Standards Based Report Cards

Click here to access  the 2024-2025 Report Card Handbooks

The Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District will continue to utilize a standards-based report card in grades K-5.  Standards are specific learning outcomes that students must meet at certain grade levels by the end of the school year. Throughout the year, students are expected to progress towards meeting these end of year standards.

Standards-based report cards measure how well an individual student is doing in relation to the grade level standards, not to the work of other students. It gives parents a better understanding of their child’s strengths and weaknesses and encourages all students to do their best. Please take a moment and review the important information provided in the parent guides to help  you have a better understanding of the report card. Standards-based grading and reporting provides helpful information for teachers and parents so that they can work together to help children reach their fullest potential.   

Other strengths and benefits of a standards-based grading and reporting system are as follows:

• Student progress is tracked by specific standards/concepts/skills, not entire chapters or units.  Parents and teachers can easily see which areas of the curriculum are strengths and which need more practice or time for mastery.
• Students have the opportunity to show progression and growth over time.
• Students have the opportunity to demonstrate mastery beyond grade level expectations.
• Student progress indicators clearly reflect the student’s knowledge of key skills and concepts without the addition of work behaviors such as participation and homework completion which may skew a child’s grade in a traditional grading system.  While homework completion and practice work will be reported on the report card, they will NOT be part of the progress indicator for any academic standard.  Instead, work habits will be reported in a separate category so that parents can easily differentiate between academic concerns and deficits in work habits. 
• Teachers can assess children both formally and informally to collect data on skill acquisition. This allows students to demonstrate mastery of skills/concepts in a variety of methods rather than simply on a test.
• Learning goals are very clear to parents, teachers, and most importantly, students.  Everyone knows the end of year goals and can work together to help the child reach them.