Letter grades on report cards will soon be a thing of the past as the Wooster City School District phases in a standards-based report card for its elementary school students.

Members of the team charged with implementing the new system briefed the board of education in February. The standards-based report card replaces traditional letter grades of A-F for general curriculum content areas in favor of a rating of one through three on specific skills within each curriculum content area.

The process of moving to a standards-based reporting system began three years ago when the district assembled a team comprised of representatives from each building, circuit area, and intervention area, and charged them with studying the advisability of transitioning to the new system, according to team member Donna Lanyi, a gifted teacher at Parkview Elementary School.

“Our focus was on research-based strategies,” said Lanyi, noting that the team looked at a wide variety of national and statewide resources and worked closely with personnel in each district building to formulate the final draft of the new report cards.

According to Melrose Elementary School intervention specialist Deann Adams, during the current school year the team rolled out the new report cards to 40 percent of the district’s elementary school buildings and sought feedback from parents on their views about the new system.

Adams noted that during the next academic year the new report card system will be implemented for all K-6 students throughout the district.

Melrose sixth-grade teacher Eric Vizzo believes the new system will provide parents with a better understanding of their students’ progress toward the mastery of concepts.

Vizzo noted that a letter grade under the traditional grading system “doesn’t tell us the whole story about the student” because it reflects behaviors such as missed assignments and school absences.

“With the standards-based report card we can look at the individual standards and see how that student is doing specifically on that skill.

“What we’re looking at is a culture change to try to improve our students’ achievement and trying to separate the behaviors from the grades and hone in more on the specific skills and focus on the (student’s) specific strengths and weaknesses,” said Vizzo.

In addition to allowing parents to have a better picture of the skills a student needs to work on at home and not waste time on skills they have already mastered, the new system also “clarifies a need for intervention or enrichment” for teachers in the classroom, Vizzo noted.

Dean Frank, Melrose Elementary School principal, said parents of students taking part in the initial launch of the new program were given the opportunity to participate in a survey. While not as many parents participated as the team would have liked, the initial response to the new system from the parents that did participate was very positive.

The team plans to conduct another parent survey later this year, the data from which will be used to prepare for the full rollout of the program over the summer.

To see copies of the new standards-based report cards and to learn more about the new reporting system, log on the Wooster City School District website at http://www.woostercityschools.org and look for the report card information section under the students and parents tab.