February, 2011

Manitoba Education has mandated the Provincial Assessment Policy Kindergarten to Grade 12: Academic Responsibility, Honesty, and Promotion/Retention.

Mandate is for local divisions to develop policy. Currently in Fort la Bosse we have a Student

Assessment and Evaluation Manual referenced by local policy IKA that states, “will represent the operational procedures used by all within our school division in all matters pertaining to student assessment and evaluation”

Our new local “policy” will be included in the Student Assessment and Evaluation Manual.

In discussions with the Assessment Branch of Manitoba Education, I was advised to remind schools that despite this new policy, all other Department documents, ie: Rethinking Assessment with Purpose in Mind, and Communicating Student Learning are still very much still current, and we are held accountable to the expectations indicated in these.

….to improve student learning. This is the first statement in the Provincial

policy and needs to be emphasized. Although we certainly do want

students/parents/communities to be aware that deadlines and timeliness in submitting assignments is important…still the priority in our summative assessment scores is student learning of subject area learning outcomes.

Both the provincial document and our local addition pertains ONLY to Assessment OF Learning…not Assessment FOR/AS Learning.

Both of these documents remind us that you need to use your professional judgment in determining summative scores.

As educators we must triangulate the evidence: observations, conversations, and student products—this increases the reliability and validity of the assessment of student achievement.

Interpreting evidence will reflect the student’s most consistent level of achievement with special consideration given to more recent evidence.

Not all assessment task scores need to be included!

Assessment tasks being used to provide evidence of achievement, are to be completed whenever possible under the supervision of the teacher.

This is the most contentious issue, at least at the high school level, and as Administrators, we spent considerable time deliberating on this area.

“Clear communication will be in place indicating when assignments are due..” examples such as letters, email, school home page/wiki/telephone call etc.

Students initiating discussion when they foresee completing an assignment by the due date as a difficulty, is showing responsibility and I would be cautious in reducing marks in that case, “may”

“When students do not complete an assignment(s) by the previously established due date, educators will access strategies listed in the provincial policy document to help support them.”

Reducing marks for late assignments however, will be applied only when necessary and will not be instituted without having a dialogue with the student and parent.”…Yes, that means if you are at the point of reducing marks, you should have had a dialogue with the parent. A dialogue is not a note, or email without a reply, but must involve a “conversation” either electronically, via phone, or in person.

“ A teacher may proceed with a reduction of marks which could ultimately lead to a loss of credit should the student-teacher agreement be breached.”

Certainly we feel you should include a statement about the importance of submitting assignments by due dates, and that reducing marks MAY be applied.

However, course outlines or assignments cannot include statements such as:

1 Day late---10% reduction, 2 Days late---20% reduction, etc.

Every situation will be treated differently, and differing strategies may be required based on the individual student.

Students are entitled to “due process”, thus just taking off marks as the first strategy is not “due process”.

For those students in which you have had to implement mark reduction, your principal may ask you what steps have been taken prior to this? If there is no other steps/due process, and if it came to an appeal to the board office, the mark reduction would be disallowed, as it would contravene our policy.

Perhaps it does, at least at the onset, until students become accustomed to differing practices. Our hope though is that through time, this will drastically reduce the workload.

The Provincial policy does put more ownership on students, but also on staff.

As well, this puts tremendous pressure on your Principal---he/she is responsible that this policy is being followed

Appropriate Education Legislation (Bill 13) now allows parents the avenue to appeal outside the confines of our division. This legislation is in place for all students, not just those funded students.

This appeal process is a nasty one, even if you are doing everything “right”.

I suspect, the province may see some appeals under the assessment umbrella due to new policies.

“Schools will communicate clearly and reinforce expectations of academic honesty with students. A range of strategies may be applied to deal with academic dishonesty based on the age of the student and the severity of the dishonesty.”

That range/list is in the policy, but schools may have a school specific policy, or teacher by teacher policy.

This is certainly dependent upon the school demographic as well, and since we have K-12 schools, it may look different within a school…but in all cases of academic dishonesty, the student, parent and principal are included in the communication.

This has changed very little from the status quo and we have retained a “sign-off” form for parents.

“Students from Kindergarten to Grade Eight should rarely be required to repeat a grade.”

“ The decision for promotion/retention will involve thorough dialogue between the parent/guardian, teacher and the principal. The final decision however, will be that of the principal.”

This policy will be mandated for this semester, and will be re-evaluated later in the term to determine any changes that need to be put in place.

Thus, any feedback you may have, if you could pass that on to your principal, or to me that would be great.

“It is worth noting, right from the start, that assessment is a human process, conducted by and with human beings, and subject inevitably to the frailties of human judgment. However crisp and objective we might try to make it, and however neatly quantifiable may be our “results”, assessment is closer to an art than a science. It is, after all, an exercise in human communication.”Ruth Sutton, (1991)