K report card is such BS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So if your child is just skating by but has an A, that's fine with you?
.

Not always, but in a lot of cases, yeah. Time and effort are not infinite resources. If she can get an A for putting in 3 hours in x subject, and using another 2 hours doing something else worthwhile; I would prefer that than to putting in 5 hours in x subject and still getting an A, but with a lot more effort and time. And why stop at 5 hours? Why not 10? Sometimes you do what you need to do so you can get to something else. It's a valuable skill.

Correct, and the PP's rationale is mine as well. They have an A... why would they put in more effort when that effort could be spent on something else? Opportunity cost applies in more than just economics. This has shifted a bit away from just talking about kindergarten, but by late elementary school my kids had enough competing priorities that as long as they had an A I don't see the point in telling them they need "more effort". Why and how? They already have the highest category of grade; more effort at that point is not going to yield a substantial benefit that is worth the extra effort.

That's actually what I hope for, really, that they're able to get all A's with little effort. Because that frees up a ton of time and effort for other things we consider important as well. Obviously academics are priority #1, so everything else gets only the time and effort which is left over once that priority has been taken care of therefore maximizing that amount of available time and effort is ideal.

You are quoting me, so we agree. The only caveat I would add is that I do believe in putting forth strong effort at times. That's an important skill also. It just doesn't have to be with every class, especially those that are easy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Well, report cards used to have comments for one thing. The teacher would at least note whether the student was polite, diligent, tended to be spacey, needed to put in more effort, simple short comments like that.

If the grades are good, then obviously either the effort is there or additional effort beyond what the student put in is unnecessary.

If grades are unsatisfactory, lack of effort is always going to be my first suspicion. We will start there, and if that doesn't begin to show an improvement in the student's grades within a month or so we will contact the teacher to see if other issues may be at play besides lack of effort. Frequently, however, letter grades can speak for themselves.

So if your child is just skating by but has an A, that's fine with you?

A P also speaks for itself, by the way. And if you find an I unsatisfactory, you can similarly start with lack of effort, and then if that doesn't work, contact the teacher to see if other issues are at play.

A P does not convey as much useful information as letter grades do. As mentioned in a previous post, I believe this because P covers such a wide range and you don't really know where the student falls within that. See the last paragraph of 12:48 for why I don't find it useful to know my student has gotten a P -

anonymous wrote:
They have met the standard, but have they just barely met it or are they far above it and producing work that's consistently almost completely free from mistakes? That is information I would find valuable, and due to the design of the letter grade system it is much easier to find that out under letter grades. With letter grades there are either 3 or 4 "successful" levels, depending on the school's policies. Either a D or a C is "barely meeting" the standards, and there are well-defined levels above that to differentiate how well a given student is meeting or exceeding the standards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is no way to tell how my child is doing from the report card. Seriously, what does an I in physical education personal and social responsibility mean anyway?

What do you want? Letter grades and a class ranking?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

A P does not convey as much useful information as letter grades do. As mentioned in a previous post, I believe this because P covers such a wide range and you don't really know where the student falls within that. See the last paragraph of 12:48 for why I don't find it useful to know my student has gotten a P -

It's kindergarten. How much detail do you need?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So if your child is just skating by but has an A, that's fine with you?
.

Not always, but in a lot of cases, yeah. Time and effort are not infinite resources. If she can get an A for putting in 3 hours in x subject, and using another 2 hours doing something else worthwhile; I would prefer that than to putting in 5 hours in x subject and still getting an A, but with a lot more effort and time. And why stop at 5 hours? Why not 10? Sometimes you do what you need to do so you can get to something else. It's a valuable skill.

Correct, and the PP's rationale is mine as well. They have an A... why would they put in more effort when that effort could be spent on something else? Opportunity cost applies in more than just economics. This has shifted a bit away from just talking about kindergarten, but by late elementary school my kids had enough competing priorities that as long as they had an A I don't see the point in telling them they need "more effort". Why and how? They already have the highest category of grade; more effort at that point is not going to yield a substantial benefit that is worth the extra effort.

That's actually what I hope for, really, that they're able to get all A's with little effort. Because that frees up a ton of time and effort for other things we consider important as well. Obviously academics are priority #1, so everything else gets only the time and effort which is left over once that priority has been taken care of therefore maximizing that amount of available time and effort is ideal.

You are quoting me, so we agree. The only caveat I would add is that I do believe in putting forth strong effort at times. That's an important skill also. It just doesn't have to be with every class, especially those that are easy.

Sorry I messed up the quotes -- I meant to direct my reply to the person you quoted who asked if I was ok with kids skating by if they have an A but reference your post as well since you said everything I was thinking. Didn't mean to give the impression we disagreed.

As far as your caveat, that's a good point about knowing when it is important to give your full effort. Our rule is that either, you must put in enough effort to get a satisfactory result (defined differently based on activity in question; for academics it's A grades obviously) OR if you fall short of that you must be able to honestly say you gave it your good faith best effort.
It's OK for the kids to get an A without trying, and it's also OK to get a B or a C as long as they honestly were trying and not slacking but if that happens we will work with them to figure out how to improve for next quarter. However as long as they honestly were putting in the effort they wouldn't be in trouble for poor grades.

[Anonymous]

I don't think this matters too much in K but it's frustrating how it continues through 5th grade. There is only one conference a year and it's at the end of the first quarter. To get info after that you have to bug the teacher which many people would prefer not to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

A P does not convey as much useful information as letter grades do. As mentioned in a previous post, I believe this because P covers such a wide range and you don't really know where the student falls within that. See the last paragraph of 12:48 for why I don't find it useful to know my student has gotten a P -

It's kindergarten. How much detail do you need?

I dislike the system but can tolerate it for kindergarten. Unfortunately, it is used for all elementary grades. At some point I think it would be useful to know how strong my child's mastery of various subjects is. If he is barely meeting standards for quarter 1 in math, for example then his foundation won't be very strong for the next quarter. Whereas, if he is well above the threshold, he likely understands quarter 1's topics quite well and has a strong foundation to move on. In the first case I would want to reinforce concepts at home, but in the second case that is likely unnecessary. I feel like the I/P/E system does a disservice to kids who are proficient but borderline.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I dislike the system but can tolerate it for kindergarten. Unfortunately, it is used for all elementary grades. At some point I think it would be useful to know how strong my child's mastery of various subjects is. If he is barely meeting standards for quarter 1 in math, for example then his foundation won't be very strong for the next quarter. Whereas, if he is well above the threshold, he likely understands quarter 1's topics quite well and has a strong foundation to move on. In the first case I would want to reinforce concepts at home, but in the second case that is likely unnecessary. I feel like the I/P/E system does a disservice to kids who are proficient but borderline.

If that's how involved you are in his schoolwork, then I doubt that you need a report card to tell you how well he is doing.

Plus, does your child never bring work home for you to look at?

[Anonymous]

Didn't elementary students used to get O, S or N on report cards? There wasn't outrage about that. Why the outrage over ES, P, I or N? Is it that much of a difference? Yes, the standards have changed but elementary students weren't graded on an A-E scale so it's not that much of a difference than how it used to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Didn't elementary students used to get O, S or N on report cards? There wasn't outrage about that. Why the outrage over ES, P, I or N? Is it that much of a difference? Yes, the standards have changed but elementary students weren't graded on an A-E scale so it's not that much of a difference than how it used to be.

First, those grades were more satisfying because the highest grade could be acieved. Second, they were only used K-2 and in 3rd students received A-F. And third, there were teacher comments!

[Anonymous]

When you put 25-30 kids in a class and make the teacher spend a month standardized testing them, they don't have much time to write comments anyway.

I have to say that two separate years, I had comments that were repeated in separate quarters and another time, it was posted about a different child all together. I don't think the teachers make them that meaningful anyway.

The best way to see what is going on is to volunteer.

[Anonymous]

Do colleges see Kindergarten report cards?

[Anonymous]

If it makes anyone feel better, my first grade report card was full of I's, and I still managed to go to an Ivy League school

[Anonymous]

Our daughter's teacher sends home a data notebook about once a month - shows how she did on a few "tests" (things like letter recognition, letter sounds, how many numbers can you write to 100, reading level) along with some samples of classroom papers. Between that and the report card, I feel like we have a good handle on how our child is doing. I assumed the notebook was a county-wide thing - no?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our daughter's teacher sends home a data notebook about once a month - shows how she did on a few "tests" (things like letter recognition, letter sounds, how many numbers can you write to 100, reading level) along with some samples of classroom papers. Between that and the report card, I feel like we have a good handle on how our child is doing. I assumed the notebook was a county-wide thing - no?

Definitely not. I wish we had that!