If you’re like us, we like to have behavior information come home from school. The reason for this is so the kids know that if you misbehave in school there are consequences at home. Big surprise, right? For some reason, LAUSD seems to have imposed draconian restrictions on the behavior agencies communicating with parents. We’re not sure why they would want to restrict information to parents who actually want to know what’s going on and actively parent their children. For that answer, you’ll have to ask them. Anyway, Kennedy’s teacher had used her regular form that broke the day down by subject with a 4-point scale for several categories. The problem was, by the teacher’s own admission, the rating system was completely subjective. Sure, you know if Kennedy gets a 4 that’s good and if she gets a 1, that’s bad. Got it, no problem there. But what about 3 or a 2? What do they mean? Sure a 2 is worse than a 3, but by how much? Obviously, if she gets a 3 she had a better day than if she had gotten a 2, but again, how much better? Did she punch one person as opposed to two, or did she take longer to quiet down in the afternoon than she did in the morning? Or was the teacher simply having a bad day and graded her a little harder than she did yesterday? We’ve seen that, too. If you don’t define it, what makes a 3 on some days may be 2 on others or even a 1 if you’re having an exceptionally bad day. This is why things need to be defined before you can implement a behavior plan.
We’ve been talking with our BID, Yagnesh Vadgama, and he brilliantly came up with these forms.
Yes, we have usurped and stolen these forms to share with you – with his permission! The behavior form is pretty similar to what the teacher had. The 2nd and 3rd pages are where the magic comes in. The scoring rubric clearly defines what a 4, 3, 2, and 1 score entails. The third page defines “behavior” in terms of the classroom.
If you have a behavior plan in place or if you need to implement one, make sure that they give you something like this so they, you and your child understand what it means. And honestly, now that we have actual solid criteria on what’s what, her reports have been getting better! It’s simple, she understands it, and so do we.
Having open communication between school and home is vital to our children’s success, and in this case, also with the agency. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
