I wanted to take a few minutes to tell you about a conversation I had with my son last night.  He is a good student who has gotten mostly As on his report cards in previous years.  I have been involved with many conversations with teachers over the last year as we have transitioned from a traditional report card to a standards based report card, but I have never been a parent trying to explain it to my child before.  As we all do with our children each night, I tackled this conversation the best I could.

The conversation started with a simple question, “dad, how did I do on my report card?” 

As most of us would respond, “great.” 

The conversation quickly got more challenging.  Our report card, yes, I used our, had lots of 3s on it and even a few 2s.  I quickly realized that my son did not have all As on his report card.  In fact, there weren’t any As on it.  We had gotten a 2 in a science unit, mostly because our studying the night before the test hadn’t been enough to get him to remember the difference between waxing and waning and this caused issues on several of the moon questions.  It took a little explaining as to why his science grade was a 2.  The main reason is that our science topics are only taught once each year.  If you show that you know the content, you earn a 4.  However, if you don’t, you earn a 2 because there likely won’t be another opportunity to master the content.  A score of 3 wouldn’t make sense in this case, because he was not on his way to mastering the content as it won’t be taught again.  I explained that he will likely have a 2 in this science unit at the end of the year.  He wasn’t happy about it, but he did understand why. 

We also earned 2s in writing.  My son knows that writing is a weakness.  In the past, he probably would have earned a B in writing and we would have quickly moved on.  However, we both realized that a 2 is not 3 and needed to have further conversation.  His 2 means that he if he keeps performing the way he is now, he won’t earn a 4 at the end of the year.  However, writing will continue to be taught for the rest of the year.  We have time to earn a 4.  We know that this is something that we need to work on (you may have guessed this from reading all my emails over the years) and we will ask his teacher for some guidance in improving his writing.  As a parent, I now have an area to focus on with my son.  Very few, if any, students would earn a 4 in writing at this point in the year.  There are many writing concepts that still need to be taught.  Students can’t master something that hasn’t been taught yet.  A 3 would mean that a student is on track to mastery at the end of the year.  We have some work to do at home.

Math is even more confusing.  In several of the report card sections, we earned 3s.  This confused him because he has gotten 4s on many sections of his tests.  Math is one of those tricky subjects where the content gets harder throughout the year.  Mastering part of a standard at the beginning of the year doesn’t guarantee that a student will master the end of the year standard.  I convinced him that a 3 is the best score that you can get in math at this point in the year and that if he continued to earn 3s, he would end up with a 4 at the end of the year.  We did have a 2 in one section of math.  He knows that this will mean even more time on MobyMax each week and probably another conversation with his teacher to know exactly where he needs help.  He likely would have earned an A on last year’s system.  The shift to a standards based system equips me with the knowledge I needed to know how to focus our time at home.     

 I grew up in schools where an A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1 E=0.  While the teacher in me knows that this is not how a standards based report card works, the parent in me has a hard time letting this go.  Why has the district made this change?  Our goal is to inform parents as best as possible on the academic and social progress of the child.  An A doesn’t carry much meaning.  We hope this is a step in the right direction.  This report card will continue to evolve over the next year.  Any feedback would be appreciated along the way.