Standards Based Education

  • Somerdale Park School’s standards-based instruction system establishes challenging and appropriate learning targets for all students. We do this in every course, at every grade level, and in every classroom. We use standards-based education in grades K-2 to measure how well students are progressing toward mastery of critical New Jersey Student Learning Standards.


    What is Standards-Based Instruction and Grading?

    • Provides a fair and objective way to evaluate students based on what they have learned while providing the appropriate level of challenge and rigor. 
    • Standards-based learning provides the foundation for 21st century learning opportunities that prepare students for today, tomorrow and the future.
    • Gives teachers a powerful system for teaching.
    • Helps parents be knowledgeable participants in their students’ education.
    • Standards-based education is the teaching, assessment and reporting of student performance based on consistent and equitable measurements. 

We use 4 indicators of mastery to identify how students are progressing:

Mastery Indicators

On the report card, these are identified by numbers 1-4, or IN/NE. 

the cupcake analogy

See a sample report card, below. You can see that this student improved overall from Q1 to Q4 in every subject. In order to determine the score of 1-4, we use rubrics.

sample standards based report card

FAQ: 

Q1: How will parents know how students can improve?

A1: Parents can use the rubrics to see where a student performs in relation to standard mastery and how they can improve. Parents are encouraged to communicate frequently with their child’s teacher to remain up to date on their child’s progress.


Q2: How can a student earn a 4?

A2: A 4 represents that a student has achieved above and beyond the grade level expectations for that standard. This means that the student demonstrates an advanced mastery of the skill or process. 


Q3: What does NE mean vs. IN? What about a blank box?

A3: NE means not evaluated, where IN means insufficient evidence. Not evaluated means that this standard was not taught during the given marking period. IN means that there wasn’t enough evidence to evaluate that standard. This could be a result of chronic absenteeism or lack of completed work. 


Q4: Why did we decide to go to a standards-based approach? Can’t we just go back to a traditional letter grading system? 

A4: A standards-based approach allows parents and students to understand more clearly what is expected of students and how to help them be successful in their learning. It tells us what students have actually learned by measuring a student’s progress on grade level standards. Rather than receiving an overall grade for a subject, parents will see ratings for specific skills their child needs to know to reach grade level standards. This is important information for parents and teachers and it is often hidden within one overall letter grade. Traditional grading also includes subjective factors like attendance, effort, and attitude, which might influence the grade positively or negatively. In a standards based approach, these behaviors are reported separately in order to portray a more accurate report of student progress. A standards-based system also focuses on the most recent, consistent level of performance. Traditional grading systems use averaging to calculate grades, which often penalizes students for the learning process.