School Report Card

I think each school is different but for all my kids, two went to a private grade school, two public, both had some lame grading system until third grade. I say lame because my kids would keep asking me, is this an A, is this an A, oh that is a B. If the kids are just going to convert them what is the point?

We have the same as Julie. I think that the letters are just another way to say the same things everyone else says.

B...I had to laugh. The district here said no one could get less than a 50% on homework...so the kids quit doing it. It backfired badly and they rescinded that. I suspect that 63% won't be motivational, either. A little competition is a good thing.

I hadn't heard of that one.
I have heard there is a proposal in our area regarding failing grades.
For some reason they feel a zero is too harsh so instead they want to give a 63 instead which is still failing but somehow more redeemable.
I just want to know how they will distinguish between people who turned in nothing at all vs people who turned in something but was totally awful work.
What ever you replace the zero with becomes the new zero - and you end up chasing around the politically correct spectrum trying not to offend anyone.
It's ridiculous!
It seem to me self esteem should be about what you accomplish and if you accomplish nothing I'm not sure trying to make people feel good about that is a good thing.
Also, I'm fairly certain other countries are not afraid to tell students who fail that they have failed.
We can't compete in a world market if we get all wishy-washy about this.

New people at the DOE have to change policy every now and then to justify 6 figure salaries...

Report cards for elementary school children are moving towards reflecting the students' mastery of grade-based skills. Picture it sort of like getting a performance review at work. There are certain skills that the kids are supposed to demonstrate they can do at the end of a year, just like at work you might set goals for the year. Then at a quarterly, or mid-year review, you would document your progress against meeting your goals, right? Similar to what they're doing with report cards...it's about measuring progress against goals of mastering a set of skills.

It's a subtle difference in the case of your school district, but the new set, to me, gives a better sense of progress along a continuum while the older set can be interpreted as more of a label - my child is advanced, my child is proficient, my child is basic. Compare that to the new set...the new set clearly indicates that they are measuring "work" and not some innate part of the child's identity...my child's skill at addition and subtraction facts is advanced, his sight reading is basic, his writing is proficient, etc.

Our school district is so sick and tired of every parent wanting his or her child labelled as advanced that there is no grade for that LOL. Our grades through grade 5 are M (meets the standard), W (working on the stardard), or L (limited understanding of the standard).

I have never heard of this.
Good grief is what I say.
And ditto "B" below.

The elementary schools here do 1-4. Then when they get to middle school they switch to A-F.

I think it's stupid and they should stick with letter grades that correspond to grade percentage. That's how we know the kid is actually doing the work.

The public schools here use A-F, but I always liked our Montessori school's triangle method of tracking their progress. It gave us a better understanding of what our child needed to work on, something a simple grade would never be able to tell us.

our school does numbers.
Lame.
I wish everyone went back to A,B,C,D,F.
1-doing poorly
2-needs improvement.
3-Meets expectations
4-above grade level.

My daughter's school uses O S I N and M. Outstanding/exceeds grade level, Satisfactory/meets grade level, Improving, Needs improvement, Modified/IEP/504.

I have never heard of those grading terms in Texas. Is that just a California policy or is this grading system in use in other states? I think that these terms are very confusing. Adequate --compared to what??? What happens if you do not even have a minimal grasp of the subject matter and what does minimal mean? Good luck - being involved in your child's education is a good thing!

Our school district here in New Jersey through 2nd grade uses E (constantly progressing above grade level), P (progressing at grade level), I (demonstrating inconsistent growth), and N (needs improvement). They also give little pluses next to various skill sets to indicate extra achievement, and a little slash to indicate the skill set needs extra work.

We recently changed from P, A, D and N (Proficient, Acquired, Developing and Not Observable Understanding of Outcomes) to 1, 2, 3, 4 (1=Very Good, 2=Good, 3=Basic and 4=Limited Understanding and Application of Concepts and Skills). Basically the same meaning, just different words. I think the school division is just using a different computer program to do report cards.

We use this system until the end of grade six, and starting in grade seven they receive percentage grades. The idea behind it is that in elementary school the students focus on developing skills and not comparing or competing for grades.

Our elementary school uses numbers, 1=exceeds standards, 2=meeting standards, 3=approaching standards and 4=below standards.
The advanced, proficient, basic and below basic terms are still used in STAR testing (California's official state standard tests grades 2 thru 10.)

I think there's a huge difference between the report card of a first grader and the report card of a 10th grader. So I think the codes should reflect that, and that young children's report cards should be about skill levels and not about As and Bs. It's just a benchmark for parents to see how their kids are developing, and the understanding should be that kids develop skills in a different order from each other. So no young child should be marked as failing when it's just a skill that hasn't developed yet. When I was teaching, we made sure the parents understood it was rarely, if ever, a good idea for parents or teachers to sit with a young child and tell them they only got a "P" in topic such-and-such so they need to work harder or step up their game. I agree with the teacher who said she likes to measure growth.

I think terms vary by state and sometimes are linked to terms used on any statewide testing that's in place. What appears to be a change may be just a desire to achieve more consistency across the state. The report card itself should indicate what the initials mean, and there should be something on the school district's website and/or an email to parents that explains how these are interpreted and defined.

Second grade. We use 1-4, just the reverse of Mamazita's school. 4 - Exceeds expectations, 3- meets expectations, 2 - progressing towards expectations 1 - needs more work. This is NOT a new system no matter what B thinks. I am 48. In the first half of elementary school our grades were M (most of the time), S (some of the time) and N (none of the time). In 3rd grade we started a 1-4 system which was basically the system my son has now. Different states (so of course different districts). Perhaps they feel your new letters better describe what they are grading for. A kindergartner could have a thorough understanding of the letter sounds but there really isn't such a thing as 'advanced' letter sound knowledge.

Most schools use a four point system...call it what you like, but there's usually the lowest = needs improvement 1
the next is = working toward standard 2
the next is = meets standard 3
the next is = exceeds standard 4

The bottom line is basically the same (A. B C D or fail), again, you can put whatever label on it. I'm usually happy if my dd gets 3 or 4's (A's or B's)

In my state, I have only seen performance scales like that on standardized testing. Not classroom scoring-- ever. And I've had my kids in both public and private schools.

The 2 differences between private/public schools grading was that in private school they only published the letter grade on the report card, and the letter grades had smaller segments (100-94= A, where in public school 100-90 = A). This allowed them room for a D, which doesn't exist in public school grading scales.

Here in our elementary schools, for behavioral/social aspects, there are letter grades that translate to something like Consistent, Often, Inconsistent, Never.

The academics are graded on a 1-4 scale, consistent with our state testing, 1 being the lowest and 4 being the highest.