1 ORLANDO, Fla. - Lake County teacher Lynn Barrett's young students chatter softly while huddled in groups over their iPads as they explain the cause and effect of events in a fictional story.
2 The kindergarten through second-graders help one another work the device and explain tough concepts - without the pressure to earn an A or fear of receiving an F. Grades don't mean much to Barrett, a veteran teacher.
3 An A-plus in reading, for instance, won't tell parents how well their child can pronounce words with silent letters, just as a C or F can't explain how well a child understands vowels, she said.
4 'Just because they got an A or a 92 on their report card in no way tells a parent exactly what they did,' she said.
5 'All that tells you is a number. It doesn't really give you any kind of depth of knowledge as to what they know'.
6 Barrett has taught at Seminole Springs Elementary School in Eustis, Fla., for a quarter-century without doling out letter grades, much like a teacher in a classroom at a private Montessori school.
7 Barrett began teaching the class in 1990 shortly after the school opened.
8 Several of the school's other teachers at the time also used the approach, but through the years the practice died out.
9 With special permission from the School Board, she is the only one in Lake County to do so.
10 Education experts say the approach goes against modern-day education initiatives in which high-stakes tests and rigid learning standards have taken on magnified importance.
11 In contrast, Barrett's students are grouped based on skills - not their grade level - and instead of issuing A-to-F grades, Barrett relies on portfolios to track academic needs.
12 She keeps each student for three years in her classroom, allowing her to get to know them more personally.
13 She doesn't emphasize testing, which she said gives her more time to focus on where each needs help.
14 'I take a good, hard look at sometimes how they're working and watch them as they're doing math, watch them as they're reading,' she said.
15 'I pick up cues on things that they need to work on'.
16 Orange County schools spokeswoman Kathy Marsh said she didn't know of a program like Barrett's in the district.
17 Orange kindergarten and first-grade students do not receive A-to-F letter grades but rather marks including 'S' for 'satisfactory' or 'N' for 'needs improvement' to reflect academic achievement on report cards.
18 Seminole County schools do not have any classes like Barrett's, according to a spokesman.
19 Barrett's approach dates back to the one-room schoolhouse but became popular with school systems in the 1990s, said Sandra J.
20 Stone, who directs the National Multiage Institute at Northern Arizona University and has studied classrooms such as Barrett's for more than 20 years.
21 Researchers say interest in the approach waned with the introduction of the federal No Child Left Behind law, which established a system of standards and accountability through high-stakes testing.
22 John Fischetti heads the Consortium for Research on Educational Assessment and Teaching Effectiveness.
23 He said teachers in 'no grade' classrooms typically end up giving students much more 'assessment' than teachers in typical classrooms - just in a different form.
24 A teacher not using grades might rely on observation and detailed 'running records' about students instead.
25 And though letter or number grades make it easy for teachers to see who 'got the lesson' at times, Stone said, such marks can be used almost as a 'threat' against bad performance.
26 On the other hand, in classes without grades students become more focused on learning rather than achieving a mark.
27 'They're not being judged as to what that learning is or how far along that learning is,' she said.
28 'They're just engaged in the process'.
29 There's not a hard-and-fast answer about whether students in ungraded classrooms perform better or worse than those in typical classes.
30 Stone said they perform as well or better than their peers.
31 Fischetti said research shows students in ungraded classes are not worse off, but for such a class to work, teachers have to be well-prepared.
32 Barrett has a master's degree in early-childhood education and is constantly tweaking the class.
33 Her room is stockpiled with iPads, storybooks, fish tanks, snacks - even hula hoops.
34 Her students enter the class at or above grade level and finish second grade capable of reading fourth-grade-level books, she said.
35 She still teaches state academic standards and gives state-mandated tests.
36 Once a week she issues a graded spelling assignment.
37 She even issues ratings such as 'satisfactory' or 'unsatisfactory' showing students' effort, but because of the decreased emphasis on grading, her students can focus on what interests them without fear of failure.
38 'Make mistakes - you're going to make mistakes,' she said.
39 'If you make mistakes, you're going to learn more because we identify what are those mistakes, and that in itself is going to help them learn the next step.
40 And I didn't have to put a bad grade on there to give them that message'.
41 Researchers say Barrett's students also benefit because older students can mentor younger students, teaching them not just academic concepts but social skills.
42 Barrett said that because she keeps students for three years, older students already know her classroom and model behavior for their peers, meaning she spends less time at the start of the school year establishing rules.
43 Parent Jennifer Zamfino, whose two children have been through Barrett's class, said when her daughter was in second grade she would mentor kindergartners, which in turn boosted her confidence.
44 'She kind of took them under her wing,' Zamfino said.
45 'It brought her such confidence'. Barrett will be retiring this year after 36 years of teaching, but another teacher at the school will be taking the helm of her class.

The kindergarten through second - graders help one another work the device and explain tough concepts - without the pressure to earn an A or fear of receiving an F . Grades don ' t mean much to Barrett , a veteran teacher .
Grades don ' t mean much to Barrett ,
Why doesn't she put much emphasis on grades?