Assessing Students, Not Standards

See beyond content standards to the broader context of life-changing skills.

The standards-based learning and grading movement of the past twenty years has ushered in a critical shift in assessment that demands clarity in both what is being measured and how well students are learning. Seeing the value in this evolution, a wave of schools has invested enormous effort to institutionalize the policy and practices of the movement. In doing so, many focused their initial efforts squarely on grading and fell short of the more important work–classroom assessment. There are important lessons in these missteps and failures.

This groundbreaking, “next generation” approach to classroom assessment challenges educators to reflect on the connections between growth, mastery, and student self-efficacy and to prioritize the transferable skills of metacognition and self-regulation in assessments. A powerful call-to-action, this guide includes: 

• A conceptual framework that guides the questions and order of assessment reform


• An approach to assessment, grading, and reporting that prioritizes student growth over a standard definition of success for everyone 


• Strategies to develop metacognition and catalyze motivation in students


• Orientation to each chapter with learning intentions with success criteria 


• Vivid case stories and prompts to power deep reflection

Underscoring the importance of learning environments that work for the full range of learning profiles, this book calls for a revolution in the narrative around assessment and grading, emphasizing the ultimate goal of nurturing students who are metacognitive, expert learners, motivated by the joy of learning.