Looking for opinions on this - replacing letter grades with "standards" such as S - Satisfactory, P - Progressing, N - Needs Improvement".

This is a newer trend and we are just now seeing this showing up in our district.

No more top performers ("straight A students"), everyone can retest until all are proficient?

Can all students progress at their own pace? Is the depth of understanding properly documented; that is, does the documentation reflect the depth of understanding of individual students?

Our school district did this in elementary - the gotcha for us was that we had teachers who would not mark a child at "satisfactory" (or whatever the top category was showing mastery) until 4th quarter simply because 4th quarter was when everyone was supposed to arrive at mastery, therefore they "had to leave room for growth".

I think it could be ok depending on how it's used and, more importantly, are students allowed to progress at their own pace and does the documentation reflect the depth of understanding of the individual student, as Nyaanyaa points out. I'm personally not all that much a fan of the letter system after parenting two children who are all about the A.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Do you live where I live? Our local public system has recently changed to standard based system as well.

I have to say I am not a fan. I think for early elementary it may not be as much of a problem. I do wonder whether some kids/parents will be in for a rude awakening in middle school.

There are a number of old threads which have discussed standards based grading and related means of assigning grades, including
- grading based on subjective expectations for a given child,
- selective redo opportunities,
- subjective grading based on a teacher's expectation for that student (not based on a standard or rubric which allows comparison amongst students),
- level of mastery for testing out,
- Competency Based Education (CBE), based on achieving mastery, regardless of number of repetitions or length of time required, which may tend to make all accomplishments seem indistinguishably the same among students of the same chronological age,
- differentiated task demands,
- differentiation in task demands -vs- variability in work products produced.

Because such grading practices in the above roundup make all students appear to have achieved the same outcomes, some may wrongly infer that all students are performing at the same level. With student grades (from preschool on) permanently stored in statewide longitudinal data systems, the grades assigned may have lasting impact. Grades which are contrived to show equal outcomes by all students may:
- inaccurately represent student growth and progress,
- skew GPAs and class rank,
- influence college admissions,
- demotivate gifted students,
- give an inflated sense of accomplishment to students assigned an "A" grade for lower levels of work.
Some may say the widespread adoption of such grading practices by US public schools, combined with data collection P-20, changes these classrooms into a taxpayer-funded lab for studying the results of these practices upon our children.

Related posts:
- list of grading practices
- policies which lack transparency

By contrast, grading practices often used to consist of a set of:
- pre-test grades, reflecting prior knowledge or inbound knowledge,
- formative grades, reflecting uptake of the material whilst one was working through the course,
- summative grades or post-test grades, reflecting retained knowledge or outbound knowledge at the end of the course.

Studies such as the NWEA - Fordham Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude? (Sept 2011), indicate that some students may become "descenders" within a given one-third of their class. Unfortunately, this may inspire some schools to seek strategies to intentionally create "descenders," in order to close gaps and achieve equal outcomes. Expanded post on Grading practices.


Grading practices and grades recorded for earlier educational levels provide honest or less-insightful feedback to students.
Recorded grades also signal performance level to teachers, schools, institutions, programs.
Recorded grades provide input to research studies.
By these various means, grading practices impact college readiness, college acceptance, college grade inflation/deflation, and ultimately even the value of degrees conferred.

Unfortunately, concerned parents are not the only members/readers of this forum. It is my understanding that this forum is also frequented by personnel from schools/districts looking to perpetrate this type of disservice toward top pupils in order to cap the growth of students at the top and thereby close gaps... achieving equal outcomes.

Well, NO, actually-- this grading was extremely common in primary through at least the mid 1980's. All of my 'report cards' from before 7th grade have exactly that notation on them.

On the other hand, what IS new is continuous "re-evaluation" which is really a kind of shorthand for allowing all kids to reach 'benchmark' by the end of the marking period, no matter how they get there. There is another, darker side to some of those practices, too; in SOME cases, this means the exact same assessment is being given over and over-- yes, really. So "retaking" an assessment may become conflated with 'memorizing the right answers to THAT assessment' and not with "student has learned the concepts now, as demonstrated by a fresh assessment of the student's current level of understanding." (This distinction, by the way, is astonishingly difficult for some educators and administrators to grasp, believe it or not, but my DD definitely noted that this was a thing even as early as 7th-8th grade, and we refused to permit her to "retake" the same assessments for better grades, at least until it became obvious that school was "the game" and we were placing her on an uneven playing field next to peers who were more than happy to play it that way.)



THAT practice, I must say, is not particularly healthy for gifties as it encourages perfectly hideous work habits (procrastination, much??) and may even encourage some pretty bad classroom behaviors if those children are spending much of that marking period bored out of their minds while their peers are learning the material.



On the positive side, I can also see how this COULD stave off some of the worst elements of perfectionism in children who are prone to it already. Being grade-point junkies is best saved for late in secondary, IMO. I wish that my DD had never learned that "100%" was 'the best' grade-- at least not prior to high school.

Standards based grading is horrible. It gives no feedback for a kid performing really well and honestly gives no feedback for a kid who is not performing well.

Our school uses a 1-4 system of --

1- I forget the term, but way below standards essentially
2- approaching standards
3- meets standards
4- exceeds standards

My profoundly gifted kid, who finished 1st grade reading at a 6th grade level and doing mutiplication/division/fractions/square roots received all 3's on his final report card. How that possibly described him as a student in any way is beyond me. I had a long, hissy email conversation with his (horrible) first grade teacher until I just gave it up as pointless.

Granted my evidence is anecdotal, but I'm old and went to school all through the 70s and early 80s and I always got real grades.

Our school has been doing this at the elementary level for years. It seemed totally arbitrary what constituted a 3 versus a 4. I still remember my oldest, who is now in high school, arguing with her second grade teacher that she deserved a "4" in independent reading. DD was reading multiple books a week that were significantly above grade level. She asked her teacher, "How could I possibly get any more independent or read at a higher level?" The teacher said with a straight face that all of the kids in the class were doing the same thing so everyone got a "3" no exceptions. Ugh!

In middle school it seemed to be used selectively to give kids the chance to bring their grade up if they bombed a big assignment or a big test. I actually like this approach since middle school grades don't count in the grand scheme of things and you want to make sure that the kids get the concepts.

In high school, it's grades only all the way.

My elementary school (70s) used a combination of 1-4, with 1 being "great job" and 4 being "fail," and Exceeds/Meets/Doesn't meet standards, depending on the subject. Academic subjects got 1-4, with handwriting, participation, behavior, and a long list of other things that were mostly soft skills in the other group.

We got traditional letter grades in junior high and percentages in high school (80s), with a scale to convert to A, B, etc. My high school's cutoff for an A was 93%.


Let me guess: he didn't do all possible first grade stuff, followed by getting everything right on some large portion of second grade stuff, and therefore she has no way of knowing if he'd truly surpassed first grade expectations. Because, some things are just unknown?

I wish it was something as coherent as that. I got some analogy to a cupcake, that to get a 4 he needed to take all the ingredients and create a new cupcake himself, instead of the same cupcake he was shown how to create.

If you understand what the hell that means, you're clearly smarter than I am.

My issue is that I'm applying him to a competitive private school now, since his current school isn't meeting his needs, and he has a report card that shows he just "met the standards." That's the same report card a "C" student would get. I don't understand it at all.

New?? They did this when I was in elementary in the 1970's. My kids had this through 3rd grade. And my oldest is a senior in college, so she started in the late 1990's. Although we usually had a 4th designation (can't remember if it was E or O) for exceeds expectations. The "report" card was a complicated form with more than two dozen check boxes.

I think it's good thing but I guess it depends on how it's implemented. Young kids shouldn't feel pressure to get "straight A's" and giving kids A/B/C grades are just as arbitrary. (They just mean something to use since it's what your used to.) Young kids shouldn't be graded. A report card should be about feedback to parents on what the kids know. I do realize this is silly when the kids already knows everything in the curriculum but it does make sense for most kids.

Edited to add.. I think it's like others are saying a 1-4 designation and the letter designations are for effort.

Marcy, my sympathies.

BTDT with wanting to transfer schools and needing a stellar report card for my 1st grader who had finished 5th grade math and was doing pre-algebraish work and reading chapter books way beyond what I expected for his age. He got a "meets expectations" for counting up to some number for numeracy. They had many subcategories for math and all of them were graded as "meets the expectation". The teacher's performance evaluation (bonus etc) depended on showing a good growth curve from the first trimester to the last and hence the performance did not jump to "satisfactory" until the last trimester. I was unaware of this and spent a lot of time putting together a work sample portfolio and armed with data and numbers asked for a meeting and was told that they were only asked to test for counting up to 500 and he met her expectations (he missed 1 number because he counted super fast!).

Many people asked me why I was getting uptight about a 1st grader's report card. And the reason was the same as Marcy's - I needed to get DS into a highly competitive private school and his report card looked mediocre at best (he got a "below expectation" for art - poor kid later turned out to be color blind and had colored pictures using the wrong colored crayons).

Marcy, I used the data I had to prepare a data rich portfolio for the private school to consider in addition to his report card - I suggest using work samples, standardized testing scores, any score sheets from online programs like EPGY, talent search scores, contest wins, IQ test score summary, DYS qualification etc. to show that your child is more able than what the report card says. Good luck.

We have that all the way through although we do have 5 categories [well below = 2 years plus below, below = one year below, at standard, above by one year and well above. I don't think my school uses well above though and high school uses credit and merit instead of above and well above. But in the 70s at primary school we at +, = and - so below, at above {though it was above average not above standard and I never got grades at high school except in external exams as far as I can recall. Or maybe I did but since passing was only based on the final exam I didn't care.

Some anticipate a similar experience in applying to colleges, when all measures/grades/assessments represent a low ceiling.

Parents may wish to continue helping their children collect items for a portfolio through middle school and high school, which students might use to supplement their transcripts when applying to college. Portfolios of work samples might inspire portions of a college essay, personal statement, and interview question responses.

yes, I got a forewarning of what my child's college application process was going to be like when my DS was applying for 2nd grade The experience taught me to organize data and save it for future use. And did I mention, that in my experience, when I pull out my huge folder with all the information organized into categories and start showing them to administrators, they prefer to agree to my request rather than go through my big binder

Holy Toledo-- what the heck IS it with the entirely bizarre level of obsession with cupcakes in elementary educators anyway?? Is this location a party cabana or an institution of learning?!

~THAT parent, the one whose kid has food allergies.

There-- rant over, continue on-topic discussion.

Thinking about this tread some more and I'm wondering why OP thinks her son is going to look better on a A/B/C/F grading system then the S/P/N system. Is what goes into a letter grade that is all different? Not sure gifted students 1st graders report card with letter grades would be any more helpful for getting into a private school. What goes into that "A"? It's not do I know material that exceeds this grade. It's usually does the student meet grade expectations based on what I've taught, are they compliant and do they put in effort. I've never seen a teacher do letter grades based on the fact that they know material beyond what is being taught in class.

My main point is that a large part of grades are often the compliance and effort part particularly the younger the student. Thus gifted kids don't always get the "A's" that the myth tells us they should because they are often bored with the material.

Have you looked into details about what the private school looks at for admission? I would hope at this grade a letter of recommendation, a portfolio of work, and some type of standard assessment would be considered.

I think, for my part, the exceeds level has been explained as difficult to attain unless the child can show beyond grade level mastery for every single item within a category. If they don't even assess each item until the end of the year, then you only see 'progressing toward' or 'meets' as a notation, and you don't actually know how your child is demonstrating above-level (on the report card, vs talking to teacher). So it feels less substantive: 'here are the standards we've assessed, your child has met these' rather than 'here is how your child is doing relative to the grade-level and average student.'

I concluded there is no way to receive an "exceeds" for my kid in 1st grade. He received a "3" in "able to add and subtract within 20." I have a paper where he had to write ten number sentences that equal 12. This is what he wrote:

6+6=12
10+2=12
-10+22=12
√144=12
4x3=12
6x2=12
20-8=12
36÷3=12
24x½=12
12+0=12

When I asked how that didn't exceed the standards, the answer was because he used things they weren't taught in class (!). I don't see the cupcake at all.

Your son missed the implied instructions on this paper where he was supposed to use addition. Therefore the answer is incorrect. All the other kids probably wrote the answer they were looking for therefore there is nothing wrong with the way the question was worded. Right?

This type of grading of questions continues even more when they get older. Take short answers questions for social studies or science classes. Teachers are often grading these by looking for a set of key words or phrases, ie expecting kids to be regurgitating what they just learned. The gifted kid might answer the question but use different language, or in a more complex way and get the problem "wrong" because they didn't use the expected vocabulary. Teachers aren't usually testing/assessing if a students knows "more" than what they have just taught. And showing that you know more on a test/assessment can often get your graded wrong even if it's a more elegant answer.

Possible thought process (one woman's guess):

• Huh?
• Showoff.
• He was hothoused.
• Or he found a way to cheat.
• This kid makes me really uncomfortable.
• I don't understand how a first grader could know this.
• I'd rather be eating a cupcake right now. Hey, I've got an idea!

Translation: I don't want to give him a 4, so I just won't. :-P

To the OP - just curious - wouldn't the gifted school be somewhat aware of how the S/P/N system works in your local schools, hence it wouldn't be something that would be a huge concern unless a child wasn't meeting the "S"?

polarbear

That is my only real complaint about standards based assessment. If you don't use the words the marker is looking for it is wrong - even when it is right. As a student you learn to play the game and just write what you have on your handout verbatim. It encourages regurgitation and plagarism but as far as i can see not learning. I think i have got questions right when i didn't understand what the instructor said. I have also been marked wrong when i used a word the instructor didn't know.

My DD had this throughout elementary school. It was full of outright untruths. Some of the earlier ones were just so off the mark that I stopped worrying about it. My DD's teachers were all caring and hard working people - they just hadn't seen someone like my DD before.

It must have been a bit like those late 80's pictures that went 3-d on you after a while of staring at them. If you didn't look hard enough or long enough you just could not see the image that you were supposed to see - anyone here remember those, btw?

At first, I was a bit frantic as the tone of some of my earlier posts on this site will attest. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that none of it really mattered. Standards have been lowered so much in the United States that none of the elementary school stuff is anything that couldn't be learned by a reasonably intelligent child in a year, let alone 5.

Instead of trying to change the wind I trimmed my sails. I realized quickly that my choices were a) move to another area (where things may be the same in different guise) or b) just do my best to get my DD enough to stop her falling apart outside of school.

I choose the latter option - luckily my DD is something of an autodidact so if she has something that she wants to learn I just give her the books etc and she will learn it.

I wouldn't worry about the grades so much in the younger years. My son's former school (that was Pre-K through 3rd grade) was a bit alternative. The school provided a "term report" twice a year that was 10 pages long, and used a grading legend of 'Well Developed", "Developing", "Beginning to Develop", and "Not Yet Apparent". It applied those grades to about 10-12 'learning skills' in each subject, but did not give an overall grade in any subject. The school never gave standardized tests either. My son had no problem in applying to private schools for 4th grade. The private schools did their own evaluations or required testing. I think private schools are used to considering a number of different grading systems.

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ETA:
I see separate issues here.

(1) Feedback for improvement: Feedback is ideally immediate and specific, so grades are generally ineffective feedback.
(2) Evaluation of concept-understanding: This is effectively pass-fail. One does either understand a concept, or one does not. The idea of “making progress” results from failure to differentiate between concepts. Example: Arithmetic. Student A knows one half of the required concepts for arithmetic, Student B knows the other half. Who understands arithmetic better? The question is pointless, but this is the question teachers typically attempt to answer by giving grades. An accurate assessment would simply list the concepts that students A and B understand, respectively.
(3) Evaluation of ability to apply learned concepts in learned situations: See 2, basically.
(4) Evaluation of ability to apply learned concepts in novel situations: Is this not assessing fluid intelligence?

Suddenly the desire for cupcakes is strong!

Not sure if it's been mentioned above, but the private school is also most likely used to seeing report cards from the other schools in the area and has probably already had students apply in this same situation.

polarbear

I have worried about grades up until last year. My DD (4th grader) is a good student participating in a full time gifted program and has good scores particularly in math. Well, her grades are mostly 3 most of the time. I got the feeling that they rarely give a 4 and forget about straight 4s in the report card (at least at our elementary school).

I don't think the grades based on test results, homework ratings etc. in an objective manner where you add up the grades and average it out for the grade.

On the other hand, my younger one (first grader) goes to a private school (gifted program starts at 2nd grade in our state) and his report cards are much more explanatory and every subject is divided into many sub categories and each subcategory gets a grade. He has many 3s and many 4s. When I look into his report card, I rarely disagree with the grade. I am guessing, in the private school, they have/spend time thinking about how to justify the grade. The teachers are more careful on being fair and giving a justifiable grade in there.

Having said all these, several high schoolars (children of friends and one just got into Princeton this year) said that grades are not important until high school. Up until then, I decided not to overthink about grades and just focus on the progress of the areas that my child needs to improve.

Just my experience.

The only time grades are important in younger grades is if those grades are gatekeepers to specific programs which then lead to the next specific program that you want to do.

Like in the great scheme of things 4th and 5th grade grades weren't that important. But when my son applied for a magnet program for sixth grade they wanted good grades. I am glad he had them; he got in.

So, I am continuing my rant on standards based grading here.

My son came home with a "2" on his math paper today, meaning he is "able to show understanding of the assessed concepts with assistance."

The math paper was a word problem that boiled down to 16+17. He easily figured that out but was careless and wrote 16+17=34 mainly because he was bored and didn't care.

Obviously if he'd been just told, "Are you sure that's correct?" he would have figured it out in an instant and corrected it. Instead he is graded as if he really needed the teacher's help to figure this out.

They also have this ridiculous RDES system he has to do where he has to READ (write out the problem that is already written on the paper), DRAW (give a picture representation of the math problem), EQUATION (write the actual equation) and SENTENCE (write the equation he just wrote in numbers in words). All for a problem he can do in his head in 3 seconds.

Sorry, I just felt the need to rant knowing you all would understand my pain, even if there isn't currently a solution.

I've seen this in action and it's really awful. I don't think any children should suffer through it.