I’ve been sitting on this post for a very, very long time, perhaps because I hadn’t been entirely confident in my review of classroom assessment literature enough to make a claim about standards-based grading (SBG) that isn’t exactly positive. In short, the literature suggests that practices most likely to support learning are achieved by keeping graded summative assessments to a minimum.

SBG might not be doing this.

While some SBG systems use a 0-4 scale to report achievement, others use an ordinal scale, with words like “proficient” replacing “A” or “95” (Townsley, 2022). The thing is, though, these words are still grades. Like all grades, they are symbols representing levels of student performance (Brookhart et al., 2016).

Unfortunately, grades have a damning history with unreliability and variability, undermining teachers’ feedback, and students’ negative associations with motivation. We’re not talking about a few studies here and there, either. We’re talking about 35+ studies spanning 115 years from Meyer (1908) to Mandouit & Hattie (2023). I even found something similar in my own pilot study conducted last year in a small rural high school in New England. Surveys and assessment samples from 15 teachers and interviews from seven students showed an extremely high frequency of grading, and negative effects of the lack of feedback. Most teachers in the study (87%) were using SBG.

Figure 1. Each icon represents a different teacher, their assessment type(s), and each assessment’s qualities, such as occurrence throughout the semester, learning cycle timing, feedback frequency, and grading frequency. The dark blue overlay in the upper right corner represents frequent feedback and no grades. The dark orange overlay in the lower half represents frequent grades and no feedback. The broad band with no overlay running between each extreme represents more of a neutral combination of characteristics, such as graded assessments with feedback, but not occurring frequently enough to have either benefit of feedback or drawback of grades. The cluster of icons in the center shows that the majority of teacher assessments had a mix of grades and feedback, with either a neutral to negative impact on learning (Piantaggini, 2025).

Too Much Grading
If grades were seen by students only occasionally here and there, that would be a different story. In most SBG systems, however, grades are constantly being reported on assessments throughout the learning process as teachers look to assess and reassess students against each standard.

For example, a teacher determines that a student’s work shows “developing” according to the department’s rubric. The teacher then marks it as such in the gradebook (i.e., a summative function), then schedules some reteaching, or provides enrichment, and then reassesses. After these adjustments, the student shows “meeting” the standard on the next assessment, and the grade is updated. The more this happens, though, the more students are being graded, which has not been shown to be an effective practice for improving learning. Even alongside feedback, the negative effects of grades take over (Butler & Nisan, 1986; Butler, 1987; Butler, 1988; Cardelle & Corno, 1981; Elawar & Corno, 1985; Koenka et a., 2021; McLaughlin, 1992).

It turns out that we have some comparative quantitative findings on this specifically with SBG, too. Townsley (2018) filled a gap in the literature by comparing, GPA, ACT scores, and traditional vs. SBG grading between two similar high schools. Results showed that there was no difference in GPAs, and ACT scores were lower in the SBG group.

Why might SBG not be as effective?!

My hypothesis is that in Townsley’s study, even though traditional grading should have been less effective, students in that system might have seen grades just once every week with little to no opportunity to revise. In the SBG school, however, students getting anything less than the highest rating would have been reassessed in order to show understanding at the highest level. The result might have meant more grades more often than the traditional system?! Of course, this is untested. In a study like Townsley’s, I would want to know how many grades students in each school received, and/or how often they received them.

Summary & Solutions
SBG is a system attempting to address long-standing issues with grading, but it might not be enough. It’s more likely that using a particular grading system is less important than how much the system allows for practices that keep graded summative assessments to a minimum. SBG, alone, cannot do this.

The most promising solutions I’ve seen so far—within any grading system—would be to use portfolios for students to gather learning evidence + self-grading at progress reports and report cards, limiting grades to just 8x/year in a quarter system. Otherwise, all work throughout the learning process is marked as collected (or missing, late, etc.) in the gradebook, and the teacher gives feedback on how to improve, provides follow-up opportunities for students to apply that feedback, and the cycle continues until it’s time to report achievement, however the school has established that timeline (e.g., quarters, trimesters, semesters, etc.).

References
Brookhart, S. M., Guskey, T. R., Bowers, A. J., McMillan, J. H., Smith, J. K., Smith, L. F., Stevens, M. T., & Welsh, M. E. (2016). A Century of Grading Research: Meaning and Value in the Most Common Educational Measure. Review of Educational Research, 86(4), 803–848. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654316672069

Butler, R., & Nisan, M. (1986). Effects of no feedback, task-related comments, and grades on intrinsic motivation and performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 78(3), 210–216. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.78.3.210

Butler, R. (1987). Task-involving and ego-involving properties of evaluation: Effects of different feedback conditions on motivational perceptions, interest, and performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 79(4), 474–482. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.79.4.474

Butler, R. (1988). Enhancing and Undermining Intrinsic Motivation: The Effects of Task-Involving and Ego-Involving Evaluation on Interest and Performance. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 58(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8279.1988.tb00874.x

Cardelle, M., & Corno, L. (1981). Effects on Second Language Learning of Variations in Written Feedback on Homework Assignments. TESOL Quarterly, 15(3), 251.https://doi.org/10.2307/3586751

Elawar, M. C., & Corno, L. (1985). A Factorial Experiment in Teachers’ Written Feedback on Student Homework: Changing Teacher Behavior a Little Rather Than a Lot. Journal of Educational Psychology, 77(2), 162–173.

Koenka, A. C., Linnenbrink-Garcia, L., Moshontz, H., Atkinson, K. M., Sanchez, C. E., & Cooper, H. (2021). A meta-analysis on the impact of grades and comments on academic motivation and achievement: A case for written feedback. Educational Psychology, 41(7), 922–947. https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2019.1659939

Mandouit, L., & Hattie, J. (2023). Revisiting “The Power of Feedback” from the perspective of the learner. Learning and Instruction, 84, 101718.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2022.101718

McLaughlin, T. F. (1992). Effects of Written Feedback in Reading on Behaviorally Disordered Students. Journal of Educational Research – J EDUC RES, 85, 312–316. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.1992.9941131

Meyer, M. (1908). The Grading of Students. Science, 28(712), 243–250.

Piantaggini, L., (2025, May 14). Captives: Students and Teachers Held Hostage By Graded Formatives [Poster session], University of Massachusetts College of Education Annual Research Showcase, Amherst, MA.

Townsley, M., & Varga, M. (2018). Getting High School Students Ready for College: A Quantitative Study of Standards-Based Grading Practices. Journal of Research in Education, 28(1), 92–112.

Townsley, M. (2022). Using Grading to Support Student Learning (1st edition). Routledge.