Ignacio Middle School is nearing the end of its first semester of standards-based grading, a different way of reporting how students are learning. At IMS, it also governs weekly student eligibility for sports and other extra-curricular activities.

Students are graded on a four-point scale rather than traditional letter grades. Grades reflect proficiency based on Colorado Academic Standards plus work and effort in the classroom. Number grades are 4 for advanced, 3 for competent/grade level, 2 for developing (previously called partially proficient), and 1 for beginning (previously called unsatisfactory).

"It's not just a grading system but a philosophy," IMS Principal Chris DeKay told the Times. "It's based on identifying and ensuring that students learn specific skills at every grade level, and that kids can learn at faster and slower rates, and ideally the system will respond to that." He gave an update on the new grading system to the school board in November. "We haven't been able to figure out how to have an honor roll with standards-based grading," he advised.

He told the Times, "Some processes like writing can be year-long. Others could be a two- or three-week unit, so it's hard to have uniformity" in determining a grade point average. "In writing, many kids are a 1 or 2 now, and in a couple months they'll be a 3 or 4. With standards-based, it's a year-long system... Kids can show proficiency at any time during the year, and it will be recorded back on that skill."

DeKay told the school board, "We honor the work and effort at the Character Counts assembly." Those happen at the end of each quarter. The next one will be in mid-January. "I think the standards-based is going well," he said. "Really getting staffs' brains wrapped around it... It's a reporting system. I feel like the cloud lifted at the end of October." He indicated that the first month "was a challenge."

"The real challenge has been getting continuity with staff, how to report grades and skills," he said in the Times interview. "It took some time to get there, and it's still a work in progress." Teachers are buying into the concept, he said, adding, "Change affects people in different ways, but generally I think we've moved forward in a very good way - teachers, students, parents, and the community understanding how skills are being reported."

It's more exact than letter grades, he said. It's the way information is transferred to parents, knowing which skills students have mastered.

Board president Bobby Schurman was concerned about kids transitioning to the high school, which is not using this system. According to discussion in August, Colorado High School Activities Association rules don't allow it for eligibility. DeKay told the Times, "A lot of colleges and things that govern high school, their brains aren't wrapped around standards-based. When the high school reports GPAs, that's what they expect," referring to traditional letter grades.

DeKay said the main reasons students have lost eligibility for activities have been missing work in or out of class, and behavior. "That should support everything they do at the high school - to show up, be ready in class. I think the emphasis is on the right things," he said.

Work and effort gets its own grade and is considered for eligibility if a student's academic score average is 2 or lower. If the work and effort grade is 3 or higher, the student is eligible. DeKay told the school board in August, "We know how important work ethic skills are to be successful in the future studies and careers of students. As a staff, we agreed to focus on four traits for the work and effort grade - quality of homework/ classwork, citizenship, preparedness, and time management."

It's a way to recognize that kids learn at a different pace, and to make kids less likely to give up if they are performing below grade level, deKay said in August.

Standards-based grading was being used at the elementary school in 2015-16, so this year's sixth-graders already had experience with it, along with students from the Southern Ute Montessori Academy, DeKay said. It's new for seventh- and eighth-graders.

The grading is part of the district's move toward students being able to advance at their own rate in each subject. DeKay told the Times, "We predominantly have the same teachers using the same teaching strategies as in the past. It's how we report to parents that has changed. Hopefully, in a more meaningful way."