Stop babble in children's report cards

We, the undersigned request that the Ministry of Education, The Toronto District School Board, The Toronto District Catholic School Board, as well as all publicly funded school boards in Ontario, The Ontario Teachers’ Federation, and all Ontario school parents groups take whatever steps necessary to revamp, reword and clarify the current selection of comments used by schools in reporting student progress to parents.

The need for this change becomes apparent when examining the current comments available to teachers, an example of which follows: “Johnny explains how the particular characteristics of various text forms help to communicate meaning, with a focus on literary, graphic and informational texts. He extends understanding of texts by connecting the ideas in them to his own knowledge and experience, and insights, to other familiar texts, and to the world around them."

We feel that such comments do little, if anything at all, to inform the parent as to the child’s academic achievement or of steps that might be taken remedially. We further feel that the comments cause unnecessary time consumption for teachers and administrators in schools.