Reaching For Mastery

Two days ago I read Grant Wiggins’ article “How Good Is Good?” in the latest volume of Educational Leadership.  My immediate reaction while reading it was one of embarrassment.  Embarrassed because I do pretty much exactly what he strongly advises against.  It’s not that Wiggins is always right, but there is no question in my mind that he’s right on this one.  In fact, I’ve fretted over this same issue for a while.

In some ways I’ve happy and even proud of my implementation of Standards Based Grading.  One of the things that I’ve liked is that it doesn’t result in kids getting part marks for things. A student’s grade is built up from mastering learning objectives.  In order to show mastery, I require that students essentially answer all of the questions on a learning objective quiz correctly.  There is some latitude in this: after collecting enough evidence (3 quizzes maybe), a student can make a small mistake as long as they’ve clearing shown that they can routinely and accurately demonstrate their understandings and skills.

One downside though is directly related to Wiggins’ criticism.  How can I actually say that a student has mastered a topic by simply answering a few questions on quizzes?  It’s not exactly shooting for the stars, by any stretch of the imagination.

Schools too often reduce mastery to a high grade on a simplistic and nonvalidated assessment.

While I would argue that trying to achieve a validated assessment is unrealistic for individual teachers under most circumstances, we should be able to do better than asking for high grades on simplistic assessments.  I am completely guilty of this.

Part of my problem has been my difficulty in identifying and communicating enduring understandings of the topics we’ve been doing in Math 10 and Math 8. I think I’m making some progress in this regard in Math 8, but for Math 10 it’s been very difficult. In my opinion, the topics we’ve covered so far are so devoid of context, that it is difficult to do anything other than ask quiz questions:

I think I can implement some more in-depth assessment pieces in math this year, but in BC we have a second problem. Once we’ve done our assessment, how do we report it as part of a grade? Clearly most truly mastery assessments will lower a class average some how. In an environment that has a strong focus on grades, high parental and student expectations, and university entrance requirements, what will happen in the classroom? What happens to the student that routinely answers quiz questions correctly and achieves 95% in a test-based scheme, if that same student is suddenly faced with a lower mark perhaps in the B range of 80-85%? What will happen to their university applications if they end up reporting lower grades?

The above questions deserve to be answered by people at the Board and Ministry level. These questions hit at the foundational heart of assessment in public education. While teachers may be empowered and capable of doing a lot more in the classroom than they currently are doing (myself included!), they also need a framework that supports, encourages and manages best practice. This is what happens when an institution has an appropriate type of Quality Assurance program in place. Quality Assurance sets up protocols, missions and goals which are achievable and guiding for best practice. In our current environment, if our local universities need high grades from students for acceptance into programs, then our school assessments will continue to use simplistic and easy to achieve “mastery” standards.