Standards-based grading offers a different model of assessing student learning in the classroom

Instead of focusing on student behaviors, standards-based grading assesses if students are actually learning what's being taught. Valerii Apetroaiei/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Some school districts, including ones in Maine, New Mexico, Iowa and Oregon, are shifting to standards-based grading, where students are graded on the skills and concepts they learn instead of points accumulated from assignments and tests throughout the school year.

Jerrid Kruse, a professor of education at Drake University, studies how people learn and teach science, and standards-based grading is one aspect of this work.