Growing Success - Take your mark!

School starts this week, officially, for most Ontario teachers.  Many boards have a PD day scheduled with students starting September 7.  Such is the case for DCVI.  One of the topics on the agenda, likely this week, will be the AMDSB's implementation of the Growing Success document from the Ministry of Education. 

The buzz about GS last week in the media was that the new document officially allows teachers to assign a zero to work that is not submitted.  The zero / no-zero debate will likely dominate discussions in all staff rooms and staff meetings as local boards reveal their implementation of GS.

To me, the problem is not zero / no-zero.  When I first started teaching (yeah those many years ago), we reduced a grade by 25% for each day a project wasn't submitted.  Failure to write a missed test, in a timely fashion, could also result in a mark of 0.

My point is that we used to include learning skills and work habits within the assessment process (see above).  Wisely, in my opinion, learning skills and work habits are now reported separately from the performance on curriculum expectations.  Let's assume that this separation is a good thing (some of you may disagree, but that's for another time, or a lengthy comment from you).  The problem is HOW we report the learning skills and work habits.

The categories for learning skills and work habits will change to :  responsibility, organization, independent work, collaboration, initiative, and self-regulation.  Regardless of the categories, it will still be reported separately and using the same letter symbols of E - Excellent, G - Good, etc.

I think most parents, like myself, when we get a report card, the first thing I look at is the marks, followed by other mark related concerns, class average, my child's overall average, did the mark go up/down.  Next is the "canned" comments, and finally is learning skills and work habits.

Here's my wild idea - let's report a mark for learning skills and work habits.  Marks are what matter!  It makes it important.  We report achievement of curriculum expectations using a mark.  If learning skills and work habits are equally as important (as I think they are) then why not  report them using a mark?  

Your turn.  What do you think?  Parents, students, teachers, have your say by leaving a comment.

Disclaimer - these are my opinions and very likely do not reflect the opinion of my employer (Avon Maitland District School Board).

Comments

[Peter Beens]

I often think of the work habits "scores" as marks. E)xcellent = 80+, G)ood = 70-80, S)atisfactory = 60-70, N)eeds Improvement = <60. Perhaps we could communicate that thinking to the parents via the "canned comments" (as you like to call them!) or via a letter from an administrator.

[Russell Gordon]

How about no marks assigned, and in their place, pass/fail standing only, with extensive personalized comments (based on careful notes made by teachers during the semester) highlighting what was done well and what needs to improve. Universities and colleges wouldn't like this, but educators and school boards need to decide whether we are in the business of categorizing and labelling students (what occurs now) or giving true, regular, and meaningful feedback to guide their learning.

[Cyndie Jacobs]

During the consultations for GS, at the
federations' reps meeting, we had a very
lengthy debate/argument with EDU reps
about the significance, placement and the
how-to-report of LS/WH on report cards.
Where EDU landed on this issue reflects
only part of the dialogue and our suggestions.

[Jac Calder]

Interesting! I agree that the LS/WH are as important as curriculum content mark. So, you could potentially have 2 marks - one for demonstrated understanding of curriculum content and one for LS/WH. I also agree with Russell Gorden above when he says get rid of marks all together.

Making the two (curriculum/LS) equally important in the eyes of parents and students (and teachers) should be the goal. The debate of marks or no marks is a great debate and one i'll leave for later.

I still worry that Growing Success missed the mark - but maybe not. Time will tell. My biggest concern is that educators are not marking and determining the marks based on the overall expectations. Marks are most often split up falsely based on "types of assessment" (application, communication, thinking/inquiry, knowledge understanding) and teachers are trying to take the mode of achievement across different expectations. This doesn't make sense because the purpose of the achievement chart categories should be to ensure teachers are using balanced assessment, but they are not distinct enough to separate marks on. Taking the mode across curriculum expectations is also a little odd - because each expectation is different (between 7 - 14 ish for each course). They can be assessed together, but marks for each expectation can be easily separated out.

We piloted this way of tracking marks in summer school this year. http://www.jaccalder.com/assessment.php I was not part of summer school, but after speaking with the Principal of summer school, learned that there were some teacher meltdowns over this but for some it worked very well.

I wish I had my own class to pilot and try this out with.

Our credit recovery program in Ontario is great in theory. We get a sheet with the overall expectations listed on it from the original teacher with the level achieved beside each expectation. As a credit recovery teacher we fill in the gaps to determine a fair final mark when complete. The biggest concern here is that the original teachers are not marking by overall expectation, so they often are guessing or just filling in the form. This de-values the potentially very fair and decent system. It would be great to see the two jive. Oh boy, i'm rambling and going to have to write a blog post tonight. Thanks for the thought provoking post Peter!