Student Report Cards: Do They Earn an A -- or a "Needs Improvement?"
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On its surface, the question of report card reform in the elementary
grades is a simple one: What format will provide the best information
about a student's progress? But for educators the answers are seldom easy.
And for parents, anxious to see their children succeed in an increasingly
competitive society, the correct answers are crucial.
A CENTURY OF CHANGE
The first student progress reports, introduced in the late 1800s,
typically consisted of a list of basic skills and indicated which of
those skills the student had mastered and which required additional
practice.
In the first half of the 20th century, the skills list was gradually
replaced by a number grade and then by a letter grade, both of which
usually indicated a student's level of progress according to a specified
numerical standard.
Finally, in the latter half of this century, as issues of competition,
comparison, and self-esteem were raised, some elementary schools began
to replace the letter grade report card with one featuring teacher comments
and individualized assessment, in which students were evaluated according
to standards that reflected their achievement in relation to their own
effort and ability.
Today, report cards featuring each of those reporting formats -- skills'
lists, letter grades, and teacher narratives -- can be found in schools
across the country. Each form has its supporters and its detractors --
both of whom are often found within the same school district.
A DECADE OF DIVISIVNESS
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Teachers Start Report
Card Revolution
Some teachers have taken it upon themselves to rework their
report cards. Two teachers talk with Education World about
the systems they developed and the benefits to students and
parents of their improved grade-reporting systems. Tips included.
Included: Tips for setting up more detailed grading systems.
Make Way for the New
Report Cards
As districts revise curriculum and try to better measure how
much of that curriculum students master and how well, new
versions of report cards are inevitable. Education professor
Dr. Thomas R. Guskey talks about some trends. Included: Information
on the new generation of report cards.
What Will Your School's
Next Report Card Look Like?
Report cards are yet another area of education affected by
the standards movement. With more things to teach, assess,
and track, teachers need more precise ways of assessing students
than A to F. Included: Tips for setting up more detailed grading
systems.
The 1990s were a decade of controversy in the area of report card
reform, as parents and educators increasingly clashed over the best
way of reporting student progress.
The San Bernadino, California, and Rochester, New York, school districts
returned to traditional A, B, C report cards when parents complained
that new report cards, which identified developmental stages students
had attained in a variety of subjects, were too confusing.
In Gloucester, Massachusetts, angry parents forced administrators
to abandon a report card that replaced traditional letter grades with
student portfolios and teacher narratives.
Parents in Cranston, Rhode Island, reacted angrily when school officials
there replaced the A, B, C grading system with a three-level scale that
tracked student progress in a variety of educational categories and
sub-categories.
Administrators in Florida, Oregon, New Mexico, and many other states
as well were forced to defend or abandon revamped reporting formats
that did not include the traditional letter grades. Most protesting parents
appeared to agree with one Cranston mother who charged that the new formats
were vague and subjective, while the traditional A, B, C format told parents
exactly where their children stood. "It's so objective," the parent stated of the newly introduced format.
But was it?
THE ABCs OF REPORTING
Most parents regard the traditional reporting method as the most objective
indicator of student progress. They see A, B, C, D, and F as an approximate
representation of a numerical average of test scores, homework assignments,
and class work, and most believe those grades accurately reflect their
children's level of progress.
A study cited in an Education Week article, "There's
No Such Thing as Grade Inflation," seems to question that belief. Although 83 percent of the teachers in the study said they graded tests and class
work according to the number of correct answers, many admitted it was
not the only criteria they used. One-third to one-half of the respondents
said they also took into account the difficulty of the work and student
effort and ability when grading individual assignments. Further adjustment
occurred when those individual scores were averaged for reporting purposes.
According to the study, the scores were combined with other types of information,
such as attendance, class participation, extra-credit work, effort, behavior,
and teamwork, to determine final grades.
Furthermore, the author of the article states, different teachers use
different combinations of those factors in different proportions when
assigning a final, "objective" letter grade to each student.
Add to that the changing view of the meaning of specific letter grades
(Does today's "C" mean average or slightly below average, for example?),
and the problems multiply.
These inconsistencies often result in wide discrepancies in letter grade
meaning, as classmates at different skill levels receive similar letter
grades, while students in different classrooms, at the same skill level,
receive different letter grades.
MAKING PROGRESS?
Educational leaders, aware of the inadequacies of the A, B, C grading
system, have struggled to devise more effective ways of evaluating and
reporting student progress. Often those efforts include lists of specific
skills in a variety of subject areas and a reporting method that identifies
an individual student's progress through the skill levels. Many educators
feel that this method, combined with teacher narrative, better reflects
student progress because it makes allowances for individual differences
in learning rate and style, emphasizes real learning over test scores,
and minimizes subjective considerations. The new report cards, they say,
are actually more specific and more objective than the A, B, C format
because they provide a truer picture of what a particular child is doing.
While they may provide a truer picture of student progress, they apparently
do not provide one that parents can fully understand and interpret in
meaningful ways. The new report cards, according to parents, are vague,
complex, and confusing, are filled with educational jargon and meaningless
notations, and fail to provide concrete information about their children's
progress or position in the class.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KNOW?
According to Grant Wiggins, a report card consultant quoted in a Christian
Science Monitor article, (Parents
Push for Report Cards that Don't Require a Users' Manual), the real
conflict is not over format. The problem is that parents and teachers
have different goals and different expectations about the reporting process.
"Educators," he says, "want to get away from comparison and parents want
to hold onto it."
Teachers want to measure the success of each child, says Wiggins. They
want to identify each student's strengths and weaknesses and report on
the progress that student is making toward achieving individual goals.
Parents, on the other hand, want to know how their children are performing
compared to other children. Knowing what their children are doing
isn't enough, parents say. In order to understand what that information
means, they need to put it into a recognizable context. They want to know
if their children are working on grade level; if the quality of their
is work better than, worse than, or the same as the work of other children
in the same classroom and at the same grade level; if their children are
succeeding or merely "progressing."
MEETING EXPECTATIONS
Both parents and teachers want accurate, understandable, and useful
methods of measuring and reporting student progress. In order to provide
it, schools must make an effort, whatever report card format they choose,
to compare students' achievements, not to their own ability and not to
the achievements of other students, but to objective, measurable performance
requirements. "The trick," for teachers, according to Wiggins, "is not
to make an insidious comparison. You compare students not against each
other arbitrarily, but you compare their performances against standards."
A research report produced by the Office of Educational Research and
Improvement (OERI) of the U.S. Department of Education concluded with
the same advice for parents. "Parents cannot rely solely on their children's
grades to determine the quality of their education. In order to ensure
that their children are receiving a world class education that prepares
them for the 21st century, parents need external standards against which
they can assess the performance of their children and their children's
schools."
Report cards, many experts say, can -- and must -- provide that information.
Report
Card Reform
Alternative ways to report student progress find favor among educators
but doubts among parents. A reflection on a time when, as part of a move
to create what they considered the ideal primary classroom, Principal
David Riel and a group of teachers revamped the student report card at
New Richmond (Ohio) Elementary School.
