Here’s a couple of ideas to consider as you frame your Standards Based Grading thinking.
-Check out some research or articles by Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black about Formative Assessment ad Grading Practices. In Assessment For Learning and some of their other work, they point out research that shows once students receive a grade on any assignment, they essentially ignore the feedback. If that grade is passing the student is done, regardless of whether or not they have met the standard or not.
-Do you need to grade every standard discretely? What does grading each standard separately mean for students? For example, if you took your car into the shop to be repaired, and when you returned to pick it up, the mechanic said “The transmission is set, but the brakes still only work most of the time. I’d give the brakes a B.” Would you accept the car as repaired? Students have either met the standard, or they haven’t yet. It’s been my experience, and Wiliam and Black tend to support this, once you as the teacher give the B to the student, it’s like taking the car, there’s no reason to revisit it, despite the fact that the standard hasn’t been met. Not giving the grade at all is what makes the student revise and work towards meeting the standard.
-Lastly,I know you’re writing only about grading here, but a key component of any standards based system is the performance. Grading standards separately makes it difficult to really know what students have learned. For example, I’m a tennis player. My second serve is weak, and my backhand is much better than my forehand. If you assess each component of my game discretely, you would say those two discrete skills are weak. However, if you assess me in a match, I can still compete successfully despite those two relative weaknesses. Looking at the standards discretely doesn’t tell the whole story about whether or not I can apply the standards in a real-world scenario.

I hope this thinking helps you a little as you apply your ideas to your classes. As an aside, I’m a graduate of Waterford High School, and spent some time at Fitch a long time ago. I enjoy reading your blog.

Thanks,
Eric

@Shawn Cornally: Props. I’m quite sure it was your 7-part SBG series that helped me find the SBG Express platform (#9 3/4, right?).

You don’t really have to explain yourself to parents/students until you hand back the first quiz. Whatever you say before then will go over most people’s heads.

A couple other blogs you might want to check out (if you haven’t found them already):
Dot Physics is written by a physics professor who often uses physics to analyze viral videos and other pop-culture events. The physics might be more advanced that your class, but even if it is you’ll probably get some ideas for your classes.

Think Thank Thunk discusses standards-based grading a bunch, but also has some excellent posts on some physics and math concepts.