Report Cards

I believe that report cards are very important for all students from Pre-K through Senior year of high school. Report cards show students and parents how well they are doing in school and it also shows them what they need to work on. I think that report cards should be personal, meaning that if a student needs help in an area be it academic or social teachers can offer comments or advice to help said student. The same goes for a student who is doing well school. Report cards are also a very good for assessment for not only the student but also the teacher. In most cases principals or administrators do not see actual graded classwork, homework, tests/quizzes, papers,and projects individually, the only thing they see is the report card. They do not see how a teacher grades or how the students respond to and understand what the teacher is actually teaching until they see report cards. For example, if you have two second grade classes and they are both doing the same thing at the same time academically and the students are all on the average second grade level you expect the grades to be similar between the two classes, but what if one class did significantly better than the other? Sure there can be many factors into this scenario, but if it is progressive and continues for awhile it is possible that it is the teacher not the students.
One thing that I think is important for teachers to do on report cards is to acknowledge small change either good or bad. If a students Math grade goes from a C to a C+ that is a big deal to a student it is something worth celebrating, but most teachers and a lot of soon to be teachers do not see that as a big deal because it is still a C and not an A and in reality an A is the only thing that is worth being happy for. It also works if a student has a grade that goes down, obviously you cannot go insanely crazy if their grade goes from an A+ to an A, but you can offer some advice and tell them where they started to "slip" and what to do next time.
I also think that on report card day each student should get two report cards one showing academic grades and the other showing social grades, sometimes the reason why a child does not do so well in school is because they do not have many friends or because they are shy and do not like to speak out in class. A student who is not doing well socially and academically may not necessarily be a special needs student he/she may be a student who is to mature to be in the grade that they are in. I think that if schools used a social report card they would be more aware of what goes on in and out of their classroom. It would show them that grades are not always how smart a particular student is, but also how said student is viewed by their peers. I think that teachers and principals sometimes overlook the impact that family and friends and classmates that are not exactly friends have on a the student.
All in all report cards are great, but they do need a little revamping to include all factors of a child's day at school