Report Cards...what is authentic assessment?

This past Monday I joined Carol Henderson, President of the Alberta Teachers' Association and Carmen Mombourquette from the Faculty of Education at the University of Lethbridge, on Alberta Prime Time to discuss report cards and more broadly, how our education system should measure 'student progress'.

Edmonton public, in two test schools, is implementing a new electronic, online system called SchoolZone whereby students and their parents receive monthly reports rather than the traditional 3-4 report cards over the school year. What this fully entails remains to be seen. I think that they are on the right track of trying to create more open communication with parents and students. There are many concerns however; is this the best use of a teachers time and energy, do teachers parents and students understand WHAT is being reported on and WHY?

Ontario has moved away from the traditional fall report card with grades and has implemented a new "Progress" report that considers learning skills, responsibility, organization, independent work, collaboration, initiative and self-regulation.

The progress report will 'assess' children (up to Grade 8) on things like; managing their personal behaviours, working with a positive attitude and healthy peer-to-peer relationships. There are no grades, rather the learning skills and work habits will recive an E for excellent, G for good, S for satisfactory or N for needs improvement.

Denmark and Scotland currently have systems that invite parents and students to help determine HOW they will be assessed and each students' report card looks very different and is 'personalized' to the individual learning needs of that student.

Which system is the most effective?

On Primetime I commented that we need to be looking at 'Authentic assessment'. That is the second piece to the puzzle because to do authentic assessment we need to have authentic learning environments and we must all have an understanding of WHAT it is that we value in our classrooms. I am trying to get at WHAT is it that we want our children to be learning? We cannot discuss how we want them 'assessed' if we have not first discussed what they are being assessed for?

Yes, I think that we all agree that we need literacy skills, numeracy skills and that we should know world history. There is an important part that is often missing however: we hear the old adage "knowledge is power"; in fact I have seen this on a poster in a teachers classroom recently and in school hallways. I disagree with this. Knowledge without wisdom is just bits of information that clutter our minds and often allow us to think we know more about something than we truly do. We must understand WHY we are learning what we are learning and for what purpose we can use the information.

This is a direct quote from Alberta's Commission on Learning "Genuine accountability brings no surprises. Fundamentally, it is about moving and improving, not about shaming and blaming."

Read further and you will see the 'Goals' there are five of them. No where in there is "performance, success, and high achievement for all students" actually defined neither do they discuss how it can or should be measured just that it should.

These are the conversations that we, as a community, must be having with our Trustees our teachers and with administrators. CBE mega end 1 is,

Each student, in keeping with his or her individual abilities and gifts, will complete high school with a foundation of learning to function effectively in life, work and continued learning.

Have we sat down with our teachers and Principals and asked them what this means to them? CBE has added the last 3 Ends (citizenship, Personal development and character) to our report cards now yet there is much confusion still as to what this means.

Consider the contrast in this scenario (which are true stories). Two children in 2 different CBE schools and one comes home with a report card with a full paragraph on the 3 ends which the parents felt was very reflective of the student as an individual learner and reflected the students contributions to their school community and the students strengths as they related to the learning environment that teacher was trying to create in the classroom. In my view, this teacher "gets it". The teacher is consciously trying to create a positive, creative feedback loop, between teacher and students, of learning and personal growth. The other child comes home with a report card that had 2 very short bullet point on the 3 ends. When the parents asked the teacher about this the teacher responded with, "I do not put down my observations of personal character traits because I am scared to do so as I do not feel I am backed by administration and I fear that I might be sued, particularly if they are negative observations."

This concerns me. If we refer back to Inspiring Action and the 3 Ends that the CBE now feel is important enough to include in our reports cards than which of these two progress reporting scenarios would you rather receive? The bullet points or the detailed observations? Of course, what is left out here, the equally important questions of who is doing the measuring and what are we measuring. I can ask 10 parents how they define personal growth through learning and citizenship in learning and I will get 10 very different answers. These are the questions and conversations that must address before we address how we assess any of this. This is what I mean by authentic assessment and authentic learning environments.

I know there are teachers who right now, everyday come up with authentic ways of teaching their students. They are creative and innovative in their approach with each student and we can learn from these teachers.

This discussion was hopefully just the beginning of what needs to be some very in depth discussions with parents, teachers, students, Trustees, administration and community members to collaboratively share thoughts and come up with ways in which we should be 'assessing' our students (if we should at all)? We are all vested in our children's best interests. It is incumbent upon all of us to do our best to create an education system that affords them their very best chance at getting the education that they most need as individuals to become the best that they can be.

How should, the CBE, be going about the business of adequately, appropriately and comprehensively measuring the progress of your child in our schools?

As I struggled with writing this blog my husband asked me this, "What is the goal, in todays world, of the K-12 public education system?" What we are teaching and how we are assessing the learning of that teaching is subsumed by answering that question.

Lets talk!