The purpose of this study was to investigate the specific factors teachers consider when assigning the grades they record on students' report cards. Data were gathered from 943 K-12 teachers from five school districts in a Southeastern state who completed the "Teachers' Grading Practices Survey." Analyses focused on how teachers weigh…

The Common Planning Time Project of the Middle Level Education Research Special Interest Group (MLER SIG) of the American Educational Research Association provided an avenue through which researchers from throughout the United States could investigate numerous aspects of common planning time in schools. Although several studies have investigated…

This study examines how teachers navigate tensions between communicating expectations for college level work and student motivation as they determined summative grades in an AP Environmental Science course. Semi-structured interviews and a think-aloud protocol were conducted while teachers in poverty-impacted urban high schools determined final…

This paper describes a major initiative in the Commonwealth of Kentucky to develop a statewide, standards-based, student report card for reporting the learning progress of individual students at all grade levels (K-12). Led by a team of researchers with expertise in grading and reporting, 36 educators from three diverse school districts created…

The aim of the study is to examine family-school collaboration in terms of parents' appreciation of the school report card and their knowledge and understanding of teachers' role and assessment practices. Exactly 125 parents of elementary level students, all members of the Provincial Parents Committee completed the questionnaire and answered a…

The speaker describes the El Paso approach to grade reports. The district has several different methods of reporting student progress. They include report cards every six weeks, an interim progress report for students who are doing unsatisfactory work or work that is not as good as could be expected, and parent conferences. (IRT)

How teachers methodically construct report card comments into organized social features is addressed through an examination of negotiation structures which organize anecdotes. Anecdotal comments are key communication devices which teachers employ for reporting. Four hundred and fifty anecdotal comments teachers wrote about students were collected…

One of the primary aspects of a reporting system is to maintain consistency between what is taught, what is tested, and what is reported to parents. This paper explores one school district's experience in changing how student progress is reported to parents for the elementary division from kindergarten to grade five. Over the last decade, what was…

This paper presents findings of an analysis of kindergarten report cards from Ohio public schools and discusses implications of the findings for policy makers, program planners, and curriculum supervisors. A total of 76 school districts were selected in a random sample of 331 which was stratified to represent 6 types of school districts. Data were…

In 2002, five state agencies overseeing technology centers and technical colleges formed a consortium with the Council on Occupational Education, a national accreditor of workforce education institutions. The purpose was to develop common benchmarks and a common report card. Subsequently, the consortium received a 3-year grant in 2001 from the…

Grades, report cards, and other progress reports are important vehicles for communicating with families about their children's strengths, areas to target, and interventions that can be used at home. For families of children with disabilities, accurate information on learning progress is essential for understanding intervention effectiveness and…

Correlation and multiple regression analyses revealed the extent to which the report card grades of Quality Counts 2002, prepared by Education Week, were intercorrelated with and predicted by demographic factors among many states. The researchers used four grades from Quality Counts 2002 and five demographic factors. Few intercorrelations were…

This study investigated possible differences in the perceptions of three stakeholder groups (teachers, students, and parents) regarding grading and grade reporting. Data were gathered through questionnaires completed by 215 teachers in 2 states, 4,265 elementary school, middle school, and high school students, and 944 parents. Different forms were…

A study examined teachers' training, practices, and values for using the report card to communicate their knowledge of students' literacy achievement. Subjects, 48 elementary, middle, secondary, and college preparatory teachers from 10 school districts in 5 states, completed a questionnaire designed to elicit teachers' perspectives on the report…

Report-card marking items by which elementary school students' noncognitive classroom behaviors are graded were studied to establish a preliminary classification of behavioral assessment domains. Two studies were conducted. The first study employed a cluster-analytic approach to a pool of 136 noncognitive behavior-marking items that had been…