CBE Doing A Lousy Job of Selling Report Card Changes

My latest Calgary Herald column looks as the Calgary Board of Education's push for a radical report card overhaul:

As most schoolchildren can attest to, there’s a great emphasis placed on being able to show your work.
In other words, a simple answer usually will not suffice. You must be able to demonstrate how and why you reached your conclusion so as to allow others to reach the same conclusion. Or, at the very least, it demonstrates that you grasp the concept behind your undertaking, and that you could offer a coherent explanation of what you were doing and why.
It’s a lesson that seems to be lost on the Calgary Board of Education as they tout their new plan for report cards. Step one is a pilot project commencing this fall for students at a number of schools. Step two would be to have the change implemented by 2014 for all students from kindergarten up to Grade 9.
The main thrust of the change is the removal of numerical grades. Instead, report cards will apply one of four assessment categories to children: “exemplary,” “evident,” “emerging” or “support required.” Additionally, personalized teacher comments will be removed from the report cards. Oh, and the new report cards will only be handed out twice a year.
All of this represents a significant overhaul in the way students are assessed and in the way parents are informed about how their children are doing in school. Despite that, the CBE has done a remarkably poor job in explaining why these changes are coming or how exactly they represent an improvement over the status quo.
Even some trustees feel as though they’ve been left in the dark about these changes. Last week, a motion was presented at a CBE meeting asking for more information. The motion was voted down. Not only that, but Sheila Taylor — the trustee who proposed the motion — was ruled out of order for her questions about the changes.
If trustees are confused about the changes to the assessment process, one can only imagine how parents must be feeling. Their children’s report cards are about to get more vague and less frequent, and they’re not really being told why.
The CBE is trying to assure parents that they will not be cut out of the loop. CBE chief superintendent Naomi Johnson has spoken of the need to “bring parents deeper into the school community,” which implies more direct contact with teachers and principals. Certainly there is value in such contact, but why does it have to be one or the other?
Johnson is similarly elusive on the much broader question of why. While it’s true that these changes are not cast in stone, Johnson has spoken of the “evolution” of learning and assessment and the themes explored in a recent provincial report called Inspiring Education, which explores what education in Alberta in the year 2030 might look like.
None of this constitutes a coherent explanation as to why report cards are being dramatically altered. It may well be that a 78 per cent mark in social studies doesn’t really tell the whole story of a child’s strengths and weaknesses or their grasp of the curriculum. But the word “emerging” seems to convey even less.
It’s not unreasonable that in the first few years of school, more generalized assessments be applied to children. But in the later years, when students are taking tests and completing assignments that are being graded, it seems quite reasonable that those grades mean something.
It also strikes me that we might be sneaking in a sort of no-zeros policy in that the vague new assessments being eyed by the CBE don’t rely on individual marks. Therefore, whereas a skipped assignment — and the accompanying grade of zero — might affect a numbered mark, it presumably would not affect an assessment of “evident.”
The CBE owes it to parents at this point to be as open as possible. That should start with an explanation of just how committed they are to this change, and why they feel it’s needed.
Based on what we’re seeing thus far, though, it looks more like change for the sake of change and a solution in search of a problem.