CELPIP Listening Part 6 Practice Test: Report Cards Without Letter Grades

NARRATOR: For generations, the report card has been a model of brevity: a column of letters, an A in mathematics, perhaps a disappointing C in French. Yet a handful of Canadian school boards are now experimenting with abolishing letter grades in the elementary and middle years, substituting detailed written commentary on what each student can, and cannot yet, do. Advocates regard the change as long overdue; skeptics suspect it is a solution in search of a problem.

NARRATOR: Michelle Tran, a Grade 6 teacher at a pilot school near Halifax, has become one of the reform's most outspoken champions. A letter, she argues, tells a family where a child stands relative to classmates, but offers precious little guidance about what to do next. A comment, by contrast, might observe that a student writes vivid descriptions but struggles to organize a paragraph, giving parents something tangible to reinforce at home. Tran further contends that grades inadvertently teach children to pursue marks rather than mastery. Since the switch, she reports, students are far less preoccupied with what will be on the test, and far more curious about where their reasoning went astray.

NARRATOR: Paul Sinclair, a father of three and chair of his school's parent council, is markedly less enthusiastic, though his quarrel is narrower than it first appears. He has no objection to comments; what he resists is the disappearance of the letter. Written assessments, he argues, are frequently so diplomatically worded that parents cannot discern whether their child is excelling or quietly falling behind. A child described as developing confidence with fractions, he notes wryly, could be almost anyone. Sinclair also anticipates a jarring transition to high school, where letters and percentages resume and students accustomed to gentle feedback may be caught off guard. Most persuasively, he observes that composing thirty individualized reports three times a year places a considerable burden on teachers who are already stretched thin, a concern that even the reform's proponents struggle to dismiss.

NARRATOR: Tran, to her credit, acknowledges that the first comments at her school were vague, and that teachers now receive training and shared examples to sharpen them. She concedes, too, that the workload is genuine, though she maintains those hours are better invested than in calculating averages. Sinclair, for his part, would accept a compromise: comments on every report card, with a letter available to any parent who requests one. Whether school boards will embrace such a hybrid, or press ahead with abolition, remains to be seen.