Last week, they will have been anxiously handed over, eagerly received, scrutinized, discussed and, by now, are probably filed away with years worth of their predecessors. In some cases, they will have provoked raptures of praise and pride, the stirring of hopes about bright futures, the bestowing of rewards and gifts. More often, they will have produced sermonettes on the vast improvements just a little more effort might have wrought, parables about one's own regret about opportunities lost, dire warnings about the dog-eat-dog world waiting just down the road to chew up the lackadaisical. Alas, there will also have been more than a few cases in which perplexed parental units hardly knew what to make of the report cards their little darlings brought home. They are, in their modern incarnation, no simple documents to appraise. Gone are the days when it was eminently clear that a teacher had come to personally know the student in question, had developed a fair handle on what made him or her tick, and made no bones at all about giving parents the straight goods (in his or her own words, in his or her own hand-writing) about Johnny or Jane's classroom performance or appalling lack thereof. In olden days, these commentaries occasionally approached high art. An all-time favourite, for instance, pertains to a chap I shall identify only as D. "For a boy of ability,'' his master once inscribed on a report, more in sorrow than in anger, "his talents are sorely misplaced as the form clown.'' You just don't see that kind of thing any more. Now, they are laden with bureaucratese intended to obscure more than it reveals, impersonal observations about how the child in question is usually able to perform large-motor skills with a ball, or occasionally discusses with some understanding the displacement of water. Thankfully, there is another report card issued this time of year in which it's possible to hear echoes of the clearer verdicts of days gone by. It's a report not on individual students, but the annual tracking report by the lobby group People for Education on Ontario's school system. This year marks the 10th anniversary of a group hastily formed to combat the worst fallout of the former Conservative government's Common Sense Revolution. The confrontational temper of those times has happily passed. The worst pressures on the public school system have abated. But, still, the conclusion of this year's report recalls that most familiar of report card judgments: Ontario could do better. The current Liberal government has made improvements in the system, it said. Class sizes are getting smaller. Waiting lists for special education have shrunk. More schools have music teachers. With funding increases, fewer schools are charging community groups for use of their space. In general, however, programs and resources have not returned to pre-1998 levels and, alarmingly, graduation rates are lower now than they were then. Disturbingly, the shortfalls are most evident in what we now know are not frills - areas of student physical fitness, personal development, emotional well-being, intellectual enrichment. In 2006, the report says, the percentage of elementary schools with phys ed teachers increased for the first time in seven years - up from 30 per cent last year to 36 per cent this year, but it remained below 1998 levels. In 2006, only 15 per cent of Grade 7 and 8 schools had guidance counsellors, a decline from 25 per cent in 1999. In the few schools with guidance counsellors, there was an average of one half-time counsellor for every 895 students. In 2006, only 54 per cent of elementary schools had teacher-librarians, a steep decline from 80 per cent in 1998. This comes at a time when there has been a significant decline in the percentage of Grade 3 to 6 students who report they like to read, the report says, and "given the now proven link between school libraries and students' reading enjoyment" can hardly be coincidental. Since 1998, there has also been a decline in the number of specialist arts teachers in elementary schools and a decline in the number of arts courses offered in Ontario high schools. Even though research over the last 20 years "has shown that arts programs encourage new ways of problem solving, enhance students' understanding of their cultures and engage students who might otherwise drop out of school. New Canadian research has also linked students' abilities in math and other academic subjects with their exposure to music programs." As well, the report highlighted the continued and growing reliance by Ontario public schools on fundraising by staff, parents and local communities to augment school budgets. Increasingly, this revenue also pays for essentials. It also risks creating a system of have and have-not schools where quality of education depends on "the amount of free time parents have, parents' capacity to raise money and the wealth of the community." The report, issued as classes end, gives those in charge of the system something to think about over the summer. "Ontario's publicly funded schools have the potential to be among the best in the world," the report says. "But that potential will only be reached when ..." As every kid who's handed over a report card knows, it's what comes after that that's usually the most painful ... and often the most true.