This past week, a conference was held in Waterloo called the Equinox Learning 2030 Summit. The goal of the conference was to look at how education in 2030 (the Grade 12 year for students born this year) can and should change from the way it is today. The Communique summarizing their findings is interesting reading. If you do not want to read all six pages of the communique, this blog post from the conference summarizes the summary.
In this post I want to address the statement from the blog post that "portfolio work could replace letter-grades as the primary criteria for evaluation". That one statement resonated the most with me, although I also like the other main ideas of changing teacher roles and changing student groupings away from age-grouped classes to more ability-grouped classes. My last post (quite a while back, I had a busy semester 2) discussed how giving grades takes parental and teacher focus away from student learning. Watching The Agenda on TV last night (October 4, 2013) made me think about what we, as a society, are doing with the grades teachers give.
The answer I came up with is that grades provide some limited feedback for parents but otherwise the only organizations that use grades are Colleges and Universities for the purposes of student admission. No employer looks at grades. If an employer feels that a prospective employee needs to have a certain skill then the employer uses the interview process and/or the training process to make sure the employee has that skill. Why can't post-secondary institutions do the same? I would estimate that teachers spend 15-20% of their time and get 50% or more of their stress from creating evaluations (tests, projects, etc.), marking evaluations, and defending the evaluation process. Yet all that time, effort, energy, and stress is only in aid of providing a free service to post-secondary institutions, some of which are private, profit-making organizations!
A student's final grade is supposed to represent that student's overall achievement in terms of mastering the curriculum expectations. Yet courses at high school typically have 10 - 15 overall objectives on which the students are supposed to demonstrate their ability. How does it make any sense to turn 10 - 15 different skill/knowledge sets into one single grade? Current changes towards strand-based evaluation in high schools will mean that teachers will have the information necessary to report on every single one of the 10 - 15 overall objectives for any course. It is foolish to create a situation where the teacher has all that detailed information but is then forced to lose all those details by turning that information into one single grade.
I hope that provincial education bureaucrats and school board higher-ups are paying attention to the Learning 2030 Summit's conclusions. Those conclusions look like a path towards an improved education system for the children being born right now.
Showing posts with label grading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grading. Show all posts
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Student Evaluation, Another Analogy
Two of my previous three posts have been about some of the still controversial, among both teachers and the public, pushes for reform of how student marks are calculated. One post was about not assigning zeroes for work that was not done and the other was about not using averages to calculate student grades.
Today I thought that I would try to combine the ideas of those two posts using an analogy that I hope all Canadians will understand, hockey.
Determining a student's final grade is a little bit like the General Manager of an NHL hockey team trying to decide how good a player is. If the GM is looking at a player who has scored 25 goals in each of the last four seasons, then the GM can be pretty confident that he is signing a player who will score around 25 goals next year. In the same way If I see a student whose marks are 65, 65, 65, 65 I can be confident in assigning a mark of 65.
The difficulty arrives with players and students who are not so consistent. What about a player with scoring stats of 20, 20, 25, 30? I think most of us would guess that player should be scoring goals in the high-20, low-30 range next year. My point is that we are not looking at his average of goals, which is 23.75, but rather at the trend of his performance, and expecting that he actually rates better than his average. As a teacher I am trying to do the same thing for students. A student with marks of 60, 60, 65, 70 should probably be rated in the high 60s even though the average is 63.75.
We also need to reflect negative trends. A hockey player with 30, 30, 25, 20 has averaged 26.25 goals per season but I doubt the GM should pay him like a 25+ goal player. Similarly a student with 70, 70, 65, 60 has an average of 66.75 but probably should be evaluated in the low 60s.
What about flukey results? Imagine a hockey player with 20, 20, 40, 20 over the last four seasons. His average is 25 goals a season but that 40 goal season looks like it was more of a fluke than anything else. As a GM I would probably pay the player like a 20 goal guy. The issue is the same for a student with only a few good results. A student with marks of 60, 60, 100, 60 has an average of 70 but probably should only be given a mark in the low 60s since that one 100 does not seem at all to be representative of his ability.
Let us also look at zeroes. Imagine a hockey player who scored 30 goals a year for three seasons then was suspended for all of his fourth year for drug infractions. His goals are 30,30,30,0 and he is averaging 22.5 goals a season. Some people might say "well, it is the players fault he got suspended and scored no goals, he should have to face the consequences" and suggest he be paid like a low-20s goal scorer. However, I bet most NHL GMs would be willing to pay that player based on him scoring almost 30 goals in the following season. That is because the previous consistency is very strong evidence of the player's underlying ability. Also, does anyone really think the player would have scored no goals if he had played last year? So if I look at a student whose marks are 70, 70, 70, 0 (did not hand in the project) the average is 52.5. But the initial consistency suggests that this student's learning is near 70. So we should give a mark in the high 60s that reflects our best estimate of the student's learning, not an average that suggests the student is barely passing.
I hope this analogy has helped you understand that teachers who are trying to follow current best practices are trying to estimate underlying learning based on consistency and trends, rather like we might try to evaluate hockey players.
Today I thought that I would try to combine the ideas of those two posts using an analogy that I hope all Canadians will understand, hockey.
Determining a student's final grade is a little bit like the General Manager of an NHL hockey team trying to decide how good a player is. If the GM is looking at a player who has scored 25 goals in each of the last four seasons, then the GM can be pretty confident that he is signing a player who will score around 25 goals next year. In the same way If I see a student whose marks are 65, 65, 65, 65 I can be confident in assigning a mark of 65.
The difficulty arrives with players and students who are not so consistent. What about a player with scoring stats of 20, 20, 25, 30? I think most of us would guess that player should be scoring goals in the high-20, low-30 range next year. My point is that we are not looking at his average of goals, which is 23.75, but rather at the trend of his performance, and expecting that he actually rates better than his average. As a teacher I am trying to do the same thing for students. A student with marks of 60, 60, 65, 70 should probably be rated in the high 60s even though the average is 63.75.
We also need to reflect negative trends. A hockey player with 30, 30, 25, 20 has averaged 26.25 goals per season but I doubt the GM should pay him like a 25+ goal player. Similarly a student with 70, 70, 65, 60 has an average of 66.75 but probably should be evaluated in the low 60s.
What about flukey results? Imagine a hockey player with 20, 20, 40, 20 over the last four seasons. His average is 25 goals a season but that 40 goal season looks like it was more of a fluke than anything else. As a GM I would probably pay the player like a 20 goal guy. The issue is the same for a student with only a few good results. A student with marks of 60, 60, 100, 60 has an average of 70 but probably should only be given a mark in the low 60s since that one 100 does not seem at all to be representative of his ability.
Let us also look at zeroes. Imagine a hockey player who scored 30 goals a year for three seasons then was suspended for all of his fourth year for drug infractions. His goals are 30,30,30,0 and he is averaging 22.5 goals a season. Some people might say "well, it is the players fault he got suspended and scored no goals, he should have to face the consequences" and suggest he be paid like a low-20s goal scorer. However, I bet most NHL GMs would be willing to pay that player based on him scoring almost 30 goals in the following season. That is because the previous consistency is very strong evidence of the player's underlying ability. Also, does anyone really think the player would have scored no goals if he had played last year? So if I look at a student whose marks are 70, 70, 70, 0 (did not hand in the project) the average is 52.5. But the initial consistency suggests that this student's learning is near 70. So we should give a mark in the high 60s that reflects our best estimate of the student's learning, not an average that suggests the student is barely passing.
I hope this analogy has helped you understand that teachers who are trying to follow current best practices are trying to estimate underlying learning based on consistency and trends, rather like we might try to evaluate hockey players.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Why a No Zeroes policy is good for learning
Recently in Alberta there has been a large to-do over the suspension and subsequent dismissal of high school teacher Lynden Dorval. The main issue involved in the disciplining of Dorval was his refusal to follow his school's No Zero policy for student assignments that did not get handed in. Many people are referring to Dorval as a "hero" for standing up to what they view as watered-down, permissive education.
Ken O'Connor, an internationally recognized expert on evaluation and grading wrote a good defence of No Zero policies in the Edmonton Journal in June. I want to explain and expand on some of the issues he raised.
The first thing that Dorval's supporters do not realize is that teachers following best practices do not use averages to calculate final grades. When you don't use averages, then giving a zero or not becomes irrelevant. A student who has done work to demonstrate the learning demanded by the course curriculum deserves to be recognized for that learning even if he or she has not done all the work. A student whose missed work means that he or she has not met all course expectation should not be granted the credit, even if an average of his/her marks would give a grade above 50%.
Secondly, allowing a teacher to give zeros allows both teachers and students to avoid responsibility. A student can choose to not do work and "take a zero", avoiding his/her responsibility to do school work. A teacher can give a zero to that student and avoid the responsibility that I feel a teacher should have to follow up when a student has a problem so significant that work does not get completed. I ask parents out there, if your child did not do a school assignment, would you want the teacher to give a zero and forget about it or instead follow up with the student (and maybe you too) about what the problem was and how it can be fixed?
The third point that Dorval's proponents seem to be missing is the idea that grades and marks should try to accurately reflect student learning. If a student does not produce work, assigning any mark to it actually makes no sense. It would be a little bit like a meteorologist saying "On Thursday it rained most places in the city but because of a technical problem I did not get a rainfall reading so I will treat Thursday's rainfall as zero". Assuming that a measurement should be zero because you were unable to take the measurement is going to skew your data.
Now that you have read this post (and Ken O'Connors piece as well, I hope) you should have a better understanding that No Zero policies are not about watering down education or being permissive with students. No Zero policies are about trying to provide the best educational and learning opportunities possible to our young people based on what we know right now. If you are looking for more information on current best practices in assessment and evaluation, checking out Ken O'Connors books is a great place to start.
Ken O'Connor, an internationally recognized expert on evaluation and grading wrote a good defence of No Zero policies in the Edmonton Journal in June. I want to explain and expand on some of the issues he raised.
The first thing that Dorval's supporters do not realize is that teachers following best practices do not use averages to calculate final grades. When you don't use averages, then giving a zero or not becomes irrelevant. A student who has done work to demonstrate the learning demanded by the course curriculum deserves to be recognized for that learning even if he or she has not done all the work. A student whose missed work means that he or she has not met all course expectation should not be granted the credit, even if an average of his/her marks would give a grade above 50%.
Secondly, allowing a teacher to give zeros allows both teachers and students to avoid responsibility. A student can choose to not do work and "take a zero", avoiding his/her responsibility to do school work. A teacher can give a zero to that student and avoid the responsibility that I feel a teacher should have to follow up when a student has a problem so significant that work does not get completed. I ask parents out there, if your child did not do a school assignment, would you want the teacher to give a zero and forget about it or instead follow up with the student (and maybe you too) about what the problem was and how it can be fixed?
The third point that Dorval's proponents seem to be missing is the idea that grades and marks should try to accurately reflect student learning. If a student does not produce work, assigning any mark to it actually makes no sense. It would be a little bit like a meteorologist saying "On Thursday it rained most places in the city but because of a technical problem I did not get a rainfall reading so I will treat Thursday's rainfall as zero". Assuming that a measurement should be zero because you were unable to take the measurement is going to skew your data.
Now that you have read this post (and Ken O'Connors piece as well, I hope) you should have a better understanding that No Zero policies are not about watering down education or being permissive with students. No Zero policies are about trying to provide the best educational and learning opportunities possible to our young people based on what we know right now. If you are looking for more information on current best practices in assessment and evaluation, checking out Ken O'Connors books is a great place to start.
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