Tiered Assessment: Supporting and Challenging Students While Utilizing Skills-Based Grading

Creating a classroom that supports each student individually as well as the class as a whole has become increasingly difficult in recent years. Through tiered assessment, educators have the opportunity to alter assessments to further challenge or support students. Another implementation in many schools nationwide is standards-based grading (SBG). In SBG, students are assessed on each learning objective separately, meaning for each skill included on an assessment, students will receive an individual score. When tiered assessment is implemented alongside SBG, students have the unique opportunity to be assessed on each learning objective separately and to assess a skill based on their readiness, interest, and learning profile. During student teaching in a school that has implemented SBG, I administered tiered assessment in the Spanish classroom by providing scaffolds for struggling students in order to better target the specific learning objectives assessed in a particular assessment. This self-study includes a qualitative analysis of data (ie. field notes, lesson plans, assessment records, student work samples) and a review of current research. Understanding differentiation and the basics of tiered assessments is essential to this self study, as this topic in particular does not have an abundance of research.