Knudson, J. (2011). Meeting 15 summary: Ensuring access to post-secondary success in a standards-based system. The California Collaborative on District Reform. Available on Dropbox.
Garden Grove Unified School District. (2023). Board policy: Grades and evaluation of students. https://policy.ggusd.us/6126.
Garden Grove Unified School District. (2023). Administrative regulation: Grades. https://policy.ggusd.us/61261.
These three readings include Garden Grove Unified School District’s (GGUSD) policies on grading and some history of how they began this work earlier than most districts. The first reading is the California Collaborative Meeting 15 summary, which GGUSD hosted. The meeting was focused on multiple district efforts to ensure students were prepared for post-secondary access, including reflections that grading practices at that time were not fair or accurate and efforts to change them. The second and third readings are the board policies GGUSD has on grading. The policies dictate that grades ought to “largely” reflect student proficiency and explain what each letter grade ought to mean.
For the Meeting 15 summary, we recommend reading page 1, and page 6 through the first paragraph on page 12.
Long Beach Unified School District. (2024). Policy Manual, Article 5 - Students, § 5121, Grades/Evaluation of Student Achievement.
Long Beach Unified School District’s (LBUSD) policy on grading indicates that grades should “solely” be based on student academic mastery and should follow the district-wide Uniform Grading and Reporting Guidelines. To access the policy, go to https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/lbusd/Board.nsf/Public, click “Policies” on the top right, click “Article 5 – Students” on the left, and click “5121 Grades/Evaluation of Student Achievement”.
In support of this policy, LBUSD has developed draft administrative guidance with details about what the policy looks like in practice: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dp5t2JyLZtb8tRrgyfdOpHsDtLtFx2yWFl2_6YZ-3RQ/edit
San José Unified School District Board. (2021). Policy Manual, § 5121, Grades/Evaluation of Student Achievement. https://simbli.eboardsolutions.com/Policy/ViewPolicy.aspx?S=36030421&revid=Q8z5b2PlO2axHbg4Vr08tQ==.
San José Unified School District’s board policy on grading indicates that grades should “solely” be based on student’s academic mastery and that students ought to be given multiple ways to demonstrate that mastery. Additionally, student work should be graded against grade-level expectations and not against their peers in their class.
Tanya Ortiz Franklin Board District 7. (2021, February 23). Exploring mastery-based learning and grading (Res-013-20/21). Los Angeles Unified School District. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nxO7sRmD4B0x9r8UiCQbqKwDcVJVKQcb/view.
Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) adopted a resolution to establish a Grading Advisory Group to assess the district’s current grading practices. The district cites research from Grading for Equity by Joe Feldman as their source for recognizing the challenges associated with traditional grading practices. The resolution says that the district will update its policies to reflect mastery-based grading practices.
For more on LAUSD, the office for Equitable Grading and Instruction shares their developments at https://www.lausd.org/domain/827.
San Luis High School. (n.d.). San Luis High School standards-based grading. Yuma Union High School District #70. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D5rlNGuCBlZpRepOiwTfamsXOh2g3qAf/view.
In the readings under Considerations for Implementing New Grading Practices, we included a story about San Luis High School (SLHS) in Arizona that was four years into implementing standards-based grading. This reading is the teacher handbook from SLHS that gives greater guidance and details to teachers about how they should be grading students.
**This document is a priority reading.