K-5 Report Cards contain more information useful to parents

[two_third]If grandpa gives out a dollar for every A on a report card, students in Mahomet Seymour’s elementary schools may not see any profit at the end of this school year’s grading periods.

Mahomet-Seymour School District has gone to skills based report cards in the elementary schools, kindergarten through fifth grade. That means a more detailed report card that will look much different than parents are used to, according to Mary Weaver, Director of Instruction, Mahomet-Seymour Schools.

Prior to this school year, students in third, fourth or fifth grade received letter grades (A through F) for their core classes: Math, Language Arts, Science and Social Studies. Younger students had a different grading scale based on S for Satisfactory, D for Developing or N for Needs improvement. All that has changed this year, according to Weaver, with the advent of Elementary Standards Based Reporting. Educators think of the report cards as linking back to the Illinois State Learning Standards, but Weaver said parents can think of what is being assessed as the skills their children are acquiring.

“Our new report cards will provide much more information about your child’s reading and math progress as it contains information regarding specific areas of strength and areas to focus on for improvement,” Weaver said in a Friday, September 18th email to parents.

“We started working on this two years ago,” Weaver stated. A committee of teachers, administrators and parents looked at the Illinois State Learning Standards and came up with the main areas students will be assessed on throughout the school year and decided how best to communicate the change to parents.

All teachers, Kindergarten through fifth grade, will rate students with a 3, 2 or 1, based on whether or not the student’s skills are 3-Proficient “Student demonstrates solid, acceptable achievement of standard(s),” 2-Developing “Student is making progress toward acceptable achievement of standard(s),” or 1-Needs Support “Student requires more time and experiences; shows limited achievement of standard(s),” according to information provided to parents explaining the new reporting system.

Meg Loven, Mahomet resident and mother of two, was one of the parent representatives on the committee to develop the new report card.

“When a report card came home,” she said “there wasn’t any information on what makes an A vs. a B. As a parent, seeing a B isn’t helpful because I don’t know what my child needs to work on to achieve an A or how I can help him at home.”

Loven explained the process. “We looked at the purpose of a report card,” she said. “We also looked at other districts, both local and in a size similar to ours.”

The Illinois State Learning Standards for Math and Language Arts can be found on the Mahomet Seymour school district web site. There are about 20 pages of Learning Standards for K-5 students. These standards apply to all public schools in Illinois to ensure students are learning the same information at the same grade level no matter where they attend school.

Back home, teachers at each grade level discussed the specific standards that went on the report card, Loven indicated.

“Not every standard is on the report card,” Weaver said. “There are too many of them.” She said teachers chose the skills that are most important to what they are teaching. And not all skills will be covered in a particular time period.

“Some standards will be covered later in the school year,” Loven commented, “and this will be indicated on the report card.”

“The greatest success of the report card will be parents can see where students are strong and where they need targeted focus,” Loven explained.

The report card also has a section for Learner Characteristics, which are behaviors that promote learning such as “does a student turn in assignments,” said Loven.  This was a feature of the old report card given to younger elementary students, she said, and the teachers felt that was important to keep in the new report card.

Another benefit to the report card change was it ensures all teachers are teaching the same course content and makes consistent how teachers assign grades. What earns a child a “3, Proficient’ in one classroom will earn a child in a different classroom the same score.

“It communicates progress throughout the year better,” Weaver said. “It allows us to show a student’s progress throughout the year.”

If a student’s academic instruction is modified because formal accommodations are in place, it will be indicated on the report card, according to Weaver.

Another change to go along with the new report card is the switch to grade reporting three times a year, or trimesters.

“Teachers really wanted the switch to trimesters,” Weaver indicated. She said teachers felt like extending the grading period to 12 weeks instead of nine weeks allowed them more time to cover material and have students learn and demonstrate proficiency.

In the past, parent teacher conferences have been at the end of the first quarter. These conferences will remain at the end of the first nine weeks of school, but the conversation will be different, according to Loven. “Parents and teachers can talk about a specific standard and what a student needs.”

Parents wanting to see the specific skills students will be assessed on can access them through the Mahomet Seymour school district web site. Weaver said she hopes to have the grading standards posted on the site by the beginning of October.

There are no plans at this point to implement skills based reporting at Mahomet-Seymour’s junior high or high school, according to Weaver.

“It is harder to implement at that level,” she said. She also added colleges and universities still rely on overall grade point average to determine admission.

More information on the new report card can be found on the Mahomet Seymour School’s web site: www.ms.k12.il.us.   

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