Student Assessment

the fall and spring, as well as maintain ongoing opportunities throughout the year. These are open to all families at SFFS, and typically are joint endeavors with neighborhood or city organizations. In the past, we’ve partnered with local public schools and restaurants to support various gardening and maintenance projects. We’ve also had a longstanding service project with the SF Quaker Meeting through their weekend food pantry. Keep an eye out for announcements about events and opportunities, and if you’re interested in joining the Service Committee, please reach out to the Parents Association.

Winter Celebration – Held on the last day of school before Winter Break, this festive morning is a celebration of the performing arts and an opportunity for parents to enjoy student performances in music, drama, and dance. Students are dismissed at noon the day of Winter Celebration.

Year-End Celebration – We celebrate the end of the school year with a Community Meeting for Worship, student performances, and a sing-along in a meadow in Golden Gate Park. Families (including siblings) are invited to join teachers, students, and staff for this all-school event. It has become tradition for teachers and students to walk or travel on Muni to the park. After the student performances and a few words from Mike and the Parents Association, students are dismissed for the summer. Rumor has it, on the way to a Year-End Celebration one year, a teacher told a Kindergartner, “You are a Kindergartner when you get on the bus, but you become a 1st-Grader when you leave the meadow!”

Portfolios/Progress Reports/Parent Conferences – Setting and working towards goals, leaning into challenges, reflecting, and getting feedback from peers and adults: these are key aspects of our educational program. Each child in K–8 will have a portfolio of work collected through the year. This collection of work is used across disciplines to log your child’s progress; students use these portfolios actively, as self--assessment and reflection tools to celebrate accomplishments, set new goals, and work towards them. Parents experience their child’s self--reflective presentations in the form of Portfolio Day (LS) and Presentation Night (MS) each June.

In Lower School, teachers complete thorough progress reports twice a year (January and June) to complete the whole picture of the student’s learning over time. The Lower School progress report is based on a developmental continuum of skills in each content area. The complete progress report balances the gradient checklists with a narrative written report.

The narrative portion highlights aspects of student learning that may not be reflected in the checklists, such as strengths and areas for future growth, and also articulates goals and recommendations. The progress report is not intended to be the documentation of the content work at each grade level, but rather a report on the student’s overall progress, at his/her grade level, in all areas of his/her growth and learning in school.

In Middle School, teachers complete thorough progress reports twice a year (January and June) and midterm reports twice a year (November and March) to complete the whole picture of the student’s learning over time. The Middle School progress report is based on a developmental continuum of skills in each content area, with shading to indicate where teachers expect students to be. The complete progress report balances the checklists with a narrative written report. The narrative portion highlights aspects of student learning that may not be reflected in the checklists, such as strengths and areas for future focus and growth, and also articulates goals and recommendations. The progress report is not intended to be the documentation of the content work at each grade level nor is it meant to serve as a “grade.” Rather, the progress report is meant to articulate the student’s overall progress, at his/her grade level, in all areas of his/her growth and learning in school. In addition, parents receive further information about their children’s progress at parent conferences twice a year (November and March). In Lower School, teachers meet with parents; in Middle School, students lead conferences that include their advisor and their parents.

Why No Grades – At Friends, we do not use a grading system as we do not wish to reduce a student’s performance to a number or letter on a transcript. While our teachers provide a rich variety of feedback on quizzes, quests, tests, papers, projects, performances, and more, the goal of the robust academic program at Friends is to empower students to be in control of their own learning, and not to be ranked according to grades. Our faculty at SFFS understand that their job is not just to evaluate students’ skills and knowledge, but also to support students in pressing further, digging deeper, and asking more questions.

Grades discourage the kind of risk-taking that real learning requires and diminish curiosity and internal motivation. Real learning is difficult. It’s leaning into confusion, tangling with a skill or concept that is hazy, being unsure. To truly learn, one must risk failing. At Friends, teachers carefully cultivate classroom cultures that value questions as much as answers, and earnest attempts as much as easy successes. Teacher feedback emphasizes the value of process, approach, strategy, and problem-solving.

At Friends, learning, not grades, is at the center of a child’s experience. Teachers consistently assess students’ skills and understanding, provide feedback to help them grow,