October 5, 2007 

Most likely you've heard people say, “It's all about the grade!” Our culture places great emphasis on grades because they represent symbols of success in our educational system. Grades are certainly important and have been for a long time. They can make you or break you when trying to get into advanced high school courses, when applying for scholarships and entrance into college. Grades give us a picture of how well our children are learning and of how well our teachers are teaching. The critical thing to remember, however, is that grades are only a portion of the complete picture.

At NCS we would like to challenge each other to begin shifting the focus from being “all about the grade” to being “all about the growth”.

Children come to us at varying stages in their educational development. A classroom of 15 children could easily have children on 15 different learning levels. This then requires our educators to provide individualized instruction to meet the needs of each student. Teachers do this in a variety of ways. They may work with students in smaller groups and give slightly different assignments or projects to different children. They may recommend outside intervention for those who are in need of additional instruction. Technology is another route for providing differentiated instruction that was not readily available before now. Since so many levels of learning are going on at the same time, especially in the critical area of reading in the younger grades, it is difficult to simply assign a number grade to show where the child is performing academically. This number is helpful, but does not necessarily project the whole picture. A child might receive an “A” but still be struggling in one or more skill areas. On the other hand, a child may receive an “A” easily without having to challenge himself to grow. More information is needed to accurately track growth.

In addition to taking grades on classwork, projects, quizzes, tests, etc., we will be performing more formal and informal assessments on the students this year on an ongoing basis to help track growth. The results of these assessments will be filed in your child's portfolio to be viewed by you at conference times and any other times you would like see your child's progress. We have recently adopted the Reading Renaissance STAR program, thanks to our generous PTO. This computer program will allow us to assess your child's reading progress on a monthly basis in grades K-5. With our Fluency First program in grades 1-3, our students will be formally assessed 6 times per year to check for reading rate in words per minute, percentage of word recognition accuracy, and comprehension. Informal assessments will be conducted on a more frequent basis in the area of reading rate, expression, etc. Kindergarten will be assessed in these areas in the spring semester only. Students in grades K-2 will be formally assessed frequently with reading benchmark assessments to show growth from one reading level to the next. Running records will be utilized to show teachers skill areas that need improvement. These results will be compared to national norms for you to see how your child compares to others in his grade level. Another assessment tool we will be adding this year is the Storybook Weaver program, again provided by our PTO. This program will allow us to track growth in the area of writing through the use of technology.

These various assessments, in addition to report card grades, will allow for a more overall picture of your child's academic growth and progress throughout the year. It is vital for us to work together to meet your child's individual needs and to provide the type of environment, support and encouragement for growth. Let's remember that there are many ways to measure learning success. Grades are only one of those many measures!