Is This For Marks?

We have been discussing assessment in our schools for decades. Some teachers have assessment fatigue, and will avoid attending professional development sessions on this crucial professional skill, because they believe they have "been there, done that".  To be fair, there are outstanding examples of integrated, progressive, thoughtful and professional assessment practices in every school. Teachers who use regular, formative feedback to help students understand their progress and to adjust their teaching; teachers who explicitly connect all learning activities with the Big Ideas, curricular content and competencies their students will be responsible for understanding, knowing and doing; teachers who regularly invite students to be self-regulating, reflective and metacognitive learners by engaging in structured self and peer assessments; teachers who include students in developing the criteria for major summative assignments; teachers who design their entire courses with learning maps shared with students; and teachers who meet one-on-one with students to discuss the best work from their portfolio, to determine summative marks.

At the same time, there are also teachers who use traditional and troubling assessment practices. Teachers who 'cover' material on a preset timeline, rather than 'teach' in response to student learning; teachers who use pop or surprise quizzes and homework in their summative evaluation. Teachers who are proud of their reputation as 'hard markers', who include test questions not covered in class, so that almost no student can achieve a perfect score; educators who argue that final marks of 85% or 49% are precise and objective. Teachers who deduct marks for all kinds of reasons, including wearing the wrong clothing in PE, submitting work late, and even those who penalize students for using the wrong colour ink, font, spacing or for not including their name or putting it on the wrong side of a title page. Just as insidious is the practice of using 'bonus marks' to encourage and reward student behaviours.  

Too often we use marks as the currency of value and compliance. When presented with an assignment, the first thing students will often ask is "is this for marks?" as over many years, they have determined from us that learning is only worth their time if they can collect marks to deposit into the marks bank. Indeed, at the end of a course, their parents and friends will ask, "what did you get?" rather than "what did you learn?". In most schools, a subtle ethos of competitiveness exists and while learning is not a competition, access to scholarships, awards, school recognition and coveted universities in our province and country are almost exclusively based on marks and, unfortunately, this drives many of our practices in secondary schools.

How many of these statements connect with your beliefs? Your practices?  

Agree?    Disagree?

• The purpose of assessment is to support student learning and offer hope to every student.
• Evaluations and grades are a source of stress and angst for students. Marks impact students' self-image and mental health.
• Ongoing and constructive formative assessment is intimately linked to good teaching. You cannot have one without the other.
• Multiple formative assessments with specific, descriptive feedback must occur before any summative assessment.
• Practice, homework, draft work and quizzes, like all formative assessment, should be for providing feedback on what students' know and what they still need to learn, rather than collecting marks.
• Summative assessments occur at the end of learning. The teacher should be confident that students have learned and are prepared to demonstrate their learning.
• The purpose of summative assessment is to allow students to show what they understand, know and can do. 
• People learn in different ways and students should be provided with different opportunities and ways of showing what they know, understand and can do (i.e. not just unit tests or essays)
• Summative work is important. If it is not completed by a student, it is incomplete, not zero. Late work is welcomed, not penalized.
• In the real world, we learn from experience and from our mistakes. Opportunities to rewrite and redo summative assignments and tests are great learning opportunities.
• To build a secondary school foundation that supports curiosity and learning, Grades 8 and 9 should be ungraded. All assignments should be about and for learning. Schools should adapt a version of the 4-point Proficiency Scale used by the Ministry of Education.  All middle years students are either EMERGING (1) -> DEVELOPING (2) -> PROFICIENT (3) -> EXTENDING (4), with specific, individual comments.
• Report Cards should be renamed Communicating Student Learning. Detailed, constructive comments about individual student's strengths and areas for growth are helpful.  The typical 72% - S - Satisfactory work this term is about efficiency, not communicating nor supporting learning.
• It is better to have a reputation as an inspiring teacher than a hard marker.
• While students who do not attend or engage may not be successful at first, whenever a student fails, it reflects directly on the effectiveness of our teaching and our schools.

p.s. assessment in compressed timelines and/or blended learning during the pandemic will be more challenging, but even more important for keeping students feeling connected and engaged. Do less. Do it thoughtfully. Know what is essential. Allow students time to work on drafts, with feedback from peers and the teacher. Allow students different and creative ways of engaging with the curriculum and to demonstrate what they know. Collaborate. Team teach. Work together. Hang in there - this is for now, not forever.