FAQ

What is NewGrade?

NewGrade is a forever-free educational app that helps teachers easily shift their classroom structure and grading from a traditional 100-point scale to a standards-based classroom environment where students can understand their learning journey and receive meaningful feedback.

You simply select your state, school, or program standards from the drop-down menu, select or upload the skills you want to teach your students, add your teaching materials and course resources, and NewGrade helps guide you in restructuring your class curriculum from zeros to heroes.

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What is Standards-Based Grading?

Assessment can be defined as evaluation of student academic work, whereas Brookhart et al. (2016) defined grading as, “the symbols assigned to individual pieces of student work or to composite measures of student performance on student report cards” (p. 804). Assessment can be viewed through the lens of formative assessments, or foundational, nongraded work, and summative assessments, or graded summary demonstration of mastery of skills, content, or learning. Summative assessments are typically based upon the understandings gained through the formative work. Standards-based grading (SBG) functions through formative and summative assessment and communicates a richer picture of student learning and challenges over time.

Why Standards-Based Grading vs. Norm-referenced, 100-point Grading?

Historically, grading has been traditionally completed using a 100-point scale that developed in practice over the last hundred years. Traditional grading has also been plagued by a lack of uniformity, accuracy, or ability to predict success (Guskey, 2013). Munoz and Guskey (2015) asserted that, at a minimum, grading should be consistent and factual, but ideally grading should be an essential piece of communication in which grades are “meaningful, accurate, and fair” (p. 64). According to Guskey (2015), traditional grades have utterly failed to offer detailed, meaningful communication, rich reflection of the learning process, or authentic appraisal of the mastery of content over time. Ideally, grades and report cards should represent grade reporting that is useful to all students.

Unfortunately, most grades assess curriculum designed around standardized tests, not skills. Stakes are high for teachers to teach to the test. The hardest hit are our underserved students. Traditional 100-point scale grading has posed a distinct and inequitable challenge for at-risk and special education students, since this type of score-based grading failed to measure gaps in learning or account for differentiation and policies of inclusivity (Marbouti, Diefes-Dux, & Madhavan, 2015; Jung & Guskey, 2007). Both Marbouti et al. (2015) and Jung and Guskey (2007) argued for the inclusion of standards-based grading into the classroom setting at all educational levels, especially for at-risk and special needs students. If we're going to help all students, we need to redesign our curriculum from the ground up.

What does a Standards-Based Curriculum Design look like?