Kids ‘being robbed’ over report cards
Parents, pupils upset over news that Toronto board won’t issue marks
Parents and students across Canada’s largest school board were reeling Thursday to learn schools will not send home final report cards this year because teachers have refused to type in the marks, and instead will just hand out letters saying whether the student is passing to the next grade.
“In a sense they’re being robbed of all the hard work they’ve done all year — not that it’s all about marks, but the report card is the end game, that badge that is your record of your academic year,” said Andrea Joyce, co-chair of the school council at Maurice Cody Public School and a mother of two elementary students.
She said incredulous parents were emailing her Thursday after receiving a letter from director of education Donna Quan saying that the Toronto District School Board doesn’t have the time or money to have other staff enter marks into software that members of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario have provided to principals, but refuse to input themselves.
“Parents are not happy — some are suggesting petitions, letters to all levels of government etc., but no one really understands what this means,” said Joyce. “We’ve heard the rumours, but all of a sudden it just hits you — there are going to be no report cards.”
Daughter Kaleigh Halliday said students were asking teachers to tell them their marks, but on Thursday afternoon teachers said they could not.
“I’m a bit upset because I’ve been working so hard this term to pull up my marks and I have no clue how much I improved,” said the Grade 7 student at Hodgson Senior Public School.
She has a trumpet test Friday morning for which she has been practising all term — that opening note is tricky — “but now it seems like it doesn’t really matter. I still have a tech project, a health project, a language project and a geometry project all due in the last two weeks, but it seems like, why would we do them?”
The ETFO has launched a work-to-rule to protest the slow pace of bargaining and school boards’ desire to raise class size.
While teachers are handing students’ marks to principals, they are not inputting them electronically, which means someone else would have to type them in to the computer system. Because the Greater Toronto Area boards are so large, it is expected few, if any, will issue the fourpage reports to students given the ongoing job action.
“The TDSB has over 170,000 elementary students with over 20 entries that are included in each report card. This means that at least 3.4 million entries would have to be in-
“My heart goes out to parents of kids in special ed, too, who may need marks to help them get into certain programs.” ANDREA JOYCE MAURICE CODY PUBLIC SCHOOL COUNCIL CO-CHAIR
putted,” TDSB officials explained Thursday in a news release. Volunteers or non-board staff cannot be used because of issues of privacy and accuracy.
Said Quan: “I know that students, parents and guardians highly value report cards and comments and we regret that the current labour situation does not allow us to provide final report cards this year.”
During the week of June 22, schools will provide letters confirming each student’s placement for the coming year.
But for families like Joyce’s, who will be moving to Alberta this summer, having no final report card will make it difficult for new teachers to have the most up-to-date snapshot of how her daughters have done.
“Our new teachers are going to be confused,” said Grade 5 student Brigid Halliday, 11. “And we’ll miss the fun of opening the report cards and seeing our marks and also the comments about our leadership skills and how well we participate and put up our hand in class,” she said.
Students’ last report card was at the end of January. Elementary report cards in the TDSB are usually four pages long, with detailed comments on learning skills and work habits, a letter grade in various strands of each subject, extensive comments from the teacher and suggestions for improvement.
“My heart goes out to parents of kids in special ed, too, who may need marks to help them get into certain programs,” said Joyce.
For Peel, the second-largest board in the province with 112,000 elementary students, completing report cards would involve an estimated three million individual data entries, and the cost estimates to hire additional staff to assist would be about $1 million, the board said in a news release.
In Toronto, Peel and York, students will receive a letter with information about what grade they’ll be in in the fall.
Among other Ontario boards, Niagara, Simcoe County and TrilliumLakelands have said they will issue student marks.
The education ministry has refused to provide boards with additional funds for staff to get the reports done.