I found this article fascinating.
In the private school which may not be named, the verbal comments are clear and helpful.
The only people who’re helped by mealy mouthed comments are the lawyers, administration, and teachers unions.
How’s my kid doing in school? Parents are baffled by edubabble from their children’s schools, writes David Keeling of EdNavigator.
In New Orleans and Boston, his nonprofit helps low-income working parents choose schools and communicate with teachers and principals.
Bombarded with bits of data, “it’s easy for families to overestimate the performance of their children, to miss warning signs of major problems and to pass up learning opportunities that have the power to reshape a child’s basic educational trajectory,” Keeling writes on The 74.
When we began supporting one New Orleans mom working as a housekeeper in a downtown hotel, she shared her son’s report card, which showed a string of performance ratings like “AB” and “B.” She naturally assumed those ratings were positive — As and Bs. In fact, they stood for terms like “Approaching Basic.”
. . . Every day we see report cards full of baffling codes and acronyms that are incomprehensible to parents, with little explanation or analysis.
Another New Orleans student earned straight A’s. Her family didn’t realize she’d scored below average on state tests for three years.
Some schools provide reports only in English, even though many parents won’t understand what’s said, writes Keeling. Others have dropped letter grades in favor of words, such as “progressing.”
. . . what happens if a student ends the school year “progressing” in a subject or skill? Isn’t that another way to say he or she has not learned it? This tendency to play down difficult situations extends to parent-teacher conferences and other interactions, where teachers tend to sugarcoat problems and use coded language that a parent may not realize indicates a problem. For instance, when a teacher says, “Michael is really trying hard,” the true message may actually be “Michael is not doing well in class, but he is compliant and does his work.” But the parent hears, “My son is working hard in school and will be OK.”
I’ve seen “emerging” and “developing” as synonyms for “not learning.”
Many parents “trust that someone will say something if there’s a serious issue and hope for the best,” Keeling writes. “Sadly, most of the time, nobody does, and the best never comes.”
https://www.joannejacobs.com/2018/10/if-my-kid-is-progressing-is-that-good/