Nearly all states have standards for student learning and they have assessment programs to measure students' proficiency on those standards. But schools within each state nonetheless are left to develop their own standards-based student report cards as the primary means of communicating information about students' performance. To address the…

Dissatisfied with the mismatch between letter grades and their new (state-mandated) curricular emphases, the Tucson (Arizona) Public Schools began experimenting with rubric descriptions of student progress. The prototype progress report assesses students in two general categories: learner qualities and content areas. Frequent communication with…

Discusses the narrative report, which is an alternative to the traditional report card for reporting children's development and progress to parents. Examples of entries in a narrative report are included. (BB)