As parents of school-age kids and teachers know, report cards can be an incendiary topic. The idea of a stranger passing judgment on your child can be difficult and reactions can be fierce.
A controversial decision by the Saskatoon public school board has highlighted a growing aspect of the debate about report cards.
Starting this fall, high school grades in that city will only reflect whether a student ultimately completed the course work. Behavioural issues, like poor attendance, bad attitude, missed deadlines or even plagiarism will not, in most cases, affect the final mark.
The focus, school officials argue, should be entirely on whether the students successfully completed work and met the academic goals.
But that raises ethical questions. It means, for example, a student who repeatedly hands in assignments late would still get the equivalent of an “A” (Saskatoon uses a numerical scale) if the work merits it. That seems unfair to students who meet deadlines.
If a student copies chunks of an online publication into his essay without acknowledging the source, he may be told to re-do the work. But again, if the final product is satisfactory, no penalty will be assessed. Is that really the right message to send?
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Other jurisdictions are heading in the same direction. In 2000, teachers in several Ontario school districts were told to scrub student conduct from report cards.
In B.C., the Education Ministry refuses to take a stance. Its view is that local boards can decide what to do.
Yet here also, there are signs of movement toward a similar policy. An official in the capital region noted that teachers are gradually removing “late marks” and other records of misconduct from student grades.
This is troubling. There is a community interest in making student assessments both fair and complete. For kids graduating from high school, their transcripts are a certificate of fitness to advance. Some employers might use them in hiring decisions and post-secondary institutions use grade point average in admitting students.
But is it fair when students who don’t hand in work on time get the same mark as kids who do? And a transcript that doesn’t reflect transgressions like plagiarism is incomplete.
Educators point to new theories in child psychology that discourage punitive measures. They believe docking marks from underachievers merely turns them off.
And some experts insist grades should be confined to measuring what the student knows. They insist conduct is a different matter entirely. If there are behavioural issues, they should be dealt with, but not allowed to affect the student’s record.
That’s too narrow a view. Schools are about more than the academic curriculum. Students need to know that values like timeliness and honesty play a fundamental role in society. Schools have a role in helping students learn that plagiarizing an essay in university or showing up late for work repeatedly can have dire consequences.
In the event school boards are disinclined, then provincial governments should step in and set broad guidelines for report cards and what they are intended to reflect. It is unacceptable, for example, that the B.C. Education Ministry doesn’t even have an opinion on such a matter.
Parents should lead — often by example — the character development of their children. But one way or another, it must also remain part of the public education program. Report cards that reflect how students conducts themselves, at least in terms of values like honesty in completing their academic assignments, are part of the process of developing citizens.
History is replete with societies that focused on know-how and forgot about ethics. We cannot afford to become one of them.
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