Report Cards: Is there not a better way?

It has been over a week since I have sat down and actually taken the time to write out my thoughts and a week since I have actually posted. It has felt strange not to be posting on my blog here on Steemit but my work world had to take center stage and priorities had to be adjusted. There is only one week left of school here and that means that we teachers have been busy getting last minute things done with our class and finishing up the topics we have been working on. Most of all it means that we are working on finishing up our final report cards.

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Report cards are one of the necessary evils of the teaching profession. It is important that feedback about the student's performance is given and parents are always eager to know how well their kid did at school. Teachers spend upwards of 40 hours working on report cards. Although some of the reports can be done during prep times and recess breaks, most of this time comes out of teachers personal time. I can say that I spent almost a weeks worth of evening working on completing the daunting task or writing reports for my students. This is time spent after you have looked after the normal family routines such as dinner and kids activities and bedtime. This means long days and late nights.

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Now, report cards really should not be the first time parents are finding out how their child is doing. In fact, the report card should merely be a verification of things they already know. Regardless, we must complete the daunting task of completing these forms so that we can quantify results. As important as all this is and as much as both students and parents need to get that feedback, I think that in many ways our Ministry of Education here in Ontario, Canada is getting it all wrong when it comes to reporting.

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For one thing, teachers have been prescribed a certain format of how the report cards are to be written. What often happens is that the reports cards are written in a way that can leave the parents a little unsure about what is really going on in the classroom. The comments are geared towards outlining the curriculum expectations that have been covered and the student's accomplishments in regards to these expectations. In many ways, the subject comments feel like they are written as a proof of work and more for the educators than for the parents. They are by no means written in “layman's” terms. Secondly, there is way too much emphasis put on the marks. Quite often the marks are the only thing that students and parents look at. All the comments and next steps written to help benefit the child and they are often ignored as the almighty mark is the important piece of information.

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The way that our report cards are set up right now is a two page document where every subject taught has its own section and there are both marks and comments given for each subject. The goal is to give parents a details analysis of what the student has covered and how they have performed and what their level of understanding is. The sections for both language and mathematics is quite large and requires a great deal of information to be inputted. The other subjects have much smaller sections so less writing is required. Then there is the learning skills section of the report card which is the largest of the sections that are to be completed. In high school, the comments section consists of drop down boxes which have a selection of predetermined comments that teachers can choose from while in elementary and middle school the teachers must write these comments themselves.

I personally don’t begrudge the process of writing report cards but I think that there is possibly a better way. I think that the feedback for students and parents in imperative and that we couldn’t simply just move away from the report cards. There needs to be this sharing of information as a tool for families to work to help their kids and for future teachers to develop plans to best accept students into new grades and schools. What I do think is that we need to shift our thinking about what we are reporting on and what part of the educational process is most important. Does it really matter what a child’s number or letter grade for history or drama is in elementary school? Should “marks” be the biggest focus for parents and the first place they look when they receive that envelope?

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To me as a teacher, the most important thing I am doing is trying to develop learning skills in my students. Teaching them to be strong learners and giving them the skills to learn will translate into educational success both now and in the future. The learning skills speak to the responsibility students take for their learning. How well they organize themselves and take initiative. Their ability to work independently as well as working with others and to self-regulate their behaviours in a variety of situations. These are the skills that are going to make them lifelong learners. How they are progressing as students in terms of these skills is the most important piece of information on our report cards and they are too often passed over by parents as they make their way to see the MARKS for all the subjects. If you take a moment to stop and look at the learning skills and comments about the child as a learner then you will already know what the marks are going to look like. Learning skills is where our focus needs to be when reporting about our students. Not marks! This is happening is other places with success. Why not here?

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Finland is consistently ranked around the top in the world ranking of best education systems. They don’t administer marks until the children reach grade 5 and even then it is a minimal mark. The students are constantly being assessed to determine their abilities and to guide their learning needs. This focus on assessment “for” learning rather than assessment “of” learning is key to the success that they are having. They are giving kids the skills to succeed without the stress of accomplishing a particular mark. They also have less standardized testing. (A post for a different day)

Finland routinely tops rankings of global education systems and is famous for having no banding systems — all pupils, regardless of ability, are taught in the same classes. As a result, the gap between the weakest and the strongest pupils is the smallest in the world. Finnish schools also give relatively little homework and have only one mandatory test at age 16.
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What is the value of a mark in elementary school? I completely understand high school and the quest to secure a spot at a secondary institution or scholarships. Marks matter at this level but does the focus need to be on marks as a young child? Actually, I have seen marks be the source of an incredible amount of stress for kids. I have had meetings with parents where all they could focus on was the number grade on the report cards and being concerned about the difference between a 72% and a 75% without any regard for how the student was performing in terms of his learning skills. He was doing well because he was naturally bright but was struggling with his learning skills. To me, there is a disconnect here. At some point the lack of effort and willingness to show initiative will catch up.

If I had it my way, there would be comments for each of the subjects outlining all that we have done and how the students have done in terms of their understanding of the concepts covered. However, there would be no marks to accompany those comments. The comments would include “Next Steps” and suggestions on how the student could improve. The learning skills section would be much larger and the bulk of the focus would be on how the student was performing in the class. Detailed personal information outlining their progress in developing the skills that they will not only need in high school but for the rest of their lives and in the workforce.

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The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me. There needs to be a fundamental shift in what is important when it comes to education. The way we report student progress is just one small piece of a puzzle that needs to be rejigged to fit the students and what is best for them. As long as we are operating in a system that is predicated on money and budgets and dictated by people who have no experience in the education system then we are going to continue to spin our wheels and watch as other countries get it right. Stay tuned, more to come in another post.