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WSD Grading Philosophy
WSD believes the purpose of grading is to communicate an accurate representation of achievement toward learning targets, which are aligned to state academic standards. Grades are used by students, parents, teachers, administrators, and pupil service teams to communicate progress toward learning targets and measure skills. Grades assist our schools and families in determining appropriate plans or schedules, informing instruction and differentiation efforts, and highlighting the need for interventions and/or extensions.
Standards-Based Teaching, Learning, and Reporting
As technology evolves at an increasingly rapid rate, schools find themselves needing to respond to significant changes in how and when learning takes place. Teachers now find themselves moving away from the role of the primary 'disseminator of information', and into the role of 'learning facilitator', guiding students through the maze of information that is now abundantly available, and helping them develop the skills to access and accurately interpret the world around them.
Teachers use Learning Targets, which are subsets of state or national learning standards, to assess students' progress toward or mastery of a standard. Ideally, students are presented with the Learning Target - along with the criteria necessary for mastery of the target - prior to the beginning of a unit or lesson. Students then work to demonstrate evidence of understanding as it relates to the specific Learning Target(s), with the teacher providing guidance and feedback along the way.
Standards-based reporting means that students are simply 'graded' on whether or not they are proficient in a specific standard (or Learning Target). The preferred method here is to reduce the numbers, scales, and calculations that go into a traditional 'grade' and rely more on a set of indicators which describe a student's current level of understanding within the standard.
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