It’s the day we hand out our trimester Standards-based Progress Reports and I am doing some last-minute tinkering on a few of my students. We made our shift last year to this style of reporting (based on standards and expectations of students by the end of the grade they are) and I have to admit, I am still trying to get the hang of it. (see the sample ELA section above)
One one hand, the sublevels are more detailed, so the specific skills are theoretically easily to identify. I can more easily identify a student who might be strong in reading but weak in writing, as opposed to a grade average (say, a B-minus) that was balanced out by those two areas. It also is designed to show a progressive set of learning over the course of the year.
On the other hand, though, it’s not always clear what piece or work, or pieces of work, resemble a “meeting” of the standard, since we haven’t really gone through as a regional school district and brought out exemplars to say, This is what a Meeting the Standard looks like for this category. That seems to be a real missing piece of this process. We’ve had grade level meetings and all that, and we’ve had good discussions, but never something that concrete. (Am I saying that we need a district-wide writing assessment for my grade? Maybe.)
We’re left to a judgment call, once again, although this time, it is more defined, and we do have student work that we collect to fall back on as “evidence” of their progress in the standards.
Very few parents like this system, at least from feedback that we get (although the ones who like it may not be vocal since they like it) and the students still get confused about what a P and an M mean, particularly when I emphasize that they should not equate an A with a M, and a B with an P, and so on.
But I don’t see us moving away from standards-based reporting and in fact, with the Common Core on the near horizon, it will probably be going through some major revisions and revamping.
Peace (in the reporting),
Kevin