Customize Standards Index  

Standards-based grading lets you assess students on several different objectives for each subject, rather than just one grade per subject. (See an example of a standards-based report card.) Admins need to enter the standards for your school or district before teachers can use standards in their gradebooks.

Note: "Standards" are not necessarily "Rubrics", so first let's clarify some terms used in this documentation:

Rubric is a type of grade scale, like 3+ or S-. Standards often use rubrics, but you can also use letter grades.

Standards is a set of objectives for a specific subject and grade level, such as 3rd grade Math.

Objective is a single graded item in a set of Standards, such as "Factors numbers up to 50".

Strand is a group of objectives within a subject, such as Number Sense. Math and Language Arts are usually subdivided into strands, with other subjects are not.

State Standards vs. Report Cards

Most states have many more objectives than can fit practically on a report card, so most districts create a condensed version of the state standards to show on report cards. For SnapGrades, you only need to enter the standards as they appear on your report cards, not the full-length state standards.

Free Full-Service Help

The easiest way to get started is for you to send us a sample report card for your school. We will then create a report card for one grade level for you, which you can then modify and replicate for other grade levels as needed. This service is included with your school free trial. Please contact us for further instructions.

Entering Standards

The easiest way to enter standards is to copy them from your school/district's report card source document (spreadsheet, Word doc, etc.):

1. 

Go to the page.

2. 

Click the "New" button.

3. 

Select "Paste text from a document or spreadsheet". (Or you can select "blank" and type them manually.)

4. 

Copy the text from your source document for a specific subject and grade level (like 3rd grade Math). Each objective should be one row, so make sure there are no carriage returns within the objectives. It may be a single column list of objectives, or two columns where the first column is some sort of short identifier for the objective, like "1.1", and the second column is the full text of the objective. Then paste it in the text-box and click the "New" button.

5. 

You'll see your imported objectives in two columns: Label and Objective. If the Objective is blank, then the Label is bold and represents the strand as it will appear on report cards, such as "Number Sense", "Geometry", "Mathematical Reasoning", etc. All subjects must have at least one strand, such as "Science" (note, the Title of the standards is not shown on report cards, just the strand Labels). If the Objective is not blank, the Label is not bold, and it is an abbreviation that only teachers will see for each objective, such as "1.1". You'll probably need to edit these labels to make them easier for teachers to identify.

6. 

The Title of your standards is just for teachers to identify them; it is not shown on report cards. Likewise the subject and grade menus are just for your information. Teachers can use standards designated for their specific school or the entire district, but not for other schools.

7. 

Check "Calculate total grades for these strands" if your report cards show an average grade for the subject, like Reading. Uncheck it to not show an average, like for Personal/Study Skills.

8. 

When you're done editing, you can click the "Publish" button, or you can come back later to do that. Teachers cannot use it till it is Published.

9. 

Click the "New" button and repeat from step #3 for each subject and grade level. If you want to copy a set of standards (e.g., to clone "4th grade Math" from "3rd grade Math" with a few changes), first you must "Publish" the source, then click the published version and click "Edit Copy".

10. 

Click "Show All" to see all your standards. If any are marked as "[draft]", click them and click "Publish" to make them available to teachers. You can also click "Edit Copy" to re-edit them as needed.

11. 

Teachers then need to select your standards for their gradebook. See Assess Standards.

Be sure to create a set of standards for personal/study skills too if students are graded on multiple objectives. But for subjects where just a single grade is given, like PE or Music, you do not need to create any standards.

Order of Subjects

By default the order of subjects is: English Language Arts, Math, Social Studies, Science, Arts, PE, Technology, Personal/Study Skills. To customize that order go to the page, edit each standard and select a number from 1 to 100, where 1 is first and 100 is last. (It's okay to have gaps in your sequence or for different standards to have the same number.)

For subjects that do not use standards, like PE or Music, go to the page and enter a number from 1 to 100. (Note: On this page it is not necessary to enter a number for subjects that do use standards, like Math, because it uses the number you select on the Setup Standards page.)

Note: Report Cards automatically hide any subjects that are not graded yet. You may also optionally set it to hide any objectives that are not graded yet.

Updating Standards

You may edit and delete standards anytime. When you edit or delete standards that were already published, it may ask you how you want teachers' gradebooks updated to the new version (i.e., which old objective should be transferred to which new objective). Standards are copied for each school year, so anything you edit or delete in one year does not affect gradebooks or report cards from other years.

Rubrics & Grades

The standards do not define which grade scale to use. Instead, teachers select the appropriate grade scale in their gradebooks on the page. Each subject tab in their gradebook can use a different grade scale, such as 4321± on core subjects and ESN± on personal/study skills.

Note: The objectives and the strand average are calculated using the same grade scale. If you want to use different grade scales within a subject, such as ABCDF for the average but 4321 or ✓± for the objectives, teachers need to manually override the grades.


See also: Assess Standards, Report Cards