An “A” rated charter school in Alachua Fla does not employ a traditional A-F grading system. Indeed, when Boulware Springs Charter School opened in 2014, the school’s principal, Kay Abbitt, implemented a standards-based report card.

Students may bring home report cards that are 11 pages long, as opposed to a traditional one-page grade sheet. Parents can see which specific learning goals their children mastered and which need more work.

Boulware grades students on scale of 1-4, with 4 meaning mastery, on each standard. The score of 1 means the student is a novice, 2 means they are developing the standard, and 3 is approaching mastery.

As a result, students receive more than one grade in each subject area. For example, in kindergarten reading, a report card breaks down how a student mastered standards such as using frequently occurring nouns and verbs and printing upper- and lowercase letters.   Once students leave the K-5 school, it must convert their grades back to an A-F system.

Elementary schools elsewhere in Florida have employed standards-based grading for years. But a bill’s death in the waning days of Florida’s legislative session may hamper efforts to create similar grading systems for middle- and high-school students.

RedefinED spoke with Abbitt about standards-based grading. See a sample report card from the charter school embedded below.

How effective is this grading method? (more…)