CINCINNATI — Parents are urging Cincinnati Public Schools to make report cards more transparent at Monday's board meeting, saying current letter grades can be misleading when students are actually performing below grade level.
A parent advocacy group, We Excel Cincinnati, has been pushing for months to allow families to see percentage scores alongside letter grades, calling the change critical for students' academic futures.
Parents Tarena Boyd and Danielle Wagoner are among several working with CPS's Policy and Equity Committee to advocate for the transparency changes.
"My child is bringing home A's and B's, but how do I know what level my child is actually on?" said Boyd, founder and executive director of We Excel Cincinnati.
The group says families across the district report the same problem - students receiving high letter grades despite being grade levels behind in core subjects.
"37% of our children are reading proficiently, and only 28% of our children are doing math proficiently, from (kindergarten) to third grade. And so this is a crisis that no one is talking about. But yet we have an 83% graduation rate," Boyd said.
WATCH: Parents urge Cincinnati Public Schools to show percentage scores on report cards, saying A's and B's can hide when students are grade levels behind
"My daughter goes to Dater Montessori, and so her teachers are really big when communicating with me about her progress, but I don't think that every child receives that," Boyd said during a recent committee meeting.
Wagoner emphasized the need for clearer communication about student progress.
"So to get to the next level, your child needs to do X, Y, and Z, just something. It's just the simple across the board, which really should be something that we already should be doing," said Wagoner, We Excel Cincinnati's event manager.
CPS Board Member Ben Lindy introduced the resolution for more transparency after noticing gaps in academic data reporting.
"What I saw in this data was that it really depends on the school, but at least in some schools, it's not at all uncommon for a student to bring home an A on their report card for the semester, but actually have a reading level or a math level that is significantly below grade level," Lindy said.
Boyd says the Policy Committee has already unanimously recommended the change after months of review.
"We should make it as easy as possible for parents to know how the kids are doing in reading and how they're doing in math," Lindy said.
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