#standards based grading

Any secondary teachers (of ELA specifically) do standards-based grading? If so, what are your experiences? Is it better than traditional? Bad in a different way than a trad gradebook? More work? Less work? Any help would help me manage my current anxiety spiral greatly. 

Sincerely,

Tomorrow I'm giving my 8th graders their first test.  I've made two versions.  One that's separated by the type of question (multiple choice, completion, etc).  And one that is separated by learning objective (for standards based grading).  I keep wavering.  I want to have a fully sbg 8th grade science class.   

Currently I have grades set up as 70% objectives, 25% tests, and 5% participation (to account for science notebooks and odds and ends).  I'm thinking of changing it to 80+% objectives (including tests) and -20% for their science notebooks to make sure they do their assignments (even though I won't be grading them).    

In case you want to read real people talking about Standards-Based Grading instead of just my amateur summary.

Explanations from Teachers

http://mrsbmg.blogspot.com/2009/10/i-can-improve-my-grade-by-retaking-part.html

http://larkolicio.us/blog/?p=3

http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=346

http://www.mrmeyer.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/howmathmustassess.pdf

http://concurrencies.blogspot.com/2010/01/formative-assessing-to-extreme.html

http://www.asd4.org/schools/indiantrail/documents/SLP/2012-13/seven_reasons.pdf

http://assessmentforinstruction.blogspot.com/2010/03/what-are-we-grading-hopeful.html

From Educational Resources

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/oct08/vol66/num02/Seven_Reasons_for_Standards-Based_Grading.aspx

http://hepg.org/hel/article/545

http://academia.edu/1157096/Being_Fair_Teachers_Interpretations_of_Principles_for_Standards-Based_Grading

Papers

http://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/fie/2012/1353/00/06462211-abs.html

I'm in the middle of reading everything I can get my hands on about standards-based grading. It seems really fantastic. The basic idea is: grades should mean something. They should reflect an understanding of the material. So instead of having a Chapter 2 test, all the material for the year is broken into learning objectives, and a quiz has one or two questions on each objective, and the quiz has no overall grade, but rather a score for each objective based on how well it has been learned. When it has been learned perfectly, no need to have it tested anymore on that student. When not, the student knows *exactly* what they need to work on, and can take another assessment testing that objective and have a higher score replace a lower score.

Teaching can be the same as always, except often SBG teachers don't grade homework so much as correct and give lots of feedback. Lots of feedback is crucial, so that there is much more formative assessment (assessment that helps kids understand where they are, where they should be and how to get from one to the other) than summative assessment (one-directional information from student to teacher about how much the student knows). 

It refocuses grades, makes assessment less stressful and more accurate, gives kids a much better sense of exactly what they have to learn and how they can do it and doesn't punish slow learners. 

Sounds amazing, right? The only drawbacks I see other than implementation difficulties are that it's hard to see how to bring other graded assignments into it, like projects, inquiry-based learning, and having test questions that ask them to explain and describe to me what's going on, all things I'm interested in trying

yep.  i'm doing it.  i'm transitioning into standards based grading.  i'm starting first with my 8th graders.  i'm converting their grades from this semester right now, just to get the hang of things.  i'll update their grades in the grade book next week, before we start our next chapter.

i'm hoping that making this switch will be more motivating to my students.  if they bomb one assignment there is still hope!  i want to move my classroom from being points based to being learning based.