How to read a report card

The Chico Unified School District has instituted a more-detailed report card system for students in kindergarten through sixth grade. The new cards grade language arts and math based on standards set by the state, which the district believes will allow teachers to convey a student’s progress to parents more precisely and also make for more consistent scoring among teachers and across grade levels.

“[We] want to make the grading on a report card as objective as we can, [in order to] best communicate progress to parents,” says Alan Stephenson, the CUSD’s director of elementary education.

Parents will still see E (Excels), S (Satisfactory) and N (Needs to improve) grades when their child is in kindergarten through third grade and A, B, C grades for fourth through sixth grade. But the graded subjects will be further broken down into categories with specific objectives. For example, a first-grader is graded on his or her ability to “memorize addition and subtraction facts to 20” and “blend two to four sounds into recognizable words,” among other criteria.

Stephenson says that, unlike the retired report card, the new version is able to clearly show parents in what areas their children are meeting, exceeding or falling below the state standards.

In most cases, tests integrated into the coursework will determine each child’s proficiency in the given objectives, which will be measured on a grading scale of 1-4, with 4 being “exceeds standard” and 3 being “meets standard.” Some objectives are graded the entire year, while others are not applicable until later trimesters. Some objectives, such as testing of the child’s progression in pronunciation, will be measured by pulling students aside individually.

Also added to the new report cards is a “trimester assessment results” section, wherein the child receives a score on an explicit task, such as identifying 10 out of 26 uppercase letters. The goals for the child increase each trimester, with the aim being for the student to complete the task with few or no errors by the end of the year.

The concrete objectives of the new report cards let parents identify the exact areas where their children need improvement and also aid in the enlistment of parents as teachers, Stephenson said.