No Zero Earns a Zero

The recent case of the teacher in Edmonton, suspended by his school board for assigning zeroes for assignments that were never completed, is a classic example of education theory clashing with class room reality.  Popular education theory today requires that the public school system assume responsibility for student success.  Student failure is the system’s failure.  Teachers must find ways to “empower” students to achieve, well, something.  The reality is that many students have reaped the benefits of this theory because it has virtually eliminated their own responsibility for choosing to do little or no work.

            While school counsellors and administrators continually talk to students about the consequences of bad choices, the reality is that the system has continually postponed or eliminated the negative consequences of bad choices.   Schools in B.C. for years have been forbidden to put failing grades on report cards, replacing the “F” with an “I” for Incomplete.  The concept of failing was considered too harmful to student self-esteem to be countenanced. The Edmonton school board has expanded the definition of what is harmful to include zeroes for work that was never completed.

The policy came from a basically sound concept: Academic grades should be determined solely on the quality of the students’ work, not other factors.  This grew out of the practice many teachers had of docking marks for assignments that were late, for students being late to class, for missing planned tests or quizzes without a note from home excusing them, etc. Reduction of students’ marks was a form of punishment designed to alter their behaviour.  However, awarding zeroes for assignments not done is not a punishment of student behaviour. These are marks based on the students’ work, or in this case, the absence of it, just as students who leave questions blank on tests are given zeroes for those blanks.

The apologists for the No Zero policy excuse the students who fail to hand in assignments by saying that there are factors in their lives that prevent them from doing the work and that to give them a zero is penalizing or punishing them for those contributing factors.  The apologists conveniently fail to appreciate that those zeroes are in fact in keeping with their own definition of what a grade should be: an appraisal solely of a student’s work. A failing grade indicates that the work was not completed at a satisfactory level.  Not doing it at all falls within the definition of not completing it at a satisfactory level.  Grades are not measurements of potential, student ability, effort, personality, character or anything other than the work itself.  When no work is done, a zero is the only accurate numerical indicator.

Teachers of high school academic courses are already giving students more than ample opportunity to complete their work.  Teachers provide extra help when asked, accept late papers, allow students to rewrite assignments, provide alternate assignments for those with academic challenges, and offer unprecedented numbers of options for special projects and term papers.  Schools offer different levels of difficulty in English and Math courses, and a variety of Science courses and alternate electives.  As well, the requirements for graduation from high school have been made much easier than ever before.  In large part, the many options offered to students have been created to accommodate their varied interests and abilities.  An unintended by-product has been that the responsibility for student success has been shifted more and more away from the student and placed on the school system and on teachers. By prohibiting the use of the zero to indicate that no work at all has been done, the system has finally assumed total responsibility for that success.  The system now refuses to admit that students are capable of doing nothing, but instead will find some way for those students do something.  The nature, importance, seriousness of the work they end up doing, its quantity and quality, its relevance and significance may be questionable, but they will find a way to replace that zero with a real number.  Many high school students will applaud this final surrender of their responsibility.  Unfortunately, it is a corruption of educational theory that will provide only the illusion of success and confirm in the minds of the public that public education has lost its way. 

The No Zero policy truly deserves a zero.

Buying passing grades? Congratulations!

The June 18 Vancouver Sun front page story “Struggling students buying passing grades” should come as no surprise.  Public education in B.C. and indeed in all of Canada has long since adopted the U.S. concept that education is a business that should be managed and regarded like any other commercial enterprise.  School administrators, ministers of education, trustees and even teachers frequently refer to students as clients or customers, learning as the education product and teaching as a service to be delivered. Who then can fault schools that seek the ultimate business goal: profit? Indeed, school districts have used foreign exchange students for years as a source of income. Each exchange student must pay the full cost of his or her education to the district, some $8000+.  Schools with declining enrolment have attracted students by becoming specialty schools, providing hockey instruction or some other extra-curricular attraction.  With each full-time student comes additional government funding, a good business practice.

Of greater importance is that this shoe-horning of public education into a business model has led to the adoption of corporate management strategies.  Decisions are made at the government level without consultation and handed down through the corporate hierarchy to school boards, superintendants, principals and finally teachers.  The only determination of school success is what can be measured: test scores, drop-out rates, dollars spent, percentage of graduates, etc.  These can be graphed, plotted, analysed and then used to develop ways to adapt business practices and develop strategies to improve them.  Individual districts have tried to follow Covey’s sure-fire practices for improvement, have fiddled with the “culture” of the schools, and held hundreds of hours of consultations with “stakeholders;” all of which led to no measureable improvement in anything, or indeed any change at all.   The Province has altered course requirements, refocused the curriculum on career planning, increased emphasis on the accreditation process, and then decreased it (too expensive).  Still the Ministry of Education demanded statistical improvement, requiring schools to develop plans to achieve it and even employing four Super-Superintendents to ensure success.  The result? No real improvement, only more emphasis on those practices designed to give superficial proof of success. Poor statistical achievement at the Grade 10 and 12 level?  No problem. Schools pad classroom marks so that when combined with the government exam marks at those levels, the overall student marks look better.  At the Grade 4 and 7 levels, schools find ways to keep low achieving students from taking government assessment tests so that the school shows improvement, or they simply provide special assistance to those students.  Since drop-out rates can be a problematic statistic, secondary schools all have special programs for students who “can’t handle” regular classroom situations.  These programs all consist of watered down courses that students complete by doing a series of worksheets or computerized courses, the content of which is a fraction of the regular classroom course.  They miraculously achieve B’s and A’s on courses that they previously failed.  And if you can’t complete courses by the time you are nineteen, don’t worry, the adult requirements for graduation are only two-thirds of those for normal graduation; just sit tight and you can graduate without nearly as much work, and the school will use your success as a positive statistic. 

The serious issues facing public education -- issues of relevance, the use of technology, student achievement – are beyond the scope of the current corporate business model to deal with. As long as the policy makers try to impose flawed, business model solutions to public education from the top down, they will continue to be stymied. But since the alternative is a model of collegial cooperation and consensus building with the only people who really understand how to create positive, successful learning environments, the teachers, the likelihood of that changing soon is remote.  Until then, the Ministry of Education should congratulate those private schools making money by fudging marks; isn’t profit the point?