Elementary Report Card--wasted time, confused parents

Most elementary teachers have spent every spare minute of the last two weeks putting together a "report card" for their elementary classroom students. Sadly it was mostly wasted time.

The too complex and time consuming report card is full of 1,2 3 and 4 numbers on a variety of language arts and especially math picayune elementary tasks. These virtual blizzard of numbers requires huge investment of "busy" work time for the teachers with no payoff resulting in more informed parents. Most parents are just confused.

There is only one grade each for science and social science.

Why does language arts require TEN categories and math TEN more? This plethora of "grades" is confusing to our parents, especially our limited English speaking ones. Further having the grades as four numbers is not nearly as helpful as the five traditional letter grades would be. What parent does not understand ABCDF?

How do we get parents motivated to intervene if their child is not doing well ,if they cannot easily and quickly comprehend what the report card is telling them.

Because language arts includes reading and spelling, it does require more than one grade but ten? Couldn't fluency, grammar and comprehension all be rolled into one reading grade? Perhaps language arts should be four or five grades but ten is way over the limit.

Math is even worse--grade for every skill is nuts. One letter grade for math is more than enough to let parents know how well their child is doing. Any more than that is just wasted time busy work for the teachers and TMI for the parents. Besides how can the additional information given to the parents change the actions of the parents? If the child is doing poorly, one grade tells them to contact the school and find out what is going on just as well or better than ten grades.

Wasted teacher time is wasted preparation time for teaching and less effective classroom instruction. Confused parents given a flurry of numbers and letters are more likely to put the report card down without taking action than parents given clear simple letter grades. In both cases more is worse NOT better.

What about a single simple behavior grade? Instead there are seven grades for effort and ten redundant categories for work habits and social skills. Why?

In addition the report card were redesigned to get rid of the simple and bilingual use of the E,S,N, U behavior grade scale. The clear letter S in both English and Spanish was replaced with an M in English that looks VERY much like a N. Talk about confusing. How many parents notice the difference? The English speaking parents see a list of M's and N's and they all blend together. S grades stood out. M does not.

For Spanish speaking parents, the teachers must use a different letter "C" instead of the "S" or "M". How many teachers make a mistake and give a M grade to Spanish speaking student? The M has NO meaning in Spanish. The letter S does. Why this confusing change when S means satisfactory in English and satisfactorio in Spanish. Two similar words derived from the same Latin root seem like the intuit choice instead of using two different letters from two different source words.

Shouldn't report cards be crafted to give the most information in the simplest most clear way? Shouldn't the wasted time for the teachers with no gain for the students or parents be factored into decisions regarding what elementary report cards look like?

More than a decade ago there were a rash of lawsuits claiming that parents were not informed enough about their children's failure to learn in school sponsored by the forces of the ANTIs in America. In addition our good friends who are protective of our children decided that grading was labeling and bad for student self esteem. I am convinced those two movements coming together resulted in the VUSD board committees coming up with these time consuming ill informing report cards. At that time complex report cards that told less and were confusing seemed like a good idea for possible latter use in case of lawsuits to prove skills were taught and recorded. Secondly the then "new" elementary report card got rid of those nasty ABCDF grades that traumatized the children. At least that was the theory. Other districts fell into the same mistake of overly complex, non-informative report cards. I believe many have changed back to ABCDF grades. When will VUSD?

Even more sad for our VUSD students is that when those kids get to middle school and get their first report card many parents and children are shocked! "What do you mean a C? a D?I never got grades like that in elementary school." or from the parents, "But my child always got great report cards in elementary school. how could he/she get a C?"

All VUSD sixth grade teachers are overwhelmed with incredulous parents and children when the first report cards come home. For the first time ever the parents and students find out what their real accomplishments have been in school. The parents and students see an easily comprehensible grade and they are dumbfounded.n

The VUSD elementary report card is not fair to the teachers who spend weeks computing meaningless grades. It is not fair to the parents who are confused and do not understand when they need to take corrective action to help their child. It is not fair to sixth grade teachers at the middles school who must give the first "real" grades to these students.

Let's dump the elementary report card for next year. Who is with me on this? Tell your favorite school board member (except Gibson who will politicize the issue). Or add a comment to this blog and I will forward it to the four rational school board members.