‘We should not be ranking and sorting children’: educator group gives old-school grading an F

A new teacher group is promoting the benefits of “ungrading” and how professionals across the province can tweak their classroom evaluations to better serve students.

The Manitoba Association for Progressive Assessment — an affiliate of the Manitoba Teachers’ Society — officially formed at the start of the new year.

It was born out of trial-and-error at Winnipeg’s Glenlawn Collegiate, where teachers no longer give out percentage grades for quizzes and other assignments.

“My undying, unwavering belief is that we should not be ranking and sorting children, and that’s what the marks are intended to do,” principal Dionne Potapinski told the Free Press.

The founding president of the new association dedicated to exploring alternatives said she wants to establish a network of like-minded teachers to share ideas, struggles and research.

Potapinski noted she and her colleagues on the Glenlawn campus frequently field inquiries about what they call “progressive assessment” as word-of-mouth about it continues to spread.

Grades 9 and 10 teachers at the high school started replacing zero-to-100 per cent scales with descriptive feedback in September 2018. Within five years, a building-wide evaluation overhaul was completed.

Instead of issuing numbers, teachers choose from a list of four terms (emerging, progressing, applying or mastering) to best describe a student’s understanding of specific outcomes throughout a course.

They must submit one final percentage in accordance with Manitoba Education standards, but students have a chance to weigh in on the number that ends up on their report card.

Every course ends with a one-on-one meeting during which a student must self-reflect on their semester, pitch their portfolio of work and negotiate a number that reflects their academic performance and drive to learn. The model aims to shift the traditional power imbalance in education, although the teacher has the ultimate authority on final marks.

For Potapinski, the radical revamp is rooted in a desire to support student well-being and academic rigour. It places high expectations on teenagers because they are constantly asked to self-reflect on feedback and encouraged to “strive for mastery,” she said.

The principal’s motto is, “tomorrow should be better than today.”

No one enters the profession because they are interested in evaluation and not all teacher programs include formal and explicit training on different approaches to it, yet it is one of the most important tasks in every classroom, said Michael Holden, an assistant professor of education at the University of Winnipeg.

Professional assessment networks, such as the up-and-coming one in Manitoba, are “rare and necessary” to promote self-reflection and idea-sharing, Holden said.

He recently co-led a study of 168 teachers, the majority of whom were Canadian, on their experiences with marking. Participants said they were troubled by “grade obsession” and students tying their self-worth to marks, both of which are distractions from course content and building skills, per findings published in the British Educational Research Journal in September.

Holden said he endorses clear communication with students and their families about assessments and their purposes, and only assigns grades when one can measure specific and observable evidence. Deducting marks for tardiness or limited participation is “an irrelevant construct,” he said. Those matters should be reported on separately, as far as he is concerned.

“The purpose of assessment is to gather information about where students are in their learning so you can make decisions that can help students further their learning. That’s why we assess, full stop,” Holden added.

Glenlawn teachers have “forged an initial path in the snow” to overhaul traditional marking and it has reduced teenagers’ stress levels and encouraged them to take risks and participate more in lessons, Potapinski said.

The high school’s staff team wants to continue honing local strategies and grow the progressive assessment movement so more students can benefit from it, the principal said.

She added: “The more people that do it, the more people that are willing to try it… it’s like (cross-country) skiing. You don’t want to be the first one to make the trail, but if you’re the fifth or sixth or seventh or 10th person down the trail, it’s much easier.”

There were 33 teacher collectives registered to run workshops and connect subject-area experts under the MTS umbrella at the start of the school year. The inception of Potapinski’s new group brings the roster to 34.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca