I was curious about this topic, so I looked it up and found this Atlantic article.
It begins:
if the purpose of academic grading is to communicate accurate and specific information about learning, letter, or points-based grades, are a woefully blunt and inadequate instrument. Worse, points-based grading undermines learning and creativity, rewards cheating, damages students’ peer relationships and trust in their teachers, encourages students to avoid challenging work, and teaches students to value grades over knowledge.
Also, to clear up a possible misunderstanding (that I had and others may have), getting rid of letter grades does not mean getting rid of evaluation. Instead, students are assessed on whether they are achieving/not achieving proficiency in specific skills.
I don’t know enough about early childhood education to comment on this in an informed way. But I do find the contrast between this change and Ontario returning cursive to the curriculum interesting.
The worry I have is that kids not being exposed to it until grade 10 means they won’t have time to get used to it before the grades actually matter for getting into university.
You have a child who spends 10 grades “Meeting expectations” for math then end up with a B- on their Grade 10 Math final.
This isn’t the first time BC has done this. There were only ‘meeting, below and above’ for K-7 from the early 70s into the 80s, and the scholarship examinations in grade 12 kept the old 9 point scale.
Meanwhile, UBC was on the 1st class, 2nd class, pass British system until not that long ago.
Could you explain the contrast? On its face, bringing back cursive seems totally compatible with removing letter grades.
I mean in the sense that the BC curriculum is making a fairly radical change from what most of us are used to compared to Ontario making cursive mandatory again in a move towards traditionalism.
It’s not as though Ontario has better school outcomes than BC, but overall Canada does well as compared to other countries.
Checking out the most recent scores (preCOVID) in OECD PISA high school testing in science and math, Canadian students outperformed all G7 countries except Japan.
Quebec switched to something like that along with a push to make kids move on no matter if they met minimum standards or not. My friend who works in a Cegep (technical education/pre university) told me that in their case the number of students who require special classes to bring them to an acceptable level of knowledge in french or mathematics increased tenfold over 3 years, the only difference being pre and post reform cohorts.
We haven’t had letter grades (not % or numbers either) here in Regina for more than 10 years for grades up to 8. High school (9-12) just uses a %.
Oh, I guess my sister’s school was one of the ones effected by the pilot course. I remember her being incredibly confused by the change, as was I. It’s essentially just an alternative to the letter grading system as functionally there’s no difference to the current system from my current understanding?
Like, proficiency cards use expressive terms followed by supplementary teacher comments as described in the article… but how is that different from say me getting a C with my teachers comment on my report card describing where I could improve? Do they think C stands for COOL-CAT or something?? The nouns are merely a means of identifying where to apply what value. Even if it did mean Cool-Cat, I’m still struggling by this point. So what did this accomplish?
They mention this a smidge down, “while teaching them… how to use their knowledge in ways that matter for post-secondary education and careers”
Perhaps a goal shift would benefit our students? I’d love the curriculum to express why it’s important to learn, not just cram their heads so they’re set to become career-bots regurgitating information that was fed to them.
Math was always expressed upon me to be utilized in specific career fields. I wish I knew I could use it on literally anything my creativity could allow for. My sister doesn’t understand why she’s learning anything in school as I didn’t in her place. My family was failed and shall extend that failing onto her as they did with me, saved by happenstance and luck. Our entire education system is a failure.
Didn’t people like Mortimer Adler look into how to better educate kids? Is it an issue of expressing it to the right people?
