Given over 20 years of schools attempting to implement standards-based grading (SBG), Lee Ann Jung’s 2024 release, Assessing Students Not Standards, offers a refreshing alternative. Is it part of a post-SBG era? Maybe. There are a lot of SBG concepts that are universally good, and the message is clear from researchers and teachers: let’s keep those. But there’s more. We can rebuild SBG. We have the experience. We can make SBG better than it was. Better, stronger, faster.

Another message is getting clearer, too, and seems right at home with the ungrading movement. Jung states “we need to grade better, but we also need to grade less. A lot less” (p. 20). This is aligned with my own research on exploring 1) ways to reduce summative grading, and 2) find formative grading alternatives (i.e., so they remain formative). So, let’s get into some stuff in the book…

Growth
If you’re looking for inspiration as to the “why?” when it comes to grading (or not grading), this book’s got you covered. If you’re already sold, I still recommend following along. It’s possible you haven’t come across the most important concept of the book: grading for growth. In short, I’ll say that Jung is onto something that’s rarely discussed. It hardly appears in the literature, either. That is, grading against a standard ignores how a student reaches it, and is merely concerned that they reach it. Consider the student who starts high, learns barely anything, and meets a standard. They often lose motivation to continue learning because “what’s the point?” And I don’t blame. Meanwhile, consider the student who starts low, or is slower, learns a ton, yet doesn’t quite meet the standard. They’re often at a disadvantage, especially when schools convert SBG levels to a grade for GPA purposes, which most do.

Transfer Standards
Jung warns that overzealous teachers tend to rush straight to content standards, often focusing too narrowly on what students need most: learning how to learn. As such, Jung makes a strong case for beginning with assessment—not other policies or the grading scale—since it requires teachers to think about skills that are going to have the most impact on student learning across all content areas. Content goals/standards are a much smaller piece of the puzzle than most teachers think. There’s a great deal of guidance with this in the book.

Learning Progressions
One of Jung’s solutions to this inherent problem with grading against standards is learning progressions. While these require a major time investment to develop, I’m a fan. Instead of a student’s grade being the degree to which they meet a single standard, such as “beginning,” “approaching,” “proficient,” etc., the grade for learning progressions is wherever the student is along a continuum, beginning with foundational stages of a skill and progressing to higher levels. For example, we could develop the different stages of crawling to walking, observe any given child, and show where they are in that learning progression. There’s no evaluation; there’s just reporting where a student’s at, and what the next steps are for their growth.

I like Jung’s phrasing, too, of “next steps.” Unlike finite standards scales, learning progressions keep the highest achieving students from giving up. How? The rubrics keep progressing; there isn’t really the highest level! That is, Jung advocates starting with a rubric that has 4 stages of a skill for what’s reasonable to expect in the first quarter. Then, continue the progression so the rubric continues each quarter to total 16 stages for the year. This means students can progress at their own rate, and it’s probably not gonna be linear. For example, a fast high achiever might zoom through all the stages on two of the rubrics the first two quarters, ending up at stage 9 of 16. During the third quarter, they might slow down, and end at stage 10, to finally end the year at stage 12. This promotes the idea of individual growth and lifelong learning. Do we treat that as “earning” 12 stages of 16? No. Jung’s message is to focus on the growth from 0 to 12, and simply report where students are in their learning.

Course Grade
The tricky part, of course, is how to arrive at a course grade. Jung is unforgiving about why there’s almost no justification for grades until high school, and even then it’s a matter of reducing an entire year of growth down to a single symbol. This is the “use your best judgment” part of the book, which is nice. From what I’ve seen, I’d advocate for student-led conferences—which also happen at progress report/report card times throughout the year anyway—where students use a portfolio of work and rationalize a grade to the tune of something like “my grade should be ___ because ___ shows ___.” It’s actually a simple solution. Just gotta be sure to build the conference time into the school schedule and you’re set. Jung also has ideas for this, too.

I also appreciated how Jung pointed out that schools treat progress reports, report cards, and transcripts all the same way. If students only really need a number generated for college admissions, there’s zero need to “justify a constant displaying of and reward of GPA by the school” (p. 187). This is highly aligned with ungrading principles. Jung advocates for gradebooks as formative instruments of growth, and treating report cards indicators of progress until the final report of the year. Again, even these don’t need numbers attached to them until junior year of high school. And no, despite the myths, students don’t need practice receiving grades if they might eventually get grades. They need to learn how to learn.

In sum, this book is one of my top picks for classroom assessment and grading, and I’ll be using it with preservice teachers this fall.

Reference
Jung, L. A. (2024). Assessing Students, Not Standards: Begin With What Matters Most (1st edition). Corwin.