Facts about student assessment

In The importance of quality assessments for students (Think Tank, May 12), three university educators countered the May 7 Think Tank piece Grading by percentage is failing our students.

Not being in faculties of education, they combine personal and university perspectives to arguments for more percentage grading in public schools, and against achievement scales such as those including “emerging.” The perspectives merit analysis.

For example, they stated that the first purpose of assessment is “to determine to what extent (students) are meeting predetermined learning objectives when they have completed a course or unit.” This reflects the typical university lecture-test-exam-grade approach. In the grade-school context, assessment takes on various forms and purposes and may be routinely integrated with and inform instruction. Determining course grades is not necessarily the most important purpose.

As another example, research is mentioned showing that “students manage the transition (to university) best when course content and assessment in their high schools aligns with those in university, which includes the use of exams and percentage grades.”

Of course, students who thrive in this approach are more likely to attend and succeed at university. Most high school graduates, however, do not attend university, thankfully so given that many critical occupations require knowledge and skills attained in other ways. Public schools welcome and support all children with all possible trajectories and goals.

There are numerous speculative statements regarding the impact of grading practices on students and parents, including student progression through the grades, self-esteem, students with disabilities, and at-risk students.

Each represents a complex, integrated and child-specific set of circumstances. Clear communication about achievement is just one factor and is neither predicated on nor guaranteed by the use of percentage grades. The appearance of precision of percentage grades does not connote validity.

Among other matters, readers may have been left with inaccurate impressions from ‘‘…(students) have not been taught to read because reading is never assessed — it’s not even a learning outcome! The same goes for math. Yet strangely, these students are reported as meeting ‘grade level outcomes.’”

Firstly, most subjects and topics are taught in school absent an external assessment mandate.

Secondly, reading is assessed, even if not in a manner pleasing to the authors. Provincial assessment policies at grades 3 and 8 require that teachers report on elements of students’ reading achievement (e.g., comprehension, interpretation) relative to provincially stipulated performance criteria and based on locally chosen assessment strategies, with results sent to parents, reported to the public (aggregated), and used in the school system.

Regarding the claim “same for math,” there are similar provincial assessment policies at grades 3 and 7 addressing areas of number sense and skills.

Additionally, there are provincial tests in language arts and mathematics at Grade 12, as well as national and international tests that provide additional insight into aggregate student achievement. (Back to this in a moment.)

Thirdly, regarding “…these students are reporting as meeting ‘grade level outcomes,’” readers might have inferred that students are too readily deemed to be achieving at high levels. Published results from the Grade 7 assessment show that, in number sense and skills, typically about 40 per cent of ‘these students’ — not all or nearly all — are reported as meeting the assessed grade-level knowledge and skills. In reading at Grade 8, it averages between 50 per cent and 60 per cent of students.

The claim of a “failed education system” is typical of expansive condemnations designed to stir up distrust, contempt or alarm when unaccompanied by specifics or objective evidence. As such, they require extra diligence in the reading even when carrying the force of supposed clinical and critical acuity.

For example, some evidence (again, not comprehensive) comes from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA; last administered in spring 2022; mostly Grade 10).

Manitoba’s average score in mathematics was on par with that of five provinces and with the average of the countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. In reading, Manitoba’s average score was at or above that of five provinces and of over half of OECD countries. These results are inconsistent with systemic failure. Other evidence is welcome. This, then, is for information and context in the process of assessing the case for more percentage grading.

Ken Clark, retired in Winnipeg, focused mostly on large-scale assessment and on student assessment policy in his time working in the field of education.