Standards-based Grading

I find merit in only one of these "Five Problems With Standards-Based Grading", but that point is strong enough to justify the author's thesis:

Parents and teachers hate SBG because the sheer volume of grades is overwhelming.

Rather than getting an A in English and a B in math, a child receives a grade of 1-4 (or similar) for every single standard in English and the same for math, etc. Looking at one grade level for a rough measure we find there are roughly 80 English/Language Arts standards alone!

The argument is made by proponents of SBG that then parents will know if their kid knows quadratic equations but doesn’t understand exponential equations.  But parents will have to be able to decipher the jargon used in the standards.  For example: Use tiling to show in a concrete case that the area of a rectangle with whole-number side lengths a and b + c is the sum of a × b and a × c. Use area models to represent the distributive property in mathematical reasoning.
(CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.3.MD.C.7.C)  

Now, how many people can understand that?

In the case of the frustration and burden placed on teachers, they often must show evidence of each student’s mastery of each concept.  And if a test question covers three standards and another question covers two different standards, then they have to track all of that information for every student in their class.  25 math standards times 25 students times 10 tests….  Well, you get the picture.

Of course, the ed tech companies are poised and ready to solve that problem! Teachers, just turn your teaching over to the ed tech companies! They can provide you – for a few taxpayers’ dollars – with nice computer-based programs that even produce gradebook reports to track all of the standards, with each student’s proficiency included.  Phew!  Now teachers won’t have to teach anything above and beyond the basic common standards. Where would be the motivation to do so?

Our school district uses an online student information system that allows me to post students' grades for each assignment/test/quiz/project/etc., and allows parents to log on to see these grades.  The overall grade is just some linear combination of those individual components, and my guess is that 99% neither understand nor care about the individual grades.  They want to know "how their kid is doing" in the aggregate.