Students must meet the prescribed requirements of performance outlined in a scoring rubric of a content area.

Typically, these rubrics are designed on a 4-point scale, with score 3 being "proficient" and score 4 indicating "advanced" skill or knowledge.

What makes SBE unique is the expectation that every student will learn the content at a high level, either a 3 or 4 score, before being permitted to advance to the next performance level.

Sometimes it will take less or more time for a student to demonstrate mastery.

Thus, using the traditional grading system, one could say that students will eventually know their content skills and knowledge at the "B" or "A" level.

Having noted all of the above, District 50 has not yet determined whether it will use letter grades or not.

GRADE LEVELS?

There will be performance levels rather than the traditional grade levels.

1. The Standards-BasedEducation (SBE) allows students the freedom to move and progress at their own pace through the educational system.
2. Therefore, SBE moves away from the traditional grade level structure because the basic premise of SBE is that time is a variable and students move up through the various performance levels of a content area when they demonstrate mastery - sometimes quickly, sometimes more slowly. Learning is the constant.
3. Thus, the traditional time bound, annual grade level structure no longer fits.
4. For District 50, we have identified 10 rigorous performance levels in 10 content areas (language arts, math, science, social studies, art, PE, music, technology, world languages, and personal/social) that students will need to pass through in order to meet our graduation requirements.
5. We have also identified levels 11 and 12 in some of the content areas which will go beyond graduation requirements and students may earn college credit.

Graduation and College Admission?

Our students will not be at a disadvantage in being admitted to colleges or universities. Along with the transcript, which includes GPA and class rank,students typically also

• write entrance essays,
• complete standardized tests, such as the ACT or SAT (past experience indicates that students from a standards-based system perform equally as well as any other student taking these types of tests),
• and submit a review of extra-curricular or outside community activities.

Most admissions officers take all of these factors into account, not just grade point average or class rank.

• Students graduating from District 50 in a Standards-Based System will have demonstrated the skills and knowledge that meet the rigorous graduation requirements recommended by the Colorado Consortium of Higher Education (CCHE) and District 50.
• While final determination about what type of grading scale might be applied to the D50 system (i.e., letter grades or performance level scores) has NOT been determined, all D50 transcripts will be able to be "converted" into a tradition transcript for college admissions, with Carnegie unit credits and required upper level courses.
• With this information, it will certainly be possible to complete a grade point average and class rank, although, again it has not been decided yet whether this will occur. (Ironically, colleges and universities do not hold their students accountable to standards!)
• It is very conceivable that if there are letter grades, they will be in the B to A range, depending if the student is demonstrating skills and knowledge at the proficient to advanced level.

Based on experiences from school districts already implementing SBS, students from these districts are not having difficulty being admitted to colleges or universities around the country. In fact, these districts have had a higher number of students entering college than they had in the past.