Report Cards & Progress Reports in BUSD

Why do progress reports have grade ranges instead of precise grades?

Jan 1999

Does anyone know why the school progress reports do not have "whole" grades, i.e., the grades are AB or CD, etc. This makes it very difficult to get a true feel for how my kids are doing in school.

When teachers agreed to change progress reports from Pass/Fail only to ones providing more detail, they were specifically guaranteed that this would not require them to calculate grades twice as many times a year. Several options were discussed. It was finally agreed that "range grades" would provide more information to parents without seriously increasing the workload for teachers -- thus the AB, BC, CD, DF options. Many teachers (including me) also provide students detailed periodic progress reports run on their computers (providing paper and ink is one thing BSEP funds do). However, these are not required. The teachers who provide these tend to be ones who do their grades by computer because this is a built-in function of grading programs.
Judith (BHS teacher)

Reply to Progress Reports: This grade is a "This is more or less where your child is right now" grade. Making exact grades for all the students is very time consuming, so this grade is more general than the marking period grades, every 9 weeks.
Joan (parent and teacher in Berkeley schools)