At Manhattan International, we strive to create student-friendly report cards with meaningful feedback so students can reflect upon their strengths and weaknesses as well as track their progress toward attaining mastery of academic concepts (“skills”).  

Mastery-based grading is different from the traditional grading system in that students grades are based on their demonstrated level of mastery of concepts, rather than the average “points” they earned for the marking period. Therefore, a student who struggled at the beginning of a course, may still be able to demonstrate mastery of "skills" by the end of a grading period.

The Manhattan Internationals’ pedagogical approach to educating English language learners is based upon 5 Core Principles: Heterogeneity and collaboration, Experiential learning, Language and content integration, and Localized autonomy and responsibility. Our grading policy reflects the system of assessment devised by the NY State Performance Standards Consortium and Mastery-based grading.  

Instead of receiving only one grade for an entire class, each student is given a rating for each skill in that class. These skills are called Outcomes. Outcomes are year or semester long and students have multiple opportunities to work towards mastery. Manhattan International High School operates as an annualized school for the majority of our courses.  Students have constant access to their progress via the jumprope online grading platform, and are sent a “Snapshot” of their progress four times a year. 

Outcome is another word for skills that are worked on in each class. Within an outcome, students either  Exceeds Standards (ME), are Above Standards (MA), Meets Standards (MT) or are Approaching Standards (MB).