A growing band of teachers, schools, and entire districts have put their faith in standards-based grading, an innovative, albeit complex and sometimes controversial, method that aims to make grades more meaningful. A standards-based report card contains an overall grade for each course but also indicates how well a student has mastered each of the class's several standards. As well, while traditional end-of-course grades are the final products of many factors, including quizzes, homework, behavior, and attendance, with standards-based grading nothing but mastery matters. Standards-based grades account for nonacademic elements very minimally or not at all. This article describes how standards-based grading works and discusses some pros and cons regarding the controversial method.