Mastery Based Grading

Students at MAELS are encouraged to demonstrate their mastery over time and in various ways. Therefore, students will be assessed on each Learning Target at least 3 times throughout a unit. 

For each Learning Target, students will earn a mastery level based on 3 separate pieces of evidence of mastery. While each piece of evidence will be counted towards the final mastery level, the most recent assessment will be counted the most. 

To calculate student’s mastery, we use a Decaying Average to help us come to a student’s mastery score. 

The Decaying Average formula recognizes that the most recent score is more representative of the student's current mastery level and puts more weight on that score (as opposed to a straight average that counts the student's first work and most recent work as equally important). 

It helps us to recognize and value that past work that students have completed. Since mastery is achieved only when proficiency has been demonstrated over multiple times and in multiple ways, all evidence of mastery is counted towards the students’ final grade. However, evidence of mastery in the earlier stages of learning weighs less than the evidence of mastery in the later stages. This allows us to account for the experience and expertise that our students acquire as the learning process occurs over time.