Report cards: How much use are they?

I have been sending out daily tips to parents about how to understand their child’s report cards. Now I want to tell you why.

I know just how much time and effort teachers put into writing them. Report card writing times are some of the most stressful times of the year fro teachers. Report card writing comes on top of all their other work and many teachers simply stop having a social life till they have written them all.

So it was upsetting when I realized that this time, effort and energy might be wasted.

Parents have told me that their child’s report card didn’t tell them what they wanted to know about their children. They said that often had trouble making sense of what the teacher had written about their child, especially if the teacher had used an educational term they were unfamiliar with.

But the biggest peeve parents had about report cards was that they never understood if their child had problems or not. Most parents assumed that if their child’s report card said reasonably good things about their child then all was well. They did not understand some of the phrasing that a teacher might use to indicate that a child was having some difficulty in class. And looking at some report cards I can understand why.

Teachers, especially elementary school teachers, want to help their students feel good about their learning. They reason, quite rightly, that a child with good self-esteem has a better chance of learning more than a child with poor self-esteem. So they spend a lot of their teaching time boosting a child’s self esteem.

When it comes to writing report cards they continue to do the same thing. I know, because I had the same attitude when I wrote my report cards. I always used to start my report cards with a sentence that was positive and upbeat. I tried to show the child in the best light I could. I never deliberately lied but, looking back, I might not have been as straightforward in my comments as I could have been. (That is why in Report card tip #3 I suggest that parents ignore the first sentence!).

I thought I was being nice. I was being nice, but I wasn’t being helpful.

Parents told me they didn’t want teachers to pull their punches about their child’s progress, they didn’t want teachers to be nice if that meant that they did not get the information they needed. Parents wanted respect, and one way to show respect was to tell them how their child was doing in class a way that they could understand and act on.

I once asked a family worker how many of the parents she worked with understood their child’s report cards. She worked mainly with immigrant families and she had to translate many of the report cards, but two things she told me have stuck with me.

She said that she thought that only 5% of the parents she worked with understood their child’s report cards- even AFTER they had been translated!

She also told me that she tells parents not to believe what report cards say. She tells parents this because, “Canadian teachers are too nice, they never tell you the bad stuff”.

So, just how much use are report cards when parents struggle to understand them, don’t seem to get the information they want, and may not even trust them?

I would love to hear your comments about report cards – do you have any stores to share?