Report Cards and Reflection: Are We Grading the Work or the Connection?

This morning, we got an email that the report card window opens on Thursday. The days are long . . . until report cards are due! It feels like our teachers just did this! I still remember the days of trying to figure out how to politely say things without saying things, assigning value to M’s and E’s, and P’s, and S+’s, dividing my class into top students, average students, struggling students and then justifying who belongs in which category. And then assessing strengths and trying to decide which struggles were worth a comment, which parents will take what I say seriously (or too seriously), or not seriously enough. Is it how we say it? Is it what we say? What swings parents from dismissive to concerned? Or from caring to unengaged? Is how they interpret their child’s report card solely based on how much they value us as their child’s teacher?  

I understand the need to report to parents, but I constantly wonder what it all means and whether “how we’ve always done it” is really accomplishing or communicating what we actually need parents to understand. And if that’s the goal, maybe the first question should be, do teachers understand the assignment? 

Assessment, grades, and how we do both of those things are the real issues. But report cards are a staple that don’t seem to be going anywhere. How much consistency is there from district to district? School to school? Grade to grade? Classroom to classroom?

There is so much to consider, and maybe not until I had twins did I really start to “compare” report cards and consider how subjective it all is. Neither of my twins struggle with school, but they are wildly different personalities and certainly have their own individual strengths and weaknesses. Comparing their report cards in Kindergarten was fun/funny. In 1st grade, it became very noticeable which teacher had a more positive connection with my kid. Or, at least that was how it felt from my parent perspective.

My daughter’s teacher was constantly emailing me funny stories, telling me how “cute” she was, how much she was enjoying having her in class. Her report card was all sunshine and rainbows. Comparatively, my son’s report card wasn’t negative, but there was no shine. On a scale of E for exceeds, M for mastered,  or P for progressing, he had mostly P’s and M’s, while she had mostly E’s. They would always come home with the same spelling words, the same math work sheets, the same reading and writing assignments. He consistently did better than her, but their report cards did not reflect this. He was reading more words per minute, he was scoring higher on standardized and district assessments and yet . . . not well enough to get the E? Or was my daughter’s teacher too generous? Or was my son’s class so much higher that he fell into the mid range in that classroom?

If I lost you because it’s first grade . . . fair enough. If it makes you feel better, I didn’t file any formal complaints, I didn’t even bring it up to anyone! My kids were doing fine and that was what mattered to me as a parent. But to teachers, this should matter.

At the school where I work, our principal has each grade level sit down together and bring sample work of their highest students, their mid students, and their lowest students. I think we all kind of assumed that everyone’s highs, mids, and lows would be in roughly the same categories. But the first time I watched teachers go through this process, they were shocked to find out this wasn’t always the case. This was a critical perspective changer for them.  

 Report cards hardly seem like a “hot topic.” But as the report card window opens for you this second quarter, I would encourage you to reflect on how you make those decisions, how much your relationship with your students, or lack of, affects this practice and why it matters!