New in GradingPal 2.0
Standards Mastery Gradebook
Every grade you approve becomes evidence. See mastery by standard and by student, with the graded work behind every number one click away — and override anything you disagree with.
Optional. Nothing else about GradingPal changes if you never tag a standard.
“How Do You Know This Student Is at Approaching?”
It is the question a parent asks at conferences, the one a department head asks in a review, and the one you ask yourself at eleven at night. Standards-based grading has never had trouble producing a level. It has had trouble producing the work behind it — which, until now, meant digging back through folders to find three pieces of writing from October. GradingPal builds that trail as you grade, because the grading and the evidence are the same act.
Every Number Has the Work Behind It
Four clicks take you from a class summary to a specific sentence a student wrote in October. Nothing is inferred along the way and nothing is hidden — each level is just the graded work underneath it, added up in a way you chose.
- 1
Start With the Class
One row per standard, grouped by strand, each with the class level and a bar showing how many students sit where. Underneath, the honest sub-line: how many evidence points there are, and how many students do not yet have enough.
- 2
Or Start With a Student
Flip to the by-student grid — every student against every standard, one dot per cell. A dashed ring means a level you set yourself. A hollow dot means not enough evidence yet. Every cell opens the trail.
- 3
See How It Moved
A student’s mastery trajectory over time, with the scale’s levels as gridlines and a plain read of the direction: “Trending up”, “Holding steady”, “Trending down”. Beside it, every graded item behind the number — the assignment, the score, its category, the date.
- 4
Open the Actual Work
Click any point on the chart, or “View submission” on any item, and the graded submission opens — the student’s own words, your rubric, the score you approved. That is the end of the chain, and it is where “how do you know?” gets answered.
How this was calculated
Under every trajectory sits one sentence explaining the maths that produced it — the method, the number of weighted evidence points, the minimum, and when the settings last changed.
Conferences
Arrow keys step to the next student, and a dropdown lists the whole class with their levels. Preparing for a full set of conferences is one sitting, not an evening.
You Don’t Have to Do Mastery to Use This
There are two layers here and you choose how far you go. Pick the standard sets your class teaches toward and you get a per-standard view of class averages, in plain percentages, with no mastery vocabulary anywhere. That is the whole of the base layer, and for a lot of classes it is enough.
Mastery levels are a separate switch. Turn it on and evidence rolls up into a level per student per standard; leave it off and nothing about the page changes shape. The product says it plainly on the toggle itself: “Most exam-board classes leave this off.”
Grading works exactly the same without tags. Tagging just adds this summary.
Three Steps, Once Per Class
Setting this up is a task, not a project. Most teachers are through it in the time it takes to make a coffee, and after that it runs off the grading you were doing anyway.
- 01
Pick Your Standard Sets
Up to five per class, chosen from a region rail and a framework tree — take a whole framework or narrow to a grade or strand for sharper suggestions later. GradingPal proposes up to four under “Recommended for your class”, drawing on the sets your other classes use and your school’s state, subject and grade. When it has no real signal it recommends nothing, on the principle that no recommendation beats a confidently wrong one.
- 02
Tag With the Wand
Every rubric criterion and every question carries a “Suggest standards” button. Suggestions arrive as dashed chips with a confidence figure, and a tick or a cross. Nothing is stored until you accept it. Or name the standards an assignment targets when you create it and GradingPal tags the whole rubric for review: “Tagged 6 criteria with your target standards — review the tags.” Rubrics from the library arrive already tagged.
- 03
Grade As Normal
That is the whole of it. Every result you approve becomes an evidence point against the standards on that criterion or question, and the class picture builds itself — usually within a minute of you approving a grade.
Rubrics from the library arrive already tagged — rubrics from the library save the tagging step entirely. Then grade as normal.
The Maths Is Yours to Set
How evidence becomes a level is a pedagogical decision, not a technical one, so all of it is yours. Five ways to roll up, three scales, editable cutoffs, and a minimum amount of evidence before anyone gets a verdict at all.
- Simple average
- Every piece of evidence counts equally.
- Decaying average
- Recent work counts more than earlier work — rewards growth.
- Most recent attempts
- Only the last few attempts count — evidence of current learning.
- Most frequent level
- The level a student lands on most often — steady over outliers.
- Highest level
- A student’s best demonstrated level counts.
Three Scales, Your Cutoffs
A four-level performance scale — Below, Approaching, Meets, Exceeds — a standards-based four-tier scale in the state summative style, or the Marzano scale with half-points for partial mastery. The score thresholds that map graded work to each level are yours to edit, with the lowest level always starting at zero.
Some Work Counts More
Give each assignment a purpose and a multiplier. Set it up so a test counts twice what a quiz does, or so practice work counts for nothing at all while staying visible in the record: “Practice — shows in the evidence trail, doesn’t move mastery.”
No Premature Verdicts
Set how much graded work a student needs before they get a level at all. Below it the cell reads “Insufficient evidence (2 of 3)” rather than guessing. Weighting counts here too, so one graded item in a 2× category counts as two.
Conservative by Design
A class level is the median of its students, and ties resolve to the lower band. Two strong students cannot flatter a row that most of the class is struggling with.
Nothing Changes Without Warning
Change a scale or a method and GradingPal tells you what it will do first, with counts — including how many levels you set by hand would revert. Remove a standard set and it tells you how much evidence is attached, and that adding the set back restores everything.
You Outrank the Maths
You know things the evidence does not. Both overrides take a reason, show up everywhere, and undo cleanly.
Set the Level Yourself
Choose a student’s level on a standard by hand and give a reason — the placeholder suggests “Re-assessed one-on-one after the exam”. The computed level stays visible next to your choice, the evidence underneath is untouched, and “Revert to computed” is always there.
Adjust One Result
Change what a single piece of evidence counts as — a retake after re-teaching, say — without touching the mark on the assignment. The dialog says so outright: “The grade on the assignment itself is unchanged.”
It Shows Everywhere
“Set by teacher” appears on the badge, as a dashed ring on the grid, in the legend, and in both PDF reports. Nobody reading a report is left thinking a number came from somewhere it did not.
And It Sticks
An evidence adjustment survives a regrade of the same item. A level you set by hand survives evidence being deleted, the roster changing, and the gradebook being switched off and back on — because it is a judgement about a student, not a calculation.
Reports for Every Conversation
One export button, three intents, and a version for families that has no jargon in it anywhere.
- For FamiliesPDF
- A one-page PDF per student headed “How Maya is doing on learning standards”, explaining her progress in plain words and listing the recent classwork behind each level. It closes by inviting the conversation rather than ending it.
- For You and Your SchoolExcel, CSV, PDF
- Where the class stands on every standard, colour-coded in the Excel export so a department meeting can read it at a glance.
- The Evidence Behind ItExcel, CSV
- Every graded work sample under the numbers, with anything you adjusted highlighted.
Any export can be scoped to a time window — all time, the last 30 or 90 days, or dates you choose — with the window stamped into the file itself.
See What Each Assignment Did
Every assignment gets a standards recap: how the class did on it, next to where they stand overall, and a sentence saying what it changed. “Rose from Approaching — up 3 points.” “This assignment pushed it up 2 points.” “This assignment didn’t change it much.” Practice work says so plainly — the scores are still in each student’s history, they just do not move the picture.
It is the answer to “did that re-teach work?”, and it arrives the same day rather than at the end of the unit. Sitting alongside it is the grading analytics behind it.
What a Curriculum Director Will Want to Know
Five things, answered plainly, because they are the ones that come up in every evaluation.
Mastery Is Arithmetic, Not AI
No part of the mastery calculation uses AI. It is deterministic — the same evidence and the same settings always produce the same level — and it is never billing-gated, so it keeps computing even for a teacher who has used up their AI grading allowance for the month. AI’s only role anywhere near standards is suggesting tags, which a teacher accepts or dismisses.
The Maths Is Pinned
The calculation exists in two independent implementations, and a shared set of 49 golden test vectors is byte-compared between them on every build. If either drifts, the build breaks. Beyond that, 17 integration scenarios run against a real database and an independent oracle, plus 285 service tests.
Everything Is Recorded
Every settings change records what changed and who changed it. Every override records its author, its timestamp and the teacher’s reason. A level that was set by hand says so wherever it appears, including in reports that leave the building.
It Tells You When It’s Behind
Grades reach the gradebook usually within a minute. If a recompute is still running, the page says so rather than showing a stale number as though it were current — and a background sweep re-checks for anything missed.
It Doesn’t Replace Your Gradebook
This is not a system of record and does not try to be. It sits alongside your SIS, produces exports your staff can use, and answers the evidence question your gradebook of record was never built to answer.
More on our position on AI in grading.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to use standards to use GradingPal?
No. Standards are optional, and mastery levels are optional on top of that. Pick standard sets and you get per-standard class averages in plain percentages; turn mastery on only if you want levels.
Does AI decide my students’ mastery levels?
No. The mastery calculation contains no AI at all — it is deterministic arithmetic over the grades you approved, using the method you chose. AI only suggests which standards a rubric line matches, and nothing is saved until you accept it.
Can I disagree with a level?
Yes. Set any student’s level yourself with a reason, or change what one piece of evidence counts as without touching the grade on the assignment. Both show as set by teacher everywhere, and both revert whenever you want.
Does this replace our district gradebook?
No. It is not a system of record. It sits alongside your SIS and answers the evidence question — which graded work produced this level — that a gradebook of record was never designed to answer.
How much work is it to set up?
Three steps, once per class: pick your standard sets, accept the suggested tags on your rubric, then grade as normal. After that the picture builds itself from grading you were doing anyway.
What if a student hasn’t done enough work yet?
They do not get a level. You set the minimum amount of graded evidence, and below it the cell reads “Insufficient evidence” with the count so far, rather than guessing at a level from one assignment.
Can I show parents where a level came from?
Yes. Every student has a one-page report written in plain language, listing their recent work samples behind each standard. On screen you can open the actual graded submission behind any number.