New grading system expands to first grade

A different kind of student report card was explained to Enterprise Board of Education members at a recent work session.

Enterprise City Schools Director of Elementary Instruction Katrina Bowling and ECS Instructional Partner David Spires outlined the purpose and perceived benefits of a transition to a Standards Based Report Card for first grade students during a work session Aug. 16.

SBRC is currently used in kindergarten in the ECS, Bowling said, but a team of ECS educators—to include at least two first grade teachers from each Enterprise school—spent a year studying the benefits of expanding its reach to first grade in Enterprise schools.

“Our kindergarten has had SBRCs for several years and the parents are used to that,” Bowling told EBOE members. “Most parents are very positive about it because they say it gives them a lot of information about exactly what it is their students are learning,” Spires added. “It helps them know want their student needs help in, what they excel in.

The number of transfer students coming in from other states and regions that have used SBRC is part of what prompted the expansion of the system to the first grade in Enterprise, Spires said.

“(Traditional) grading practices and reporting forms are inadequate for communicating our priorities and vision for teaching and learning,” Spires said. “The SBRC puts the focus on the learning.”

Under the SBRC system, students can earn four different scores. An “M” indicates that the student “consistently demonstrates mastery.”

A “P” indicates, “progressing toward mastery.”

An “L” indicates that the student has achieved “limited progress toward mastery.”

An “X” indicates that the “standard (is) not assessed at this time.”

“As we jumped into looking at the standards and breaking it down, we looked closer at the standards than we ever have,” Spires said. “I think, in the long run, this process has made our teachers better teachers with a better understanding of how to teach the standards.

“We wanted our purpose to be clear, so the teachers spent a lot of time working on a purpose statement,” Spires said. “We wanted to limit the number of standards so it wasn’t overwhelming, avoid teacher talk, make it parent friendly and keep it from being too burdensome on teachers.”

Standards-based grading involves measuring students' proficiency on well-defined course objectives. “The purpose of this report card is to communicate with parents and students about the student’s progress toward achieving specific standards,” says the purpose statement devised by the ECS team. “It identifies the student’s level of progress with regard to those goals, areas of strength and areas where additional time, effort and support are needed.”

For first graders, there are six reading standards, four math standards, five English standards, three science standards and four social studies standards. “We took those curriculum standards and turned them into reporting standards for our parents,” Spires said. “We wanted it be an effective communication tool. Initially we were talking about a better way of communicating to parents, but the more we talked about it, teachers realized that it also provided a more effective way of talking to the students.”

Noting that colleges rely on the traditional report card grading system in their admissions process, EBOE members Dr. Danny Whitaker and Col. Bob Doerer both asked ECS Superintendent Dr. Camille Wright what grade would be the cutoff for using SBRC. “Right now, I do not see us going past the third grade” Wright replied.

“As a pediatrician and a parent, I see that younger children thrive and strive to please their teachers and their parents,” Whitaker said. “Little kids are great. They want to do what you tell them. They want to make you happy.”

That changes as children age and that is why the SBRC grading for older grades concerns him, Whitaker said. “The middle category is too broad,” he said, noting that there are no minus or plus categories for each score. “As a parent, I want to know if they are a high ‘P’ or a middle ‘P’ or a low ‘P.’

“Parents, especially at these young ages, want to know what they can do to help their student,” Whitaker added. “I have some reservations about using this for fourth through sixth (grades).”

Whitaker also asked if the new system would be readily explained to the non-English speaking parents. All the documents are in Spanish and a Spanish-speaking teacher is available, Bowling said.

The bottom line, Spires said, is enhanced communications between educators, students and parents. “Breaking it down into standards, instructional goals and assessments so that students understand where they are and parents know what they can help the kids with.”