Secondary Teachers and Standards-Based Gradebook

Traditionally, secondary teachers enter traditional grades and averages for assignments and marking periods. For example, a student might earn a B (85) on a writing assignment. Then, at the end of a marking period, all of his scores are combined to determine the average score he received during this period of time. Each student receives one average for each class:

85+75+63+91 = 314/4 = 78.5 average

With education moving towards evaluating student progress on specific standards, it is possible that you now need or want to be able to track your students' performance on such standards within your Aspen gradebook.

Using a Hybrid Gradebook

A hybrid gradebook is a gradebook you use to enter and track both traditional scores and grades and standards-based scores.

When using a hybrid gradebook, it is important to select the View you need to use each time you use your Scores page.

This determines if you can select Grade columns to view, such as assignments for specific categories, like Homework, or select which Standards information to view, such as Trends for all standards, or all assignments aligned to a specific standard.

Calculating Standards Scores

Aspen calculates two running term scores for each standard:

• Average standard score: Much like an average points score, the standards average is just that – the average of all the scores entered for a standard.
• Trend score based on the Power Law calculation: The Power Law Trend references each score you enter for a student, and predicts the next score a student would receive if evaluated for that standard again.

Using Standards-Based Scores as a Secondary Teacher Examples

A secondary teacher might use the Aspen gradebook with standards-based grades in the following ways:

1. Your district might require you enter standards scores for specific assessments. For example, your district might require you administer and enter scores for a district benchmark exam for your subject each quarter. This way, your district can track student achievement for a rubric (reporting standard) over the course of a year.

• For example, if you are an English teacher, you might administer a district-created writing assessment to measure the same standards each quarter.

  Your district might create rubrics (reporting standards) for these assessments specifically, such as District Level Assessment - ELA, which uses a 1-4 rating scale. This appears in your gradebook.

  In your Aspen gradebook, you create four assignments - one for each time you give the assessment, and align them with the District Level Assessment - HS- ELA reporting standard.

  Then, using the 1-4 rating scale, you enter a score for each student, for each reporting standard.

  At the end of the year, Aspen has used the Power Law calculation to provide the district with a Trend score. The Power Law includes each of the four scores and determines each student's progress in each standard over the course of the year (the four assessments). You can also view the average trend score for each standard for all your students, which can provide each teacher with a good indicator of how their lessons worked, or did not, on getting students to meet each standard.

2. You might want to create your own reporting standards (or rubrics) to track information you already track on paper online in your Aspen gradebook.

Note: If you create your own reporting standards in your Aspen gradebook, you cannot post these to the office, and they do not appear on student report cards or transcripts. Only reporting standards created by your district can be posted to the office.

• For example, you might already use rubrics to score specific types of assignments, like essays.

  In your Aspen gradebook, you can create a reporting standard for each criteria to attach to all essay assignments.

  This way,while also entering traditional grades for each assignment that count towards each student's term grade, you can enter and track student scores for very specific tasks within an assignment for your own knowledge.

  This helps you track their progress over a period of time during which they complete several assignments in which they practiced the same standards. Look at an individual student's Trend score for each standard to determine where they might need more help. For example, is the student still struggling with writing solid thesis statements?

Getting Started with Standards-Based Gradebook

Whether you are interested in having a place to track your students' progress in meeting standards on rubrics for a few assignments, or in using the full standards-based gradebook for your classes, you can get started using standards-based grades in your Aspen gradebook.

To enter standards scores for one or more assignments:

1. Create reporting standards or view any your district has created for your classes.
2. Create and align assignments with standards.
3. Enter and view standards scores.
4. View Trend scores to help guide your lessons.