In the prior blog, we focused on an Overview of Standards-based Practices. Before we dive deeper into processes associated with the topic, it is critical that we make a distinction between standards-referenced practices and standards-based practices. The book, A Teacher’s Guide to Standards-based Learning by Heflebower, Hoegh, Warrick, and Flygare, clarifies the terms.
Standards referenced means that teachers report student progress in reference to the standards for a specific grade level or course. Grant Wiggins and Robert Marzano describe standards referenced as “a system in which teachers give students feedback about their proficiency on a set of defined standards and schools report students’ levels of performance on the grade-level standards, but students advance at the end of the course or year based on passing performance and other factors, only some of which may involve proficiency on the standards” (p. 4).
Standards based, on the other hand, is a system of assessing and reporting that describes student progress in relation to standards. In a standards-based system, “a student can demonstrate mastery of a set of standards and move immediately to a more challenging set of standards. This means that if a third-grade student masters the entire set of third-grade mathematics standards in two months, that student immediately begins to work on fourth-grade mathematics standards. The same principle applies to all grade levels and subject areas; as soon as a student demonstrates competency with all the standards for a specific level and subject area, he or she immediately begins working on the next level of standards for that subject area. At the same time, a student who does not achieve proficiency on the standards continues to work on those standards until he or she reaches proficiency” (pp. 4-5). Competency-based or proficiency-based systems are other common labels for this type of learning.
Reference
Heflebower, T., Hoegh, J. K., Warrick, P. B., & Flygare, J. (2019). A teacher’s guide to standards-based learning. Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research.
