An 'A' Should Be an 'A'

By J. Elizabeth Gladden

Families move. Report cards should stay put.

After moving through four states with children in public schools, and teaching in yet another state before I married a career military man, I have come to realize that each school district has its own report card, and many principals give teachers the leeway to grade students at their own discretion.

One first-grade teacher may rate students "excellent" while another at the same school may use only "satisfactory" or "needs improvement," thereby giving the upcoming second-grade teacher the impression that one student was excellent while another was only satisfactory, even if their performance was identical.

As a mother, I have been frustrated trying to deal with report cards from different districts.

For my seventh-grade child, 93–100 is an A, 86–92 is a B, and below 70 is failing. My sixth grader has the more common 90–100 for an A, and so on. So 85 turns into a B for one child, but the same score is a C for another child.

Meanwhile, my first grader receives E for excellent, VG for very good, S for satisfactory, etc. It gets confusing very quickly, especially when my seventh grader has already attended six different schools.

But what started me thinking about standardized report cards was a non-academic area on my first grader's report. Numbers 1 through 5 were given for abstract concepts including "Takes pride in doing neat work." My daughter got low marks for "pride."

The teacher told me the reason was that my daughter rushes, but my daughter insists she always does her best work.

How can a teacher determine whether or not a six-year-old "takes pride in doing neat work"? What appears neat to one six-year-old is completely different from what another first grader might see, though both are very proud of their work, marking their name boldly across the paper to claim it.

What educational authority determined that anybody could accurately measure a child's level of pride in his or her work, and then decided to place that on a report card for teachers to judge as best they can?

Children learn very quickly the importance of the report card. And once a student is labeled by a grade, it is hard to break the mold.

Then again, if a B/C student with a tough grading scale were to move to a district with a more lenient curve, would that student suddenly become an A/B student? Is this fair?

I think students themselves would rather have the same grade curve, no matter which school they attend.

Could we come up with an unbiased report, one that could be used in a wide variety of schools with children from many different backgrounds and socioeconomic situations?

A panel of experts in the field of education representing the various schools of thought on teaching and evaluating students could put together guidelines that would enable teachers across the nation to "label" students more fairly and accurately. A test group of schools representing a mini-America could test the model report card.

Standardized report cards? It's an idea worth looking into.

J. Elizabeth Gladden taught for three years in San Antonio, Texas, and is now a master's degree candidate at Clemson University in South Carolina. She is a member of the NEA Student Program.