Elementary school students in this San Francisco suburb no longer have to worry about bringing home report cards riddled with Cs and Ds.
Like a growing number of school districts around the country, Alameda has abandoned traditional letter grades for the kindergarten through 5th-grade crowd.
The new report cards, now in their third year of use, stress written comments instead, along with a checklist covering a range of subjects, from reading comprehension to mathematical problem-solving.
For younger pupils, teachers check a series of boxes that tell parents that their child either “demonstrates this skill” or “needs more time to develop.” Students in 4th and 5th grades get a “satisfactory” or “needs improvement.” Teachers may use an asterisk to designate an “area of strength.”
Designed to focus more on mastery of specific grade-level skills than on pitting one student against another or against an abstract standard, the new report cards please some parents who like the personal attention the new system encourages.
But others say the lack of grades leaves them scratching their heads over how their children are really doing in school.
“At elementary school, there is absolutely no need for letter grades,” said Linda Diamond, director of program development and evaluation for the Alameda Unified School District.
“We’re asking that they work to learn a skill and learn a concept rather than to earn a grade.”
A 1992 state Department of Education report, “It’s Elementary!” recommended that letter grades not be assigned in grades K through 3. The National Association of Elementary School Principals makes the same recommendation.
The buzzword for this latest schoolhouse trend is “authentic assessment.” By collecting portfolios of each child’s schoolwork, writing narrative comments and holding parent-teacher conferences, teachers try to give parents a more concrete sense of the pupil’s strengths and weaknesses than a letter grade can provide.
Diamond stresses the destructive effects of competition on children, noting that grades do not motivate low achievers.
“Kids who get Ds and Fs couldn’t give a darn about grades,” she said. “If (grades) motivated them, they wouldn’t get Ds and Fs.”
Parental reviews have been mixed.
Paula Smith, 39, whose son Nicholas is in 5th grade, said the non-graded report card works well as long as it is combined with a portfolio of the child’s work.
“What you end up getting is a lot more written commentary,” she said.
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Many military families in Alameda, who move frequently, are concerned that non-graded report cards will be difficult to transfer to new districts.