The impact of traditional grading versus standards-based grading (SBG) on student success is a crucial topic in education.
Grading is about more than simply measuring student attainment. Your choice of grading method can affect student motivation, morale, and future engagement. As such, it influences both academic outcomes and personal development.
Let’s compare and contrast traditional vs standards based grading to understand their impact.
Why does grading matter in student success?
Grading matters to student success because grading isn’t just about scores. It’s about assessing learning, providing constructive feedback, and supporting students to higher attainment. It’s about the interplay of feedback, motivation, and engagement, and how that can influence future behavior.
Plus, it’s a question of fairness. How to grade students in a way that reflects, not only their knowledge, but their critical skills and effort?
As the influential educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom said in 1968: “Our basic task in education is to find strategies which will take individual differences into consideration but which will do so in such a way as to promote the fullest development of the individual.”
Bloom’s quote goes to the heart of a much-debated question in education. What is the best, fairest, and most effective way to grade students’ progress?
With a focus on subject and skills mastery, Bloom’s work laid the foundation for many modern educational principles, including Standards-Based Grading (though he isn’t credited with the concept).
Standards based grading is an increasingly popular alternative to traditional grading systems, thought to improve student outcomes, motivation, and well-being. So how do these systems compare in fostering equitable and effective learning?
What is traditional grading?
Traditional grading uses letters (e.g. A-F), numbers, or percentage scores to show how a student has fared in an assessment.
Over a period of study, traditional grading takes an average of grades from a student's body of work – from homework, assessments, projects, or tests – and holds that final score to be the best reflection of a student’s abilities and competence.
But this familiar system has flaws. Traditional grading is typically summative – meaning it happens at the end of a period of learning. This can culminate in single high-stakes assessment, putting undue stress on students and disproportionate weight on their performance on a given day.
Plus, average scores can skew a final grade and mask a student’s particular strengths. It may not, in the end, give a fair or precise assessment of a student's abilities: their ‘mastery’ of a given subject.
Academic research suggests that traditional grading is a poor way to drive students to success (Chamberlain and Chaing, 2018). It increases student anxiety (Howard, 2020) because students feel pressure to achieve a grade, believing this is the only true marker of success.
High-stakes assessments can make students feel they’re unable to recover from a bad grade, leading to disengagement and the risk of academic misconduct. It may also lead to students prioritizing rote learning over truly engaging with a topic.
Where did traditional grading originate and why is it so widespread?
Given these limitations, why is traditional grading so widespread, and where did it come from?
Traditional grading is deeply ingrained in education. It emerged in the early 20th century as educational systems expanded. With more students, institutions needed a more standardized way to rank students, identify higher achievers for future professional careers, and communicate progress to parents.
In the United States, for example, the Grade Point Average metric was directly linked to how federal funding was allocated for education. GPA became the default, and because it was so widely adopted across districts administered by different states, it was a convenient standard measure of performance for the government.
By contrast, standards-based grading does not provide a generalized average score in this way – and so does not easily fit into existing systems, which are geared for the traditional approach.
Traditional grading continues today exactly because it is so familiar and embedded. Rather than breeding contempt, this familiarity has created resistance to change.
Parents and students alike understand what traditional grading indicates, and institutions and educators are familiar with its application. It is easy to both implement and interpret. As a result, traditional grading continues, despite reformers advocating for change.
Pros and cons of traditional grading
As educators increasingly seek fairer, more meaningful ways to assess learning, it’s important to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of traditional grading systems. The table below breaks down these key points.
How is standards-based grading redefining assessment?
A better approach, say many education reformers, is Standards Based Grading – or SBG.
Standards based grading focuses on how well students learn specific skills and meet clear learning goals, rather than averaging their grades. It also provides detailed feedback to help students improve and understand what they need to work on, instead of just an alpha or numerical grade.
This Standards-Based system prefers grading using tests and assignments tied to those learning goals. There are no averaged grades or cumulative scores with Standards Based Grading, and no high-stakes final assessments. Instead, it aims at continual, focused assessment of a student’s progress and achievement in a subject.
Students are then graded according to their mastery of specific skills and knowledge, often on a scale, and provided with bespoke narrative feedback to help them move to the next level.
Typical standards based grading scale
- Beginning
- Developing
- Proficient
- Advanced
Narrative evaluation has been proven to improve student motivation and make learning more effective and enjoyable (Knight and Cooper, 2019). Research also shows that quality, timely feedback provided in this way is central to students’ performance and progress.
Research also shows that the clarity provided by well-defined learning objectives and the grading scale helps students engage more effectively with the subject and improve their performance.
How does traditional vs. standards-based grading impact student motivation?
At its heart, traditional vs standards based grading comes down to one key question: how does each grading approach affect student motivation?
Tradition grading focuses on extrinsic motivation. Grades can be viewed as ‘rewards’ for good performance and ‘punishments’ for poor performance. It reinforces a pass/fail mindset that can undermine student engagement.
Standards-based grading emphasizes intrinsic motivation. A compassionate grading scale that recognizes students’ different levels, and constructive feedback to help them improve, encourages a growth mindset and is a powerful way to cultivate student engagement. With a focus on mastery, goal-setting, and self-directed learning, it helps ladder students to the next level and develop depth of knowledge.
Many education reformers want to encourage students to be ‘intrinsically’ motivated – ie self-motivated – to develop their own confidence, ability, and skills and to want to perform well. Studies show that self-motivated students perform better than students whose mindset is motivated by avoiding external punishments (Liu, Shi, and Wang, 2022).
Intrinsic motivation gives students more confidence to learn independently, makes them more resilient to setbacks, and develops their critical thinking skills. As some educators put it, a ‘willingness to learn’ (Ishiguro, 2018).
SBG encourages these skills to a greater degree than traditional grading methods by focusing on student development, rather than simply information retention in one all-or-nothing examination.
As such, promising studies suggest that it outperforms the traditional approach, particularly in STEM subjects (Hackerson, Slominski, Johnson, 2024).
How does traditional vs. standards-based grading impact learning outcomes and prepare students for the future?
Traditional grading systems – with their reliance on general assessments – often leave gaps in students’ understanding. By averaging scores from a range of assignments, students may appear competent overall, even if they struggle with specific concepts.
This method also tends to prioritize memorization over true mastery, encouraging short-term learning strategies that don’t promote long-term retention or application.
Plus, the heavy emphasis on test-taking can lead to ‘grade chasing’, often at the cost of deeper learning – and potentially risking academic integrity.
Unfortunately, traditional grading does little to develop critical thinking or adaptability, key skills needed for success in today’s ever-evolving job market.
In contrast, standards-based grading focuses on ensuring that students master specific skills, promoting a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the material.
This system uses formative assessments to gauge progress over time, allowing students to receive continuous feedback and adjust their learning strategies accordingly.
By focusing on mastery and skill development, SBG encourages students to approach learning as a process of growth and continuous improvement.
Standards based grading helps prepare students for an ever-changing career landscape where self-motivation and lifelong learning will be required.
Traditional vs standards-based grading: Application and impact
Both traditional and standards based grading impact student motivation, feedback, and instructional strategies in unique ways. The table below highlights their key applications and potential impacts in educational settings.
How is grading evolving with educational trends?
Despite the convenience and clarity associated with traditional grading, more institutions are taking note of reformers’ research and integrating more student-focused grading approaches into their practice.
Competency-based grading is emerging as a way to bridge the gap between traditional vs standards-based grading, combining traditional assessments with a stronger focus on student mastery and skills development.
Another approach is to introduce more formative assessment alongside summative approaches, and supplement traditional grades with more narrative feedback.
Advances in technology are supporting institutions to evolve their grading practices to better support student achievement.
Tools like Turnitin’s Feedback Studio and Gradescope enable educators to create and deliver formative assessments, and provide detailed actionable feedback on assignments and tests.
If that’s part of your forward strategy, here are six ways to reshape your feedback and increase student engagement.