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.

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.

In addition to the report cards, they are also filling out insanely long reports for reading, writing and math that have tons of standards, as well. It's gotten out of hand.

What reports? I've never seen or heard of one?

They don’t go to parents. They go to the ELA and Math offices, maybe at Syphax. I was a long term sub at the end of the school year one year and had to fill these out. They took way longer than report cards. I’m honestly not sure who read them.

I assume you’re referring to the k-3 achievement cards. At least they’re done online now, rather than on actual cards. APS says those are required by the state.

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.

In addition to the report cards, they are also filling out insanely long reports for reading, writing and math that have tons of standards, as well. It's gotten out of hand.

What reports? I've never seen or heard of one?

They don’t go to parents. They go to the ELA and Math offices, maybe at Syphax. I was a long term sub at the end of the school year one year and had to fill these out. They took way longer than report cards. I’m honestly not sure who read them.

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.

In addition to the report cards, they are also filling out insanely long reports for reading, writing and math that have tons of standards, as well. It's gotten out of hand.

What reports? I've never seen or heard of one?

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.

In addition to the report cards, they are also filling out insanely long reports for reading, writing and math that have tons of standards, as well. It's gotten out of hand.

Who is getting to read these insanely long reports? Being genuine.

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.

In addition to the report cards, they are also filling out insanely long reports for reading, writing and math that have tons of standards, as well. It's gotten out of hand.

I was once accidentally sent my childs report card...and that of the other kids in the class. I read about three before I realized what was happening (and closed the report -- privacy concerns) but what I read was exactly the same for each kid. After that I put no stock in elem report cards. If your kid isn't meeting the standard, I would check it out. Otherwise I ignored it.

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.

The standards based grading with no specific teacher comments is awful. No information at all. Can we go back to traditional report cards yet?

Every elementary is swinging to Standards based grading. I think there are only 1-2 schools who haven’t made the switch yet, but I believe they all will be by next school year (with the exception of ATS).

My child’s teacher wrote a nice long paragraph describing her performance in class this year, but I agree that this totally depends on the specific teacher.

SBG is ridiculous. For elementary, the primary teacher needs to make sure that there is one comment from an specials teacher for each kid. The specials teachers have too many students to comment on all.

I hate the standards based grading.

The standards based report cards are useless and I don't even bother looking at them. Total waste of time for the teachers to even spend whatever time they put into them.

We usually get one to two sentences that are specific to our kid and the rest is clearly a canned paragraph that all the kids get.

For my other kid at a different APS elementary, I get a standards based report card where my kid "meets" every standard and I get zero personalized comments. This quarter I got a list of the units covered and "It was great having Larlo in class this year!" from the homeroom teacher and nothing at all from any other teachers. Absolutely zero actual feedback. Is this common? After an entire year in their class is it unreasonable to expect a sentence about the student's progress? It's not just the 4th Q report cart--they're like this every quarter.


This tracks with my experience. My kids adore their teachers and the testing seems to indicate they're on track, so I've learned not to care much about the report cards. Honestly, since they're really not value added for me, I think they could probably just do them twice per year instead of quarterly.

I have kids at two different elementary schools and have found that the effort teachers put into report cards varies wildly. Is there no APS standard for what needs to go into a report card?

As an example, one kid gets a report card with traditional grades and effort scores showing areas of strength and weakness. They also consistently get comments from all their teachers (including specials) about strengths and things to work on. I get the impression that all the teachers know my kid and have a sense for who they are and what they're learning. I don't get essays, but a few thoughts from each teacher.

For my other kid at a different APS elementary, I get a standards based report card where my kid "meets" every standard and I get zero personalized comments. This quarter I got a list of the units covered and "It was great having Larlo in class this year!" from the homeroom teacher and nothing at all from any other teachers. Absolutely zero actual feedback. Is this common? After an entire year in their class is it unreasonable to expect a sentence about the student's progress? It's not just the 4th Q report cart--they're like this every quarter.