Some Cobb County parents plan to plead with the school board Thursday night to scuttle a move to standards-based report cards for third-graders, arguing that a 3-2-1 grading scale promotes mediocrity.
Standards-based report cards are one of the latest national trends in a 20-year push to establish higher academic standards and have mandatory state tests of the materials.
These kinds of report cards have been going home with students in lower grades in Forsyth and Barrow counties, among other places. In Cobb, they've been used in kindergarten for two years and in first and second grades in the just-completed school year.
The traditional A, B, C and F grading system still applies in Cobb's fourth through 12th grades, but younger students are graded on specific skills and given the top rating of a "3" if they meet standards "consistently and independently."
A group of parents, calling themselves the Committee for Informed Parents of Cobb County, is trying to block a proposal to expand the standards-based report card to the third grade for the coming school year, calling the report card an "unproven and unresearched fad."
"We're opposed to the ideology behind it, and that's to push everybody to the middle, so nobody feels bad," said Christy Kown, one of the committee's co-chairs and the parent of two Cobb County students, a second-grader and a sixth-grader.
Standard-based report cards, she argues, provide "a checklist of small bits of information about what a child can do, but not the big picture."
Dr. Fara McCrady, a clinical psychologist and another of the committee's co-chairs, said, with standards-based grading, "there's no way to distinguish the high achievers from the midlevel achievers, and the same thing at the bottom." She has a second-grader, a fourth-grader and a sixth-grader.
School administrators have acknowledged that the current 3-2-1 report card may not do enough to acknowledge excellence. One of the proposals before the school board tonight would create a new grade — a 3-plus to acknowledge a student who "exceeds standards."
"It was in response to the feedback we received in good faith from the parents and from teachers," said Robert Benson, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.
Supporters contend that a standards-based report card is more illuminating than one that just gives letter grades in various subjects and could, ultimately, lead to students performing better on standardized testing.
"It's more specific so parents and students can see where strengths and weaknesses lie," said Amy Krause, director of curriculum and instruction for Cobb County Schools.
Benson said the report card is one tool the school system is using to comply with Georgia's performance standards.
Local educators are "making sure our expectations are high and consistent from classroom to classroom and from school to school," he said.
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