All elementary schools in the Archdiocese of Portland are transitioning to a Standards-Referenced Grading (SRG) system by the 2024-2025 school year. For the past three years, teacher teams and school leadership across the Archdiocese of Portland have prioritized standards, developed proficiency scales, and trained in research-based best practices for instruction and assessment.
Standards communicate what students should know and be able to do by the end of each academic year. Student mastery of grade-level standards is evaluated through proficiency scales and forms the basis of Standards-Referenced Grading. In this system, students are given multiple opportunities guided by teacher feedback to demonstrate mastery of individual standards.
Beginning with the 2022-2023 school year, six schools (Cohort 1) will participate in an Archdiocesan Standards-Referenced Grading Report Card pilot. Data will be used along with the other Cohort 1 schools to inform improvements, training, and communication with all stakeholders. Additional information is provided below to support your understanding of this transition. Stay tuned for updates from your child's principal for information specific to individual schools.
Standards-referenced grading (SRG) is a system of grading where teachers provide feedback to students about their demonstrated level of understanding of a set of defined standards and levels of performance.
The dynamic profile of the Catholic school identity: The Catholic school lives in the flow of human history. It is therefore continually called upon to follow its unfolding in order to offer an educational service appropriate to the present times. The witness of Catholic educational institutions shows on their part a great responsiveness to the diversity of socio-cultural situations and readiness to adopt new teaching methods, while remaining faithful to their own identity (idem esse). By identity we mean its reference to the Christian concept of life (Source). The conciliar declaration Gravissimum educationis and the documents that followed it traced the dynamic profile of an educational institution through the two terms “school” and “Catholic.”