Report Card Reform

School Administrator, Dec, 1997 by Priscilla Pardini

Alternative ways to report student progress find favor among educators but doubts among parents

About five years ago, 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 Elementary School in New Richmond, Ohio.

Riel, who has been a principal for 18 years, saw a pressing need to improve the way the school communicated with parents. "An A doesn't mean the same thing to every teacher or every parent," he says.

But to parent Becky Walvrin, the P's (which stood for "Progressing") that replaced the A's she was used to seeing on the report card of her daughter Ashley meant even less. "I wondered: Was she up to her level? Was she doing OK for her grade?" says Walvrin. "A P was somewhat comforting, but an A would have told me a lot more."

Walvrin says she wasn't the only one confused by the school's new grading system. "Try taking that report card to Chuck E. Cheese," she quipped.

Once Walvrin explained that "This is the new A," the pizza parlor quickly adapted to New Richmond's revamped grading system by rewarding pupils with free video game tokens for every P they earned. Crisis averted.

A Tough Sell

Similarly, in hundreds of school districts across the country, school leaders are struggling to find ways to make the report cards they send home to parents such as Becky Walvrin more meaningful. They contend that time-honored, traditional grading systems--which they say never really worked all that well anyway--are especially inadequate when it comes to measuring what and how students learn in today's restructured schools. They believe the best of the alternative report cards, which typically do away with traditional letter grades and rate pupils on specific skills in a subject area or along a developmental continuum, better reflect a school district's goals and give parents more information about their children's progress.

Still, out on the front lines, many administrators who are responsible for devising and selling parents on alternative report cards are finding the effort can be tough going. Consider:

* In Gloucester, Mass., a record turnout of parents at a school committee meeting in 1995 forced administrators to abandon a new reporting system that had replaced letter grades with student portfolios and narrative reports written by teachers. Kim Norman, school committee chairman, called the parents' response "very political," adding, "People wanted to be able to tell their children's grandparents, 'Johnny got all A's.'"

* School board members in Rio Rancho, N.M., last spring were forced to reinstate letter grades in response to overwhelming parental opposition to a new reporting system that evaluated student progress against a rubric, or continuum, of skills. In the new system, teachers rated their students as "novice," "apprentice," "practitioner" or "expert" on dozens of skills. "We didn't think there was anything wrong with being a novice," says Kathryn Weil, principal of Lincoln Middle School. "But the parents didn't like the terms and felt we were labeling their children."

* In Coos Bay, Ore., complaints from parents and teachers have tempered Barbara Walton's initial enthusiasm for her district's alternative report card, which rated each pupil's progress in up to 51 specific areas. ("Lots of little marks that don't mean a thing," complained one pupil's grandmother.) Walton, a former principal who now directs the district's curriculum and instruction, concedes the new forms, already revised once, are "very burdensome to fill out" and the narrative reports that go with them are time-consuming to complete. "I'm not sure it's worth it," she admits. About a possible return to letter grades, Walton says, "If that's what the majority wants, I won't fight it."

* In Pasco County, Fla., Sandra Ramos describes the elementary report card revision as "a volatile issue--one of the most controversial in recent years." Ramos, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, says the proposed report card met strong resistance, even though it was designed by a task force of teachers, administrators and parents and had been piloted at several schools. Angry parents showed up at school meetings, armed with petitions signed by thousands of their peers. Some teachers resisted a grading system that did away with the percentage-based letter grades they had used for years. The result: The school district reinstated letter grades in grades 3-5.

* In the Rialto Unified School District in San Bernadino County, Calif., board members last spring threw out an alternative report card touted by experts as one of the best in the country. The report card, which tracked a child's movement through developmental stages, was abandoned because it was too complex and "not very friendly to parents," says Louis Herz, board vice president.

Noted educational consultant Grant Wiggins, who has worked with a number of school districts on revamping the way they report student progress, is well aware of the potential pitfalls.