Getting good grades is as easy as S-M-P

Academic go-getters used to grub to get all A's -- and scheming slackers could doctor a report card with a single stroke, changing a minus to a plus, or a D to a B.

Today, with many area elementary schools ditching traditional letter grades for more open-ended phrases such as ''meets expectations" or ''progressing," slackers are finding it hard to white-out out a poor performance -- and parents are left trying to navigate time-consuming pages of numbers and categories keyed to state academic standards.

Some praise the new system for giving them a better idea of how their children are faring in the classroom. But others see the ratings as new-age impostors, and struggle to sift through the educational jargon and pin down how their children stack up.

Many area school districts -- Bridgewater-Raynham, Foxborough, Middleborough, Stoughton, and Westwood, to name a few -- have adopted the new grading system. More schools are likely to follow. It might not be long, educators say, until grade-schoolers no longer receive letter grades at all.

In Massachusetts, where many parents have both a competitive streak and a sharp interest in education, with an eye fixed on college admissions from an early age, the change is unsettling. It makes it harder to casually mention how well your eldest is doing in school, too. ''Above grade level" or ''exceeding standards" just doesn't have the same ring as ''straight-A's."

''A lot of parents like the [letter] grade system because it's what we grew up with," said Michele McCarthy, principal at the Mabelle Burrell Elementary School in Foxborough, which reworked its standards-based report cards this year. ''But now they're happy to see the M's [meets expectations]."

The shift toward new report cards has accelerated as schools push for higher standards and tailor teaching to state guidelines. It's part of the same accountability movement that gave rise to MCAS testing and the No Child Left Behind law.

The new report cards represent a fundamental shift. Students' marks no longer represent how they fared overall on tests, quizzes, and homework assignments during the semester. Instead, they show how well students have learned specific building block skills -- fractions, vocabulary, sentence structure -- as measured against the state yardstick.

For example, Middleborough, which sent home new standards-based report cards in December, judges fourth-graders' math performance in 14 areas, including measurement, time, graphing, and fractions. Foxborough fourth-graders receive 17 different ratings in reading and writing. Westwood fifth-graders are evaluated in 22 categories in math and language arts.

''The way we teach doesn't match the 'A, B, and C's' anymore," said Debra Spinelli, assistant superintendent in Stoughton schools, which last school year shifted to standards-based report cards for kindergarten through Grade 5. ''Old report cards judged students against student. These judge them solely against the standards."

The new system has taken a strong hold among elementary schools, but has not caught on in middle and high schools, where traditional grades are seen as important for motivation and college admissions. Schools are keenly aware that parents raised on letter grades tend to grumble over the new approach, and have gone out of their way to smooth the transition. Many have sent lengthy letters home, held special parent workshops and televised them on cable, and posted detailed manuals on school websites.

Middleborough, for example, posted a 25-slide PowerPoint presentation along with a glossary defining unwieldy educational terms such as ''letter cluster," ''scaffolding," and ''word structure cues." Foxborough schools in October sent parents preview copies of the new report card to help prepare them for the change.

''There's a lot of consternation at first, because parents want grades to look like the grades they got growing up," said Barry Rabinovitch, assistant superintendent in Wareham, which moved three years ago to standards-based report cards up to fifth grade. But teachers say the confusion is usually short-lived, and parents come to appreciate the new report cards for providing more information.

Educators note the new format can pinpoint weaknesses that a single high mark would have overshadowed. And by reporting progress rather than overall performance, the new system more accurately pegs students who may struggle to learn a topic at first but master it by term's end.

''Giving an A, B, or C, what does that mean?" asked Diane Bemis, assistant superintendent for the Bridgewater-Raynham schools, which now have standards-based report cards for grades 1 and 2 and plan to expand them to grades 3 and 4. ''But with standards, you can tell parents exactly what their children can and can't do."

Still, many parents give the system mixed marks. The new categories and skill lists are confusing and slippery, some parents say. And there's almost too much information -- they break down students' performance into such small subgroups that it's hard to quantify how students are doing overall. Letter grades were reassuringly familiar -- you knew where your child stood.

''Everyone knows an A is good," said Deborah Peeples, School Committee chairwoman in Shrewsbury, which introduced standards-based report cards for grades 5 and 6 this school year. ''But it's hard to know if ''meeting standards" is quite as good. It's going to take some time for parents to adjust."

Daniel Koretz, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who studies educational testing and achievement, said standards grading can be useful by isolating what students need work on. But he says educators need to realize that subjectivity and comparing students with each other is inevitable, no matter how well drawn the standards and categories.

''It's a myth in education that once we use these nifty labels, we know exactly what they mean," he said. ''And parents need to know whether their students are cutting it or not, so some amount of comparative information is useful."

All those categories and standards add up to longer hours for teachers, but administrators say it's time well spent because it forces teachers to keep close tabs on how students are doing in a variety of areas.

Teachers stress that the new ratings do not correspond at all to letter grades, but parents and students inevitably make the leap.

Karen Einstein, a Middleborough parent who helped the schools devise their new report cards, said it wasn't long before her daughter was trying to translate her quiz scores into the new number grades. That's doubly true for parents, who want to know where their children stand in the pecking order no matter what the system, teachers say.

But educators insist the new system is worth the adjustment required. ''As parents we pat ourselves on the back if our child got a bunch of A's," said Avalin Green, director of curriculum, instruction, and professional development for the Westwood schools, which last year abandoned letter grades for elementary school students in favor of a 1-4 scale. ''But what does that really tell us about what they have learned?"

Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com.