A report card from Prospect Hill Elementary School in Pelham, N.Y. The number grades being used in Pelham and elsewhere are thought to do a better job of charting students’ mastery of specific skills. But parents have voiced complaints, including that since the grading system is based on year-end expectations, top scores are generally not available until the final marking period.

PELHAM, N.Y. — There is no more A for effort at Prospect Hill Elementary School.

In fact, there are no more A’s at all. Instead of letter grades in English or math, schoolchildren in this well-to-do Westchester County suburb now get report cards filled with numbers indicating how they are faring in dozens of specific skills like “decoding strategies” and “number sense and operations.” The lowest mark, 1, indicates a student is not meeting New York state’s academic standards, while the top grade of 4 celebrates “meeting standards with distinction.”

They are called standards-based report cards, part of a new system to establish academic standards and require state tests on the material. Educators say the expectations they set are much clearer, but many parents who chose to live in Pelham because of its well-regarded schools don’t like them. Among their complaints are that since the new grades are based on year-end expectations, 4s are generally not available until the final marking period (school officials are already planning to tweak this aspect next year).

“We’re running around the school saying ‘2 is cool,’” said Jennifer Lapey, a mother of two who grew up in Pelham, “but in my world, 2 out of 4 is not so cool.”

When Pelham changed from traditional report cards to standards-based ones in its four elementary schools in September, it joined a growing number of districts, including Yonkers, N.Y.; Nashville, Tenn.; Denver; and San Diego. While urban areas typically have adopted the system as part of an effort to raise standardized test scores and achievement in struggling schools, officials in top suburban districts like Pelham — where more than 85 percent of students already pass state tests — say they are hoping the numbers ensure more consistent grading across classrooms, tamp down grade inflation and refine focus on individual academic skills.

Thomas Guskey, a professor at Georgetown College in Kentucky and an author of “Developing Standards-Based Report Cards,” a book that is soon to be released, said the new approach was more accurate, because it measures each student against a stated set of criteria, rather than grading on a curve, which compares members of a class with one another. “The dilemma with that system is you really don’t know whether anybody has learned anything,” Guskey said of grading on a curve. “They could all have done miserably, just some less miserably than others.”

The executive director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, Gerald Tirozzi — who supports standards-based report cards — said that many educators and parents were far from ready to scrap letter grades, especially for older students, in part because they worry about the ripple effects on things like the honor roll and class rank.

“I think the present grading system — A, B, C, D, F — is ingrained in us,” Tirozzi said. “It’s the language which college admissions officers understand; it’s the language which parents understand.”

Outside San Francisco, the San Mateo-Foster City district delayed plans this school year to expand standards-based report cards to its four middle schools from its elementary schools, where they have been used since 2006, after parents packed school board meetings and collected more than 500 signatures in opposition.

“What happened was the high-performing students said, ‘I don’t have to work that hard’ and they all stopped trying,” said Ellen Ulrich, a San Mateo mother of two who is lobbying for a hybrid card that would retain letter grades for achievement and effort alongside the 1-to-4 scale for specific skills. “Parents were beyond livid.”

And here in Westchester County, the Irvington district switched to the standards-based cards not only to make grading less subjective but also to keep parents better informed on their children’s progress, said Karen Kellogg, an assistant principal.

In Pelham, the second-grade report card includes 39 separate skill scores — 10 each in math and language arts, two each in science and social studies, and a total of 15 in art, music, physical education, technology and “learning behaviors” — engagement, respect, responsibility and organization. The report card itself is one page, but it comes with a 14-page guide explaining the different skills and the scoring system.

Dennis Lauro, Pelham’s superintendent, said that standards-based report cards helped students chart their own courses for improvement; as part of the process, they each develop individual goals, which are discussed with teachers and parents, and assemble portfolios of work.

“I was never the A student, and it would constantly frustrate me,” Lauro said. “Nobody ever bothered to tell me how to get that A, to get to that next level.”

Addressing parental complaints, Pelham district officials said they planned to change the system next year to use benchmarks for each marking period — rather than a year-end standard — to give more timely snapshots of students’ progress (and allow many more students to earn 4s from the beginning). They also plan to bring back a section for teacher comments, and are looking for ways to recognize student effort and attitude.

Those changes might help Danielle Como, a fourth-grader, with skeptical relatives like her Uncle Vinny. After the first marking period, Uncle Vinny gave Danielle’s older sister, Nicole, a sixth-grader whose middle school uses letter grades, $5 for every A, but scoffed at Danielle’s 2s and 3s.

“We’re from the old school where a 4.0 is a good GPA, so nobody’s buying her story,” explained the girls’ mother, Mary.

Danielle got her teacher to send an e-mail message explaining the new system, and persuaded Uncle Vinny to cough it up for each 3. Last week, after getting 16 3s, Danielle headed over to see Uncle Vinny.