2y ago

Did BC Need to End Letter Grades on Report Cards? | The Tyee

4 comments

“Percentage grades make it possible to differentiate between good work and excellent work more precisely than vague descriptors such as ‘emerging’ and ‘developing,”
This is a dumb take. No one in grade k-9 needs more specificity than the four labels coupled with teacher input. I suspect the people who are against this change are simply against change.
- I mean, I've been on percentages for pretty much my entire life. It's worked out just fine.
  
  I honestly though letter grades were an American thing
The title of this article is disingenuous, and the article itself fails to note that K-8 have already been using the proficiency scale report cards for years. Grades 10-12 continue to have letter grades, and that will likely continue for a while longer. That being said, the numeracy and literacy exams grade on the same proficiency scale, it just converts it to a number (1-4 scale). It's not impossible to apply this system to high school grades, but it will take some getting used to by teachers, students and parents.
Most middle school kids don't really care about report cards or grades as they know to that they will just be pushed along with everyone else (this is a separate issue from report card formats). The proficiency based report cards will not change this practice. Another note of importance is that official academic transcripts start in grade 10, so everything before it doesn't really matter, from an academic record point of view.