95 - Standards Based Reporting and Grading at the Elementary School Level

Episode 95 • 6th May 2025 • The Grading Podcast • Sharona Krinsky and Robert Bosley

95 - Elementary grades

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Sharona: What I had in my kids' elementary school, and I'm looking at them, I pulled them out. I have a report card that has three different proficiency scales on it. One of the proficiency scales is academic achievement, and that's a five level scale that goes from far below grade level to below grade level, to approaching grade level, to meets grade level, to exceeds grade level.

Boz: Welcome to the grading podcast, where we'll take a critical lens to the methods of assessing students', learning from traditional grading to alternative methods of grading. We'll look at how grades impact our classrooms and our students' success. I'm Robert Bosley, a high school math teacher, instructional coach, intervention specialist and instructional designer in the Los Angeles Unified School District and with Cal State LA.

Sharona: And I'm Sharona Krinsky, a math instructor at Cal State Los Angeles. Faculty coach and instructional designer, whether you work in higher ed or K 12, whatever your discipline is, whether you are a teacher, a coach, or an administrator, this podcast is for you. Each week, you will get the practical, detailed information you need to be able to actually implement effective grading practices in your class and at your institution.

Boz: Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I'm Robert Bosley, one of your two cohosts, and with me as always, Sharona Krinsky. Welcome back, Sharona. How you doing?

Sharona: Thank you. Thank you. It's definitely been an interesting month. Thank you so much everyone for bearing with us as I took a little time off last week, but glad to be back and really, really so ready for the academic year to be over. I mean I always am ready for the academic year to be over. This has gotta be one of the more readies I I've had in a while. How about you?

Boz: You know, I, I'm doing all right. We're in the heart of testing in my K 12 world. So both of the high schools that I work with as a instructional coach are in the middle of testing. They were testing last week, we're, you know, about to start AP testing and then come back to finish up the state testing. So it's a weird time as a coach 'cause that also means I don't have as many classes to go in and observe and co-plan with and do all the things that I've been doing as a coach. So it's, it's kind of a weird adjustment, especially since the last like decade during testing at my old school. I was the one person that had proctored every single one of them. Like.

Sharona: That's what I was gonna ask you. Yeah. I, not only no coaching to do, but how's your experience of testing?

Boz: Yeah, it's very weird. 'cause I have, I've usually, you know, with the way we tested and even though I was never the testing coordinator at my old school, I was always kind of the right hand person of the last three testing coordinators. And I was always one of the main proctors, whether it was the ICA's, the SBAC's, the CAASPP. So it is kind of an adjustment not having to be proctoring all day. These tests that I'm like, this is usually one of the busiest, stressful times because of all that proctoring that I've done. Not doing it now. It is, it's really kind of weird.

Sharona: But you could get used to this, right?

Boz: Oh, I'm getting used to it real damn fast.

Sharona: Well, you know, testing, huh? Not, not the kind of testing we normally talk on the pod because this is the state testing. And I was gone last week, so I'm gonna kick it over to you to introduce, what are we talking about?

Boz: Well, about a week ago, I got a really interesting message from an old friend of mine, an old friend and colleague that we taught together at Santee. She's now an an admin at an elementary school. She sent me a message. She recently heard about this podcast and has been listening and trying to catch up, but she sent me a message asking me if we'd done anything specifically with elementary. Like I said, she's an admin at elementary school. They were having a few issues and she was looking to see if we had an episode that she could refer to and maybe even use in some of her trainings.

Well, we don't, and there's a reason for that, but I do think we have kind of neglected the elementary long enough. Neither one of us are experts, but I wanna talk a little bit about some of the issues she brought up and some of the issues that we've seen just as parents. But I wanna make this very clear to our audience, and I also want to ask our audience a few favors that, neither one of us are experts by any means when it comes to elementary. Most of what we're gonna be talking about today is either based on a couple of research books that we've talked about before, but neither one of us have done a lot of deep diving research into this.

So a lot of this is gonna be personal experience, but I really do wanna ask our audience, especially if you are an experienced elementary level educator or admin, or have done any kind of research specifically into elementary and issues with grading. Please call us out. If we get something completely wrong, let us know. If you're listening to this and, and you're going, wow, we really missed the boat, we'd love to have you come on. 'cause we really have, we've been doing this, what is this? Our almost 90th episode?

Sharona: Actually, this is gonna come out as episode 95.

Boz: Episode 95. And we haven't done an elementary one really yet. So it's long past due. If you're listening to this and you are one of those kind of people or know someone, please, we'd love to have you on and I'm gonna try to get my friend on that, that sent me this message to talk more detail about what some of the issues she's seen and what she was reaching out to us for. But I still wanted to kind of get into it this time.

origin story, I claim, is in: 2016

Boz: And I think you brought this up when we were talking with Matt Townsley about Extinguish. But we also had brought up a little bit about his book A Parents' Guide to Grading and Reporting, which I'm sure we will reference several times during this episode. But yeah, you brought that up. Not only was that your first experience, you were one of those parents that complained about it or that that kind of are like, what the heck is this?

Sharona: So let me clarify. I wasn't complaining about the report card itself. I was one of those parents of high achieving students who was complaining that their student was not marked as exceeding grade level specifically. So it wasn't so much that I didn't like getting the standards based report card. I liked that. I was just offended that my kids were not off the charts.

Boz: And, and we're gonna end up getting into that I'm sure here in a bit.

Sharona: So right now, I wanna apologize to the principal, my students', first grade teachers, my kids kindergarten teachers, my kids' fourth grade teachers. I am so sorry. I know this is a long overdue apology. And to be clear, I was not obnoxious. I was never an obnoxious parent. But I was pretty confused, especially for my younger son. Because my younger son is one of the only kids I know that actually still skipped a grade. In second grade we skipped him mid-year, unofficially, from second to third. And that was after we were at a school that was highly, highly differentiated and multiple years of trying not to do that. So I'm sitting here saying, how are you telling me my kid is not above grade level when we're literally skipping him?

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: Like this was so confusing to me. I'm sure we'll get into that. And then the other thing that occurred to me when you were talking to me this week about this is, we reran Sean Nank's episode last week and I didn't listen to all of it. You did the re-edit and everything, but when we asked him why he does what he does. He brought up a first grade situation with his daughter.

Boz: Yeah. Which, if you've not listened to either his original episode or that replay, this is probably one of the biggest gut punch stories out of all the origin stories we've had with all of our guests. This is the one that when he was telling it, I was like, oh, ow, like that I, in fact, I think I made the comment on the original episode that I probably would have been arrested if that was me as a parent. Like, so if you've not listened to that origin story of Sean's, go and listen to it. It, it really is a gut punch of a story.

Sharona: And it's really easy to find. 'cause it's now also episode 94. So. So, where did you wanna start with this discussion?

Boz: Well be before, 'cause kind of building off of Sean Nank's origin story of what that experience did, not only to his daughter but to him as a parent, kind of thinking back to some of our experiences and how many of us have stories that can go back to elementary and why this is so important is we really can inadvertently cause a lot of trauma that takes a lot of time for our students to recover from. I mean, do you have any of those like experiences.

Sharona: Oh my God. The main one, I have two boys who come from multi-generational STEM fam. We have a multi-generational STEM family,

Boz: multi-generational stem educating family at that.

Sharona: Stem educating, I mean, both of my parents were PhDs, one in physics, one in math education. I have my master's in math. Their dad has a degree in engineering from Harvey Mudd. I mean, we're highly educated from very top universities and I still have trauma with my kids over timed number fact quizzes in elementary school. Whether it was star charts or grades or whatever they were doing. But this emphasis on building fluency by timing stuff, just, oh my God. Now that's not necessarily the report card trauma. And that's something I want to distinguish between that there seems to be more of a distinction in elementary between the report card and what happens in the classroom potentially.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: So I wanna also talk about the fact that there's standards-based reporting in elementary school. That doesn't necessarily mean that what's happening in the classroom is standards-based grading, and unfortunately, my experience is it's the math content that typically still seems to bring out numbers, like as grades.

Boz: Well, let, let's, let's hang on to that point and we'll come back to that. 'cause I, I think we've gotta do a lot before we kind of get into that detail.

But just talking.

Sharona: But most of the trauma I remember is about math assessments.

Boz: Yeah. And, and that's interesting that you said that. 'cause you know, when, when I think of the, of math trauma or if I think about elementary trauma, the first thing that comes up, I mean, we've joked about it. I don't know if I've ever told the complete story, but we've joked about. I was banned from my daughter's school without administrative escort. Like I wasn't allowed on the campus.

Sharona: Her elementary school. Yes. To be clear.

Boz: Yes. This happened in my daughter's third grade year. So, and where both of my daughters go to school. Their elementary is K through six. So this happened at my oldest daughter's third grade. The rest of her next three years. Like I said, if I showed up to parent conferences, I had to have the principal or an assistant principal with me as I went and talked to their teachers.

Sharona: Well, and I think you should clarify, it's not because of anything aggressive physically or verbally. What did you dare to do?

Boz: So? Well, what had happened is my daughter's school and they were using, I can't remember the name of the curriculum, but you know, it was, it was supposed to be Common Core aligned. But if, and, and the curriculum was pretty good, understanding how to teach it and stuff, maybe not always so, but several times this one teacher would go off the curriculum and do a hand drawn thing or do something that was teacher made. And wasn't always real careful about how she did it. So she did it once and made this diagram. They were trying to find, they were doing this geometry unit where they were finding the areas of these weird shapes by breaking it down into regular shapes, like a rectangle that's easy to find.

And she had done one that was drawn completely out of scale. Where one side said eight and the other side said six. But the six was longer in the diagram, which, hey, if you're doing that in high school, no problem. This was a third grade. The cognitive ability to think abstractly isn't there yet. You shouldn't be drawing shapes and asking to find areas when the shapes aren't drawn anywhere near out of scale. So I wrote a little note about it and included some links to some research about the cognitive development and when you can start going from physical to abstract. Well couple weeks later, she'd come home with another hand-drawn question. And this time it was drawn where there one of the shapes would've had a dimension of zero if you actually did all the calculation. So this time I wrote a nice long number theory and

Sharona: so you were a jerk.

Boz: I was a jerk. And at the end, I wrote my daughter will no longer be doing these kind of problems until you can stop making these kind of errors. 'cause I know she wasn't doing it on purpose. Well, apparently I hit her nerve and upset the teacher. And if she happens to be listening, I of course won't use her name. But I do apologize. I was being a bit of a jerk. But yeah, that got me to where I wasn't allowed on the campus without principals. And let me be clear, the rest of my daughter's teachers, especially her fourth and sixth grade, absolutely loved me. But.

Sharona: But the point is, does your daughter remember this stuff? I mean, you remember it as a parent, but does your daughter have trauma about this?

Boz: Oh, she absolutely remembers it. And it's weird because that is the same grade where they started to look at, on a number line, the concept of negative numbers. And my daughter, God bless her, has got some great algebraic thinking and great algebraic reasoning. Her number sense has never been great. Especially when it comes to things like adding and subtracting negative numbers. And some of her arithmetic skills are actually quite a bit below her algebraic thinking skills, which is weird. 'cause in her math career in high school sometimes she is leading the class and sometimes she is fairly low on the performances, depending on how much of it is algebraic thinking and manipulation and how much of it is really heavy and arithmetic skills.

Sharona: But I think the point that we're making, which we have made before, about middle school is

Boz: elementary school

Sharona: grades. No, no, no. We made this about middle school and now I wanna make it about elementary school grade trauma starts early.

Boz: It can.

Sharona: Many of us, many of us have stories from third grade, fourth grade, sometimes even kindergarten, where we carry these things with us for decades. And so I do think looking at how we communicate progress in elementary schools critically important.

Boz: And that's one of the big reasons I wanted to have this episode. Because I've read lots of research that states, especially in the K 12, that it can take three to five years for a student to recover from one bad year, one bad experience in math education.

Sharona: So I wanted to, if we're ready, I would like to kind of start to talk about what these things actually look like in elementary school.

Boz: Well, before we start talking about what they look like, the big question that my friend asked and the big issues that she is having is with consistency. And what I mean by that is, a student one year getting really high marks and the very next year, getting very low marks. Now, before we get too far into this conversation, I want to make it clear. Can a student be doing really well one year and the next year? Whether it's relationship with the teacher, whether it's other trauma outside of class whether it's a hundred different reasons. Is that possible? Absolutely, yes. And just because that happened doesn't mean there's an inconsistency with the grading or the school or the teachers or that there's some issue. That can and does happen all the time. So I, I wanna throw that out there before we start talking about some of the issues and someone hears this and thinks that we're blaming school or teachers. No, there's sometimes that is absolutely going to happen for a lot of different reasons.

But we wanna look at if it's not one of those reasons, what else could it be? And I think first is exactly what you were talking about. So why don't we kind of, if we're talking about consistency, let's first talk about what they look like.

Sharona: Right. Well, I guess what I'm say is the question is when we're talking about consistency, consistency on what is really the question, right? Because the things that you were saying where there's other reasons. There's a distinction between the student really has changed or the situation has changed, or the relationships have changed versus the reporting itself is what's changing. Right?

So what I had in my kids elementary school, and I'm looking at them, I pulled them out. I have a report card that has three different proficiency scales on it. One of the proficiency scales is academic achievement, and that's a five level scale that goes from far below grade level to below grade level to approaching grade level, to meets grade level, to exceeds grade level. So that's that particular scale, and that scale is used for an entire content area. So the content areas that use that on my kids thing is mathematics, listening and speaking, reading, writing, science and health, and history and social science, those are the ones that use that five level, grade level scale.

Boz: Okay. So right away this is not a like traditional A, B, C, D, F grade. So if you aren't in elementary or you haven't had a student elementary in a while, that might come as a little bit of surprise, but most elementary reporting, at least in California and in most of the areas that I've talked to outside of California, have gone to a standards based report card. They don't all call it that, but that is exactly what it is.

Sharona: So that's the achievement grade, and that's over like all of mathematics, right? So that's one scale.

Boz: Well, it's not just mathematics, is it?

Sharona: No, no, but I'm giving an example. Okay. So my kid has an achievement score, a mark from one to five in mathematics. Just in mathematics. Now, underneath that level, however, there is another rubric called Progress towards Standard. And it has secure, developing, beginning, and not yet assessed. So it's a four level rubric and they'll take the standards. So for example, one of the standards under mathematics is, and this is a kindergarten level, says, compare objects and identify which is equal to more than or less than the other. So that's the standard. And my kid would get one of these four levels not yet assessed, beginning, developing, secure, and that's a sub report under that mathematics four that, or whatever the mathematics grade level.

Boz: And what did that, what did those marks look like? Are those like 1, 2, 3, fours? Are those?

Sharona: So no, that one they use an asterisk for not yet assessed and then they use B, D, S for beginning, developing, secure.

Boz: Okay.

Sharona: So I'm looking at a report card where at the top of a big sort of black box in reporting period one it has achievement and then it has a number one through five, that's the grade level rubric. But then when you go to the line items, it'll have an asterisk, a B, a D, or an S.

Boz: Okay.

Sharona: So I can tell by looking at this that overall he was meeting grade level standards in kindergarten in say the second reporting standard. And I can see that he's secure in everything that's been assessed, but there are 1, 2, 3 things they have not yet assessed by the second reporting period. So using concrete objects to add and subtract sums up to 18. They had not yet started doing that by the second reporting period. So it has an asterisk. Okay. Okay. So that's two of them.

And then there's a third rubric on here for effort. So what they have done is they've split out the non-academic grades. And the effort piece is also four levels. Outstanding, satisfactory, needs to improve, or unsatisfactory. So they do, they use that in two ways. First of all, in, let's go back to the mathematics. They give an effort for mathematics overall. So like an S, but then they have, later on in the report card, parts of the report card that have no academic achievement score.

Boz: Yeah. Those, and those are usually your behavioral things. I, I know and my, my daughter's report cards, those are called the Montclair Learner Behaviors.

Sharona: And so ours is Yeah. Successful learner behaviors. Yep. Although in kindergarten, they also put visual and performing arts and physical education in, not in the same category, they have 'em split out, but they only give an effort grade. Okay. They don't give an achievement grade for those sections as well.

Boz: So you've got these three different scales that are all being reported onto one report card. And I don't know about your's, but in some of the language arts and the math, did they have things that weren't graded but were titled like number sense and algebraic functions and measurements and geometry?

Sharona: So what they do is they have taken their standards and grouped them into those categories but there's not a score overall. Yeah. So there's like a number sense line, but it doesn't have, they only have the sublevels. They don't roll it up.

Boz: No, no. That's what, not What I was asking is did they have those, those groupings?

'cause do you know what those groupings are? Yes.

Sharona: So I am not as familiar, but they have on the back of the report card lists of the various standards, so those are the big mathematics standards that they say.

Boz: Those actually aren't mathematic standards. Those are what are called the mathematical domains. So the common core and the common core assessment are broken up into domains.

Sharona: So they literally say on the back, standards.

Boz: Okay, well now.

Sharona: Now this was: 2010

Boz: That's a good question. I, I'm curious to see.

Sharona: Because I wanna say it came in when my kids were in middle school.

Boz: Yeah. But those, those are the five domains for elementary and middle school for mathematics number sense, algebra and functions, measurements in geometry, statistics, data analysis, probability, and like, those are the domains of common core.

t card I'm looking at is from: 2010

Boz: Mm-hmm.

Sharona:: 2010

Boz: Yeah. But those, doing these report cards, those and, and yes, our standards are grouped into these domains, which is beneath it. Every one of those standards that they listed, and then they had a grade for that, so.

Sharona: Right. So yeah, so I do see the domains and then I see the line items in each domain. So for example, in number sense in kindergarten, there were three standards listed, but in first grade there were seven standards listed in number sense.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: And then in fourth grade there were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 standards specifically in number sense. But then also by fourth grade, they included actually they even had it in kindergarten algebra and functions.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: They had one in that domain in kindergarten, and they had two of them in fourth grade.

Boz: Yeah. When a lot of people hear algebra and functions, they go to what they picture algebra as their Algebra 1 class in high school. And, you know, we're, we're introducing letters into math. That's not what Algebra one functions necessarily means. Right. And if you look at those standards that are listed in there they might make a little bit more sense. But that's part of what Common Core was trying to do was, you know, this vertical alignment between all the different grades. But we can, we can probably do a whole episode on, so I don't wanna go too far down this rabbit hole, right?

Sharona: No, I do wanna talk about one other thing before we move off of these report cards, though, I am looking at a first grade report card and a fourth grade report card. 'cause I have two sons from the same year, the same reporting period.

Boz: Okay.

Sharona: The major content areas are laid out differently. Now, I suspect it's because that's how it fits on the page. But in the first grade report card that it's the three columns. The first column is mathematics and then science and health, and then history and social science. The second column is reading and then successful leaner behaviors. Then the third column is writing and then some other stuff. Whereas on the fourth grade, report, card writing is in the first column, and then reading and then math. So it's just, it just was interesting to me that they didn't have the same format across two grades, in the same reporting period, same year, same school.

Boz: But yeah, I'm, I'm guessing you're right, it's a formatting issue with the way things are laid out. Just with the different number of standards in each of those different categories.

Sharona: It's just something to be aware of. Yeah. Consistency.

Boz: Okay. If we're talking about consistency, and this was one of the big issues, we've got three different scales here. So what does that mean for consistency? Well, first you've gotta have an agreements and understandings with your teachers of what each of those things actually mean and what achievements are you looking for, for each of those?

So I can see right away if we've possibly dealing with some real inconsistencies that just the way this is built and the fact that we have three different scales that we're looking at, like you gotta have a ton of communication with your teachers, and a ton of collaboration and an real in depth understanding of these three different proficiency scales or marking scales, whatever you wanna call them. Would you agree that, that?

Sharona: I absolutely agree. Communication among teachers is gonna be critical. That's what we, we often talk about norming or grade calibration. I do wanna point out that a lot of times we say things like we would only use a four level or five level scale at most. I personally think these scales are all pretty good. I think you probably need this level of detail because you do need to separate achievement from effort and there is a difference between meeting grade level versus where you are in your progress.

Boz: Yeah. Right. Well, and that's interesting. I was looking for some of my daughter's old report cards to bring to this as well, and although I couldn't find any of 'em, 'cause I kind of forgot until last minute. Oops. But their report cards from what I remember are very similar to this except they basically use one less scale, the progress towards standard. They didn't have that, they had the achievement and the effort, but the achievement had a one through four and the effort had three different. So they was basically this minus one on every dimension.

Sharona: Well, but what I like about the progress towards standard, because if you think about it, it's kind of a combination of what we do, right? Because in our grades, we have these proficiency scales, but then we also talk about the rollup.

Boz: Mm-hmm.

Sharona: And I kind of feel like they're, in this particular version where they have exceeds level meets grade level, like that's almost a rollup thing. Yeah. Because that's, that's ultimately, I mean, in, in college I roll up to a single overall grade, right? But you get one for each class. So if you think about it at a university level, you don't have just one instructor, or even in high school. Elementary, they've rolled all the subjects into a single teacher. So I kind of feel like this makes sense to me. 'cause you want as a parent, I wanna know if my, if the progress towards the standard, what, where we're at. So if they're just beginning in trimester two and the teacher looks at me and says, just so you know, most of the class is already secure, so we wanna work on this one area where your child is still beginning in this skill. That's super important.

Boz: Yeah. And that actually, I think brings up to another possible issue. Especially if you're looking at consistency. So, like I said, my daughters didn't have that. So when I'm looking at the report card, let's taken a example of the writing and they're looking at locating information using a prefix, appendix, whatever. That's one of the fourth grade standards. When I'm looking at it and I am seeing a two, which remember my daughter's only had four levels. Is that two meaning that my daughter is struggling a little bit with that? And is it quite is near grade level expectations or does that mean they just started it and none of the students have had a chance to show proficiency yet? So does that mark of below standard, near standard, at standard or above standard, does that mean, especially on the interim grades, not so much on the final 'cause, the final's obvious, but on those interim grades, on that first reporting mark, is that one or two an indication that it's something I should be working with my child with? Or is that an indication that that's something that they just started and they're gonna continue to work on that? None of the students, like the grade level expectation at that time would have been that it was just at a two. Does that make sense?

Sharona: Yes. And so what that speaks to is it's almost like you need another document for interim reports that says the average student, or in general, we're not comparing students in order to rank and score them, but especially in elementary school, developmental processes are in a range, right?

Boz: Absolutely.

Sharona: So as a parent, you wanna know if your student is below a typical range, so that if you need to do an intervention. And that's what the teacher needs to know too. And if they're above a typical range, which a lot of what we were struggling with with my younger son in the early grades is he was far above the typical range, which was creating problems for him in the classroom. So I know people think that that's really funny and great.

Boz: No, I'm laughing because that was me.

Sharona: Right. Well, he was so bored that he ended up disassociating from the classroom because he would literally in the first grade, but then into second grade. He would spend six hours a day reading a book. 'cause every time he looked up, he knew what was going on. And that was bad for him. Yeah. So the teacher had an obligation to.

Boz: No, I, I, I've, I don't know if I've told this story, but I flunked first grade. Like back when I was in elementary school in Oklahoma, you could flunk. Not parents holding you back. You could flunk in elementary I flunked first grade. And the reason I did was because in kindergarten I was in a different school and they let me progress at the level that I was showing. Well, I was doing third grade math as a kindergarten. I was doing two digit multiplication as a kindergartner.

When I changed schools in first grade, they didn't do that. So I went from practicing and working on two digit multiplication as a kindergartner, back to doing basic one digit and two digit addition. I was bored sick. I was so bored that in the math part that I discontinued everything else. And by the time I ended first grade I could barely read. I mean, I was a terrible reader because I was so bored. So I, I wasn't, please, if you thought I was laughing at either of your sons. No, I was laughing 'cause that was me. The fact that I was so good in math and wasn't getting challenged ended up hurting everything else.

Sharona: Right. So, so the issue with this report card, for me, looking at it now as a parent or even as a different teacher, if I don't have that partner document that says this is what is to be expected. Again, it's for the interim reporting. 'cause at the end, if it's on the report card, they should be secure in everything basically.

Boz: Yeah, yeah. The end is easier. Yeah.

Sharona: So that speaks to one of the things that I think is the biggest challenge other than, so it's the same challenge, right? When we're trying to get consistency, there's communication between teachers within the grade level to come up with consistency from one fourth grade class to another fourth grade class or whatever. Then there's consistency from grade level to grade level.

Boz: Yeah. If I'm say a third grade teacher and my four means they're where I expect them to be in their pursuit of proficiency at a scale. Not necessarily their proficiency. And then they go to you as a fourth grade teacher and you give a two because they've not achieved, but that two is actually where you expect them to be. So your two is now equivalent to my four at the same period. That looks inconsistent when it's not. It's a inconsistence of definition of those scores.

Sharona: And, and that's especially true from grade level to grade level.

Boz: Mm-hmm.

Sharona: But that might be appropriate from grade, like a four at the end of fourth grade as a terminal grade, you don't expect you to be at a terminal grade in fifth grade. Well, no, in a first trimester.

Boz: I'm not talking about terminals. I'm talking about those interims. If I'm giving, if I'm giving, my interim grade is based on where I believe they should be for a typical range, and you are giving your interim grades based on their actual level of mastery. There's a huge inconsistency there.

Sharona: So if we're both like in the same grade level was what you're saying?

Boz: No, either in the same even or in different grade levels. Just, ah, as a parent I'm used to getting three, three, you know, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3. And now as a parent in your class, all of a sudden they're getting ones. As a parent, especially if I don't have a huge understanding of these report cards. I just went from third grade where my kid got, you know, threes or fours across the board on all reporting periods, on all categories, and now I'm getting ones or twos from you. That's, as a parent, would be an, a huge concern if I didn't understand this kind of reporting.

So I'm saying even the consistency, and I think this is, especially if you're an admin, a schoolwide understanding and a schoolwide conversation and consistency that I, as an administrator, not that I am, not that I ever would be, but if I was that would be a consistency in a conversation I would want to have. And I don't know if all elementary teachers at a single site have that same understanding.

Sharona: Yeah, you're correct. Especially, I think that's probably more problematic when you don't have a distinction between checking grade level and checking progress.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: Like that's what I like looking at this one, that the fact that we have three makes it a lot more complex for the teachers, but it gives me the distinction to say, you know what, they're where I expect them to be at this point in fourth grade. I'm gonna give you that thing. But they're still developing on half the stuff because I expect them to be developing on half the stuff right now.

Boz: Yeah. And I agree with you. Like I said, that wasn't part of my daughters, but I like that third piece. 'cause it does do that, it does add a lot of complexity to the report card. And as a parent, if I don't understand this, this report card would be very difficult to read if I was a parent that my only experience was my old elementary report cards, which mine were letter grades that were E for excellent, VG for very good S for satisfactory. Right. I think needs improvement and unsatisfactory were our elementary grades.

Sharona: Now, I wanted to also bring up that there's a distinction between standards based reporting and the actual marking and grading practices in the classroom. So just because you have a standards based report card does not mean that you might not be getting some of the damaging marking procedures in the classroom. 'cause like what Sean Nank was talking about with his daughter was a in-class situation and a conversation that the teacher had with them. They could have been at a standards-based report card. I have no idea. Right?

I do recall some marking processes that happened in the classroom where my kids would bring home a math test that had a numerical score on it. And that's not inconsistent with a standards-based report card. It is not standards-based grading practices as we would have them in the classroom.

Boz: So, and I think that is one of the other big ones, is just because most elementary schools that that I'm aware of, most that I've seen for the last 10 years have gone to standards-based report cards. That does not mean the in-class grade books and how they get to these is necessarily anything other than traditional. And again, if we are two teachers at the same school, let's, let's say this time, we are doing the same grade. I'm doing traditional grading and then just using those percentages to identify what I'm gonna give a four as, what I'm gonna give a three as, and you are doing true alternative grading or standards based education and instruction, then there's gonna be another huge inconsistency there. Like, so going back to my friend's question, that would be the next big thing that I would want to look at is how are your teachers wrapping this up into this very complex reporting? How, what are they doing in the classes? Is it still points, percentages and averages? Is it, you know, some teachers doing real alternative grading and instruction and others doing traditional, because if that's the case, yeah, you are gonna see some inconsistencies.

Sharona: And you're gonna see the damage that we get with traditional grading practices. And as we said, we know so many origin stories that start in elementary school. There's one other thing though that I forgot to bring up that I wanted to bring up is there's a book called Standards-Based Grading, A School District's Pillars to Student Success. And it's written by an elementary school district that implemented standards based grading. And one of the things that I was thinking about is when we talk about the purpose of grades, a lot of times it's to communicate.

In this particular book, they talk about changing their parent teacher conferences to be student led. And especially in the upper grades, the students are the ones communicating how they're doing. But these report cards that I am reading that we've been discussing just now, these are written for parents.

Boz: Absolutely.

Sharona: These are not elementary school. So these report cards are not reporting to the students how they're doing?

Boz: No. The, the absolutely not. This, if this, the point of these are to communicate student progress, it is definitely communicating this to an adult. There is no way a third grader or especially a K through second is reading this and understanding what's being communicated. 'cause this is using language from state standards and common cores, which again, were written for educators. This absolutely is not trying to communicate directly to the student. And there's nothing wrong with that. Don't get me wrong, but.

Sharona: Right. But it's something to think about when you're looking at the distinction, especially between reporting and grading, is the report cards are parent directed, so how are you communicating how the students are doing to the students?

Boz: Absolutely.

Sharona: And so this particular school district talks, they've really embraced the student led conferences and they prepare for these conferences using reflections and setting goals and compiling evidence. They don't specify what grade levels, but again, this is an elementary school district, so I mean at least third, fourth, fifth grade I would guess can do these student led conferences, but possibly even younger. But again, that's gonna require that the grading practices in the classroom, in addition to the reporting practices, have to be aligned with these things.

Boz: Absolutely. I think that, and that's could be one of those big underlying issues that my friend is dealing with is that consistency of practice.

Sharona: So what's interesting about this particular book is it's a collaborative where different staff in the district wrote the different chapters. So the first chapter is by the principal or a principal. The second chapter comes from a first grade teacher. The third, the third chapter is a second grade. Then the music teacher, then another first grade teacher, and they each like did this together as a school district to write this book. Okay. So I think that.

Boz: You, you, you're on my naughty list right now.

Sharona: I know I showed this book to you.

Boz: No, you did not. We, you we share resources. I have never heard, seen or heard that book when Swear I this to you.

ng 'cause it was published in: 2024

Boz: No, you okay. You also just said that you've had it for three years when it was published a year ago, so.

Sharona: It's covid time. Okay?

Boz: Yeah. No, you have never shown or, or talked about that.

Sharona: Okay. Well, I am sorry I pulled it out for this episode, but it's called Standards Based Grading, A School District's Pillars to Student Success. Madison Elementary School District 162's Commitment to Student Mastery of specific learning objectives embodies the core values of equity, mindfulness, communication, and high expectation for all students. Alright, so I will let you borrow this. I'll get you a copy.

Boz: So especially my friend, you who I, who you are, if you're listening to this episode here's,

Sharona: I'll send her a copy

Boz: here. Here's, here's where we were gonna start giving some advice. And my first two bits of advice get that book. And there is another book that we've talked about before on this podcast that I think is a extremely powerful tool. And that is the Parents' Guide To Grading and Reporting by Matt Townsley and Chad Lang. So, those are the two resource books that I would be getting and looking at and depending on what your specific needs are, one might be more helpful than the other.

So that's, that's advice number one.

Sharona: I'm gonna throw two more books at that, by the way.

Boz: Okay, go ahead.

n the date on this one. Yeah,: 2024

Boz: Well, and that was my second going to be, my second point of advice, is if your school doesn't have a school-wide understanding of what each of your different grades mean, again, is a two on an interim, meaning that the student is struggling or does a two mean you're at the beginning of the instruction and that's where you expect things to be. So coming to those kind of agreements, and I think the best way to start that process is making a grading purpose statement. Just like we ground a lot of our work in mission and vision statements of a school. I think a lot of the work, and the more I'm dealing with this and the more I dive into grading purpose statements, the more useful and the more important I am seeing they become. So that would be my second point of advice is if you don't already have one, get a school-wide statement of purpose for grades and let that guide you.

Sharona: Absolutely. I completely agree. And then the other thing I would recommend is listening to one of our episodes about grade norming or grading calibration because being able to hold meetings with teachers to come to these agreements. Is pretty good. I think is a critical thing. We also have a blog post out on that, on the Grading for Growth blog.

Boz: And then my last bit of my last thing I would leave with is I know a lot of elementary schools are doing this, and they've been doing this for a while. In fact, we've talked several times on different episodes about the fact that elementary education, when it comes to grade reporting, really is at least a decade ahead of most of the other levels of education, whether it's middle school, high school, or higher ed.

But just because they've been doing it longer, and especially knowing how things usually roll out in education, just because we've been doing it longer in elementary, doesn't mean your teachers ever really received the proper training of how to do it. And I think that's where you'll see those differences, like what you were talking about, Sharona, with the difference between standards based grade reporting and standards based grading or instruction. So that's kind of where I would dive into is look at just what are your teacher's understandings? What, if any training have they gotten, what training is out there that could strengthen those different foundational understandings.

Sharona: And that I think has been one of my biggest takeaway from my work this year is how far my skills have come in terms of being able to facilitate some of these trainings, but also the grading calibration, like these calibration conversations. So definitely find someone who can help with these conversations if you don't have an expert on your staff.

Boz: All right. Well, again, I hope the friend I'm referring to is listening to this. 'cause I really do. I wanna get you on to have a more in-depth conversation. 'cause you asked me a couple of questions. This whole episode was based on my interpretation of that consistency question. And it might be completely different from what you were actually asking. So I'd love to have you on. To our listeners our elementary experienced listeners, whether you're admin, teacher, researcher. I hope we didn't get anything too wrong on this, but if you, listening to this and screaming, oh, you idiots. You get, this isn't what it means. Please write into us. Please, we'd love to have you come on and have this more in depth discussion. We really have been ignoring elementary, and we shouldn't be. This podcast is supposed to be grading reform at all levels from K through higher ed, and really it has been seventh through higher ed at best, so well.

Sharona: And I wanna thank your friend because it gave me a chance to go back and look at my kids' report cards with the eyes that I have now, with the training that I have now. And I really wish I could go back in time and be like, wow, this is truly remarkable. So thank you to all those elementary teachers out there that have been doing this. That have been struggling with this because we parents are definitely behind the eight ball on that.

like five weeks out from the: 2025

So Sharona, where can they go to register if they haven't already?

Sharona: They can go to thegradingconference.com and you'll see everything. I believe the agenda for the conference is going to be coming out in the next week or so, maybe two weeks. So you'll get to see all of the amazing talks and posters that we're accepted this year. We're very excited about that. We have amazing keynotes as well. I'm also gonna shout out, I think we have 15 institutional registrations right now, so you might wanna check with your institution if you're a higher ed institution. I don't think we have any K 12 institutions right now. They're primarily higher ed institutions, but if we as institutional registrations are also still available, if you're gonna have a group of 10 or more who want to come it's gonna be cheaper even than the conference itself. So the grading conference.com, that's where we go.

Boz: You could also go to the Center for Grading Reform which is.org or.org which is the nonprofit organization that now runs the conference. So you can find the conference plus other things on that website as well. And until next week, we'll see you later.

Sharona: Please share your thoughts and comments about this episode by commenting on this episode's page on our website, www.thegradingpod.com. Or you can share with us publicly on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. If you would like to suggest a future topic for the show or would like to be considered as a potential guest for the show, please use the Contact us form on our website. The Grading podcast is created and produced. By Robert Bosley and Sharona Krinsky. The full transcript of this episode is available on our website.

Boz: The views expressed here are those of the host and our guest. These views are not necessarily endorsed by the Cal State System or by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

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