Hallelujah!

A Toronto Star report says that a movement is underfoot to make the report cards at Ontario schools more understandable. In my experience so far, report cards are an exercise in frustration for parents. No longer do you see a subject, a letter grade, and a personal comment. No, that was apparently too easy, so in 1998 the Ontario government, led by my all-time favourite Premier Mike Harris (was that too sarcastic?) decided that all report cards needed to be standardized. The intention was to bring consistency between school boards in the province. In fact, I believe that this idea was supposed to make things easier for parents.

Instead, what we've had is robotic comments straight out of the curriculum that are more edu-speak than parent-speak. Teachers choose from a list of comments instead of giving any personal comment that actually tells a parent how their child is doing in that subject. I honestly thought maybe I was just stupid, reading my daughter's report card. I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent person, and I have a university degree with a minor in English. I can't be THAT dumb, can I?

Toronto school board trustee Howard Goodman says I'm not. He struggles to understand his own children's report cards, he says. He is now leading the charge for more coherent reports, inspired by retired teacher Tom Sullivan (who holds a Masters Degree in Education) who started his crusade after he couldn't understand his grandson's Grade 4 report. There are also concerns that if a former teacher or school board trustee, whose first language is English, can't understand the report cards, new Canadians may have a very difficult time with them.

Some actual comments from report cards:

“She systematically describes the relative locations of objects or people using positional language.”

“She is able to count using one-to-one correspondence with ease.”

“He explains how the particular characteristics of various text forms help to communicate meaning, with a focus on literary, graphic and informational texts.”

Aren't those helpful?

I was speaking about this to a friend whose kids are now in university, and she mentioned that her son, now studying Engineering, had a 99% in Calculus (or some kind of math... it's not my strong suit). His report card said, “A... should take advantage of additional help that is available.”

HUH? I could see how that extra 1% would be nice, but that sounds like he needs tutoring or something! His mother asked about it, and was told that the comment was applied to everyone. WHAT?

Sometimes I honestly think that they make changes to education because they're expected to, not because it's necessary. My oldest daughter learned to read using the Animated Literacy program. My younger daughter started Junior Kindergarten this year, and her teacher told me that they were told they were no longer allowed to use this curriculum. No new curriculum had been chosen, but they were absolutely NOT to use Animated Literacy anymore, because someone had decided that it wasn't the best way to teach reading. The teacher agreed with me that in a year or two they would probably change their minds again, going from Phonics to Whole Language to... who knows what? Is leaving something alone a sign of stagnation, or is change for the sake of change just politically sanctioned busywork?

However, I really do hope that the intiative to change the report cards go through. Even “translating” the current comment system isn't enough, in my opinion. Yes, it tells me what my child can do, or knows, but what are the specific things she needs to improve on? Does that mean that she's at the top of the class? I would love to see the personal comments that used to be on report cards when I was a kid. I'd much rather hear that my child is “a joy to have in class” than that she knows whether she's in front of or behind something. I'd rather know that he's a chatterbox and needs to settle down than that he can count one by one.

But maybe that's just me.