Out of curiosity, with today’s technology making it easy for students to duplicate hard copy report cards right down to the school’s logo, do school report cards still look the same as they did when I was a kid (folded cardboard with grids for grades and a space for parental signatures) or have they gotten fancier?
My wife’s school does. They get mailed directly to the parents. They aren’t the classic cardstock kind for ye olden days, though. Just a computer-generated report.
Yes. We get a sheet of paper instead of an actual card in my high school, although, in my junior high school, folded blue cards were used.
…and at school, they’re given to the students to take to their parents. On occasion, if a student is doing poorly, a letter will be sent home.
The school I worked at was still using triplicate carbon copies requiring a signature, regardless, and returned to the teacher. Ditto on the letters sent to those doing poorly or those who, usually for that reason, you assumed had mastered the fine art of forgery.
My kid’s report card is decidedly low-tech: it’s a sheet of carbonless paper which has been printed off a dot-matrix printer. Each class, or sometimes each subject area within a class, is given an incomprehensible letter grade (no A,B,C…it’s bad for self-esteem. Now it’s something like Exceeds grade standards, Is working on meeting grade standards or Your kid is a Moron.) and also some random numbers. These number correlate to various “comments” the teacher can choose from, like “Comes to class prepared.” “Does not complete homework.” (Often, these completely contradictory comments are both chosen…for the same class, by the same teacher. :rolleyes: ) “Makes good use of student time” (WTF does that even mean?) and about two dozen other innanities.
Some other classes’ grades are handwritten on carbonless paper forms, like music and art. There are at least three sheets of paper shoved into the little envelope he brings home. The **envelope **must be signed and returned to the school.
Basically, if he came home with a crisp, professional looking document which was coherent, easy-to-read and made sense, I’d know he was a lying little bastard.
Oh, Lord!!! have they changed.
Our elementary school system issues two kinds of report cards for grades 3, 4, & 5. One is technically called a “Progress Report”. Instead of typical grades, the student is given scores of S (Satisfactory) and U (Unsatisfactory), and some other letters I don’t remember. (I think there is E for Excellent, for example, but I may be remembering Harry Potter instead. Nonetheless, Harry Potter’s OWL scores didn’t seem unusual to me after dealing with my son’s “Progress Reports.”) This is reported on a LARGE page that is twice the size of standard letter paper, with places for checkmarks and comments on all of the skills a child at that point in their education should have “acquired.” (For Primary grades K, 1, and 2, they only receive Progress Reports, without any grades.)
They also get actual “Grade Reports”, with the standard A, B, C, D and F grades. (I do remember that there was a grade of E when I was growing up, but I guess it got too confusing with "E"xcellent, so it has disappeared by the wayside.) However, I don’t think the grades themselves mean a whole lot. Our son, for example, got failing grades in reading and math, due primarily to the fact that he still doesn’t seem to understand that he has to turn in homework*, but since he got S’s in those subjects on his last Progress Report, they passed him onto the next grade. These grade reports are issued on the 21st century equivalent of carbon forms (I still don’t know what they are officially called–the ones that transfer based on pressure), so that all grades received for each grading period, along with any teacher notes on that particular grade report, to date are visible on each form sent home to the student. Both the Grade Report and the Progress Report come home in an envelope that must be signed by the parent to show that the parent received the Report, and the envelope is re-used until the end of the school year.
Our daughter was in Middle School for the last three years (started High School today!), and she only received a typical Grade Report with A, B, C, D, F grades (for her, only A’s and B’s have actually been recorded, but I’m assuming the schools still use the other three grades). She brought home all of her Grade Reports herself, except those issued at the end of the year, when they are mailed. However, the school system includes Grade Report dates on the school calendar, so that parents are informed about when they are sent home, and two copies are normally sent home–one for the parents to keep, and another copy to be signed and sent back to the school.
*Before readers get hot and riled about this, please let me point out that I am a teacher by profession as well. Both Mr. Kiminy and I have tried to stress to both our children that homework is important, and that we expect them to do all work to the best of their ability. However, we are still trying to overcome the problem of making sure that teachers tell us what homework Son is expected to do, so that we can make sure he does it in a timely fashion. The elementary schools here are still in the pre-computer age, and none of his teachers seem to understand how to post assignments to the school’s website, or to communicate via e-mail. They also fail to use 20th century technology of simply making sure that all assignments are written in his school-issued agenda. Son, on the other hand, refuses to admit to any homework that we don’t actually have knowledge of, and he often “forgets” to write down homework assignments in his agenda.
You, too, huh? Glad to hear we’re not the only “horrible parents” out there. When they issue you your “teacher mind-reading ray”, would you pass it along to the WhyFamily, because WhyKid plays exactly the same mind games here. And somehow it’s all my fault when his homework isn’t completed. His asshat of a teacher last year actually refused to even look at and initial his assignment book to make sure he had all his assignments written down - and that’s in his stinking IEP!!! *Then * she inflated his grades the second term “to increase his self-esteem and motivation”, and still she was somehow shocked when I was shocked when he nearly failed the final term! It is to grr. [/homework hijack]
I’m at a different school this year than last year, so I’m not entirely sure about this school. I think they e-mail grades home (and since students are from all over the state of Indiana, they kind of have to).
My former school didn’t do anything of the sort. They just gave hard copy report cards to the students to do with what they wish.
At my former school we had the typical A, B, C, D, F grades. At this school he have A, B, C and D* (pronounced dee star). D* is a failing grade. It is there so if a student goes back to his home school, the home school can choose whether to take that as a D or an F.
At the school I teach at, the grade reports that are sent home are apparently rather easy to forge. One of my very-best, top of the class, straight-A students decided to pull a prank on her parents. She scanned the report into her computer and changed several of her “A” grades to "D"s and "F"s. The fake print out was completely indistiguishable from a real one: same paper quality, same barely legible text, and she even added the smudges of ink that result when one pulls the report out of the carbonpaper envelope forms the reports are printed on. Her parents freaked when they saw the fake report and wouldn’t believe her that it was fake until she produced the real paper. Even then, they called the school to confirm what her real grades were. (talk about overbearing parents :rolleyes: … the student confessed to me that she did it to make a point about how overly uptight they were about her grades. )
At the high school at which I work, the report cards are computer printed on special paper that has anti-photocopy features (the word “copy” magically appears.) In previous years, some of the teachers have made this feature irrelevant by hand-writing grade changes on the card. :smack:
There is a line for parent signature and the signed report cards must be returned within one week but no one looks at the signatures too closely. It wouldn’t be safe.
MilliCal, now going into thrird grade, still gets a report card. Thery give it to her in an envelope that she decorates herself. Her decorations are a hoot:
1.) We know what this one was because she labekled it herself: People in a Retirement Home Watching Frankenstein. And that’s exactly what she drew – old people sitting around a TV set watching the old Colin Clive/Boris Karloff Frankenstein. I have no idea where the inspiration for this came from.
2.) A cartoon of a little monster in bed, talking to her Mommy Monster.
Little Monster: "Mommy, are there humans under my bed?"
Mommy Monster: "No, they're just imaginary."They were computer generated during my entire time in high school, and I left there in 1990. For semester report cards, they would be mailed home rather than entrusted with us. Don’t much see the point, though – am I a fluke of all of society that I checked the mail myself a good number of days?