HOW SBG CAME TO FIELD - AND WHAT THE RECORD SHOWS

When parents of ‘25/‘26 6th grade Field students ask why SBG is being implemented at the middle school, administration has consistently pointed to the District 31 Strategic Plan 2022–2027, approved by the Board of Education in August 2021.

There is a problem with that answer: the Strategic Plan does not mention Standards-Based Grading.

SBG was added as an initiative after the Strategic Plan was approved — after the Board had voted and after the community had any opportunity to weigh in. This page documents how that happened, what the rollout timeline has looked like, and what the communication record to 6th grade families actually shows.

Part 1: SBG Was Not in the Approved Strategic Plan

The 5-year Strategic Plan 2022 – 2027 was approved on August 26, 2021. Goal 1 commits the district to creating and implementing a standards-based curriculum across all subject areas — a requirement of Illinois state law. It does not mention Standards-Based Grading as a reporting or assessment system. In Dec 2021 (see pg 3), administration published a progress update on Goal 1 (and 3). Again, no mention of SBG as a grading initiative.

SBG was first piloted in grades K and 4 in the 2023–2024 school year. D31’s SBG Handbook (last updated February 8, 2024) describes SBG as an extension of the Strategic Plan — framing it as aligned with what was approved, not as a separate decision made afterward that involved community input. The distinction matters significantly. A Board-approved Strategic Plan is a public commitment made through a formal governance process. An administrative add-on is a decision made internally without that process. Parents who have asked why SBG is being rolled out at Field have been told it was approved as part of the Strategic Plan. That is not accurate.

Part 2: The Rollout Timeline — and Two Discrepancies Worth Noting

According to the SBG Handbook, the grade-by-grade rollout schedule is:

2023–2024: Grades K and 4
2024–2025: Grades 1 and 5
2025–2026: Grades 2, 3, and 6 (Field - first year at middle school level)
2026–2027: Grade 7 (Field)
2027–2028: Grade 8 (Field)

Two things stand out. First, this timeline extends to 2028 — one year past the Strategic Plan's 2027 endpoint. The administration has not publicly addressed this discrepancy. Second, the September 2025 video presentation to 6th grade parents showed a different timeline: 7th and 8th grade rolling out together in 2026–2027. That conflicts with the Handbook's schedule of 7th in 2026–2027 and 8th in 2027–2028. No explanation was offered for the inconsistency. It is one of several instances throughout the year where the district communicated one plan and then changed it without transparency or notice.

The Handbook also shows a focus (albeit very limited) on family education in the 2023–2024 and 2024–2025 rollout years. No additional commitment is articulated for subsequent years — including the year SBG arrived at Field for the first time in 2025-2026.

Part 3: The Leadership Gap No One Mentioned

There is a critical piece of context absent from all district communications about the 6th grade rollout: the assistant superintendent of curriculum who designed and launched the SBG initiative is no longer with the district. The Director of Curriculum and Instruction as well as Field’s Principal responsible for executing the 2025–2026 Field rollout were new to their roles in that same year. The institutional knowledge, established relationships with teachers, and implementation experience that should have anchored the most complex phase of the rollout — the first year at the middle school level, with a brand-new grading system, a new gradebook platform, and no prior middle school SBG model to draw on — were not present. This is never acknowledged in any district communication as a contributing factor to the year's difficulties.

Teachers themselves document gaps in critical roles exacerbating an under-resourced rollout:

Part 4: The Communication Record — Every Touchpoint

What follows is the complete record of district communications to 6th grade families about SBG in 2025–2026. This is not a selection. This is all of it.

May 2, 2025 — One email, before the year began

An email went out to incoming 6th grade families noting that a "hybrid" grading model would be implemented in Fall 2025. It contained no detail about what hybrid meant, how the B/D/M/E scale worked, how final grades would be calculated, or what families should expect to see on the report card. This was the only communication families received before setting foot in the school year.

September 2, 2025 — An 18-minute one-way video, after the year started

An 18-minute video presentation was held for 6th grade parents — after the school year had already begun. The format was one-directional: no questions, no dialogue. Many parents were unaware the presentation was happening; it was not prominently communicated. Administration stated in this session that they recognized grades matter to families, which was given as the reason a hybrid model was being adopted rather than a fully standards-based report card. This session was considered sufficient to inform and educate 6th grade families on SBG.

The presentation also showed a rollout timeline in which 7th and 8th grade would launch together in 2026–2027 — directly contradicting the SBG Handbook's published schedule. No explanation was provided.

October 15, 2025 — A grading system change with no notice, six weeks in

Right before Q1 report cards were released, families received an email announcing that the hybrid model — described in May and confirmed in September — would not be used. The report card would be fully standards-based: Beginning, Developing, Meeting, Extending only. No advance notice. No community input. No informational sessions. The stated reason offered when parents questioned the change was that the hybrid model was "administratively burdensome for teachers."

This explanation is worth examining against what teachers themselves documented (see snapshot below). In a formal written letter to administration submitted that same fall, 6th grade teachers wrote: "Growth mindset concern — we want them to be okay with developing, but Ds and Fs all quarter will not be good."

Teacher documents from this same period describe the challenge of a system in which students would accumulate Developing and Beginning designations early in the year as standards were only partially taught — which, under the hybrid conversion, would translate directly to low letter grades. Whether the October change was primarily about teacher workload or about anticipated grade outcomes is not established in any public record. What is established is that the explanation given to parents — administrative burden for teachers — is not the only explanation in the documented record.

This last-minute, unexplained change to the grading system, six weeks into the first year of implementation, set the tone for how information would be managed for the rest of the year.

November 11–18, 2025 — A one-week survey, results withheld

A parent survey was distributed via Google Forms one week after Q1 report cards went out. It was open for seven days. 35 families responded — a 32% response rate. The results were presented internally and at the December 18, 2025 Board of Education meeting. They were never proactively shared with the 6th grade parent community, despite multiple parents emailing to request them. They were only acquired through the FOIA request.

Survey results showed that 76.5% of parents disagreed or strongly disagreed that the Q1 report card clearly communicated their child's progress, and more than half felt they had not received adequate information about how SBG works

January 20, 2026 — Three focus groups, near the end of the year

An email went out with a registration link for three SBG focus groups scheduled for March, April, and May. By March, the school year was more than two-thirds over. The focus groups were organized around explaining SBG's rationale — the "why" — rather than substantively engaging with the documented concerns about implementation — the "how." No written summaries were shared afterward. No public commitments were made. No follow-up communications to the broader community described what was discussed or what would change.

Part 5: What the Record Shows

The complete communication record for the 2025–2026 6th grade SBG rollout:

one email before the year began.
A one-way presentation after it started.
A grading system change six weeks in, with no advance notice and a disputed explanation.
A survey whose results were withheld.
Three focus groups in the final months of the year that produced no documented follow-through.

This is not a communication plan. It is the absence of one — and it stands in direct contradiction to the district's own stated vision of a grading system built on "transparent, meaningful, and actionable" communication and "strong partnerships with parents and the community."

The Superintendent's own April 2026 all-staff email acknowledged "concerns about purpose, preparedness, and implementation" that the administration "have not gone far enough" to address. (See Teacher Insights sub-page for the full context.) The question now is what the district intends to do differently as it plans to continue rollout at Field in the Fall of 2026 — families who, based on this record, have every reason to expect they will receive less information than they need, later than they need it, with less transparency about changes than the situation requires.

The Superintendent has committed to a comprehensive Board presentation in June 2026. What that presentation contains — and whether it honestly accounts for the documented failures of year one — will be the clearest signal yet of whether the administration has genuinely learned from this year, or whether it intends to proceed the same way at larger scale.