The Past and The Future - How to BEST Communicate Student Performance and Get the Most Out of Students

by Director Steve Rothenberg
sroth@concordnhschools.net

At its root, performance reporting, in whatever form it assumes is all about communication. Communication to help students, educators and families assess an individual student’s performance and growth; in doing so make a plan to achieve future appropriate educational goals.

Historically the determination process to create a grade has been extremely convoluted. We’ve embraced giving schools and teachers a great deal of latitude in determining a reporting (grading) systems. This was the norm. We’ve all experienced grading systems that involve total points, percentage breakdowns (homework, tests..), bonus points, and more. The systems used reflected the values associated with the particular entity providing the educational experience (teacher and/or school). Ultimately students worked to develop the adaptive skills necessary to figure out these systems.

Yet those adaptation skills are not necessarily what research shows help students to improve. Rather than adaptive skills, we want students to develop ownership skills. Performance objectives needs to be defined (transparent) and scoring must align without prejudice.

The good news is that over the past few years performance reporting systems have begun to change considerably with high schools as the last frontier. We are proud that the CRTC has been leading the way in this area.

Quality systems don’t label student performance with one number or letter; nor do they merge behaviors (homework completion rate) and understandings (demonstration of hard skills) into one score. If there were one theme to summarize the future - it would be separate reporting.

For example the CRTC separates reporting of hard and soft skills. A students who is bright, knows his/her material, demonstrate his/her knowledge, but is lousy at doing homework would get a 4 or 5 (out of 5) in hard skills, but would get a 1 or 2 (out of 5) on work ethic. This level of reporting allows teacher and parents to have the most meaningful discussion with students so the student can adjust their future educational targets and career plans.

We are still stuck behind transcripts that share one element of reporting data per course (a single number or letter). All of our hard work is sadly compromised at this final stage. Schools throughout New Hampshire are changing their transcripts and report cards to better reflect performance. Ultimately to tell a more complete story. In our conversations with local colleges like UNH, Plymouth State University and Keene State, they are willing to embrace performance reports in many different formats.

To summarize, I want to challenge those of you with extensive work experience, to reference a great performance review you’ve hopefully received from a caring boss at some point in your career. That boss knew you, your strengths, your weaknesses and was able give you honest performance feedback that, most importantly, gave you targets to improve. This clarity, as well as a potential raise, may have motivated you to improve. Now, apply that to report cards. School are moving slowly to change our age-old model, but it is taking time. We are especially proud of our report cards and I think you will see how far we’ve come.