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"When you give a letter grade, it's a blanket grade for the whole subject," Pence said. "And when you do the standards, it shows the parent the exact areas where the child needs to work. ...

This only works if parents care about how junior is doing in his classes. If they do care, they will pay close attention to the mid-term reports sent home and will apply a boot to the appropriate location as needed. I fail to see anything wrong with a blanket grade for an entire subject.

Exactly. Also, those parents who give a darn have always called (or e-mailed) the teacher, and got the specifics that way. This simply makes more useless paperwork. It will not solve the disconnect between classroom performance evaluation and test scores. This disparity, IMHO, is mainly due to test anxiety, the testing style differing from the teacher's style, generous grading curves from those teachers worried about the kids' self-esteem, differing student motivation between the test and within the classroom, and the fact that ANY time you have two lists of personal statistics there will be SOME disparity inherent in them. Which exactly will disappear with new and more detailed report cards? None.