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Students will want straight E's New state standards prompt new report cards in Medford, elsewhere By VICKI GUARINO Say goodbye to the ABCs of report cards. The Medford School District is changing the way it tells parents how well their children are doing in school. New report cards at Medford's 14 elementary schools this year will use a different set of letters -- E, M and N -- and numbers 1-6 to show parents how quickly students are mastering new state academic standards. E is for exceeding standards; M is for meeting them; and N is for not meeting them. The numbers, reported for each subject area, denote grade level performance. Third-graders, for instance, should receive at least 3s. "What we want is to do a good job of reporting to parents how well their students are doing," says Medford schools Superintendent Steve Wisely. Just as students have been struggling to meet the higher academic standards set by the 1991 Legislature, educators have been struggling to find a clear way to assess youngsters' efforts. Many districts around the state are changing report cards as a result. The changes address what has become a rift between traditional class letter grades and scores on the progression of state achievement tests that lead to the new high school level CIM, Certificate of Initial Mastery. By mastering the standards and meeting benchmarks grade by grade, students stand the best chance of being ready by the tenth grade to pass the CIM tests. Locally, Phoenix-Talent schools began using new elementary report cards last year. Talks have begun for changing reports at the secondary level. Like Medford's revisions, the new Phoenix-Talent cards correlate school performance to state benchmarks. The district's curriculum director, Tim Mobley, says the new reports seem to better inform parents. "An A, B or C doesn't necessarily tell you a child is progressing toward the benchmarks," Mobley says. In Central Point, teachers and administrators have been considering report card changes for some time, says Superintendent Candy Manary. She expects more progress this year toward a report card redesign. In Eagle Point, staff at one grade school, Little Butte, is experimenting with several different report card formats. Ashland hasn't changed its grading system, says Superintendent John Daggett. But teachers discuss student performance relative to the state academic standards during parent conferences. In Medford, the job of changing report cards has turned out to be so complicated that no report cards of any kind will be issued in the elementary grades until the year is half over in January. "This change is so big that we realize there are refinements we want to make right away," says Lone Pine Elementary School Principal Richard Miles. "And we didn't want to rush and have to change it again later." Instead of getting the usual printed report cards at the end of the year's first grading period next week, parents and teachers will meet to review overall student performance. Teachers will discuss test scores, assignments, classroom performance and progress toward the benchmarks and the CIM. "Parents will still find out how their kids are doing," Miles promises. Miles and Abraham Lincoln Principal Robert Hartwig are leading the effort to revise the grading system. Once revisions are completed at the elementary level, Medford staff will turn to middle and high school grading formulas. The problem, says Miles, is that Medford's old grading system of A's, B's and C's merely reflects a percentage of correct answers. "It really doesn't show how much the students are learning and how they are progressing toward the CIM. The CIM is driving everything we do now." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA