Report cards in Hawai'i's schools get new look
By Eloise Aguiar
Advertiser Staff Writer
When parents of Mauna-wili Elementary School children open their first report cards of the new year in November, they're in for a change.
GRADING SCALE Source: Department of Education
Gone will be the familiar A, B, C, D and F.
A look at the state's
new report card
A detailed multipage progress report will replace the traditional report card at public schools statewide, beginning this fall with a pilot project at 10 elementary schools.
View complete sets:
PROGRESS REPORT
STATUS REPORT
Instead, they'll see a detailed multipage report intended to give them a comprehensive picture of how well their child is meeting statewide academic goals known as Hawai'i Content and Performance Standards. At the end of the semester will come the letter grades: E, M, N, U and NA.
Maunawili is among 10 elementary schools that will test the new format and launch the beginning of the end of the traditional report card, the familiar document that for generations has told Hawai'i parents how their children are doing in school.
The switch from the traditional report card is rare nationally, but it's the wave of the future as school districts adjust to the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind education law.
"I think it will become the norm rather than the exception," said Randy Hitz, dean of education at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa. "I expect the whole nation to go to standard-based reporting."
State education officials said the change is necessary because the traditional grades and report card are insufficient to keep pace with standards-based teaching.
"We're told to teach to standards, but our cards today don't reflect that, so it will be more of a match," said Arlyne Yonemoto, the Maunawili principal.
Within a year, the new report cards are scheduled to be in use at all Hawai'i elementary schools, and all public schools are expected to be using the system by 2007-08, said Mildred Higashi, report-card coordinator for the state Department of Education.
Ola Ondayog, a Maunawili staff member and parent of two children there, said she looks forward to the new report cards. Letter grades are broad and words such as "satisfactory" for such things as reading don't tell a parent if a child can read, comprehend and analyze what he or she is reading, Ondayog said.
"As a parent I will be able to see exactly where on the spectrum, on the scale my child is at," she said, adding that the new system should also catch problems sooner. "For kids coming up this will keep everybody accountable."
The other schools that will test the new format this fall are Mayor John H. Wilson, Alvah A. Scott, Mililani Ike, Iroquois Point and Ma'ili on O'ahu; Ha'aheo and Mountain View on the Big Island; Ha'iku on Maui; and Kalaheo on Kaua'i.
A pilot project for 10 secondary schools is expected to begin in the 2006-07 school year, Higashi said.
Parents will receive two types of reports twice a year:
- A four-page status report, which will include the new letter grades, to sum up the semester's learning.
- A two-page progress report at midsemester to let parents know whether a child is on track to meet the standards by the end of the term.
"If they're not doing OK at the rate they're going, they still have half a semester to work harder," she said.
The reports are divided into two basic areas — academics and general abilities — plus space for comments from teachers, parents and students.
The two-page progress report lets parents know if their child's progress is "more than adequate," "adequate," "some," "little or no," "not evaluated yet" in the content areas such as reading, writing, math, science, fine arts and educational technology.
The abilities, or General Learner Outcomes, of responsibility, cooperation, thinking, quality work, communication and technology will be rated according to how a student demonstrates them: "consistently," "usually," "sometimes" or "rarely."
This report also has a list of recommended actions to improve.
The four-page status report is the more comprehensive format for the content areas. Each subject area lists criteria that must be met, some of which may not apply until later in the year.
Sixth-grade math, for example, has seven criteria that include "uses and justifies strategies to compute with whole numbers, fractions, decimals and percents"; "defines and applies geometric concepts and relationships"; and "designs surveys, analyzes data, and draws conclusions based on the mean, median, mode and range and describes limitations of the representations."
With an eye toward the grade-point averages and comparable letter grades needed for college, secondary schools will still use the A, B, C, D and F grades. However, the grades will reflect new standards-based graduation and course requirements, said Mike Heim, DOE director of planning and evaluation, who was responsible for creating the new report card.
Each course will have a list of standards that students must demonstrate proficiency in, he said. If a student is proficient in a majority of the standards, then the student will get a "C." A grade of "B" will be awarded for meeting all standards. To receive an "A," a student will have to attain proficiency above the standards.
Creating the new report card took three years, dozens of drafts and numerous meetings with focus groups that included parents, curriculum specialists and teachers, Heim said. Experts were consulted, but there were few examples of standards-based reporting that could be used as a template, he said.
Heim couldn't say how much it cost to conduct the research and devise the new report system.
The prototype was created by a teachers group and then critiqued by various groups and stakeholders. Dozens of changes were made before the final document was sent to press last week, Heim said.
The issues were too numerous to count but included issues such as the use of too much educational jargon and trying to put too much information into the report, he said.
"It sounds simple but making it happen turned out to be a lot more difficult than frankly any of us expected," Heim said.
The pilot project is expected to generate teacher and parent feedback that could lead to changes, but the content of the reports is expected to remain the same, Higashi said.
