In today’s National Post, there is an article about the elimination of a report card in Elementary schools in Ontario, replacing it with a “kinder, gentler progress assessment”.
This is a stupid idea. You cannot fix what you don’t measure. And fluffy, feel-good assessments don’t measure.
Mary-Lou Donnelly of the Canadian Teachers’ Federation is quoted as saying:
Assessment is very complex, it’s not just a right or a wrong and a test mark. It is an accumulation of how the student is doing in many, many different areas,
Except that measuring whether a student is absorbing and understanding the material is just a right or wrong question. It can, and must, be measured by a test score. Yes, there are other things that teachers should be communicating to parents about their child’s behaviour, attitude, etc – but the test score should be the opening part of the discussion. If this kid is failing to learn the material – then let’s talk about why. But without grade letters or percentages or some hard measurement, we can’t tell if the child is succeeding or not.
It also does a disservice to the child as they grow up. How many businesses and career paths don’t involve hard measurement of performance? In my field, measuring performance is critical to our success. We measure the productivity of employees and groups of workers so we can realistically predict outcomes. This is how the real world works – if you can’t measure it, you can’t figure out where the problem. The movement in business over the last 20 years has been to quantify performance. And our education system is moving as fast as it can AWAY from this model.
The big question is why? That is simple – the teachers’ unions don’t want to be measured. They want to get paid to do their job regardless of whether they are doing it well or not. Measurement of performance is bad for unions because it might show that not all their members are equally good at what they do. And poor performance is tough to use as leverage when asking for more money…
2 comments
grandma says:
23 December 2009 at 15:29 (UTC -7 )
When I was in school you were promoted only after you passed. You failed and were held back.
Then the system changed to nobody fails (this would stigmatize the student)So instead of having to learn they move onto a harder class where they have no chance of learning the new stuff because they never learned the old.
Then came the teacher who was supposed to be the authority in the classroom to someone who comes in and attempts to be the students best friend.
This didn’t work either as you can not teach someone who thinks of you as a good buddy.
So since teachers are not teaching why would they want a report going home to tell parents just what little Judy isn’t learning.
Better for the students feelings not be hurt by telling a parent that she can’t add 2+3 and get 5 but she is doing oh so well at getting along with her fellow students.
that will look great on a job resume in the future.
Maybe when they graduate the government won’t have to hide all their plans since nobody will be able to read and understand them so will vote for whoever gives them the best laugh.
Yes Dalton would approve of that.
Cynical Bard says:
29 December 2009 at 21:57 (UTC -7 )
This is right on, as is grandma’s comment. I have a hard time understanding why we would go the effort to convince little Johnny to have high self esteem if he can’t read. to me if the kid leaves school without being able to read and do mathematics, the system has totally failed. If we have to spend all the time on these and don’t tell Johnny to have high self esteem we will be better off.
Johnny will get high self esteem from being able to demonstrate that he is a capable, competent individual. Let’s just make him one.
There is no other reason for him to go to school.