Thursday evening I drove past Politics and Prose (one of our school partners!) and saw the long line for an author event with Chelsea Clinton. Luckily for a number of Deal students, Ms. Clinton had already visited our auditorium that morning and shared her story with us. About a third of our students were able to participate across all grades. Ms. Clinton graciously answered our students' many questions, interjecting "Oh, Gosh!" at the many, many hands raised. I am thankful that our students have opportunities like this. Ms. Clinton shared her interest in raising student awareness around service, especially for students in the middle grades. We thank the family that helped bring her here and will surely look for more opportunities for all of our students.

It is likely that the author event was overshadowed by the arrival of student Edline reports on Thursday and Friday. This first shared Edline report is always a challenge. It is the first formal information sent home about student progress in the year. DCPS and city law require that at each mid-advisory (about four weeks into the advisory) a note go home to parents indicating whether their student is failing any classes. No student can be said to be "failing" a class that has just started; this defies logic. In the first weeks of school it is not possible to know whether a student will not pass a class. One can know, however, if there is any work missing or if there are any trends in performance or attendance that should be noted. These are early days.

Our new reporting system provides a letter grade for each class on this report. (This year's 7th grade parents may recall that last year in 6th grade no letter grade was provided in mid-advisory reports.) This approach aligned with the IB philosophy that students are in progress towards mastery and have a number of formative/feedback opportunities before each summative assessment. With the DCPS grading system just adopted, however, we are expected to report an actual number and letter grade, even though we are still operating under the formative/summative structure. This first mid-advisory report has mostly homework and classwork assignments scored, with very few formative or summatives. Since formatives and summatives comprise 85 percent of each advisory grade, the student grades are comprised mostly of smaller assignments and are not generally indicative of overall progress. It is unlikely that in these early weeks students are at a place where large units of study are wrapping up (although it is happening in some cases).

Looking at this early Edline report, my recommendation is that families discuss the printout with an eye towards missed work and obvious weaknesses in performance. For example, if a student is consistently not turning in homework or has low results on classwork, that is a good place to start the conversation. Be sure that if you see low results on a summative that you encourage your child to begin the process with their teacher to address this through a reteaching cycle. As we move towards the first advisory reports, follow the pattern of checking on missed work and critical assignments. There is often a tight timeline for work that can be made up. Teachers are providing a number of different opportunities for this, but students may need to practice their self-advocacy skills in some cases.

Finally, if you just aren't sure what you are seeing and perhaps your child is also a bit confused, feel free to check in with the teacher or team to clarify. We report performance - even at this early stage - so that you can be informed and we can work together.