How Educate Calculates Standards-Based Grading

When using Standards-based grading, there are three options for calculating a student's final grade for that standard: Most Recent, Mode, Calculated Average, Average of 3 Highest, and Power Law. This article will cover each of those and how they are calculated.

 

Most Recent

The Most Recent scoring method takes the standard score awarded most recently to that standard for each student. This is based on Due Date of the assignment. 

Mode

The Mode scoring method takes the most frequently occurring score for that standard. If more than one score appears the same number of times, the Mode will reflect the more recently scored assignment by Due Date. For example, if a single standard has scores of 1, 2, 3, 3, 4 the Mode will calculate to a 3 as the final grade.

Average

The calculated Average score for a student is the average of all summative grades entered for that standard from the gradebook. Meaning it will take the score entered / number of grades entered. For the example below, there are 4 assignments with this standard entered and the scores are shown below; the calculation for the first student is 4 + 3 + 3 + 4 = 14 / 4 = 3.5.

Average of 3 Highest

The Average of 3 Highest is calculated off of only the 3 highest summative scores from the gradebook, instead of averaging all grades entered. For the finalized grades listed above, this calculation would only take the assignments the student scored highest on; meaning the calculation for the first student would be 4 + 4 + 3 = 11 / 3 = 3.67.

Power Law

Power Law Calculation for standards-based grading is an equation developed by Robert J. Marzano (Transforming Classroom Grading, Assn for Supervision & Curriculum, 2000) that looks at a student's trend in learning. It assigns a prediction of the student's score based on the values already entered for them, throughout the grading period. To best use the Power Law calculation, there should be at least 3 scores entered.

Below you will find a table that shows how the calculation would be interpreted.

 

Questions or Concerns, please reach out to the Educate Support Team.