Students at elementary schools across the Diocese are no longer striving to get A's and 100 percents on their report cards. Don't be alarmed, it's not due to a widespread slacker epidemic. Rather, this year as all the Diocesan elementary schools switch to a new report card system, a five is the new mark of excellence.
The change of format of report cards reflects a farther-reaching change in grading policy that involves the use of rubrics to evaluate student work.
The new system outlines the expectations of students and the qualities of satisfactory work at the outset of every assignment in a rubric. This system, teachers and administrators hope, will not only eliminate the mystery and potential arbitrariness of more traditional grading, but will also encourage students to self-evaluate and improve their work.
The student's work is broken into four categories – classwork, independent work, homework and assessments – that count for different percentages of the total average depending on grade level. Within these four categories every assignment is graded on a scale of one to five where five indicates a consistent effort and one indicates that a student does not meet the minimum objectives.
Teachers will create a variety of rubrics for everything they assign
“The teachers who had a hard time were just getting used to the new system,” said Carlson. She added that this year everyone was “much more comfortable, they enjoy it.”
“There’s a little uncertainty because they’ve never used it,” Chianese said of the teachers at her school, but added “I like it, I think it’s a great program.” Durante pointed out that the younger teachers who have recently graduated from college, like Carlson, are already familiar with rubric systems because it is the way most college and universities teach their education students to grade. Other teachers have probably also been using rubrics for their grading, or standard sets of requirements, but calling them a different name, she added.
In addition to the DVD for parents, a longer DVD was produced to aid teachers with the new program. Chianese also said that teachers and administrators from other schools have come to her for advice about the new program.
In a message on the DVD for parents, Durante recapped the six-year process that led to the new grading system.
Durante said that the goals of the committee, which included administrators, principals and an education professor from Salve Regina University, were “to produce a document that would match Diocesan curriculum guidelines, to improve the evaluation process and to provide parents with a more accurate picture of their child’s progress.”
She said that after careful study of report cards from public schools in the area and other Dioceses and consulting with faculty members from Diocesan schools it became clear that “a radical change was necessary.”
McIntyre said many teachers have approached the new system with excitement. “Good teachers have always understood that we’re lifelong learners, that we’re never done,” she said. The system, she hopes, “has created an excitement about teaching and about learning.”
