Plan to revamp report cards worries Calgary parents

Some Calgary public schools are going to try out a redesigned report card next school year.

The report cards for students in kindergarten to Grade 9 will come out twice yearly instead of three times and traditional marks will be replaced with a new range of learning outcome ratings.

Student performance will be classified as exemplary, evident, emerging or support required.

"So there will be indicators that talk about how the student is achieving in a variety of measures rather than a specific mark," said Frank Bruseker, president of the Calgary Public Teachers Association.

The Calgary Board of Education is also considering dropping the personalized comment portion of report cards.

That worries Jeff Bowes, who is the head of the Association of Parent and School Councils.

"We have concerns about the removal of comments from report cards. Personally, I find the comments often have the most valuable information on the report card," he said.

But according to school trustee Carol Bazinet, parents don't have to rely so much on report cards to find out how their child is doing with emails and other online information.

There is no word yet on which schools will be taking part in the pilot project.