“A’s” are gone from British Columbia report cards, but B.C. parents hoping to gauge their child’s performance find the newfangled “descriptive” grading system confusing, according to a new report .
Last year, the B.C. government scrapped the traditional A, B, C grading system for kindergarten to Grade 9 students in favour of a descriptive grading system that saw student progress judged along a scale from “emerging” to “extending.
” “Parents, by and large, do not understand the new descriptors: emerging, developing, proficient, and extending,” said Michael Zwaagstra, a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute. The report, conducted by Leger for the Fraser Institute, asked parents of school-aged children (ages five to 18) enrolled in public and independent schools across Canada to match “extending” to its B.C.
government definition. In B.C.
specifically, 43 per cent of parents made the wrong choice, the highest proportion of any province; extending, per the government’s decision, means “The student is meeting the learning standard expectations with increasing depth. This is not perfection.” While 83 per cent of Canadians said the letter grade “C” is clear and easy to understand, only 36 per cent of B.
C. parents could correctly identify what an “emerging” grade means. Ninety-nine per cent of B.
C.’s K-12 parents said they want clear academic assessments for their child’s report cards. The new grading system was fully implemented last year.