DAVID MAMARIL HOROWITZ

david.horowitz@bgdailynews.com

Bowling Green Junior High Principal Robert Lightning recalled how over the decades, students discussed letter grades after getting test results.

But these days, amid a shift from traditional grading, that’s changing, he says — with the conversation sounding increasingly different amid a transition toward reaching specific learning goals.

“Now I think when you walk into our class, you hear those kids talking: ‘I’ve mastered this skill. I’m partial mastery here, and now I need to grow in this area,’ ” Roberts said.

The school, according to Lightning and BGJHS teachers, has had success in its sixth-grade implementation of standards-based reporting, a system of evaluating students in math, reading, science, social studies and writing which is known for grading based on mastery rather than letters.

Bowling Green Independent School District has used that system, also known as competency-based grading, for grades K-2 over more than 20 years and in recent years expanded it to higher grades. BGISD plans for the reporting system’s expansion, which encompassed sixth grade this past academic year, to continue to seventh grade next academic year and eighth grade beginning fall 2026, Lightning said.

“… It’s allowed us to take a much more intentional and targeted approach with our instruction and making sure that we’re teaching those skills that we’ve identified to be essential,” Lightning said.

While standards-based reporting is new to some district students and parents, most are accustomed from previous grades. For those who aren’t and teachers, the expansion requires an upfront investment in time — which BGISD has allotted educators at least some time for through professional development and early-release days — but BGISD sees the intended clarity and consistency as worth it.

“My argument and my vision was, we have to make sure that all those kids in that first-grade classroom are being taught the same standards in the same manner with the same curriculum so that there is a consistency to experience,” BGISD Superintendent Gary Fields said.

Expansion

Several years ago, BGISD started developing standards for those higher grades aligned with those required by the state — creating learning targets as well as mastery scales, BGISD Director of Instructional Programs Darlene Porter said. The scales show teachers and students exactly what to learn at each learning standard, she said.

“By providing that clarity, students and teachers know: ‘This is the learning that I’m working on, and here’s how I’m doing based on the evidence and the feedback,’” Porter said.

The system is still relatively new to sixth-grade BGJHS teachers Jenna Calvert and Paula Searcy, the two said. Still, they offered early thoughts. Overall: a tough learning curve, but beneficial over time as students increasingly understand what they know and need to learn.

Calvert saw the biggest change in how she designed and looked at her assessments, which have become shorter as each evaluates less material at once — isolating skills more than before and allowing students to better zero in on one skill at a time, Calvert said.

“That has really been eye opening for me as a teacher, just to see where my kids are and where they are in their learning,” Calvert said. “And it’s been eye opening for them as well, because I feel like this is the first year where kids can actually tell you where they are in their learning.”

“They can look at the student (grading) scales, see where they fall, and see what else they need to do to get their grade up to mastery or get it up to that, to that (‘Excel’) scale.”

The biggest hurdle as teachers was learning to input and post grades as well as teaching parents about how to understand them, the two said.

“It was an all-hands-on-deck experience in sixth grade,” Jenna said. “I would say there’s a large learning curve for teachers, parents and students.”

Teachers must wrap their heads around a new way to grade and assess. Parents must learn what scores mean, how students are affected, how targets work, and so on; and students do the same as they continually learn the difference between target skills and foundational ones — the latter encompassing the basic skills required to work toward mastering a skill.

As early as February, Calvert and Searcy said students and parents overall seemed to understand the new system — and it’s something expected to continue smoothening out with time.

“It feels like you’re recreating the wheel and that everything has to be changed. And that’s not the case,” Paula said. “You’re just shifting gears from the way you assess them before and the way you assess them now.”

How it looks

Teachers provide activities and lessons followed by an assessment — be it pencil-paper, a conversation or another manner of demonstrating their learning — that is especially intentional about grading based on knowledge of a given subject area, according to the district. Then, an instructor compiles and reviews evidence to evaluate a student’s mastery of the scales and learning targets — graded “E” for “Excels,” “M” for “Mastery,” “PM” for “Partial Mastery” and “Beg” for “Beginning.”

For example, Dishman-McGinnis fifth-grade teacher Jessie Vermillion attaches a standard to each test question. This, she said, enables her to identify specific areas of learning mastery students may struggle with: For example, a student could have scored high but missed a question on a standard about using evidence to support a claim.

“… Even though I would have originally thought, ‘OK, they’ve got it, they’re ready to move on,’ they would have missed one of the most important standards in fifth-grade social studies,” she explained about the scenario.

The standards system also keeps Vermillion cognizant of evidence collected, which can aid in efficiency. Vermillion recalled, for example, a time she had compiled enough evidence via observational notes and a range of activities to report on standards and scrapped one of her tests.

Kellen Smith, a fifth-grade teacher at W.R. McNeill Elementary, said the system works with grouping, where he group students who struggle with the same standard. He’s also zeroed in on standards in lessons and rubrics to ensure it’s clear how a student can progress toward mastery.

Second-grade W.R. McNeill Elementary teacher Olivia Mitchell described a similar experience with groups. Mitchell added that her students each have a data tracking sheet breaking down the foundational skills for partial mastery of each skill they must learn. These are targeted and reviewed throughout a unit as students work toward mastery of that skill.

“It’s not just a teacher simply stating, ‘This is what we’re learning today, this is important, this is it,’” she said. “Instead, teachers are giving students a ‘how,’ ‘why’ and ‘what.’ ”

Standards-based reporting begins with standards-based instruction, she said, and gives students a roadmap to track their individual progress toward mastery and see the breakdown of what they are learning.

“Our teaching practices aren’t changing per se, but the clarity of how we teach and report on student learning is being refined to match our intentions,” she said.