APS Report Cards

[Anonymous]

Also, to previous posters, standards base report cards do not equate to lack of meaningful comments. Teacher/schools can put in lengthy, individualized, meaningful comments on sb report cards, and on the old-fashioned ones. The same goes for just a few stock sentences that are mostly the same for every kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my experience the comments appear to be chosen from a list. They are specific to my child in the sense of child knows XYZ instead of child needs to work on XYZ. But they are clearly taken from some database of comments. That said, my kid's ES teachers have been fabulous on the whole, and I'd rather they spend their efforts in class than on report cards.

APS does not use a database. Teachers and admin do sometimes share comment stems and suggested phrases.

That makes it all ok. Thanks.
Seriously, what's the difference? Either way, not custom to the student and therefore wasted time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my experience the comments appear to be chosen from a list. They are specific to my child in the sense of child knows XYZ instead of child needs to work on XYZ. But they are clearly taken from some database of comments. That said, my kid's ES teachers have been fabulous on the whole, and I'd rather they spend their efforts in class than on report cards.

APS does not use a database. Teachers and admin do sometimes share comment stems and suggested phrases.

That makes it all ok. Thanks.
Seriously, what's the difference? Either way, not custom to the student and therefore wasted time.

NP but I would rather my kids’ teachers have some efficiency (“Larla sometimes needs to be reminded to keep hands to herself/not have side conversations/tidy up her space” ends up on many K report cards I bet), and I don’t think it detracts from the personalization or relevance. I frankly hope my kids’ teachers have created keyboard shortcuts to hit like control:R for “reads on grade level” or cntl:A for “reads above grade level”

Our teachers write a decent amount; I don’t hate SBG but it feels more like it’s focused on ensuring kids aren’t falling behind vs encouraging them to extend and learn more. I remember working hard to make sure I had an A growing up, but it seems much easier to get a “meets expectations”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my experience the comments appear to be chosen from a list. They are specific to my child in the sense of child knows XYZ instead of child needs to work on XYZ. But they are clearly taken from some database of comments. That said, my kid's ES teachers have been fabulous on the whole, and I'd rather they spend their efforts in class than on report cards.

APS does not use a database. Teachers and admin do sometimes share comment stems and suggested phrases.

That makes it all ok. Thanks.
Seriously, what's the difference? Either way, not custom to the student and therefore wasted time.

NP but I would rather my kids’ teachers have some efficiency (“Larla sometimes needs to be reminded to keep hands to herself/not have side conversations/tidy up her space” ends up on many K report cards I bet), and I don’t think it detracts from the personalization or relevance. I frankly hope my kids’ teachers have created keyboard shortcuts to hit like control:R for “reads on grade level” or cntl:A for “reads above grade level”

Our teachers write a decent amount; I don’t hate SBG but it feels more like it’s focused on ensuring kids aren’t falling behind vs encouraging them to extend and learn more. I remember working hard to make sure I had an A growing up, but it seems much easier to get a “meets expectations”

I think the difference here is that I only get 3 sentences. I absolutely expect to pick from a set of comments, but I got "Larlo is wonderful to have in class. He's reading on grade level. Keep up the great work Larlo!" But his PALS scores suggest otherwise and I get zero indication of behavior, math, motivation, or anything else. I'd love the types of information in the example you provide

[Anonymous]

I hate standards based grading.”Meets” strikes me as a synonym for “competent” or “adequate”. I wish there was something equivalent to an A my kids could strive for. When I ask my 4th grader to review and correct his mistakes on papers he brings home, he balks because he “already got a Meets”.

I feel like middle school is going to be a rough adjustment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hate standards based grading.”Meets” strikes me as a synonym for “competent” or “adequate”. I wish there was something equivalent to an A my kids could strive for. When I ask my 4th grader to review and correct his mistakes on papers he brings home, he balks because he “already got a Meets”.

I feel like middle school is going to be a rough adjustment.

At least some of the APS middle schools (most? All?) use SBG. However, for report cards they convert those standards back into grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hate standards based grading.”Meets” strikes me as a synonym for “competent” or “adequate”. I wish there was something equivalent to an A my kids could strive for. When I ask my 4th grader to review and correct his mistakes on papers he brings home, he balks because he “already got a Meets”.

I feel like middle school is going to be a rough adjustment.

Is there not an “exceeds” category on your SBG report cards? There is on ours and it was explained that it tracked with an “A” on traditional report cards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate standards based grading.”Meets” strikes me as a synonym for “competent” or “adequate”. I wish there was something equivalent to an A my kids could strive for. When I ask my 4th grader to review and correct his mistakes on papers he brings home, he balks because he “already got a Meets”.

I feel like middle school is going to be a rough adjustment.

Is there not an “exceeds” category on your SBG report cards? There is on ours and it was explained that it tracked with an “A” on traditional report cards.

NP. Not on my kids’ card. One child had no comments.

[Anonymous]

Exceeds as a category was removed, and this is because a) the standards are not written to have a student exceed. You can’t exceed adding numbers to 100, for example. You can do it independently (meeting), with some support (approaching), or with heavy support and not at all independently (developing).
If you can do that, and also add numbers to 1000, that’s great but also a completely different standard. So it becomes really muddy and parents are constantly on teachers as to why their kid didn’t “exceed” in every area. There’s no common definition.

And we in elementary have specifically been told it doesn’t correlate to a percentage so equating to an A doesn’t make sense. APS gives us proficiency scales that we use to determine meeting, approaching, and developing for each standard and they are written to describe the level of independence for that specific skill.

[Anonymous]

Three ES schools in APS do not use SBG...yet. Two of the three will transition to SBG next year. Do you have a student in one of the SBG schools and one of the "old" grading schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate standards based grading.”Meets” strikes me as a synonym for “competent” or “adequate”. I wish there was something equivalent to an A my kids could strive for. When I ask my 4th grader to review and correct his mistakes on papers he brings home, he balks because he “already got a Meets”.

I feel like middle school is going to be a rough adjustment.

At least some of the APS middle schools (most? All?) use SBG. However, for report cards they convert those standards back into grades.

Swanson does not. Not sure about others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate standards based grading.”Meets” strikes me as a synonym for “competent” or “adequate”. I wish there was something equivalent to an A my kids could strive for. When I ask my 4th grader to review and correct his mistakes on papers he brings home, he balks because he “already got a Meets”.

I feel like middle school is going to be a rough adjustment.

At least some of the APS middle schools (most? All?) use SBG. However, for report cards they convert those standards back into grades.

Swanson does not. Not sure about others.

We still get letter grades from Gunston

[Anonymous]

Gunston used to have SBG and then switched back.. it was a bit ridiculous to have the teachers calculate exceeds/meets/etc on each summative, add up to say a “3.7” out of 4 and then switch back to a letter grade for the actual report card

[Anonymous]

It’s completely fine for them to reuse comments if they are applicable.

JFC. Some people will complain about anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Three ES schools in APS do not use SBG...yet. Two of the three will transition to SBG next year. Do you have a student in one of the SBG schools and one of the "old" grading schools?

Yes. And having received both for elementary, I have a strong preference for the traditional report cards as it conveys a lot more information.

I also have a big issue with teachers not bothering to write comments specific to the student. Between no comments and a standards-based format, the report card tells me absolutely nothing about what my student learned this year.