BC Teachers Share their Concerns with Latest Changes to Graduation Requirements

The past few years in British Columbia has seen extensive changes to our public education system.  The move towards a more "child centred", progressive, collaborative approach is, what the experts tell us, supposed to prepare our kids for a world yet unknown, and for jobs that don't exist yet.

In preparation of this unknown existence, all of the education partners involved in public education have been duly consulted, BCTF Committees have been hastily formed, and all have provided feedback to the Ministry of Education to implement these changes to support our children entering a Brave New World.

Provincial Exams are a thing of the past; deemed no longer relevant.  Ditto for letter grades - they are no longer mandatory until Grade 10.  But what our education leaders have failed to disclose, is how this might affect our kids applying for post secondary admissions both in our province and beyond.  What measure might these admissions departments use, when it's already been determined that the single best factor for measuring academic ability, is through rigorous standardized exams?  Especially so for our more disadvantaged youth.  By removing these provincial standardized measures, how are these kids expected to compete against those kids who will now receive even more extracurricular tutoring to make up for this lack of academic accountability?  How might they fare against those students applying from provinces that still use provincial exams and letter grades?

In light of these significant changes, there has been a provincewide reaction that is gathering steam...one that has been initiated by classroom teachers.  I'd like to share their concerns here, along with an abbreviated response by the Admissions Office at UBC:

To Whom It May Concern:

Re: University and College Applications and Scholarships for B.C. English 12 Students

We are writing to share our concerns regarding the elimination of the English 12 provincial exam and the potential negative effect this may have on B.C. students applying to universities and applying for entrance scholarships.

Since the mid 80s B.C. English 12 students have had to write a standardized provincial exam.  This exam was seen by students, teachers, and post-secondary institutions as a reliable indicator of student reading and writing skills.  This standard exit exam provided a common benchmark for all students, which at times would expose potential grade inflation.

The new literacy assessment will be an online exam focussing not on interpretive reading but instead on basic understanding through the use of simpler texts, including non-fiction.  Poetry has been eliminated.  As well, this exam will not be tied to any course, including English.  The literacy assessment will have absolutely no impact on a student’s grade.  It counts for 0%.

B.C.’s new English curriculum, which comes into effect for grades 11 and 12 in September of 2018, has eliminated the provincial exam as well as the Communications 11 and 12 program and the Communications 12 provincial exam.  Although the new curriculum provides more flexibility regarding delivery, content and skills, there are fewer learning outcomes regarding the development of critical reading and writing skills.  With the new curriculum, it is possible for students not to write and essay or read a novel for up to two years.  With the elimination of the Communications 11 and 12 program and the requirement for all students to take English Studies 12 in order to graduate, grade 12 teachers are required to employ a “low floor, high ceiling” approach to their courses.  Ultimately, English Studies 12 classes will require teachers to greatly differentiate their practices in order to meet the needs of a very diverse population of learners who are now placed in one class. 

Although teachers are asked to maintain current “high standards”, we are concerned that, with neither a tool to measure these high standards nor examples of these high standards, student grades will be even less reliable.  For teachers who work to maintain current levels of reading and writing, which we view as advantageous to our students, we may, ironically, be putting our students at a disadvantage.  Without the insight and standards provided by the English 12 provincial exam, it will be more difficult to determine if grades have been inflated.  This distinction is even more imperative with the rise in Distance Learning programs that are popular among ELL learners who wish to graduate from a Canadian high school in order to study at a North American university.

We hope that you can understand our concerns and provide some direction so we can ensure that our students will not be at a greater risk for missing out on scholarships or admission.  We want to be honest with our students and our institutions, but we are finding this challenging when it may put at risk our students’ future plans.

We would appreciate hearing from you in regards to this matter.

And here are some of the comments received in response to their letter:

• "While students are showing significantly higher grades in secondary school, the performance is not translating into increased success in university. 
• "Our studies show that roughly one in eight first-year UBC students from BC secondary schools presented a discrepancy of at least twenty percentage points between their English 12 course grade and their English 12 provincial exam...In many cases, students admitted   with high English 12 scores and poor English 12 provincial examination performance lose their offers of admission in the summer."  
• " We have very spotty data on Distributed Learning....What little empirical data we have does suggest that the grades in online courses are much higher than the mean and have less correlation with first-year performance."

"Unfortunately, there is not much we can do about the situation. Solving the issue of increasing grades is not as simple as introducing a standardized assessment...All our data suggests that standardized assessments within curricula (e.g. provincial exams in Alberta, the IB curriculum) are much better predictors of success in university. But the data has to be available in a timely manner. Standardized assessments within the curriculum that come at the end of the year (such as the old provincial exams) are of limited use, as universities are increasingly pressured to make earlier and earlier admission decisions...As for the English 12 provincial exam, once it goes away, we will lose a lot of our ability to better understand English 12 course grades. We will use the literacy assessment as best we can to validate (i.e. the flag will go up when we see a student with a 90% in English 11 but “approaching expectations” (or something similar) on their literacy assessment). But without detailed, quantitative assessments on the literacy assessment that are tied to English 12, making fair and merit-based admission decisions will get harder."

In conclusion, I'd like to add that the above scenario will be the same for Mathematics entry and subsequently other subjects as well; I will be providing an update to the numeracy assessment that will be replacing the Math 10 provincial exam in another post.

The bottom line is that overwhelming evidence and data suggest that the single biggest predictor of academic success, lies with the implementation of rigorous exams and letter grades to support higher learning.  The cancellation of letter grades up to Grade 10, along with the removal of mandatory provincial exams at high school, does not bode well for our students.

If you, or others you know, are a teacher and would like to support this initiative, please take a moment and send your name, and school where you work, to karikroker@me.com 

Feel free to email Kari anytime if you have any comments or questions you may have.