I wanted to take some time to share more about the change in our reporting practices that were shared in a letter home (also posted on the website).

As you are aware, the Ministry of Education has implemented a redesigned Provincial curriculum in schools. This curriculum places emphasis on personal learning by providing students more opportunities to follow their interests, set goals and reflect on their learning. The foundation of the curriculum is that mastery of concepts requires students to understand, know and do. To learn more about the BC Curriculum please visit the Ministry of Education curriculum webpage ( https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/ ).

As curriculum has changed, so do the ways we assess, evaluate and report on student learning. Teachers will be communicating your student’s learning using the following proficiency scale along with comments.

Comments will include:

• What your child is able to do in relation to learning standards
• Areas to work on in relation to learning standards
• Ways your child can be supported in their learning.

Our focus will be on determining where your child is in relation to curriculum learning standards, what their next steps are, and how we can help them get there. Students will be active participants and take ownership of their learning through goal setting and self-assessment.

Moving forward, letter grades will no longer be a part of reporting for grades 4-7 in our district (they never were a part of K – 3). The district and Ministry of Education are currently reviewing the value of letter grads at high school as well. Instead, the above scale will be used in place of letter grades.

We are moving away from the use of letter grades, as there is a substantial amount of research indicating that letter grades are detrimental to student learning. As well, letter grades can often be subjective, while not truly communicating progress your child has made in relation to learning objectives.

Contrary to what many of us have traditionally believed, the research indicates that:

• Grades tend to reduce students’ interest in learning itself
• Grades tend to reduce students’ preference for challenging tasks
• Grades tend to reduce the quality of students’ thinking

According to Alfie Kohn, just one educational researcher, letter grades are not only unnecessary but harmful.

“The research quite clearly shows that kids who are graded – and have been encouraged to try to improve their grades – tend to lose interest in the learning itself, avoid challenging tasks whenever possible (in order to maximize the chance of getting an A), and think less deeply than kids who aren’t graded,” Kohn explains. “The problem isn’t with how we grade, nor is it limited to students who do especially well or poorly in school; it’s inherent to grading.”

Here’s the thing…

Letter grades limit learning for high achievers. It lends a false sense of comfort and accomplishment to parents and students for a child to be an A student. What if they already understood all the course content from the beginning? They traditionally would get an A, but would have not really learned anything. Being smart is having the ability to think about content, problem solve, communicate thinking and question information. However, some of the smartest people I know did not do well in school. Sound familiar?

Also, some of our hardest working students, who grow the most and learn the most are deflated by letter grades that do not reflect their thinking and learning.

Many of the important skills we’re asking students to learn are not easily measurable in traditional ways. In addition to strong foundational skills, we want students to be proficient in competencies and concepts that will lead to success. Important skills like collaboration and critical thinking do not lend themselves to numerical scoring and letter grades, but rather to descriptions about how proficiently students can accomplish these skills.

If learning is what we care about, then we need to move to a system that allows us to describe learning. Learning is a continuum. We are never done learning. We all have things we are good at and we all have things we need to work on next. This scale allows us the freedom to describe your child’s learning in a more meaningful way.

Please don’t try to match letter grades with this performance scale. We are no longer talking about As and Bs. We are talking about where your child is in their learning, where they are going next and how we will support them along the way.

Hopefully with this background you will better understand the changes you will see. If you still have questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

Stacy