You’ve likely seen many different report cards in your life. As a student you may have focused more on your grades than on how your school was approaching or communicating about assessment.
Historically, report cards have served many purposes: providing a record of student achievement, showing student growth over time, bringing together a variety of objective and subjective measures (e.g. multiple choice quizzes, essays, and student participation), and communicating to families, students, and college admissions committees.
You will look at two sample report cards and consider what each communicates in terms of student performance. In this activity, the focus will be less on how the fictionalized students performed and more about the report card itself.
Instructions
- Look at the two sample cards. The first one is an example of a competency-based report card. The second one is a traditional report card that is similar to the kind schools have been using in the United States for a while (though not everywhere). Note: We have created these examples to work for this activity and have made them less complex than real report cards. Both traditional and CBE report cards will typically include additional information about how the student is being assessed.
- Make some notes about the following questions and then feel free to add any other observations:
- What does each report card tell you about the student’s performance? What does each report card NOT tell you?
- List a few pros and cons of each type of report card.
Debrief
These sample report cards were both shorter and more simplified than what you would find at an actual school, but we hope they helped you think about how schools can communicate about student progress and achievement.
Both traditional and CBE report cards have their advantages and drawbacks. Proponents of competency-based education like that CBE report cards often focus primarily on the student’s demonstration of mastery. Work habits, like turning in homework on time, may be separated out from mastery grades. However, CBE report cards can require detailed keys to decipher, and the length and level of detail may be intimidating. CBE report cards or progress reports typically include lengthy explanations of the grading system and proficiencies for each of the student’s classes. Schools’ approaches to calculating cumulative grades also varies. Some schools determine these types of grades by averaging a student’s grades for each marking period. In other schools, cumulative grades may reflect the highest level of mastery a student achieves by the end of the semester or year. Proficiencies may be applicable in every marking period, like in Ms. Miller’s class in the example, or in some marking periods and not others, like in Mrs. Harris’s class. To see how varied competency-based report cards can be, we recommend looking at a few examples:
- Middletown Public Schools K-8, Middletown, Vermont, USA
- Norwich Public Schools, Norwich, Connecticut, USA
- Sanborn Regional High School, Kingston, New Hampshire, USA
Some people like traditional report cards because they provide a quick overview of a student’s progress and the format is familiar from their own time in school. Traditional report cards can also have varying amounts of written comments from teachers, which provide additional detail about the student’s work and progress. They can be easier for both students and parents to read and understand, in part because there is less information presented.
One drawback is that traditional report cards do not provide as detailed an overview of student proficiency. A number of students may receive the same grade for very different reasons due to factors like extra credit, late penalties, and zeros for missing work. Take three students who all received “C”s in the same History class: Joy consistently turned in “C” level work throughout the marking period; while Theo started the marking period with a few “F”s and managed to get “A”s by the end of the marking period, averaging in a “C”; and Dominic got a mix of “D”s and “F”s on his graded work but is a conscientious student who turns in all his homework on time and did the maximum extra credit, bringing his grade up to a C.