Standards-based grading is a new trend in the innovation of education that focuses on learning and helps to increase achievement. Standards-based grading also measures students learning and offers itself to understand the effectiveness of instruction. The ability of teachers to track the students’ progress enables them to custom make the instructions to fit the individual student needs according to their performance in each of the “learning targets”. Higher completion rates for students was interpreted as a good mastery of the subject and students can earn higher grades by completing most of the work. A was a high completion rate for student when they will have completed 90 to 100% of the work, B was for the completion of 80 to 89%, C was for the completion of 70 to 79%, D was for the completion of 60 to 69% while F was the completion of 0 to 59% of the work. The standards-based grading system has numbers 1 to 4 as points from which the instructor can choose how well a student has mastered a subject. Typical skills of 1-4 reflect student’s increasing skill in the subject and an instructor can know how to well address the issue from the progress. This approach therefore means that teaching is responsive to learning as traditional grading systems shared the contrary opinion. Teachers filling the gap by giving regular feedback, reteaching the misunderstood subject and offering additional opportunities for students to perform better in the grading ladder. This makes standards-based grading a very powerful tool because it provides a framework to regularly measure student’s progress.
Traditional grading systems simply give cause such as 9/10 or 85% for a certain completion of work which is not as effective as teachers giving feedback on the tests performed and the skills used. Standards-based grading systems motivates the students as they feel that they have certain strengths even though they didn’t perform really well and are enabled by the instructor to see what they can improve their weaknesses. “Learning targets” in standards-based grading written in student-friendly language so as they can understand the cause of the instructions well. This provides herself directional grading system that can enable the student to improve themselves.
The traditional systems mechanically presented the teacher’s instructions in a curricular that had a lesson plan and because of the different planning rates of students, some are bored because of the slow pace of the teacher while some teachers will go extremely fast for the students that are slow. Students are therefore less frustrated by poorly fitting instructions and the school gets to be a more positive experience when the material is relevant and interesting.
This enables them to achieve high levels of enjoyment in school while sustaining high levels of effort and achievement. In traditional grading systems students with fewer mistakes and the highest grades and depending on the type of the mistake, it is impossible to recover and a good grade if a student doesn’t fit well in the instructional system.