Educators' Resource Guide
The following is the Foreword of the Educators’ Resource Guide.
The fundamental purpose of assessment, evaluation, and communication in public education is undergoing significant change. Until quite recently, over the course of a term or semester, teachers were expected to sift and sort students into those who are highly successful, those who are moderately successful, and those who are unsuccessful. This sorting process involved comparing one student’s achievement with the achievements of his or her peers. A teacher was deemed to have appropriately “high standards” if, come reporting time, there were some, but not too many “A” students, larger numbers of “B” and “C” students, some “D” students, and a few students who had failed. Historically, this norm-referenced model of assessment and grading served as a means of determining, ultimately, who would proceed to higher education and who would go directly into the work force where academic knowledge and skills were not necessarily prerequisites for gainful employment.
Today, mission statements of school boards across Canada and the United States emphasize “success for all.” The job of every teacher in every school is to work in ways that maximize the learning of ALL students, and, ensure that ALL students leave school literate, numerate, able to solve complex problems, and able to work productively with others. From an assessment perspective, norm-referenced practices with their emphasis on competition among students—“For me to win, you have to lose”—are being replaced by criterion-referenced practices in which the standards for success are made explicit and all students are expected to reach those standards. In criterion-referenced grading systems, there are no “A” students; there are only “A” performances and teachers must teach and assess in ways that motivate ALL students to succeed.
This shift is neither easy to make, nor can it be expected to occur overnight. Assessment practices are guided by long-held beliefs, and many of those beliefs reflect our norm-referenced traditions.
For example, in the past, particularly in the intermediate and secondary divisions, it has been common practice for teachers “to cover” the curriculum once, in the same way for all students, and then to test all students’ learning of that curriculum once, in the same way. But because not all students learn in the same way, at the same speed, and because not all students are able to demonstrate that learning on a timed, written test, teachers could reasonably expect that student achievement would be distributed across the full range of grades, from A to F.
A paradigm shift is occurring in public education. Teachers must now expect to deliver the curriculum in different ways, at different speeds, according to the strengths and needs of groups of students within their class—what we call “differentiated instruction.” From an assessment perspective, since all students are expected to achieve proficiency on essential elements of the curriculum, it follows that some students will need either more time or more than one opportunity to “hit the target.”
Faced with such changes, some teachers maintain, “That’s not fair for students who got it the first time.” Others claim, “How are we preparing students for the real world if they get to do tests and assignments over again? If you’re a pilot landing an Airbus and you blow the landing, you don’t get a second chance. There are dire consequences.” Yet others charge, “If there’s no longer any failure, what does that say about our standards? We no longer have any.”
These objections to assessment reform reflect norm-referenced thinking. First, let’s examine the “fairness” issue. How many of us would charge that “It’s not fair” if our neighbour took his or her in-car driver’s test three times before passing? On the contrary, since we will be sharing the road with our neighbour, we are more likely to insist that he/she take the test repeatedly until he/she is able to demonstrate mastery! When achievement and competence are the goals of teaching and learning, failure is NOT an option.
And what of the charge that we are not preparing young people for the real world if they are permitted to redo assessment tasks? The Airbus pilot argument simply
doesn’t hold up. The pilot DOES get to “redo” the poor landing—not once, not twice, but hundreds of times—in the flight simulator at pilot training school. Note the word “school.” Our classrooms, including the senior years, represent the simulator, NOT the Airbus. Our assessment and grading practices must prepare students for entry into the outside world; these practices should not be the outside world. Furthermore, most “real-world” situations do provide adults with more than one opportunity to demonstrate their competence. How many teachers face dismissal if they teach one bad lesson? In fact, most learning occurs when human beings of all ages make errors, reflect on those errors, and then adjust their subsequent actions accordingly.
The argument that a “no failure” policy represents a lowering of standards reflects a serious misunderstanding of the practices associated with criterion-referenced grading. It does NOT mean that sub-standard work will receive a passing grade; it means that sub-standard work must be improved until it meets the standard. Rather than lowering our standards, current assessment reforms, when implemented as intended, lead to improved standards for student work. Similarly, when an assessment task that provides evidence of essential learning is not submitted by a student, the response MUST NOT be to assign a zero. Instead, the work MUST be submitted. In the words of Douglas Reeves, “The appropriate consequence for failing to complete an assignment is completing the assignment” (Reeves 2006, p.122).
Again, consider the driver’s test. Informing the examiner that you never mastered the 3-point turn and therefore wish to have it excluded from your test won’t get you very far! The 3-point turn is one of the essential tasks associated with learning to drive and must be demonstrated as a pre-requisite of certification. Criterion-referenced assessment requires teachers, in collaboration with colleagues, to determine and agree on the essential evidence required to “certify” students as competent and knowledgeable in a given subject and then requires that all students complete these tasks.
The greatest challenge we face once we demand that all students demonstrate
proficiency on the essential learning for a given subject and grade is time. In order for teachers to differentiate instruction and assessment to meet the strengths and needs of students, they must engage in the long-range planning process of “backward design” to determine what is essential learning. With curriculum documents and classroom resources at hand, they must agree about the essential concepts and skills that students must acquire and demonstrate by the end of a term, semester or year.
It is clear that assessment, evaluation, and communication must all be examined in light of current educational research. And so, while this document is a resource guide about assessment, evaluation, and communication, it requires us to consider all aspects of our work with students. As educators whose job it is to prepare students for a rapidly changing world, we must accept our professional responsibility to constantly reflect, adjust, and improve our practices in order to increase the learning of all students.
