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Should report cards “value” students?
In case we needed further proof that Canadian faculties of education seem intent on getting students in Canadian schools ready for life on another (not yet identified) planet, we now have fresh pronouncements from the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (OISE) on the upcoming discontinuation of graded fall report cards in Ontario. In a Dec 23rd Globe and Mail article, OISE Associate Professor Linda Cameron says that “educators should be exploring a grade-free report card” because “[the] root of evaluation is to value” and (I’m paraphrasing the rest of her words for brevity’s sake) “you can’t honestly value a child using letter grades”.
This is a peculiar interpretation of the word “evaluate” that, to my knowledge, has not been adopted outside of OISE and teacher union offices. Everywhere else in the world, when the word “evaluate” is used relative to education or training, it means comparing (as objectively as possible - usually using some form of grade) what an individual has learned against what he or she was expected to learn. I’m sure most teachers would be appalled to think that when they give Omar a C+ in Mathematics that this might be interpreted as saying that his “value” as a person is “average”.
Isn’t this just another case of educators broadening their mandate so that they don’t have to be responsible for the more specific (and measurable) learning outcomes that should be the core (but not sole) focus of our schools?
This new world order of evaluation is what happens when decades of students are fed a steady diet of mediocrity by a system more concerned to trick its charges to feel good about mediocre because that’s all that is expected.
I recently took a call from a parent livid that her Grade 12 child was told by a teacher that students headed to post-secondary next year should expect to fail at least one subject - that’s just the way it is so get used to it. Nice. Instead of raising the bar it seems the public system is now content on raising wet noodles and letting the unprepared student move on to be someone else’s problem.
The London Free Press today has a piece that speaks to the dwindling accounting to parents via the removal of fall report cards.
“Teachers’ Unions Guiding Liberal Policy”
by John Snobelen
“..the government is throwing out the fall report cards for primary schools and replacing them with “progress reports.” Progress reports, it seems, don’t have those pesky letter grades that tell parents exactly how their student is doing.
Why is the government eliminating the most important report card of the year? For the same reason it has dumbed down testing and added professional development days - because the teachers’ unions asked it to.
The right policy is obvious. Parents need a detailed report, as early in the school year as possible, that tells them how their child is doing. Parents need to know if tutoring or some other help is required before their child falls helplessly behind.
Lots of teachers understand this. Many seek out parents of underperforming kids and try to help as best they can.
But provincial regulations aren’t designed for those teachers. Provincial standards set the low bar on reports to parents. They are designed for those teachers who work the minimum. Such teachers need to be encouraged-make that ordered-to test their students early in the year and report their findings to parents.Simple.
But the McGuinty government’s education policy is consistent. The only constituency that matters is the teachers’ unions.
Gerard Kennedy would be proud.”