Past Principal Points

Grades!

Ever wonder how grades are determined? What constitutes “A” work or “B” work? What does it take to get an “A” or 100%? These questions have been asked a lot this year more than most, it seems, so I thought I would talk about the whole grading process as well as the standards of Alberta Learning and AKCS specifically. This is a bit of a complicated subject, and so it will take more than my usual one page to address!

First, we need to understand that grading of student work is fundamentally a matter of professional judgment. Regardless of what kind of work is being marked or what kind of scoring system is used (points, percents, letters), the mark is going to reflect the teacher’s professional judgment about the quality of the work. For example, consider the different judgments that must be made to construct a simple elementary math test.

How many questions should there be? What level of difficulty should be required for this grade level? Should all children in a class be expected to do the same work or should there be some variations and accommodations? How long should be allowed to complete the activity? Should some children be allowed extra time? Should the test be constructed as a multiple choice, matching, completion, or some combination? All of these questions have to be answered before the test is even made, and they are largely subjective. Then a judgment must be made about what level of mastery should be considered an “A” or “B”, etc. Certainly, there are provincial and school standards that give guidance, but in the final analysis, how the test is actually constructed will determine whether the class gets an “A” average or “C” average.

Second, we need to understand that how we report student achievement is also a subjective and rather arbitrary decision. It varies from school to school, province to province, and country to country. If percent grades are used, we still need to make some kind of evaluative judgment as to what percent is considered “Excellent” and what percent will represent “Fair” or “Poor”, etc. I have personally had experience in American, British, and Canadian schools. In my American high school, to get an “A” one had to get “94%, and a Fail was “70%. However, that school was quite a bit easier than the British school I attended in junior high. There an “A” (or Excellent) was a 75%, and a Fail was 35%. However, it was nearly impossible to get an “A”, and if one did, it was never more than 85%. (As another example, the history department at the University of Saskatchewan where I attended had a policy that no paper could be given higher than 85%. That made it tough for history majors like me to maintain a high average.)

In Alberta, there is no provincial standard for elementary schools at all. In high school, grades must be reported as percents. Very little attention is given to letter grades, but if they are used at all, then an “A” is 80% or better, a “B” is 65% or better, and a “C” is 50% or better. Less than 50% is a fail. Personally, I prefer letter grades as we use them in the elementary grades because I think percents convey a false sense of precision. No two teachers will mark exactly the same way, and in fact, one teacher will mark differently on different days. Generally, however, there is considerable agreement as to the broader categories represented by a letter. A paper which is a 73% today might be a 75% a week later, but it is still essentially a middle “B” (or “C” in our elementary grades.).

Another problem for us at AKCS is that, historically, we have used 90% as the cutoff for an “A” and 60% as the cutoff for a “Fail.” Once we added high school back in ’95 we had to change the way we marked. Since then we have extended the high school grading system down to the junior high as the two programs are quite connected. This makes the transition from grade six to seven a bit of a shock until students realize that marks will generally be about 10% lower across the board in junior and senior high. The lower marks are not a reflection of the students or the teaching, but simply a different method for reporting “Excellent” or “Fail”, etc.

Also, in the elementary grades we work very hard to help every child achieve mastery of each subject. This means we are trying to help every child achieve a “B”. Students sometimes think that anything less than an 80% is a failure, but in fact, getting a “C”, should not be seen as a “Failure” but simply not having achieved mastery yet. While 80% may seem high (and at times for some children it is) there are certain concepts at the elementary level where anything less than 100% is unsatisfactory. (For example, how much of the alphabet do we want our grade ones to know?) However, translate that same feeling into junior high, and students who feel that anything less than an 80% is a failure are really saying that they have failed if they have anything less than an “A”. That’s not very realistic!

Finally, behind all reporting of achievement is the statistical phenomenon known as the “Normal Curve”. This is a statistical fact that in a random, large scale measurement of anything (speed, size, earnings, intelligence, achievement, etc.), there will be a range from slow to fast, small to large, poor to excellent, etc. The vast majority of people or events will be in the middle (or average) group. There are fewer and fewer measurements at the extremes. That’s why the extremes are considered “exceptional”. In education, “exceptional” refers to extremely gifted or extremely handicapped children. Most children are in the middle somewhere.

Regardless of the system used (points, percents, letters) every teacher works with an underlying concept of a “normal curve”. This helps define what is considered Well Above Average, Above Average, Average, Below Average, and Well Below Average. Some schools actually use a curve to grade students and simply give the top 10% an “A”, the next 15% a “B”, the middle 50% a “C”, and so on. In this system students are specifically compared to one another. There will always be a few “A’s” and a few “F’s” no matter how hard a student tries.

At AKCS, we have tried to establish standards that reflect what we consider to be Excellent, Good, Acceptable, Poor, and Failing work. We hope that these standards will be consistent from year to year and class to class and compare favorably with other schools in Alberta. Therefore, we can give out as many “A’s” or “F’s” as we think are merited based on our judgment of the quality of the work in light of our experience and the school’s history and expectations. We have an exceptional student body from very supportive homes, excellent teachers, and a rigorous curriculum, etc. It is understandable, then, that we see lots of “A’s” and “B’s” and very few “D’s” and “F’s”. However, at the secondary level, we cannot use these terms or the letters, but must use percent grades, and we must use the 80% and 50% limits for Excellence or Fail. The grades we use must be transferable across the province at the high school level.

What all this means is that the Department expects only about 15% of students will achieve an “excellence” level on achievement tests and diploma exams. While we often exceed that number, we still have far more “A’s” given out than students who score at the level of excellence on these exams. We need to be realistic and fair as we are evaluating our students not only as we compare them to our criteria, but also as we compare them to students across the province. An “A” is not given to a student to make them feel good, but because it truly represents excellent work, and “excellent” is a judgment call of the individual teacher as s/he compares student work to both the school’s and province’s standards.

At the secondary level, students and parents should be very pleased with any mark over 80% and thrilled with anything in the 90’s. (As a rule, most teachers will seldom use anything in the 90’s other than for very clear objective activities such as Scripture Memory work or a spelling test. A really exceptional essay might merit a 95%, but that is rare.) We have great teachers and great, hard working students, and because of this we will have class averages in the 70’s as opposed to the 60’s that would be typical for most schools, but we shouldn’t expect class averages in the 80’s. Basically, we should have no more students in the 80 to 100 level in junior high as we formerly had at the 90 to 100 level in the elementary school. Again, this really has nothing to do with the quality of the work, but simply the arbitrary cutoffs used in Alberta. There is no right or wrong system to use, and, ultimately, all of them end up where we began: teachers must use professional judgment.

Brian Hazeltine, B.Ed., M.A.
Principal, Airdrie Koinonia Christian School

Copyright © 2003/2004 Airdrie Koinonia Christian School      Last modified: November 25, 2003