According to the reports and polls released by the Gallup and the non-profit Learning Heroes on Wednesday, majority of parents believe that their children are preforming as per the grade. For most of the parents, Report cards are considered to be the best source to know and understand the level and success rate of their children but relying completely and blindly on these papers would be a mistake, where the parents can miss the zoomed out picture of the progress journey.
As per the survey, in states, nearly around 88% parents believe that their child is on grade level in reading and 89% when it comes to math but schools in contrast claim that half of all the students are lagging behind in at least one subject. The blame cannot be put solely onto the parents as they believe what is being shown to them and report cards don’t reveal the academic actuality of the child. Parents only end up observing and concluding based on how many A’s or C’s are there on the card, there is no explanation or some other standards to know the real picture. Not only the students and parents are getting assured of what isn’t there on ground but the misleading grade cards are also restricting to get a proper help from the expert and in the end will affect the future choices and interests.
The answer to the question that why grades aren’t reliable is that the standards can be adjusted and so can be the level of checking and distributing the grades to the students. In a comparative analysis, the reports have highlighted the jump in the grades during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the teachers were asked to observe leniency while distributing the grades, and this is being continued with to mask up the gaps of learning and exhibiting 100% success rate on papers for both teachers/institutions and students.
