Middle school students will see percentages return to report cards for the upcoming 2014-15 school year after the Northern Lights School Division (NLSD) board of trustees voted to institute a dual system.
Percentages will now accompany the new outcomes-based reporting on report cards for students in Grades 5 to 8 throughout the division.
The decision comes a month after a petition of 251 names was presented to the board asking the division to put percentages back on report card to give parents and students a better understanding of assessment during their time in middle school.
“The concern is the clarity or the confusion in the report. You are reporting so that parents are the receivers of the report and they want to know where that child is at,” said NLSD trustee Tom Varghese during a board discussion at the June 18 board meeting. “Clarity is what is needed and I don't think at this time we have clarity.”
Since 2012, NLSD report cards for students in grade 8 or lower had dropped percentages in favour of assessment categories like Exemplary, Proficient, Progressing and Needs Improvement.
The problem, according to Lorne and Deb Kaban, the two parents who led the petition, is that the new outcomes-based system is confusing, inconsistent and gets interpreted differently by each teacher.
“If you were a teacher you might say the exemplary range is between 75 and 100 per cent. Where as I might say exemplary is between 90 and 100,” said Lorne Kaban. “We see that inconsistency on our kids report cards and it is confusing.”
After reviewing their son's work and converting raw scores to percentages, the Kaban's found out that Exemplary ranges from 87 to 100 per cent, but saw grades ranging from 69 to 94 per cent in the Proficient category. They also saw some scores in the Progressing category that were higher than those in the Proficient category, which confused them even further.
They weren't alone in their confusion, as five schools in the division listed problems with assessment high in the complaints section of the recent Thoughtstream survey.
Many trustees on the board agreed that the feedback was there to make a decision in favour of percentages as the parents were confused with the current system.
“The petition holds a whole lot of weight with me. The Thoughtstream survey, which came out differently than I thought, (also) holds a whole lot of weight with me,” said NLSD trustee for Cold Lake, Rod Soholt, who felt the board shouldn't discredit the feedback it had received.
NLSD trustee for Lac La Biche Debra Lozinski said it “takes a ton of passion and time to create a petition” and urged the board to listen to what the people were asking for.
After a lengthy debate the board passed a dual reporting system. Varghese was the lone trustee against the motion, feeling that percentages shouldn't be introduced to students in Grades 5 and 6. Trustee Micheal Topylki abstained from the discussion and vote as he had signed the petition.
