School lessons from Covid: Grading without Tests

My son told me that remote learning was teaching him which were his most and least favorite subjects. Perhaps by removing friends and the hustle and bustle of school life, he's finding that remote learning is somehow distilling and concentrating each subject into its essence, bringing certain otherwise hidden things to light.

I have heard some other comments from students and parents which provide similar insights. These comments have arisen from our decision to cancel end of year examinations in light of the extended remote learning (if we return to school before the end of the academic year we want to spend the time in classrooms, not exam halls), and go along the lines of:

• I don’t like working without any assessments

• How can we get grades without the end of year tests?

These comments highlight competing underlying mental models, and provide opportunities to align thinking across students, parents, teachers.  The comments reflect a view of the relationship between assessment, testing and grading that was widely held many years ago; but education has moved on, and current circumstances shine a light on the different approaches.

So here are two models for educational assessment.  As you can see, both end up with the award of a grade (such as an end of year grade that will be used in High School transcripts).  Model one, the model that was prevalent when I was at school, is that assessment (big blue circle) consists largely of tests (yellow circle).  So the grading (green rectangle) is done largely on basis of tests - because in this model, testing and assessment are largely synonymous.  In fact, in this model we can probably drop the term assessment altogether, because other elements (see the four tiny coloured dots in the blue circle) are vanishingly small; in this model, tests/exams are all that count.

Two competing models of Assessment.
Within school, we work on the basis of model 2.
NB there may be several other elements of assessment depending on context
 eg performance work in drama or music or physical education

Model two is very different; here tests/exams play an important but not exclusive role in grading. That is, we assess students by several means, of which testing is just one. We take into account everything we know about students' knowledge, skills and understandings whether it is demonstrated in a test or elsewhere; oral work, written work, presentations, group work. In fact, we use whatever works in any given subject area. That means that in model two you can see multiple circles in the assessment circle - and the relative sizes may vary across a course (perhaps there are no presentations in the first term) or by subject (perhaps oral work more important in a foreign language than in mathematics).   So here, assessment in its broadest sense is ongoing and continuous, and adding a grade at the end is an incidental, not a central feature.  And when they are awarded, grades really are awarded on the basis of an holistic assessment, not solely on exams and tests.

We think that's the right thing on principle:

• for moral reasons, as it gives students multiple pathways to demonstrate their capabilities, and does not privilege those who excel purely on tests

• for accuracy reasons, as tests can only ever capture limited facets. Some very capable students do not do themselves justice in their exams, and others will sometimes just get lucky!

• for practical reasons as we want students to take seriously tasks which we know will be important throughout their lives (if you look at the elements of assessment in the diagram, exams and tests seem to be the least relevant beyond school).

In these days of remote learning, this means we can award grades as we have always done, because we still have many assessment elements in place - with more emphasis on formative rather than summative assessment. Adopting model two, the answers to the student comments are simple:

• I don’t like working without any assessments: No problem - all your work is still being assessed; your contributions to class in Google Meet; your written work; your work in groups, the videos where you explain your thinking... it all counts - in fact, even more now that there are no exams.

• How can we get grades without the end of year tests? By taking into account everything we know about you - which is a lot. Removing the tests is regrettable, as it would be for any element, but we still have multiple ways to assess.

Model two has always been our approach - it's always been how we award the end of year grades that appear in the High School transcripts and are used by Universities for students in Grades 11 and 12.  Nothing has changed other than the removal of one single element of this grade.  As we continue to navigate the unexpected twists and turns of remote learning, I am hoping that developing shared understandings with our community here will be one of the long-term benefits.

References

• On PISA Tests: Put a Bounty on Snakes, You Get More Snakes.  
• The Importance of Knowing Stuff and Excelling in Examinations
• How valuable are exams? A family view.
• Why can't you just make it simple?
• Testing, Exams, Karate, Newton
• Assessment, Grading - putting a number to students' understandings
• What are the connections? Feedback, Grading, Motivation