Handouts are available below

Big Idea

I was giving a workshop on Standards Based Grading last week, and one question that came up – which comes up a lot – was whether we’re allowed to fail students when we use standards based assessment because some of my colleagues have heard from their administrators that students aren’t allowed to fail in SBA. But, from my own experience, students have failed while using SBA – and I’ll tell you how in below.

A Mark of Incomplete or Insufficient

Quick refresher: in SBA, students are assessed on a four level proficiency scale starting at emerging, developing, proficient, and extending. The misconception that students can’t fail comes from the misguided idea that all students start at emerging – that they have a basic ability at performing a skill – so long as they attempt to perform a task- regardless of how horribly they may have performed a task. In other words, because a student tried, they are automatically at the lowest level on the scale – “Emerging”.

However, not every student necessarily starts at emerging – some don’t make it to emerging at all – and that’s how a student can fail in an SBA system. This happens when a student (1) does not answer questions or avoids performing tasks – which I consider incomplete or (2) they write down answers that don’t really answer the question or perform tasks that are not contributing to their learning. I consider the latter to be insufficient evidence. For example, let’s say that on a test, I asked students to write an argument for which organelle in the cell that they believe is the least important. An incomplete response would be no response. An insufficient response would be if they wrote something that didn’t answer the question, like “cells have organelles” or “plant cells have chloroplasts and animal cells don’t”.

Of course, getting incomplete or insufficient evidence on one task doesn’t immediately mean a student fails. It just means they weren’t able to complete that task at that moment at the emerging level. However, if a student consistently shows they cannot consistently perform a skill at the emerging level and, instead, regularly gets incomplete or insufficient evidence, then a student can fail.

Thanks for reading, and let’s talk science education again soon.

Resources

Handout(s): Ep49 Handout – Revised SBA Proficiency Scale

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