Family Engagement: Reporting Student Progress

Report Card Guides Available: 

Report Card Guide for Elementary Families
(Elementary Guide in Spanish)

Report Card Guide for Middle School Families
(Middle School Guide in Spanish)

Family Engagement

Family engagement is a key strategy of the Bellingham Promise because the research is clear. Your involvement in your child’s education matters. Students whose families are engaged in their school lives attend class more regularly, achieve at higher levels, and generally have better behavior both at home and at school.

What is family engagement? It is a term for the ongoing reciprocal partnership between families and educators that supports student achievement. A quality approach to family engagement encourages and supports two-way communication about student progress and performance to build a strong home-to-school connection.

Bellingham Public Schools has adopted a tiered approach to elementary and middle school family engagement, where a baseline of ongoing communication about student performance is shared with all families and more intensive communication strategies are put into place for students and families as needed.

Standards-Based Reporting

Bellingham’s elementary and middle schools have adopted a Standards-Based approach to reporting student progress. Since this is the first year of our middle schools’ transition to Standards-Based Reporting, we have added a page for Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) that will be updated as needed.

2012-13:   New Elementary and Middle School Report Cards

Elementary and middle school report cards will go home with students on February 12, 2013, and again in June.  For a preview of the new elementary report card for 1st and 2nd grades click here.  To view the new report card for 3rd-5th grades, click here.

New Student Information System and Family Access

Bellingham Public Schools are also using a new student information system this year called Skyward to report student progress. This technology improves our staff’s ability to manage data, monitor student progress and communicate important information with students and families. The new system replaces StudentConnect and ParentConnect.  All district families have received receive log-ins and passwords for accessing the web-based Skyward Family Access. If you do not have your login information, please contact your child’s school.