This past February, the Adair-Casey/Guthrie Center School District outlined a two-year plan to implement a Standards-Based Learning and Grading system for the district.

The easy route would have been to abandon that system after schools shut down April 2 at the beginning of the pandemic and focus that energy on surviving in the fall. But, Superintendent Dennis McClain is calling the system a success.

“We’ve stuck with our focus on Standards-Based Learning and Grading and that’s really helped us. With the number of remote learners that we do have, it’s really made a difference in our philosophy on how teachers work with the students and students interact with the teachers.”

The system breaks a subject into smaller masteries, allowing teachers to set personalized targets and goals for their students and rank the student’s proficiency in each standard on a scale. McClain says the district made its decision to stick with the system.

“We made a conscious decision this summer that we didn’t want to let that go.  We didn’t want to focus on just dealing with the pandemic and doing these other things. We wanted to move forward with that, so we’re going to be a year ahead instead of a year behind in our work on that and moving forward with that process. We’re really excited about that because that’s really helped us also.”

McClain adds another benefit of this system for teachers is that by emphasizing mastery of specific tasks, students are allowed to retry and build up a skill versus failing an exam and moving on to the next unit.