For years, teachers who wanted to use standards-based grading had to rely on a patchwork of spreadsheets, custom rubric hacks, or third-party add-ons to track skill mastery inside Google Classroom.

Well, grab your favorite coffee mug because those workarounds are officially a thing of the past! Google has rolled out native Learning Goals inside Google Classroom. 🥳

Whether you’re a 4th-grade teacher tracking state reading targets or a high school administrator looking for district-wide mastery insights, here is everything you need to know to get started.

1. What Are Learning Goals in Google Classroom (and Who Can Use Them)?

At its core, the Learning Goals feature allows educators to tie assignments directly to specific learning targets rather than just assigning points to a generic homework category.

In Google Classroom, Learning Goals include two options:

• Learning Skills: These are student-friendly, actionable targets provided by Google (e.g., “Identify main ideas in a text” or “Solve two-step equations”). They are ideal for quick progress checks and formative feedback.
• Learning Standards: These are official academic standards published by your state, region, or educational institution (such as CCSS, NGSS, or state-specific frameworks).

Who has access?

This feature is available across ALL Google Workspace editions! No premium access required. Some languages may not have this feature immediately, but all languages will be supported eventually.

Related Post: Which Google Workspace version do I have?

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2. Classroom Setup: How to Select Learning Goals for Your Class

Before you start tagging your daily warm-ups and projects, you need to configure the Learning Goals for your course. The setup takes less than two minutes:

1. Open Google Classroom on your web browser and open a class.
2. Click the gear icon (Class Settings) in the top right corner.
3. Scroll down to the Learning goals section (it’s at the very bottom)
4. Click Select standard sets.
5. Browse or search for your state or subject standard sets (you can select up to 5 standard sets per class).
6. Click Save.

Teacher Tip: Some standard sets include learning goals for grades K-12. Take a minute to expand the standard set and make sure you are only selecting the standards that you need. This will make it easier to tag standards for individual assignments.

If you don’t see the standards you need, it is possible to add custom learning standards to Google’s data base through the Satchel Rosetta Exchange. This is not a fast or simple process. You can learn more here.

3. Using Learning Goals in Daily Classwork & Grading

Once your Learning Goals are configured, tagging assignments is seamless.

Tagging Assignments

1. Go to the Classwork tab and create or open an assignment.
2. Underneath your instructions there is a new section that says “
3. Choose whether you want to tag with your configured Standards or available Skills. You can attach up to 10 learning goals per assignment.
4. Bonus feature: Google Classroom uses AI to analyze your assignment instructions and automatically suggest relevant Learning Goals! You can click on the suggested goals or manually pick your own.
5. Click Confirm and assign as usual.

How Scores are Calculated

Google Classroom gives you two flexible ways to calculate mastery for Learning Goals:

• Standard Grading: The score is calculated based on the overall percentage earned on the tagged assignment.
• Rubric Criterion Grading: If you attach a rubric to your assignment, you can map specific Learning Goals directly to individual rubric criteria! Classroom will calculate the student’s goal score based only on the points earned for that specific criterion, not the overall assignment grade.

Reviewing Student Growth in the Gradebook

Head over to the Grades tab and toggle on Learning goals at the top:

• Traditional Gradebook – this is where you can see your traditional numeric grades.
• Learning Goals: Gives you an overview of how your entire class is progressing across all targeted skills and standards.
• Single Goal View: Click any goal title to dive deep into a specific Learning Goal. You’ll see individual student scores, rubric breakdowns, and handy trend arrows showing whether a student’s performance on their latest assignment improved or dropped for that specific target.