Marks: The Holy Grail
In my own school I am frequently approached by students individually and also in a mob like mentality by students who are overly zealous about appealing their marks, often their numerous requests are very petty and frequently based on the assumption that they can self-evaluate their work much better and more accurately than can their instructor who taught the course. All part of the: Teacher is wrong and I the student am correct Syndrome.
The end game invariably is that I as principal become the arbitrator of marks disputes. Often discussions are heated and protracted and gives a sense of a court room drama or the Wild West. Marks are a type of addiction and my own students fixate on them as they are the only things that really matter about education. School climate, extra-curricular events, even to go so far as to throw in the love of learning, are all thrown aside for the scramble for that one more additional mark that will set them apart from the crowd.
I realize the importance of marks to any student, I too had such a fixation as a student, and obviously marks are important because they directly relate to university acceptance and attending their university of first choice - the end game in the eyes of students. Marks are an obsession and often the quest for better marks eclipses the actual learning experience and therefore so much is lost as the mark, the holly grail, supersedes the high school experience and the learning process.
Recently, I called around to several admissions departments associated with universities in Southern Ontario to discover more details about their admission policies and procedures. My hope was that this would give me better insight in assisting my own students at a small private school in Toronto. I did make many interesting discoveries, including the fact that although many universities have basic similarities in their methods in regards to admission and each practices their own unique set of expectations, standards, requirements, timelines and general best practices to suit their own needs while accommodating students as well.
Presently, at my own school, and I know this to be a concern at Public and Separate Boards as well and many other private schools is the issue related to mark relevance and credibility. There are some university departments that systematically track marks from admitting high schools over time and as a result implement a correction factor to the marks making them more relevant and realistic to the realities of the university courses to which they are applied.
The practice of mark correction or adjustment becomes a necessity in order to accept students to various programs and give them an increased capacity, once accepted, to academically succeed. This procedure is not always practiced by the university as a whole but may be used by individual departments who also have a great deal of sovereignty over their own admissions.
Most recently, and likely this will be duplicated by more institutions, is the implementation of timed essay writing for admission purposes on a dedicated web portal and/or a video interview also over a secured portal. To date this sems more common for business and engineering faculties as the need arises to secure accurate student markers of competency, skills and knowledge as well as specific communication and linguistic abilities.
A long-standing issue with many students and made more paramount with present AI developments and technologies is the ubiquitous frequency of cheating and plagiarism associated with school testing and admissions procedures. Teachers must be ever more vigilant of sources, writing style, standards of expression and originality of any written submission they receive. Although several admissions officers did tell me they relied heavily on honest self-reporting by students concerning their admissions materials with the exception of transcripts of course. However, with this response I also detected some hesitation on the part of those admission personnel I spoke with, indicating, I thought, self-reported information is likely not totally honest or accurate at times.
In the future a likely outcome for university acceptance, in addition to the present reliance on grades and other standardized test results, will be the use of more competency-basedassessment. Marks can be very unreliable even when based on structured rubrics, or student observation and conversation. Therefore, demonstrating an accomplished skill set rather than the mere presentation of a mark representing the same skill is probably a much stronger tool when evaluating abilities of any kind.
Using ESL as an example, an IELTS or English mark is one standard of assessment, but an interview designed to capture current competencies as a supplement may prove much more effective in accepting the right students in a competitive market. Competency testing also works in the favor of students as there are likely many students with inflated marks that do not reflect actual ability, when these students are accepted into university level courses, they often run the danger of crashing into insurmountable linguistic and other academic barriers. Clearly best practice to raise the academic bar for admissions.
At my own school, through English and Public Speaking classes, we are introducing the use of assessing, and measuring competencies through secure video for two reasons. First, it is an excellent practice activity for students to articulate their ideas and communicate effectively with out the aid of translators, AI or any other type of electronic aid. It is then more of a true measure of ability, knowledge and expression.
The second reason of course is preparation for the university admission process which will certainly evolve in such a way as to gain more defenses against cheating, inflated marks and self-reported information through the use of secure video interviews and testing of written and spoken skills.
The key to success is independent, thoughtful, accurate and organized expression of ideas through more competency testing in the classroom and for the university admissions process now evolving. I know students will continue to appeal their marks and have a feverish reliance and allegiance to their mark, but hopefully over time as educators we can wean them off the “marks addiction” and switch their present holy grail of marks allegiance to skills competencies and even the wild goal of a love of learning.
Marty Rempel
