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“The education research says this, that grades don’t communicate really well with parents,” he said. “What does an A in Language Arts in Grade 3 mean? What can that student do with the language? Can they comprehend the text well in terms of concrete, real world skills? What does that mark mean?”

Mr. Field said the new assessments should give parents a better understanding of how well their child is actually doing.

“When you send a report card home, how do you know parents understand it?” he asked.

Yet Mr. Cowley said he feared proof that the changes will improve outcomes is lacking.

“If this is more clear to parents, presumably they’ve done studies to show that this is the case. They’ve compared the old standard and the new standard and can say ‘Oh, these new sets of outcomes and descriptions are more informative than the old ones,’” he said.

In the 2010-11 school year, Ontario’s school boards changed their report cards. Elementary students are now given a progress report card in November that omits letter grades and percentage marks. However, districts still give out more traditional report cards twice per year. Quebec also revamped its report cards, reducing the number of formal notices and simplifying reports for parents. Meanwhile, school boards in Vancouver offer only comments up until Grade 3. After that, teachers offer letter grades and comments.

Jeff Bowes, president of the Calgary Association of Parents and School Councils, said that while it would be a good thing to see report cards standardized across schools, he’s concerned that dropping personalized comments from report cards will just result in less feedback altogether.