Report Card Redesign

You might be interested in the Redesign the Report Card contest happening over at Good. You can vote on one of seven entries through Sunday, October 23.

The standard report card is in need of a major redesign. Grant Wiggins once opined that report cards should be more like baseball cards. I agree. Not only has the basic report card format remained more or less unchanged over the last 150 years, it rarely reflects the whole child. While the Roll Your Own Gradebook series here is an attempt to look at a different way to display student data, it is only a first step toward giving teachers control of the data they have and how they share meaning with others. We still have a ways to go to making things pretty.

But click on over and take a look at what has been suggested. Here are the two I liked best.

This submission, by Polly Avignon, uses colour-coding for assignment categories and simple graphics to communicate a variety of data: scores, attendance, observations. (Click here for a larger version.)

I also like this one by Larry Buchanan (larger version here):

Although I personally wouldn't choose to display the class average (or any average at all, for that matter), I do like the area graph with comments. I also like the separation of grades from student behaviors, such as participation and effort.

What do you see that you like?