Standards Based Grading

Duluth Edison Charter Schools believes in assessing students in an informative, equitable, and age-appropriate way.  These assessments help teachers and parents understand how their students are progressing with each grade-level skill. Children who have not mastered the skill are given more time to learn and practice. This encourages a growth mindset!

Grades look different at DECS. Instead of assigning students a superficial letter grade for a subject, we provide meaningful information about a student’s mastery of individual academic and soft skills using a 1-4 scale. Here is an example of how that may look on a report card.

This is a sample ELA grade report for a 5th Grade student at DECS:

Example of report card

The 1-4 scale is explained in the graphic below:

alt="Above: Student is working on skills beyond their current grade level On-Student has mastered this skill/standard and is confident in their abilities Approaching- Student is working on mastering this skill/standard and requires some support Below- Student has not mastered this skill/standard and requires additional practice and support"