Grade Level of Achievement Reporting

Alberta Education will no longer require school boards to collect and submit Grade Level of Achievement (GLA) data to Alberta Education as a way of reporting to the province on how well students are learning. Instead, schools will focus on reporting GLA at the local level.

Following consultations with school boards, school administrators and key stakeholders, Alberta Education has concluded that the data-collection process for submission to the province was creating an additional administrative burden for schools.

Alberta Education believes the most valuable conversations about an individual student’s progress occur between teachers and parents and with the students themselves. Regardless of what grade a student is in, parents need and want to understand what and how well their child is actually doing in achieving the student learning outcomes in the provincial programs of study for that grade level.

In these focused discussions, it is essential that everyone has a clear idea of the grade level and related programs of study the student is being instructed in and how well the student is doing in achieving the expected outcomes for that grade level. All the formative and summative assessments a teacher conducts throughout the school year inform this conversation.

For Grade 3, 6 and 9, the conversation with parents would also include the student’s performance on standardized Provincial Achievement Tests which complement the assessments conducted by teachers.

The Guide to Education for the 2010-11 school year has not been updated to reflect this change in government practice.  The responsibility to report to parents has shifted to the local level and the principal shall make the decision about how best to share this information with parents.  Some school authorities may have found value in collecting this data and are certainly free to do so if they desire to.

For the current 2010-2011 school year the following points describe the key elements of reporting expected at the local level for this school year.  Teachers shall ensure that information is communicated effectively to parents about:

• what their child knows and can do in the courses being studied

• how well their child is doing in those courses

• the grade level(s) the child has achieved in relation to the grade levels of the provincial programs of study for language arts and mathematics.

• The provision does not restrict the communicating of achievement to written reports, nor does it require schools to use a particular type of instructional grouping or placement policy.