We baby boomers cling to a lot of childhood memories younger generations find quaint. Take report cards. Mine was a study in simplicity. Sturdy tan cardstock, folded like a little book. Back then, we were not assessed. Assessing was done on real estate, not people. In elementary school, we were graded on just the three r鈥檚, plus art and music. I loved school, so I got mostly good marks, and report cards were easy for me to understand, even in first grade. It was, as teachers like to say now, 鈥渆mpowering鈥�, to be able see for myself how well I was doing (or, in the case of science or phys ed, not doing.) If you were really good at something, you got a five. If you were really bad at it, you got a one. If you were in-between, you got a number in-between.
That user friendly rating system also enabled parents to talk easily and confidently with teachers about their children鈥檚 progress - or lack of it.
I鈥檓 waxing nostalgic here because I鈥檝e just seen what a modern fifth grade Vermont report card looks like - all nine pages of it. There are still numbers - one to four. One means that the child is 鈥渘ot meeting learning expectations,鈥� two means that she is 鈥渘early鈥� meeting them, three means that she needs 鈥渙ccasional support鈥� and four, that she is 鈥渕eeting learning expectations independently.鈥� But honestly, what child doesn鈥檛 need occasional support? Seems to me everybody should get a three.
And what parent wouldn鈥檛 need more than occasional support to understand the 16 different categories that measure literacy on this document? We鈥檙e told a child who can read aloud, 鈥渁pplies grade level decoding strategies to read unfamiliar words鈥� and 鈥渟peaks clearly at an understandable pace when reporting sequencing ideas logically.鈥� A child who does arithmetic well 鈥渇luently multiplies using the standard algorithm.鈥� This is language that teachers understand, but it may not be all that clear to parents, especially those who for whom English is a second language.
I understand why we have these longer, wordier, more specific report cards, because they do align well with the federally sanctioned standards called the Common Core. And happily, grades are just one of many ways to measure accomplishment these days. Still, when a fifth grader looks at that multi-page document, can he or she actually decipher it?
If so, that child should get a gold star for what I think teachers still call 鈥渞eading comprehension.鈥�
