On Maryland report cards, ‘P’ is for perplexing
The report cards in Maryland’s biggest school system left parents puzzled. They showed a wide range of elementary school subjects, but the same grade popped up again and again: the perplexing letter “P,” for proficient.
It was too vague for many parents, almost inscrutable. One mother in suburban Montgomery County counted 80 of them on a fourth-quarter report card with a total of 84 grades. A father said his children stopped paying attention to grading reports altogether, so unvaried were the marks that filled them.
“The all-inclusive P,” said Cynthia Simonson, a Derwood parent and longtime PTA leader who advocated for change.
As a new school year begins, the Ps of yore are largely gone. The Montgomery system, outside Washington, D.C., has reverted to grades such as A, B and C for its second- to fifth-graders. Ps were purged for all but those in kindergarten and first grade.
School district officials say they decided on the change after a long tryout failed to resolve complaints and glitches with the grading system, which included four main marks: ES (exceptional), P (proficient), I (in progress) and N (not-yet-making progress).
The top grade of ES was not well understood or used consistently and some schools did not use it at all, said Niki Hazel, director of elementary curriculum and districtwide programs in Montgomery County.
Some parents joked that grades of ES were like unicorns: You heard they existed, but you never saw one. Some said they only saw them in P.E., art or music classes.
Some families said under the P system — rolled out in phases and first used districtwide through fifth grade in the 2013-14 school year — they did not know until middle school, when traditional grades were used, that their children were straight-A achievers or had been lagging all along.
Many said Ps appeared to mean anything from a low C through an A, so it was hard to spot student strengths, weaknesses and progress — and some kids lost motivation.