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Should report cards “value” students?
In case we needed further proof that Canadian faculties of education seem intent on getting students in Canadian schools ready for life on another (not yet identified) planet, we now have fresh pronouncements from the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (OISE) on the upcoming discontinuation of graded fall report cards in Ontario. In a Dec 23rd Globe and Mail article, OISE Associate Professor Linda Cameron says that “educators should be exploring a grade-free report card” because “[the] root of evaluation is to value” and (I’m paraphrasing the rest of her words for brevity’s sake) “you can’t honestly value a child using letter grades”.
This is a peculiar interpretation of the word “evaluate” that, to my knowledge, has not been adopted outside of OISE and teacher union offices. Everywhere else in the world, when the word “evaluate” is used relative to education or training, it means comparing (as objectively as possible - usually using some form of grade) what an individual has learned against what he or she was expected to learn. I’m sure most teachers would be appalled to think that when they give Omar a C+ in Mathematics that this might be interpreted as saying that his “value” as a person is “average”.
Isn’t this just another case of educators broadening their mandate so that they don’t have to be responsible for the more specific (and measurable) learning outcomes that should be the core (but not sole) focus of our schools?