|
|
 |
Ask the Superintendent - Oct. 25, 2006
After reading my last two articles describing life in a “galaxy far far away” and from a “time long long ago” Jane Unhjem, our Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum,
asked to be a guest columnist this week. I was only too happy to oblige; her comments
follow:
In the last two “Ask the Superintendent” columns, Roy Reese took a leisurely stroll down memory lane to reminisce about his first days of school as a student in the 1940’s and as a teacher in the 1960’s. If you read those two columns, you probably remarked to yourself, “My, how things have changed!”
Yes, many things have changed over the past 60 years in the way we do business in education, and some of those things are not readily apparent because, behind the scenes our schools are using many forms of technology to get things done faster and more efficiently.
A good example of “how things have changed” is the use of technology to produce report cards for all of our students. If you have a youngster at C. J. Hooker Middle School or Goshen High School, you have become accustomed to receiving quarterly report cards through the mail. These report cards start out at the middle school and high school by having individual teachers use a computer to enter a grade for each of their students into InteGradePro, which is an electronic grading program. As you know, at the secondary level, all students have as many teachers as they have subjects, and somehow all the grades for all the subject areas for each student come together on a single report card. This “miracle of technology” is possible because of another software program, SASI, which contains basic information about all of our students (name, address, schedule of classes, and so on). InteGradePro and SASI “talk” to each other to generate a single paper report card that includes grades and comments from each teacher who works with an individual student. Amazing!!
Soon, our elementary students and their parents will benefit from similar technology that allows teachers to create individual report cards electronically. Last year, a committee of elementary teachers and administrators worked on revising the report cards for grades K through 5. A major goal of the committee was to move away from “carbonless” paper report cards (the kind that required teachers to PRESS REALLY HARD as they record grades or comments so that their writing shows up on the fifth copy!) towards an electronic version that would be both teacher-friendly and parent-friendly.
The recommendations of that committee will soon become a reality, with several major changes in the way report cards are prepared, produced, and distributed to parents:
Like their colleagues in grades 6 through 12, teachers in grades K through 5 will enter report card grades and comments for each student into a web-based computer program. All of our K-5 teachers have just completed training with this new software, and they found it very user-friendly, with many intuitive and time-saving features.
Like the grading software used in grades 6 through 12, the new elementary report card software will “talk” to SASI to generate a report card that will include grades and comments from several teachers: the classroom teacher, as well as the special area teachers (art, computer, library, music, and physical education).
As before, parents will receive a “paper” copy of the report card at a parent-teacher conference during the month of November. A second report card will be shared with parents at an additional parent-teacher conference during the last week of February or the first week of March. At the end of June, a third and final report card will go home with each K-5 student. Although this is a reduction in the number of elementary report cards (from four to three), the additional parent conference at the end of February will provide parents and teachers another opportunity to discuss in detail individual student progress.
One more change that may take a bit of getting-used-to is the use of standards-based grading on the elementary report cards. Instead of letter grades (A, B, C, D, F) or progress grades (O=outstanding, S=satisfactory, U=unsatisfactory), parents will see number grades of 4, 3, 2, and 1. This will align our teachers’ grading practices with those of the New York State Education Department, which uses the 4-3-2-1 system to report individual results of the standardized tests in grades 3 through 8. Parents will get further explanation about this change during the parent-teacher conference in November.
Once our K-5 teachers get familiar with the new software, we believe the change from paper-and-pencil report cards to the electronic version will allow teachers to spend more time thinking about teaching and learning, and less time PRESSING REALLY HARD on report cards. I think that is an advantage that Roy’s kindergarten teacher would appreciate!
Jane Unhjem
Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum
|
|
|
