There is a lot to get excited about in the area of education!! But the thing that I'm most excited about and the one thing that gets my blood boiling the most is...
Standards Based Reporting (sbar) - Face it, people...grades can be manipulated and they have been for a long time. Heck, when I was in high school, you could do enough extra credit to get a B even though you didn't know ANYTHING about the subject you were attempting to learn.
So let me ask you, what does that grade tell you about what your child knows? Does an "B" tell you what they can do in English?
Right now, list the skills your child is able to perform around writing. Can they write a sentence? Paragraph? Correct subject/verb pairing? Can they write a five paragraph paper with a common theme? Can they properly support a topic?
If I gave your child an "B" in English - how do you know they can do all those writing skills? What if I told you that they are such an accomplished reader that their reading skills averaged out their poor (below grade level) writing skills to a B?
The point is - you don't. With standards based reporting - you DO! (And so do next year's teachers...and college entrance boards...and...)
And guess what else happens? Teachers are held accountable to get your child secure in those writing skills during the course of the year - we don't get to hide behind the grade and neither does your child.
And I'm just going to say it because this is my blog - I can't think of any reason why a parent would fight this unless they just want to brag that their child is a straight A student. Well, Christmas brag letters be damned...when did education become about the adults? I thought it was what was best for students.
And yes, I really said that.
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