If a second-grader gets B's and C's in math and reading, what does she know? What does she still need to learn?

Canyons School District is revamping its elementary school report cards to give parents more specific information about their students' progress. The district is one of the first in Utah to look at lining up report cards with the Common Core State Standards, new academic standards adopted by most states, including Utah.

Canyons is unsure when the report card will be adopted, but it could be as early as this fall. K-6 students would receive marks not simply for reading or arithmetic but for "mastery" of dozens of specific goals.

Already, elementary students in Canyons, along with those in most of Utah's 10 largest school districts, do not receive traditional letter grades. So-called standards-based report cards are becoming increasingly popular. They break down subjects into many more narrowly defined standards or objectives, such as understanding the equal sign or the concept of a ratio.

"It's more informative to parents and students and everybody," said Robert Marzano, a leading education researcher and chief executive officer of Marzano Research Laboratory in Englewood, Colo. "What I've seen over the last two to three years is a real increase in going from a traditional, overall letter grade to a more specific, standards-based system."

Traditional grades average a range of scores from homework and exams. Critics say those composite grades can hide what a student doesn't know — for example, a student does unrelated extra-credit work to make up a poor test score. The system also can penalize a student who takes longer to learn a concept. He may earn low scores on initial assignments, but ultimately ace the final exam only to get an averaged "C" grade.

But Canyons' standards-based report cards have "drifted" from really measuring students' knowledge of state standards, said Jeff Nalwalker, principal of Midvalley Elementary. Students now receive grades of 1 through 4 in specific subject areas, but parents often interpret those as A, B, C, D. And the grading can be subjective.

"You could have the same student in a class with three different teachers and each teacher would give that student a different grade. It lacks consistency," said Nalwalker, who is on a district committee that is developing new report cards.

The new report cards would rely strictly on assessments to measure whether students have learned key objectives, Nalwalker said. There still would be homework, quizzes and in-class assignments, but those would receive separate marks as part of the "learning process." Students also would receive scores for growth throughout the year.

The committee plans to share a draft report card with the Canyons Board of Education before unveiling it to teachers and parents. For now, a time line has not been set.

Already, rumblings about the changes have sparked concerns.

Debora Donahue, who has a fifth-grader at Willow Springs Elementary in Draper, said in an interview that she dislikes that the new report cards potentially could reduce grades to a two-tier system: mastered or not-yet-mastered. (The committee also is considering whether to add a third category for "partial mastery.")

She sees a two-tier approach as a "pass-or-fail" system that would give no incentive to students to do above-average work.

"Children need to learn that hard work is rewarded," she wrote in a recent letter to the editor published in The Salt Lake Tribune. "Too often we reward everyone with a trophy just for 'participating' in an event because we don't want to make anyone feel bad about themselves. The United States is losing its competitive advantage through this mind-set of complacency."

Julie Clawson, who has two daughters at Oakdale Elementary in Cottonwood Heights, said she would like to learn more about the new report card. But she too dislikes the idea of binary grades.

"I get a report card that is glowing [for both my students]. If they were struggling, I would want to see more than 'she masters it' or 'she doesn't master it.' "

Amber Roderick-Landward, who leads the report-card committee as Canyons' director of evidence-based learning in elementary schools, said the new report cards aim to give parents more — not less — information about their students' performance. She also said pass-fail systems use traditional composite grades, averaging work for a term and then giving all A, B, C and D students a "pass."

"The direction that we're heading is actually to increase our competitive advantage by really focusing on the skills necessary to complete each grade level," Roderick-Landward said. "If you haven't mastered them, we're going to do everything we can to increase your skills around that area, rather than say 'You've passed or failed and we're moving on.' "

Canyons also is looking at whether to extend standards-based report cards into middle schools in fall 2013, said Mary Bailey, district director of secondary education. That's when middle schools will be reconfigured to be grades 6, 7 and 8 with grades 9-12 in high schools.

But, she said, standards-based report cards will not be coming to high schools. There, students need traditional letter grades and a grade-point average to apply for college.

rwinters@sltrib.com —

Canyons to align grades with Common Core

Canyons is working on a new elementary school report card for next year that would measure students' mastery of math and language arts objectives in the new Common Core State Standards.

Here's a sample of some "measure and data" objectives for first-grade math:

Measure lengths indirectly and by repeating length units

Tell and write time

Represent and interpret data