Gold Standard Grades is a software solution for teachers to formatively assess learning in real time on any activity. It is ad hoc and does not involve sitting at a computer taking screeners.

Gold Standard uses an index search function to allow teachers to quickly find and select learning standards--at the breakout level--for formative assessment on a scale of 1-4. Standards appear as the teacher types in the search bar.

For example, if the students are adding transitions to essays, the teacher can type the word "transition" and select "develop drafts into a coherent piece of writing by organizing with purposeful structure, including transitions" from the list of standards that pops up.

The teacher might have the students highlight the transition sentences they added to their papers as part of the lesson, then walk around the room providing focused feedback and scoring student mastery of the standard.

Later in class, she would use the standards mastery aggregate tool to identify students who did not succeed the first time, see how they responded to the focused feedback, and give them a new score…much more effective for and timely for teachers and students than getting a stack of papers to grade and return the next day.

Gold Standard also supports project-based and group work, enabling teachers to fairly assess learning on student-designed activities across all content areas. Imagine trying to give a kid a traditional grade for a real-life experience, such as helping her mom build a shed at home... What would getting a 95 on shed-building even mean?

Using Gold Standard, the teacher would listen to the student explain the steps she took during the activity and then give a grade for each relevant standard. The shed example for a fourth grader could include the following:

• Math standard "solve a problem that deals with measurement of length”

• Science standard "measure physical properties of matter, including size“

• ELAR standard “restate oral instructions that involve a series of related sequences of action”

Teachers can assess breakout-level learning on any activity, supporting multiple instructional models (in-person, virtual, hybrid) in a way that no other system can.

Gold Standard's real-time reporting benefits everyone.

• The Growth Tracker tool shows stakeholders the percentage of standards mastered and can be filtered by campus, subject and grade-level.

• The Standards Mastery Aggregate interactive report shows teachers how their students are performing on each student expectation breakout.

• Click-through feature identifies groups of students with similar needs for targeted, in-class intervention and easy follow-up scoring.

Even though it can be used in an ad hoc way, Gold Standard supports planned instruction, too. Teachers can easily create and save activities in advance and make quick adjustments in real-time.

Students must prepare to be part of a complex problem-solving, flexible workforce and take on the challenge of more rigorous standards and assessments. Teachers must track student progress in order to quickly identify and respond to learning gaps, ensuring all students fulfill their potential.

The problem is that traditional grades are too imprecise to support modern instruction. Traditional grades are like getting a weekly statement of your car’s average speed instead of having a speedometer.

Not all feedback is the same. Traditional grade books have the qualities of ineffective feedback, providing generic appraisals of good-ness in the form of letter or number grades. This nonspecific approach has little influence on student growth and achievement.

Teaching to a test distorts high-quality instruction. Growth requires formative assessment. This means that feedback guides instruction, it takes place during class in real-time, and it is a student-centered process. Further, formative assessment should be unobtrusive and not interfere with instruction. When formative feedback is done correctly, resulting percentile gains on academic achievement measures can be as high as 43 points (Marzano, 2010).

The benefits of good formative assessment are clear, but there is no system for teachers to assess students without disrupting class.

Gold Standard Grades solves that. Gold Standard is the only standards-aligned assessment tool that can be used daily, with no test creation required. Instead of just giving a grade for an assignment, teachers score mastery at the breakout level. Using traditional methods, teachers might assess learning on a specific standard a few times a year during benchmarks and summative assessments. With Gold Standard, it happens a few times per class. And it's easy.

Gold Standard is the tool schools need to grow all students, especially after the losses experienced during Covid.

Gold Standard was developed to support rapid experimentation and data-driven continuous improvement by enabling evaluation of the impact of instruction and prompt adjustment of teaching to meet student needs. Educators and researchers can use the comprehensive learning data to better understand how students learn and teachers teach.

Gold Standard compiles data and produces outputs in various formats, such as graphs to show student growth relative to content taught and time. The clear record of standards taught and mastered informs teachers’ self-reflection, empowers action research, and supports professional growth, and de-identified and aggregate data will be shared with external researchers for free.

Gold Standard supports equity in multiple ways.

Unemployment rates are higher for people without a bachelor’s degree (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019), and the already-affluent are approximately 2.4 times more likely than the least affluent to immediately pursue a bachelor’s degree (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019). Gold Standard helps prepare students for a fulfilling and prosperous life after high school by enabling them to engage in meaningful learning activities instead of constant test-prep. These experiences support cognitive engagement and contribute to robust, lasting learning.

Punitive grading and attendance policies drive students away from school (Reschly, 2020). Gold Standard grades are based on observed learning, not attendance or timeliness. With Gold Standard, there is no such thing as a zero or late work. Student grades are based on percent of the standards mastered versus percent of the school year gone.

CASEL social and emotional learning standards are included in the standards search, enabling teachers to keep track of students' social and emotional needs. These are not used to inform grades but as another tool for teachers to support all students. Gold Standard was developed with feedback from a diverse group of educators, including early elementary and secondary teachers, university professors and researchers, campus and district administrators, curriculum specialists, and experts in social emotional learning and English language acquisition.

English Language Proficiency Standards and Spanish versions of elementary core standards are included in the search, so teachers can better support English learners and dual language classes.

Gold Standard Grades lets learning be fun again, not just a compliance checklist or test prep. The ideals promoted by Gold Standard align with the cofounder's research on Engagement Culture, which is a systemic approach to motivation based on fostering satisfaction and minimizing dissatisfaction—not by coercion into compliance. It is correlated with improved outcomes on high-poverty campuses (Hearnsberger, 2021).

Gold Standard scales.

Gold Standard was developed using the Ed-Fi data standard. This means districts with Ed-Fi implementations can link directly with us to exchange data via API. We support non-Ed-Fi districts, too, by integrating directly with SIS and other systems to pass data quickly and securely.

Gold Standard is built on a .NET core framework and is device-agnostic. It works on any modern device with a browser.

Users can authenticate using their district Google login. This automates user credentials, so you do not have to worry about unauthorized access. It also means we work with Clever.

We will continue to scale by including the addition of learning standards from more states, paying developers to quickly respond to end-user needs, implementing sustainable organizational change efforts, subsidizing early adopters, developing of a parent-facing dashboard, outreach, exploring alternative uses such as preservice teacher training, and collaborating with researchers.

Future developments are anticipated to include the addition of learning standards from more states, paying developers to quickly respond to end-user needs, implementing sustainable organizational change efforts, partnering with early adopters, developing of a parent-facing dashboard, outreach, exploring alternative uses such as preservice teacher training, and collaborating with researchers.

• TEKS-based reports for all your needs

• Actionable Covid slide facts on each student

• Growth chart by student

• Easy student grouping by intervention need

• Visible results

• Happy parents, teachers and students

• Customizable standards based report cards and progress reports

• Maximized ADA for Sync, Async, In-person and hybrid

• Details on all interactions

• Growth chart by student, class, subject, campus...

• Searchable TEKS for each grade and subject (breakout level)

• Detailed data on performance metrics with administrator dashboard

• Install and rollout support from qualified experts

• Easy integration with any SIS-LMS combination