Decoding report card ‘edu-ese’: Why parents are frustrated — and Alberta is getting involved

Alberta’s education minister tapped into a big irritant for at least some parents when he said he’s taking on school report cards this year.

Today's report cards often use descriptive grading. Rather than giving students a percentage mark, or assigning a B or a C, many report cards in Alberta use words like “proficient” or “developing” to describe student progress. They lump all students into just a few categories, sometimes with numbers — one, two, three or four.

The descriptors are different across the province. They’re especially common at the elementary level, although descriptive grading can appear in junior high and high school, too.

Education experts say these descriptive report cards should actually make it easier for parents to follow how their kids are doing, but some parents say they’re frustrated with the jargon and really confused.  

Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said legislative changes will enable him to standardize report card requirements and bring more transparency for parents. (CBC)

Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides kicked off the debate again recently when he announced new legislation that he said will bring transparency and consistency across the province.

“That’s the primary driver behind these changes,” he said at a news conference. “We want to ensure that parents are receiving the most transparent information … as possible.”

He didn't say what new report cards will look like.

So, CBC News set out to understand how parents feel about report cards today. 

Parents frustrated with ‘edu-ese,’ vague grading categories

Outside of Calgary’s West Ridge middle school at pickup time, we spoke with half a dozen parents who were frustrated with the fact that the Calgary Board of Education doesn’t use percentages until high school. Students get a one, two, three or four along with comments from their teacher.

“We're not sure whether two means pass or three means pass,” said Ieanne Yu, a parent who moved to Alberta from Hong Kong two years ago.

“The teacher’s comments are helpful but not deep enough,” added Fiona Tsang, whose daughter is with CBE in Grade 9.

“I don’t know if she’s at the high three, close to four. Or a low three, and she’s close to two.” 

"It's too general. It works for kindergarten and early grades, but at Grade 6 they're still using this?" said Rafael Liao, a father of two boys in grades seven and two. "Of course, I can get more information at the one-on-one meeting with the teachers, but I expect to see more in the higher grades."

Fiona Tsang has a daughter in Grade 9 with the Calgary Board of Education. She finds the CBE four-point grade system makes it difficult to know how her daughter is doing academically. (Elise Stolte/CBC)

We did not hear the same frustration at Richmond elementary school, a short drive away. We spoke with half a dozen parents, and at those younger grades, all seemed happy with the system.

“I look at the number first. Then I see in the comments,” said Tanzia Hossain, whose daughter is in Grade 6. “The teacher knows if she needs any help, and [if I overlook something], they send me the email, always.”

After the school visits, we posted a call online, asking parents across the province for their thoughts on report cards. 

One parent with children in two different Edmonton-based school boards wrote in to say their report cards are so full of “edu-ese,” she now runs all of the phrases through AI to get a plain language summary.

She’ll type: "What does 'analyze quantities to 1,000' mean in a Grade 2 Alberta report card?"

On the right, Ayaka Sakiki says she's happy with the report cards at Richmond School, and Rafael Liao says he'd like to see schools switch to percentages before junior high. On the left, Suderdeva Ganeshkumar says she's happy with the alternative reporting teachers give for her son, Dhakshean Ganeshkumar, and his learning challenges. (Elise Stolte and Nate Luit/CBC)

Another parent, Amber Dennison, questioned why report cards are now only online, which often requires parents to navigate complicated internet portals.

“Have you ever had to show a Grade 1 student their report card on a mobile phone? It means almost nothing to them,” she wrote. She hopes funding could support printing them.

But several other parents wrote to say they think the report cards are just fine. They worry the provincial announcement will only add stress for teachers, and report cards should be left with the school boards.

“I worry that it's a distraction from the lack of funding and the support of public education. I'm worried that it's another move to centralized power — taking power away from the boards and removing a layer of democracy,” said Hanita Simard. 

She’s a Calgary-based parent who is both frustrated at recently introduced descriptive scales for CBE high school report cards and worried about the province getting too involved.

Education expert says descriptive grades encourage growth

So, why do schools use descriptive grading?

Shannon Ireland heads a non-profit consortium specifically focused on helping school boards improve assessment and report cards. She said descriptive report cards are part of a larger shift in how teachers assess student learning, called outcomes based assessment.

Her team encourages teachers to move away from the traditional model: teaching content, then testing students on it. Assessment should be more than a test, she said. Teachers should be assessing how students are learning through observing their work and having conversations with them, especially in the age of AI.

Report cards should communicate where a student is in their learning journey. And she says that can be communicated more clearly by saying, for example, that a child is at the beginning level or has mastered a task, than by giving the average of the percentage grades accumulated.

Shannon Ireland is a former classroom teacher and currently leads the Alberta Assessment Consortium. (Submitted by Shannon Ireland)

“I can understand parents being frustrated because there are a multitude of [descriptions] that we're seeing across the province. But what we're trying to help parents understand — that 75 per cent isn't as revealing as you think it might be. If your child gets 75 per cent in social studies, what does that actually tell you?" said Ireland.

“I think we're too quick to accept percentages in a school system. If you took your car to the mechanic and they said to you, 'Your car is operating at 75 per cent.' What does that mean? What's wrong with my car?”

The new approach is meant to describe how each child is doing in relation to each learning goal or outcome described in the curriculum, she said.

“It’s honouring the learning journey of every student,” she said. “It's about growth. It's a growth-based measure. Students know where they're at, where they need to go.”

Why is Alberta taking this on? Here’s one conservative take

Jeff Park is executive director of the Alberta Parents’ Union and travels across the province hosting conversations with parents. 

He said when report cards come up, parents will say things like: “It turned out my kid had a problem with reading for three years before we actually understood it was a problem.”

Park thinks the issue is both confusing language, and teachers' reluctance to be direct and say what’s going wrong — because if comments need to be couched in the positive so that they are encouraging, many parents will simply miss that there are problems at all.

He said the Fraser Institute and Parents for Choice in Education have been advocating for change, and recently Alberta Education asked for some recommendations.

Jeff Park is the executive director of the Alberta Parents' Union. He says when parents are upset with report cards, it's often because they find them difficult to understand. (Elise Stolte/CBC)

“We were asked pretty much for a checklist, goodness, a year ago,” said Park. “Some of the biggest stuff is getting checked off.

“This is more of a school division issue, to be frank, but the buck stops at the provincial government. If school boards refuse to deal with something after parents have been telling them it's an issue for many, many years — as we have on this issue — then it's absolutely the domain of the provincial government to step in.”

This retired teacher believes she has a solution

Of course, teachers are also an important part of this conversation.

Earlier this year, CBC News surveyed more than 7,000 teachers about their classroom experience. When teachers brought up report cards, it was often in the context of being overwhelmed with classroom work already.

The report cards are taking up long days and evenings, outside of regularly scheduled work hours. Several teachers said they can see online how few parents even open the documents, and it feels like extra work when it repeats updates they file through PowerSchool and similar programs for parents continually.

Ann Bentley is a retired teacher from Edmonton who wrote in with her thoughts. In a phone call, she said she agrees there can be pressure for teachers to phrase things in positive terms, sometimes because parents react poorly to negative news.

But as for the language, she’s a fan of using descriptive terms instead of percentages. She says the real problem is that teachers often don’t know how to break out of the jargon.

“It's what they've been taught, what they learn. And they don't understand that parents aren't in the same boat.”

But there’s a solution at every school, she said: parent council. 

“They exist in all school jurisdictions and within a school,” she said. “If there were some round tables so that there could be some consensus about what report card wording should be … so that they're more in layman's terms, that would be better.”