I think that all students should have standards based report cards. We are supposed to be teaching to the standards and assessing the standards, simply giving a letter grade doesn't show what standards the students do or do not meet. I had an issue involving this come up last year. In my district 1st graders are only given letter grades in reading, spelling, and math. Reading grades in my classes were made up of oral reading (vocabulary words) and comprehension tests. At the end of the year the very last question on the test was worth 3 points because students had to respond in writing to a prompt. 1 point was for beginning with a capital letter, 1 point was for ending with the correct ending mark, and 1 point for a complete sentence that correctly answered the question. A parent was concerned about a student's grade. While reviewing the grades with our academic coach I was asked if grading the question that way was actually assessing reading comprehension, which is what the grade is supposed to be. Well all of the points were not assessing reading comprehension, however, they were assessing standards.
If the work is based on the standards, does it make a difference? The traditional letter grades would probably be more user friendly to parents.
ReplyDeleteI think that all students should have standards based report cards. We are supposed to be teaching to the standards and assessing the standards, simply giving a letter grade doesn't show what standards the students do or do not meet. I had an issue involving this come up last year. In my district 1st graders are only given letter grades in reading, spelling, and math. Reading grades in my classes were made up of oral reading (vocabulary words) and comprehension tests. At the end of the year the very last question on the test was worth 3 points because students had to respond in writing to a prompt. 1 point was for beginning with a capital letter, 1 point was for ending with the correct ending mark, and 1 point for a complete sentence that correctly answered the question. A parent was concerned about a student's grade. While reviewing the grades with our academic coach I was asked if grading the question that way was actually assessing reading comprehension, which is what the grade is supposed to be. Well all of the points were not assessing reading comprehension, however, they were assessing standards.
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