Finally there has been a revolution of sorts–a revolution against those absolutely ridiculous comments on report cards (I live in Ontario, however this may also be the case with your educational powers that be).
Over the years, our Ministry of Education has taken it upon themselves to “streamline” those comments so that no matter where you live in the province the comments are uniform. They “simplified” the process by placing all the comments on a report card engine on the computer that the teachers must choose from–and they made it more “applicable” by addressing the curriculum–not who really matters–the child–in an educational double talking jargon.
Remember the child–those little individuals that the education system is set up for–those little individuals that the education system is supposed to be preparing for the real world–those little people that are evaluated on their skill development, their application of knowledge understood–their progress. Remember them??
A parent should be able to look at a report card and understand how their child is doing, what areas s/he is excelling in, what needs their child has, what progress their child has made. Instead, I constantly get parents asking me to decipher the comments on their child’s report card.
Who is the target audience for these comments, anyway? It certainly isn’t the parent–or the teacher–or anyone connected with the child’s education. I understand that perhaps, there needed to be some uniformity of language so that the comments matched the marks and meant the same no matter where you were in the province, however those comments should still be focused on the child, not just the curriculum.
So, now,instead of complaining amongst ourselves–get out there and do something. Write, phone, talk to anyone and everyone–and continue doing it–until we are heard!
I agree,Marika,that a lot of the comments are ‘canned’ and picked to the best of the teacher’s ability to fit the student into to one of the available comments from which they must choose. Oblivious maybe, I did not realize this with my first child. I may not have noticed it again specifically with the next child due to different phrases for different age groups. But the ‘ah ha’ moment came when I realized my twin sons, different in many many ways had the same canned responses from different teachers. How disappointing to realize this system was not for the individual! My teacher friends also express much frustration with not being able to tell parents, except in a very small area how their child is really doing, relating to others. They even have had their not so subtle comments, that have been carefully worded, reworded by the principle so parents are not offended. I wonder how our children will fare in the real world when they have never had true constructive feedback? It is up to parents to be sure our kids know the value of real feedback so they are not shocked later in life and can see it as positive to receive such feedback.