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| Rockville employs new grading scale |
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| Education | |||
| Written by Jesse Trimble | |||
| Wednesday, 18 November 2009 09:00 | |||
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Parents of children attending Rockville Elementary School have probably noticed a significant change to the report cards their kids have been bringing home recently. Principal Becky Bowes said although the grading scale changed from the typical A to F scale four years ago, the report card has been revamped for this school year and years to come. Typically, elementary, middle and high schools use the letter grading scale, which even continues through college-level courses. However, many teachers and administrative staff members at Rockville agreed you cannot rate a kindergartener or first-grader the same way you can a student in high school. Bowes said Rockville already had examples from the state’s standardized form of testing scales, which rate students’ academic performance levels of achievement with an “E” for Exemplary, “ES” for Exceeds Standards down to “AS” for Approaches Standards and lastly “AW” for Academic Warning. Bowes stressed, however, that an “E” does not replace an “A” letter grade. “The focus of this was to get parents and kids more adjusted to these words,” she said. With previous report cards each subject was split up into a different category, ranging from math to language arts. Beside each subject, a student would be graded with an “E”. “ES”, “MS”, “AS” or “AW.” The grades were also split up into four quarters. Bowes said the information provided on this report card wasn’t enough. Aside from changing the scale from the single letter grade to the new one, parents weren’t provided with information on why their children were receiving these scores. “It took a lot of collaboration among all of us here,” Bowes said. The new report card includes the same scale as before, but with more information about what the students are doing well with specifically in class, as well as what they need to improve on. For example, kindergarteners are rated in writing by if they can spell their first and last names, simple sentences and capital and lower case letters. The report cards are specific to each grade-level, too, changing as the student advances. The report card for second-graders includes information for parents on if they are reading aloud with accuracy, fluency and expression and spelling correctly in written work. “It’s working well,” Bowes added. “We plan on improving a few things, but so far it has worked extremely well.”
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