

Frank

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