Report cards

[Anonymous]

Does your public school report card have any useful info?? Ours is a joke, I have no insights on how my dc is doing or what she needs to work on. Their conferences are also 10mins in September! So also not helpful aside from meeting the teacher. The school says to schedule a meeting if you want any info but GL with that! You have to hound the teachers.

[Anonymous]

Ours grades on a 1-4 scale. I'm not sure why they don't just use letter grades. I do find conferences somewhat useful at least some of the time. I found out that my kid was disorganized and too chatty. But usefulness varies by teacher. Most of the time it's either the teacher says "What do you want to talk about?" and sits back OR the teacher gives a 10 minute talk and leaves no time for me to ask any questions at all.

[Anonymous]

I like the conferences (in November) but the report cards are a joke. FCPS does 1-4 until middle school, and all three of my kids needed the motivation and guidance of actual letter grades before 7th. I don't even show them to my kids TBH.

[Anonymous]

They do 1-4 grading scale because they know that kids learn at a different pace, especially in ES, and giving an ES a D in reading is unduly harsh. The scale is based on how well the kids are picking up new skills and mastering those skills. I would be concerned if my child had any 1s and 2s on their report card in ES. 3s indicate that the kid is learning the material and should hopefully grow to a 4 by the end of the year.

You are not doing kids any good by giving them C's and D's in ES. Parents who are involved know that 1s and 2s are problematic. Contact your kids teachers if they have 2s or below on their report card. You are likely to get a conference at any point in the year for kids with 2s and below. Kids with 3s and higher are on grade level or ahead and the teachers are less likely to meet for a conference because those take time out of their workday, which is already jammed, to meet to discuss a kid on grade level. It is frustrating, we liked having parent teacher conferences after the second report card to see where we might be able to help solidify DS skills but he had some 3s and mainly 4s. We did not have parent teacher conferences in 5th and 6th.

[Anonymous]

Report cards are not an issue unless your kid is getting poor grades. Look at work samples to see how they are doing. With 28 kids in a class, teachers are not sitting down to deeply consider each grade in each area. It’s fairly subjective, except for any actual tests. Don’t worry about it, and ask for an appointment for a longer conference if you want one. It takes all day to do 28 conferences for ten minutes each, plus report cards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They do 1-4 grading scale because they know that kids learn at a different pace, especially in ES, and giving an ES a D in reading is unduly harsh. The scale is based on how well the kids are picking up new skills and mastering those skills. I would be concerned if my child had any 1s and 2s on their report card in ES. 3s indicate that the kid is learning the material and should hopefully grow to a 4 by the end of the year.

You are not doing kids any good by giving them C's and D's in ES. Parents who are involved know that 1s and 2s are problematic. Contact your kids teachers if they have 2s or below on their report card. You are likely to get a conference at any point in the year for kids with 2s and below. Kids with 3s and higher are on grade level or ahead and the teachers are less likely to meet for a conference because those take time out of their workday, which is already jammed, to meet to discuss a kid on grade level. It is frustrating, we liked having parent teacher conferences after the second report card to see where we might be able to help solidify DS skills but he had some 3s and mainly 4s. We did not have parent teacher conferences in 5th and 6th.

I don't see the difference between saying 1 and giving a D. It's the same thing. Everyone knows which letter grades correspond to each number.

[Anonymous]

The actual report card isn't that useful, but the graded assignments are. I look at those when the grades come and the papers come back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I like the conferences (in November) but the report cards are a joke. FCPS does 1-4 until middle school, and all three of my kids needed the motivation and guidance of actual letter grades before 7th. I don't even show them to my kids TBH.

My kid is smart but lazy, and motivated by awards/results. He got all 3s in K-2 and continued to slack off and rush through his work. He just got his 1st trimester report card for 3rd grade and suddenly sees a bunch of letter/number grades. 81, 82, 95, 98.... You bet it motivated him to see those low 80s! Now he is more likely to slow down, write neatly, and check his work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I like the conferences (in November) but the report cards are a joke. FCPS does 1-4 until middle school, and all three of my kids needed the motivation and guidance of actual letter grades before 7th. I don't even show them to my kids TBH.

Is that it? No paragraphs with some details?

Ours aren’t very different than the ones that I brought home when I was in elementary school, just a little longer.
We have that basic subjects, for example Math - It has Meets Expectations, Exceeds Expectations or Does Not Meet Expectations. Under that there is about 10 - 15 subsets that go into detail on the various parts of the math they are working on. The teacher writes a paragraph next to each subject.

[Anonymous]

The paragraphs we get are about what the class is doing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The paragraphs we get are about what the class is doing.

Same here.

[Anonymous]

So in order to give more than 10 minutes per student, conferences would need to be multiple days. Parents would be pissed of their kids didn’t have school for days to accommodate this. If you want more time, make another appointment.

[Anonymous]

A September conference is weird, but our teachers will allow us to set up a meeting whenever we’d like throughout the year.