Ministry demands for Ontario report cards to be written in plain English

“Coming Soon: report cards that make sense - Province reworking jargon-filled documents”
From TorStar News Service Oct 13, 2009 written by Kristin Rushowy - Education Reporter

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

Say what?

How about: “She can tell you if she’s in front or behind someone, or last in line.”

Now that’s better.

After more than a decade of incomprehensible and indecipherable comments, Ontario student report cards are in for an overhaul.

A memo from the Ontario education ministry, obtained by the Star, says a new assessment policy to be released next year will address report card comments.

“Teachers should strive to use language that parents will understand and should avoid language that simply repeats” what curriculum documents state, says the policy, which is still in draft format.

“The comments should describe in overall terms what students know and can do and should provide parents with personalized, clear, precise and meaningful feedback. Teachers should strive to help parents understand how they can support their children at home.”

The memo says many mistakenly believe the ministry mandates the technical language used in report cards, when that is not the case.

“It is important that teachers have the opportunity to compose and use personalized comments on report cards,” says the memo, adding that boards shouldn’t enact policies prohibiting teachers from doing so.

That’s good news for Toronto Trustee Howard Goodman, who hopes to make report cards in the city’s public schools a lot simpler, clearer and more parent-friendly as of Wednesday by creating a new list of comments for teachers to choose from, if they wish, free of “edu-speak.”

“The comments now work for teacher-to-teacher communication, but report cards aren’t meant to be for one teacher to another,” says Goodman, who has struggled to understand his own children’s report cards and says he can’t imagine how families who speak little English could make sense of them.

“They are meant for teacher to parent and teacher to student, and parent to student,” added Goodman, inspired by retired teacher Tom Sullivan, who is on a crusade to improve report cards after he couldn’t make sense of his grandson’s Grade 4 report.

Boards generally provide their schools with standard comment lists, using language taken directly from curriculum documents. When Goodman started asking questions of board staff he was told “we have no control over the comment list,” and that the provincial Ministry of Education requires that comments be this way.

“But after some digging, it became clear that the situation wasn’t in fact clear, and that perhaps we did have the power to use whatever comments we thought would help parents and students,” he said.

His motion, which goes to a committee before getting approval of the full board, asks that the board develop a new list of comments for elementary report cards by fall 2010 that provide useful information to students and parents, even if the comments do not mirror the format of the technical goals described in the ministry’s curriculum, and that principals and teachers be able to add their own.

Goodman is also asking that the board consider translating report cards for parents whose first language isn’t English.

“It may be that the province still wants a single, consistent set of comments, and when and if we pass this motion, we’ll hear from them saying ‘No, you don’t have the authority to do that.’ At that point, it’s their problem to solve – they’ve taken ownership of it.”

The province will soon change in assessment and evaluation of students, which includes new “templates” for report cards, said an education ministry spokesperson.

In 1998, the provincial Conservative government brought in new, standardized report cards as it ushered in a new curriculum, meant to bring consistency across Ontario and give parents more information. Since then, most boards have created their own libraries of comments that mirror what students are expected to do at each grade level. While they vary, they don’t differ all that much from board to board.

The issue got the attention of Sullivan, 77, a retired Toronto teacher who said he had no idea how his grandson was doing after reading his Grade 4 report card last year.

“I thought, ‘This is a report card, you are supposed to report,’ ” says Sullivan. “I have a master’s degree in education and thought, ‘My God, if I can’t understand what this is talking about, what about a parent whose first language isn’t English?’ ”

He started an online petition, with more than 120 signatures so far, asking that the ministry and all publicly funded school boards in Ontario “revamp, reword and clarify the current selection of comments used by schools in reporting student progress to parents.”

The current comments, it adds, “do little, if anything at all, to inform the parent as to the child’s academic achievement or of steps that might be taken remedially.”

Karen Grose, a superintendent with the Toronto public board, said the board has its own “comment builder” containing the provincial expectations of students that teachers can use when creating report cards, which are issued three times a year.

She also said report cards are “one of several means teachers use to report back to parents,” along with parent-teacher conferences, portfolio sharing and phone calls.

Annie Kidder, of advocacy group People for Education, said the personal touch has been lost.

While in the past some complained about personalized remarks, Kidder said she would “like to know, personally, what the teacher thinks, rather than having (comments) come from a bank of preplanned comments,

“Parents find them absolutely filled with jargon and gobbledygook that don’t seem to have any relation to their own child,” she said.

Martin Long, who heads the Elementary Teachers of Toronto union, says he used to “sit down and write each parent a letter” at report card time.

However, no solution will please everyone. Long is hopeful the language issue is “a starting point” because the union is hoping to cut the number of report cards from three to two, saying the first report, which comes in November, is much too soon into the school year. He said parent-teacher conferences should replace one formal assessment.

He also praised the board for looking at helping newcomer parents better understand their children’s assessment.

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