A new system for reporting student progress in kindergarten was introduced during the 2018-2019 school year. Seneca Valley’s new reporting system will benefit students, teachers, and parents/guardians. Overall, this system is designed to better inform parents/guardians of their child’s progress toward specific learning goals.
Seneca Valley’s Report of Student Progress (RoSP) includes more information about student learning and reports on how each student is progressing toward grade level standards. The academic standards provide a logical sequencing of learning and support the overall goal of student proficiency.
The district’s RoSP is based on the PA Core standards, current research, and effective instructional strategies. Standards-based grading includes information about student understanding and reports on how the student is progressing toward grade level goals, or essential standards. Essential standards are the most important learning targets of the PA Core Standards and district curriculum. These select standards contain key concepts that will be used in multiple disciplines and content areas. The RoSP helps teachers and students to focus on student achievement and growth by collecting and analyzing evidence of student learning to assess the student’s learning specific to each standard.
The RoSP measures student understanding over time and separates academic performance from work habits and behaviors. Therefore, student understanding is demonstrated through proficiency scales, which articulate learning progressions for each essential standard. Learning progressions are beneficial because they describe how student understanding of a topic develops over time. The proficiency scales along with a consistent grading language for all subjects in all grades represent a student’s progression on the learning continuum (Beginning, Progressing, Meeting, Exceeding). Therefore, student progress on each standard is specific and based on learning.
The teacher will continuously assess each student based on his or her mastery of grade level essential standards. The RoSP focuses on growth over time, understanding and mastery of specific grade level skills. Teachers will communicate as necessary if they have concerns regarding student progress and proficiency of grade level essential standards. Please remember that students may not be able to master the entire standard until the third trimester, as some standards have multiple components. Our reporting of student progress, as described above, will occur on a trimester basis.