Report cards, but no comments! Fallout from labour dispute between teachers’ unions and government

BY PAUL JUNOR

Now that almost all of the teachers unions are in a legal strike position with the government, there are many potential effects from this ongoing dispute. The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (EFTO) is now in Phase 4 of their job action. The Ontario Secondary Teachers Federation (OSSTF), which have been in a legal strike position since November 2019, are continuing their series of one day rotating strikes which have targeted publicly funded school boards across the province.

Strikes were held on December 4^th, 11^th, 18^th, January 11^th, 18^th, 21^st, and February 5^th and 6^th. One of the effects of the job actions by OSSTF has been the decision to not provide comments on any of the secondary provincial report cards. In a news release by John Malloy (Director of Education, Toronto District School Board) dated January 23^rd, “As per the sanction secondary teachers will be inputting student marks electronically, but will not be writing comments. As a result, semester one report cards will be produced for secondary students with marks only and distributed following the completion of the semester.”

Consequently, students will be able to get a report card with a numerical value but no written comments. Furthermore, “For those students applying to College or University marks will be submitted to the Ontario College Application Service (OCAS) and to the Ontario Universities Application Centre (OUAC) on time to avoid any impact on application deadlines.” Students will not have to be worried or concerned about the job action effecting their admission to post-secondary institutions.                                       `

ETFO has been in a legal strike position since November 2019.  In a news release to parents in January, the TDSB gave specific details regarding the report card process. It indicated that Term 1 report cards would not be provided to the school administrators for the various subjects. According to John Malloy, “As teachers will not be entering learning skills and/or comments electronically, we are not able to produce Term 1 report cards or the Kindergarten Communication of Learning. I want you to know that this difficult decision was made after careful consideration and a thorough review of options. It is not possible to produce accurate reports for the TDSB’s approximately 174,000 elementary students given the significant resources and time required to do so.”

This means that parents will not be able to get up-to date information about their children’s academic performance in their elementary classes. The director noted, “It is important to note that teachers are still expected to assess and evaluate students and respond to your inquiries.”

The Minister of Education Stephen Leece in a response to the lack of report cards noted, “Yet again, teacher union leaders are risking student success and preventing parents from seeing valuable information about their child’s performance in class. It underscores our government’s insistence that teacher unions cancel these strikes that are hurting our kids. And it only strengthens our belief that parents want our government to invest in front-line services, not in compensation and other demands, for some of the highest-paid educators in the country.”

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