Is Your Child’s Report Card “O/C”?

I'm only in my 40's. So don't take this as the "old man get off my lawn speech". But I miss the days when parents could understand a report card. A, B, C, D and F made sense. My son just got his 2nd marking period report card, and the grade possibilities are as follows: O/C, IS, Dev, and Ach.

Can we add WTF?

O/C as it turns out means "of concern" a.k.a. 'your child is experiencing difficulty in this area at this time'. One can only assume this would have been an F or a D in the good old days.

Then there's IS, or 'your child is in the first stages of development'.

Next we have Dev, 'your child is building knowledge and skills at this time'.

Finally, Ach, or 'achieving', 'your child consistently demonstrates solid performance and understanding that meets grade level expectations at this time.

Luckily I know my child is doing okay because he got all Dev's and Ach's, but how good? Look at Dev, I suppose short for developing, your child is building knowledge and skills at this time. Oooookay, but is it on an average level which would have been your old fashioned C, or does it it mean my child is doing really well but not perfect, which might be a B+? "IS", 'your child is in the first stages of development'. Well, whoopety-doo, great, but what does that MEAN? Is he behind his peers? Ahead of his peers? On par with? Today's report cards don't give parents an objective guideline of where they rank, and isn't that ultimately what grades are supposed to do? It's as if some politically correct thinker at some point decided parents couldn't handle knowing their child was way too far behind in math so we'll sugar coat everything. It's the whole "everybody-gets-a-ribbon" mentality which I hate about this country. Guess what kids, real world time, everybody DOESN'T get a ribbon, and if you want a ribbon, you must earn it, and if your parents are to HELP you earn it, perhaps they should have a clearer report card to know where you stand.

Think about the classic A, B, C, D and F. You couldn't ask for better than an A. Now a B, depending on the kid, told you either the kid was easily getting B's therefore could focus more and work harder and achieve perfection, or it might mean the kid works as hard as he possibly can but isn't able to crack out of the better-than-average but just not quite an A student realm, which might be fine for that child. C was average, which no parent is ever happy with. D was buckle down time, figure out the problem, kid's got major work ahead of him. It was a clear, more helpful objective standard of assessment. Today's report cards seem to talk around everything.

Today we even have more precise areas of report cards with different grades in those sections. For example, in the "progress key" for academic performance level for Reading/Writing we have: pre-literate (doesn't that just mean illiterate?), pre-emergent, emergent, early developing, developing, beginning, and finally expanding.

Apparently you want to be expanding.
And how is beginning different than developing?

Once again, when it comes to New Jersey report cards, I offer my final grade of WTF?