Administrators with the Griffin-Spalding County School System (GSCS) have taken the first step in implementing a standards-based report card for fourth- and fifth-graders by requesting a waiver of grading policy from the State Board.

What the standards-based report card does is eliminate the use of letter grades ” A, B, C, D and F ” as well as number grades.

The school system has been implementing standards-based report cards for the past four years for kindergarten through third grade, with Anne Street Elementary School and Atkinson Elementary School piloting standards-based report cards for fourth-graders, said GSCS Assistant Superintendent for Instruction Denise Burrell.

“We were one of the first school systems to implement standards-based report cards, but not the first to go to the grades four and five standards-based report cards,” Burrell said. “Right now, we love it.”

With standards-based report cards, report cards will have corresponding marks of “1,” “2” or “3” for specific standards.

A “1” signifies that a student did not meet the standard; a “2” signifies that the student met the standard; and a “3” signifies that the student not only met the standard, but exceeded it.

“It’s not watering down the curriculum,” Burrell said. “The curriculum is the curriculum. Students can come in, master something and move on to something else.”

According to a report presented to the Griffin-Spalding County Board of Education, teachers and principals report knowing more about their students’ progress because of the detail in the standards-based report cards and parents get a more in-depth picture of how their child is performing in relation to the Georgia Performance Standards.

If the State Board approves the waiver, implementation will begin in the 2009-2010 school year.