Confusing Report Cards Up For Debate At School Board Meeting
Posted October 14, 2009 8:35 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
If you find your child’s report card as confusing as advanced algebra, you’re not alone.
The cryptic comments that are the norm on Toronto District School Board report cards leave many parents scratching their heads and at least one trustee wants that to change.
The issue will be up for debate at a TDSB meeting Wednesday night, with trustee Howard Goodman leading the charge for change.
Currently, teachers choose from a list of curriculum-approved comments for those end-of-the-term missives.
But many have complained that they’re difficult to read – and that they don’t say much.
For example, a comment like, “He demonstrates the principles of movement using locomotion, manipulation and stability skills,” could be used to mean, “Playing basketball, he dribbles, passes, shoots the ball well and knows how to play defence.”
“They’re comments that are based on techinical language from the curriculum, which means things to teachers and doesn’t necessarily mean anything to ordinary people like you and me,” noted Goodman.
Goodman wants report cards translated for parents who don’t speak English as a first language and is pushing for changes to high school report cards as well.
Ontario plans to discuss the policy next year.
Meanwhile, a parent has asked the TDSB to remove To Kill A Mockingbird, the Pulitzer-prize winning novel by Harper Lee, from the library at Malvern Collegiate.
The book was published in 1960. The main plot involves a white lawyer defending a black man accused of rape in a fictional Alabama town.
Racial injustice is a major theme in the novel and racial epithets are used in the text.
