Secondary school perspective here,

We have a set of comments in what is called the ‘comment bank’  we use them or not at our professional discretion.

NONE of the prefab comments in the comment bank are as ridiculous as the ones that Malkin cites.

And again we can and do use our own language.  Some of this confidence and direction is simply because in secondary - most teachers are subject specialists.

Once you have mastered a subject area and have achieved post secondary recognition in your field - you are a harder sell when stupid comes knocking ............

Actually it is true most are idiotic. You should see the whole list. Many pages thick. All to avoid saying anything harsh or negative. Teachers hate them and laugh at them. Written by bureaucrats

From a parent perspective - with the idiocy so common we learn to read between the lines. What is most offending though is standardizing the reports and bell curving results. It is not even about fairness and being truthful but making your child an unimportant tool for the teacher’s/system’s manipulation. In all, report cards are not true and I will not pay much attention to them until they will be about my son completely. It is his name written on the top therefore it should apply to him and only to him (not being copied from the other report - as I caught the teacher doing - nah, I didn’t say - pointless).  Marks are also not true representation of child’s abilities. You can recognize bad teachers by their teaching less to nothing, testing more than required, marking harder than covering the subject, and not sending any worksheets/tests home for parents to know. <—This becomes standard.

In particular, Malkin’s comment here resonated with me:  “As a parent who was lulled into complacency for almost two years by dishonest report cards, I can personally speak to the damage and the lost time dishonest report cards cause.”
I can relate to that.  For years, our eldest received glowing reports on her math skills at elementary school.  In fact, each year it appeared she was becoming even more proficient in arithmetic.  “Exceeding Expectations” and many, many comments outlining her demonstration for whatever project was given to her, was glowing in praise.  Problem was that this was a complete disconnect to the reality of her understanding of arithmetic.  The truth was, she had none.  At home, we tried for years to work on daily worksheets, drill her on multiplication facts, yet she stubbornly stuck to the premise that her teacher was the one in charge and she wanted to learn the way she was being taught in school.  And she was able to complete her tasks given in the classroom, all the while sacrificing her intuitive ability for arithmetic.  It was heartbreaking.

Luckily for her, things changed in Gr.5 when her teacher took control of the situation and started assessing the children regularly, instilled daily practice in the classroom, using worksheets, taught them the fundamentals of arithmetic using the 4 standard algorithms, had them memorize their multiplication tables, introduced and had the kids use long division (many for the first time), and whipped them all into shape for Middle School.  For the first time, we had an honest report for our daughter’s math skills, and it was based on assessment, daily assignments, effective teaching methods, and a strong foundation of math facts.

I am not blaming teachers here; they are being mandated to teach a very wishy washy curriculum with very vague learning objectives.  The point of this story, is that the report card issue could be improved dramatically just by insisting that teachers utilize ongoing, meaningful assessment in the classroom, and track student’s performance.  If teachers were allowed to use letter grades/percentages, there would be proof attached to the level of learning that each student obtained.  It astounds me that so much gobbledygook has to take up so much of our teacher’s time, when a more simplistic standard of measure would be far more successful.  A parent’s responsibility first and foremost is to prepare our children for the real world.  Wrapping them in feel good phrases and positive reinforcement does them a tremendous disservice. 

A parent in the Coquitlam School District in the Vancouver area was able to overturn her school’s pilot project which is enacting these changes at her child’s middle school; she lobbied the principal along with other likeminded parents, demanding that the standardized method of report cards remain in place for their kids.  For those parents, letter grades will remain.  We don’t need the gobbledygook, we need honesty. 

Tara,

You shared that with your daughter’s good instruction happened in grade 5.  I believe, absolutely, that good instruction needs subject specialists.  Your grade 5 teacher who understood how to teach math - was that a person with a math degree?  In Ontario we can look that up via the OCT.  Do you have an equivalency in BC?  If not that would be more that 70% of the fight for an effective math curriculum.

Teachers would welcome it.  We want to teach what we studied and were trained for.  We are tired of being used as widgets - we are subject specialists.

Yup - you are welcome.  Keep up the good fight!

Mirka to answer your question…this was a teacher who struggled with math and science as a child herself, and, upon becoming a teacher later on in life, vowed to bring math to life for her students.  Ironically, this same teacher is now retired, and I get weekly emails from desperate parents inquiring if she could tutor their children to help with math.  We were just lucky to have her. 

In the ideal world, having teachers with a strong math background at the elementary level would be glorious.  Unfortunately the reality is quite different.  Unless other provinces adapt the same levels of training and expertise like Quebec has for their teacher colleges, I do not know if anything will change.  Another idea would be to bring back teacher mentors to schools…something that was prevalent once upon a time, but this has somehow gone the way of the typewriter and the buggy whip. 

In lieu of teachers with a strong math background, a focus should be on the evidence based research, strong curriculum guidelines, as and better resources for teachers.  That might be a good starting point.  That, as well as ongoing dialogue between elementary and secondary teachers about what is expected of students once they are in the older grades.  Why is it that education is the only profession where colleagues do not engage in a peer review process and engaging in conversation when there is a problem to fix? 

Again, though, the teachers here are not to blame.  Weak curriculum guidelines and poor classroom strategies are the issue.  Following the evidence which supports rigorous direct instruction, proper teaching methods, and ongoing assessment could happen tomorrow and make a great deal of progress within the school system if the will was there.

Tara,

thank you for your thought full response.  Honestly I post here with the best of intentions.

We have funding in Ontario from the ministry for after school tutoring to fill the holes in children’s understanding in SECONDARY Math, Science , and English.  Each Tuesday and Thursday in each secondary school we have a two hour session staffed by classroom teachers, retired teachers, student teachers, and community members.  This is the sort of support that KUMON and company charge $30 per hour.  It is free.  The teachers who are part of this program are paid by the ministry and there is a program co-coordinator that ensures that the bodies are counted and the funds are justified.

Ironically - kid you not- the hardest sell is the students struggling with specific subject matter and their parents.  They find the after hours paradigm inconvenient and many chose not to participate even though it is a free program that is efficient and effective.

These kids chose to go to hockey, basketball, and every other paradigm with a ball…........... with their parent’s support. 

I agree with your assertion on the weak curriculum without any argument.  Please explain how children who are not able to navigate this pablum still check out from support from the system - and the check out with their parents support.

there is water, there is the horse, what happens when the darn thing will not drink?

Mirka,

As admirable as this program is for high school kids, by that time it’s too late.  Kids check out because they have already determined they are horrible at math, and will not improve.  By this time, parents have usually given up on the system.  They have battled the school administrators and others in the education establishment for years up to this point, and have usually come to the same conclusion as their kids.  I might further suggest that real teaching occur during class time, rather than after school. 

Real improvement might be warranted by offering this tutoring support at the elementary level rather than the high school level.  Parents would be much more keen during the younger years as well. This is where the real problems lie. Kids do not have a strong foundation of arithmetic skills.  The teaching methods at the elementary level are so convoluted, that it’s hard for kids to navigate addition, subtraction, multiplication and long division.  Furthermore, there is no ongoing assessment at this level to determine where improvement likes to be made, and the weak curriculum guidelines make it very difficult for many elementary teachers to know what the priorities are for effective math instruction.

I attended an education conference this weekend and was the only parent in the room.  All there were teachers.  I went to a math assessment discussion, and heard many accounts from middle school teachers who did not test their students; they did not think it was necessary.  Other teachers there employed students to videotape various projects…for MATH assignments.  The way math is being taught is seriously convoluted and wrong.

If any real improvement is to be made, the way to get the horse to the water trough is to insist they drink from it at the earlier years, rather than later on when they’re beaten up and beyond caring.

It’s too late to try to fix in 1 year of high school everything that hasn’t been taught and practiced and learned during 8 years of elementary school!

By grade 9 is too late!
- Some kids already have already given up on math.
- Others who’ve got good grades during elementary find out they don’t know as much as they thought but would not come to free tutoring.
Why? Because of what has been instilled into them by elementary school. One is either good at something or not. If you have to work at something if it’s not fun, you are stupid.
Or if the parent pushes you to practice they have “develpmentally inappropriate expectations”.
What 14 year old wants to admit that they are stupid?

The parents that have pushed and succeded, their kids don’t need tutoring.

The parents that have pushed and have not succeded have already given up tired to fight the establishment and to damage their relationship with their child.

The parents who only find out in high school how big are their child’s knowledge gaps believe that learning comes naturally so why would they have their child work at something that is not their child’s thing?

The chaotic, bad or inexistent teaching, the lack of standards, the brainwashing that all learning can be effortless and fun during 8 (eight) elementary school years catches up and some of shit hits the fan.

Not all of the shit by all means.
Grade 9 and grade 10 math and science to a large degree yet another spiral repetition of knowledge that should have been mastered in elementary.

More shit hits the fan in grade 11 if your child is in a decent high school that doesn’t just give high grades away like candy.