Kindergartners, don’t fret.

You may still get into Harvard even if your report card shows that you need to improve your ability to name geometric shapes, plan and control your body movements or recite the alphabet. But your report card will be changing, and becoming more stringent, at almost every level of your education.

There’s no one model for report cards in New Hampshire’s public schools. They vary in length and detail, and may be completely different from one school or grade to the next.

But that may be changing, according to some local education experts.

“What I’m beginning to see emerge as different states are adopting standards-based curricula, is that these report cards reflect those standards,” said SAU 15 Superintendent Charles Littlefield, who heads the Hooksett, Auburn and Candia school districts.

Hooksett’s Fred C. Underhill School, which serves kindergarten through secondgrade students, is one school that has moved towards a “standards-based” report card.

The idea, said the school’s assistant principal, Ralene St. Pierre, is that the specif- ic skills for a certain grade are listed on the report card.

What’s then measured is the students progress toward mastering those skills, which are continuously coordinated with state standards known as grade-level expectations, or GLE’s.

“It’s not like it’s ‘You’re good or bad;’ it’s ‘How close have you gotten to these goals?’” she said.

St. Pierre said a standards-based report card works well for very young students, since they’re at an age when they’re making some of the most rapid and varied developmental gains.

“We really try to de-emphasize any kind of hierarchical thing here,” she said. “At this age they move a lot. The kids can change from one level to another very quickly.”

A first-grade report card at Underhill, for example, measures abilities in core subjects like reading, writing, math, science and social studies. It also evaluates abilities in topics like art, music, physical education and behavior.

For each question under those topics, students receive a letter – E, G, S, P or W – which represent the grades of excellent, above expectation, meets expectation, progressing and working toward. There’s also a key that translates those definitions.

For example, “working toward” translates to “needs improvement.”

But in most high schools, including Manchester West, Central and Memorial, good old-fashioned letter grades – beginning with A – are still the norm.

“It could be that way for a while,” said Central Principal John Rist.

Rist said fiddling with the traditional high school letter grades would be like asking Americans to switch entirely to the metric system.

“It just doesn’t work,” he said.

“This is just a system that everybody is accustomed to,” he said.

Manchester high school report cards show letter grades for each course, and provide semester and cumulative grade point average totals. A weighted grade-point average is also included, and is used to determine class rankings, from top to bottom. The high school report cards also note the number of times a student misses a school day, or is tardy for the start of school.

Teachers can also choose from a key of more than 70 prescripted comments to add to the report cards.

High school students may have a keener interest in the details of their report cards than do much younger students, said Rist.

“They all know their grade,” he said. “Whether they care or not is another matter.”

In Auburn, at Auburn Village School, for students in the intermediate grades, teachers fill out report cards that contain traditional letter grades, but also have numeric measurements for things like conduct and effort.

For example, in a fourth-grade report card, a student may earn a B-plus in spelling, but their conduct and effort toward the subject may be deemed either “commendable,” “satisfactory” or unsatisfactory.”

Conduct and effort for work habits and social development – including things like listening, following school rules and showing respect for others – are also measured by those three terms.

While the report card hasn’t changed much in each of AVS’s first through eighth grades in the last six years, Principal Anita Johnson said it may also soon shift to reflect “standards-based” curricula.

But Johnson and other educators stressed report cards are only one way of communicating a student’s academic and social progress.

Report cards are supplemented by regular progress reports at most schools.

An Allenstown Elementary School progress report, for example, updates parents on academic progress in areas like writing, math and science, but also behavioral and social progress in categories like playground behavior, listening and the ability to work cooperatively.

Johnson said perhaps the most effective means of conveying a student’s progress is through direct contact between teachers and parents.

“Communication with parents is ongoing,” she said, even if its the quarterly report card that’s going to make the cut into the student’s permanent file.

And report cards being filed away for a kindergarten student now may well be dated by the time that student graduates high school.

“This is an ongoing process as the standards change and as the GLE’s change,” said St. Pierre. “Just as the world we’re preparing our children for is ever-changing.”