EQUITABLE ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION PRACTICES

Build one-on-one and small group opportunities for conversations/ observations into the learning process to reveal and/or confirm student thinking. Use conferencing in an ongoing manner to share feedback, build understanding and relationships, and inform assessment and evaluation. 

Re-design assessment opportunities that lower the stakes and open the door to more reliable demonstrations of learning. Embed smaller demonstrations of student learning, with less-rigid time demands into the learning process. 

In areas where skill development depends on the completion of larger products, chunk them into smaller pieces, checking in and offering feedback along the way, rather than relying on submission of a large product as the only means to gather evidence of learning. Ask yourself whether all of the components must become a polished final product, or whether students could polish just one element or share reflections of their learning orally.

Recognize that a heavily-weighted, single assessment piece such as an exam is not an accurate or reliable method of gathering evidence of student learning and may not be appropriate in intermediate-level courses. 

Exams should be used selectively and in combination with other methods of assessment, primarily in senior courses.  Rather than use exams to confirm what you likely already know about student learning, use Instructional Support Days to uncover the learning of students who haven’t yet sufficiently demonstrated the overall expectations in your course.

"Formative" and "summative" should not be used to describe any specific assessment task. 

Rather, the terms describe how you will use the information you've gathered. Focus on offering students descriptive feedback and delay determining what evidence will be considered summative until the end of the learning period. Avoid equating how fast a student grasps a concept/skill with their level of achievement.

Powerful learning partnerships are best built upon relationships that are not evaluative. Many educators are inching towards grading less and can be our guides. Focus less on a numerical grade in the first two-thirds of the course, and allow relationships and feedback to be the driving force until the latter part of the course. Think about how you can offer students some agency in the evaluation and reporting process, especially considering that a midterm grade (or level) needs to be communicated within the first two thirds of the course.

Ditch the weightings and calculations in favour of using professional judgement in partnership with a body of evidence to identify patterns in the data for each overall expectation. Standardized and universal weightings impede the ability of educators to individualize the evaluation and reporting process. The importance of various pieces of assessment evidence may change for different students, or shift over time as more information is added. Ignore the outliers. Give priority to the more recent/most consistent evidence. Once you have identified a level of achievement for each overall expectation, aggregate them into a final grade. 

An important question that teachers often ask themselves is “What is level 1, really?” 

Prior to the release of Growing Success in 2011, passing a course may have meant that when the teacher aggregated, weighed, and averaged all of the points earned on all of the summative products submitted by a student through the semester, the outcome was a grade of 50% or more. Determining a grade was largely an act of entering a series of numbers into a calculator, spreadsheet, or electronic grade book and letting the calculation determine the outcome. 

This is no longer considered to be a fair, accurate, or valid approach to determining a final grade. In fact, rather than letting the numbers speak for themselves, “Teachers’ professional judgements are at the heart of effective assessment, evaluation, and reporting of student achievement.”(8) While leaning on professional judgement may be an uncomfortable shift for some educators, it is key to employing equitable assessment practices. The more teachers trust themselves to know where their students are along the learning continuum, the more comfortable employing their professional judgement becomes.

If Level 1 is not a calculated grade of 50-59%, then what is it?

According to Growing Success, “Level 1 represents achievement that falls much below the provincial standard. The student demonstrates the specified knowledge and skills with limited effectiveness. Students must work at significantly improving in specific areas, as necessary if they are to be successful in a subject or course in the next grade.”(18)

Students who are just emerging in their demonstration of the overall expectations, but are still a long way from the provincial standard would be considered Level 1. This may mean that they don’t get many, or possibly any, correct answers, but there is still evidence that their thinking is on the right track. For some students, this emergent thinking may not be evident in products at all but is revealed while observing how the student works through a thinking task or while conferencing with them about their learning. This is why aggregating points is an unreliable way to determine Level 1 achievement.  It is only through gathering varied forms of evidence of learning related to the overall expectations, using one's professional judgement to determine how the evidence aligns with the achievement chart, and ideally including students in the evaluation process, that a fair, accurate, and valid level of achievement can be determined.

What is the difference between meeting the provincial standard, Level 1 achievement, and failing to earn the credit?

In Ontario, the provincial standard is Level 3 achievement. This indicates that the student is well prepared with the necessary skills and knowledge to set them up for success in the next grade or course. Level 1 indicates that the student demonstrated emergent understanding of the overall expectations and is at risk of not being prepared to demonstrate the expectations at the next grade level or course. The Level 1 grade would signal to the subsequent teacher that they will need to offer extra support to help accelerate that students' learning.  A grade below Level 1 indicates that the credit has not been earned because “additional learning is required before the student begins to achieve success in meeting the subject/grade or course expectations.”(41) A student who fails to earn the credit would not have even begun to reveal their understanding of most or all of the overall expectations whether through observations, conversations, or products.

In the past, there has been a misconception that one does a disservice to their colleagues when they grant the credit to a student who has not yet acquired the prerequisite skills and knowledge to be successful in subsequent courses. In some instances, educators have been asked to justify why a student was granted the credit after diagnostic tasks early in the next course reveal a students’ need for additional support. These practices are harmful because they reinforce viewing students through a deficit lens, in addition to other oppressive and inequitable assessment practices. The decision to grant a credit should be based on the student's demonstration of the overall expectations in the course they are currently enrolled in, and not perceptions of whether they have what they need to be successful in future ones.