Those of you with a child at a Light of Christ School Division school might be surprised in the fall by a radically different new report card.
But as much as the change to the report card happened suddenly, the process of designing the report cards involved four to five years of research aimed at addressing the new world of technology and the lagging performance of Saskatchewan schools.
In 2010, Saskatchewan placed sixth in math and science and fourth in reading in Canada, performing well below the Canadian mean score.
In response, Saskatchewan revamped its curriculum and the school divisions have adjusted accordingly. The adjustments have been philosophical and structural, and the new report card represents these changes.
Kelvin Colliar, the Light of Christ school division Superintendent of Learning, explains that a change in our educational philosophy is long overdue. Technological changes mean that students have "the facts and figures at their fingertips," and changes in the workforce mean that a different kind of education is required. Colliar points out to me that our education system hasn't changed in the last two hundred years, and falling grades are to show for it.
To understand the new report cards, we have to first consider the old ones. Report cards formerly gave numerical grades for each subject. The numbers themselves meant very little, as there were few standards provincially for what a certain number might mean. One teacher might award grades for attendance while another might not. A teacher formerly had to teach around 800 outcomes to students, and the grade was itself a poor demonstration of a student's grasp on those outcomes.
Some issues that might not have been important for a student to know over the long term (individual factoids, for example) might have been worth more, while more important concepts in the long term (mathematical processes or biological systems, for example), might have been worth comparatively little. A grade of ninety per cent was related to student performance, teacher priorities and a myriad of other factors, not necessarily representing anything. Teachers used the resources available to them to determine the means of assessment and define outcomes.
Colliar explains that "no research says that percentage grades produce better results." But in addition to eliminating percentage grades, the new report cards aim to put "the meat behind the numbers."
This is accomplished in part through changes to the curriculum. The new curriculum is smaller and expressed in "outcome" rather than objective form. Rather than pick and choose the objectives that they must teach, teachers have a smaller list of outcomes that they must produce. The revamping of the curriculum means that the teachers actually base the curriculum on outcomes, using them to determine assessment and decide on the resources that the class will use. This is the opposite of the old method of starting with the educational resources available to determine desired outcomes.
School divisions across the province have collaborated in designing a revamped curriculum that sharply defines outcomes and puts meaning behind the numbers used to assess them. Grades on the report cards are given on a per-outcome, rather than a per-subject basis, and defined on a four-point scale.
The four-point scale has several advantages over a percentage-based grade. Because the grades are given on a per-outcome basis, they can show which concepts a student is excelling in and which a student is doing poorly in. They also compare students not to their peers, but to the standards of the province. Just as importantly, the new system has more relevance for the groups traditionally lost by percentage grades - those at the top and those at the bottom. For those at the top, the four-point scale has a grade for going above and beyond the class's expectations. For those at the bottom, the grades show specific areas where the student needs improvement, and does not punish them for attempting problems beyond their understanding and failing.
Each grade in the four point scale is explicitly defined for every single outcome in the curriculum. For the "characteristics of electricity" unit, for example, one outcome is to "demonstrate and analyze characteristics of static electric charge and current electricity, including historical and cultural understanding."
To receive a grade of two, a student has to understand the concept and remember details. Some examples of outcomes are that the student can "identify dangers to the human body associated with static electric charge" or "explain, with reference to electron transfer, the production of static electric charge" in real materials.
To receive a three, a student has to be able to create, evaluate, analyze and apply the ideas of the lesson. Possible outcomes for this level include "using a technological problem-solving process," differentiating between different kinds of circuits and "discussing function, design and purpose of each."
Traditional assessment was related to performance on tests. While test performance is one way of grading a number of important concepts, it doesn't accurately reflect the real world, where people almost never see "tests," but instead receive feedback, require teamwork and have to learn new ideas on the fly. Moreover, facts are becoming less important across a wide variety of jobs, since even youth have all the facts they'll ever need "on their hip." In the modern jobs market, it is how people use facts and the outcomes they can produce with them that are more important.
The shift in assessment reflects this change. In the previous system, assessment was used for a variety of purposes that were not standard across school boards of even schools. Based in part on tests, assessment could be used for punishment, and was always used to "sort" the students in a class. The new curriculum uses assessment for three purposes, summarized as assessment for, as and of learning.
By collecting as much data on student performance as possible, teachers can use their assessment to address gaps in learning (assessment for learning). By sharply defining desired outcomes, assessments can show students where they are lacking (assessments as learning). Of course, the new curriculum also uses tests and other measures to assess student performance, so assessments are still made of learning.
The changes more accurately assess the way students will eventually be assessed in the real world, and provide valuable tools for students, teachers and parents.
To parents who might be apprehensive, Colliar points out that there is more research being done on all aspects of education than ever before, enthusiastically mentioning that "it's an exciting time to be in education right now." Though the changes might seem enormous, they have been backed up with five years of solid work, often collaboratively with other school divisions or researchers.
They also give parents the ability to play a more important role in their children's education, as the rubrics reveal clearly where a student is excelling and where he or she can use work. To those who think the new curriculum is more lax, Collier has a simple message: "we're not watering it down, we're revving it up."
Those concerned with the potential effects of the change need look no further than Ontario, which has consistently placed well above the Canadian average, and often placed first in Canada, in standardized tests for all subjects. Ontario has been using similar assessment systems for close to a decade and the results have been clear - as Saskatchewan's Canadian performance worsened, Ontario's improved.
How applicable are Ontario's results to Saskatchewan? Colliar pointed to a chart describing the performance of Saskatchewan schools on standardized reading tests. Discouragingly, the performance of schools has decreased every year since 2000. But there was also cause for enthusiasm in the results. Performance on reading tests seem to have only a little correlation with socioeconomic status, meaning that even the poorest schools, with the right resources, teachers and systems, can perform as well as the richest ones.
The school division has so far spoken to many of the parents who will be affected by the changes. Parents have so far been approving of the many changes, but the Light of Christ School Division is hoping to be as open as possible with parents. For more information about the report cards, visit the "parent report card information" tab on the Light of Christ School Division website at www.loccsd.ca.
