October 6 2017

Dear parents

The past few years the school system has been issuing progress reports to let you know prior to report cards how your child is doing in school. As the school system has had to revamp its reporting system to fall in line with the state standards, this year we are launching a program called Renaissance Star. This will allow us to indicate to you benchmark assessments, which will allow you to see your child’s progress in math and reading and will allow you to understand your child’s progress compared to one’s peers. This test is administered without IEP accommodations, so if your child is in on an IEP, you will receive a separate progress report prepared by your child’s special education teacher in the next few weeks.

This program will allow you to understand what skills your child is proficient in or not proficient in rather than a letter grade. It will allow us to design specific interventions for your child as needed. Last year, as you may remember, due to scheduling changes as a result of winter weather, progress reporting times crept into the report card dates, therefore progress reports were not consistent. After many in the school system reviewed the options we had—we felt it was in your child’s best interest to relay to you how your child is performing on the Massachusetts Standards established by the Department of Education.

Again, this reporting system is designed to help us see where your child stands and help you understand the success or lack of success one is having with their overall success in math and reading.

The first such report will be issued to you on Oct 13th. Subsequent to that date we will review the data and firm up winter and spring dates for progress reports to better inform you as to your child’s performance. Please understand that our attempt here is to more accurately reflect your child’s progress as it relates to the state standards so that you can understand how ready they are for state tests.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact your school’s principal.

Thank you.

Margaret Shepherd
Principal