It's Report Card Time!

Did your grandparents give you a dollar for each A on your report card? Did you spend your high school years hoping you would squeak by with C's in important classes? Did you ever see the dreaded F on a paper, test or your report card?

Like many other districts across the nation, RUSD schools pair standards-based report cards with standards-based teaching. Parents, teachers, and students get more information about achievement towards to grade level standards (what students should know and be able to do by the end of the year).

Because this way of grading is so different from when we were in elementary school, here is some information to help you understand it better. Imagine two different grade books for the same set of students, as shown in the table below. Which one of the two better illustrates what students know and what they still need to learn?

Comparing Traditional and Standards-Based Grade Books

TRADITIONAL GRADE BOOK

Name Homework Quiz 1 Chapter 1 Test

John 90 65 70

Bill 50 75 78

Susan 110 50 62

Felicia 10 90 85

Amanda 95 100 90

STANDARDS-BASED GRADE BOOK

Name Objective 1 Objective 2: Objective 3:

Write an alt. Identify elements Compare/Contrast

ending to story of a story two stories

John Basic Proficient Basic

Bill Proficient Basic Basic

Susan Basic Basic Basic

Felicia Advanced Proficient Proficient

Amanda Basic Advanced Proficient

The standards-based grade book gives a wealth of information to help the teacher adjust instruction. Note that two objectives (1 and 3) may require more class instruction. The notations for Objective 2, on the other hand, suggest that the class only needs practice and one student needs some reteaching.

Students can also see much more information about their learning. In the traditional grade book, Amanda would assume she is in great shape, but standards-based grading reveals that she has not mastered a crucial concept.

Gifted and talented students can be truly challenged in a standards-based classroom because if they show early mastery of fundamental skills and concepts, they can then concentrate on more challenging work that is at higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy or that seeks connections among objectives.