Since 2016, the Ministry of Education has been testing a no-letter-grade model for about half of the province's Kindergarten to Grade 9 students. That model — based on a proficiency scale — has been expanded to include all school districts this year.
Say goodbye to letter grades in British Columbia public schools for all students in Kindergarten through Grade 9.
Since 2016, the Ministry of Education has been testing a no-letter-grade model for about half of the province's Kindergarten to Grade 9 students. That model — based on a proficiency scale — has been expanded to include all school districts this year.
According to the ministry, private and independent schools are not obligated to adopt the proficiency scale for students in the Kindergarten to Grade 9 range, but many "have indicated they will align with it."
Letter grades and percentages remain for all students in Grades 10 through 12 — public or private — so those students can meet post-secondary entry requirements.
Instead of letter grades to rank performance, the proficiency scale uses the terms emerging, developing, proficient and extending to describe student learning.
Glen Thielmann taught high school social studies for 22 years and now lectures in the school of education at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George. He has also worked in curriculum development for the Ministry of Education.
In an interview with CBC Radio's Daybreak North this week, Thielmann spoke with guest host Bill Fee about the ditching of letter grades for all public school students up to Grade 9, and the implementation of the proficiency scale.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you walk me through why letter grades have been eliminated for Grades 9 and below?
In theory, the letter grades are connected to extrinsic motivation. Who doesn't want to be an A student, but what have you actually learned?
So a four-point proficiency scale is seen by some as more descriptive, more about intrinsic motivation, [more] about strengths than weaknesses, more about growth over time.
But in reality, there are great and not-so-great assessment practices using both letter grades and the proficiency scale, and students in my mind will always be motivated by both intrinsic and extrinsic influences. So in that debate about how best to assess student progress, our Ministry of Education has put its eggs in the proficiency scale basket, for now just up to Grade 9.
The idea of school without letter grades, I guess it's jarring for some. How are parents going to be able to tell if their kids are progressing well or not?
That's where it gets interesting. The ministry has published a guide to the new assessment order … [that] includes descriptions of each part of the proficiency scale, but there's still a lot of confusion for parents and educators alike as to what [the terms on the scale] actually will mean.
So at the bottom of the scale — if bottom is the right word — emerging describes a student that's just starting to show some learning in relation to expectations or maybe isn't even demonstrating learning. But at the end of a course, emerging is still enough to move on to the next level and that's seen as a problem by many. The proficiency scale uses strength-based language, which is … reassuring for parents and students but it does kind of awkwardly dance around the idea that some students aren't actually ready to move on.
And at the other end, there's some confusion about what it means to be extending. The goal is to be proficient with this new scale but there's an elusive category beyond that, with some vague criteria for placement.
I read a report card and I see proficient, but in my mind, what does that mean, and what does that mean for that particular teacher? That's where I guess some confusion may come in.
Yeah, and there's probably been confusion in the past as to what a B actually means, or a C+ or an A. But eventually we kind of settle on somewhere in the middle on what those things mean, and I guess we'll have to do the same with proficiency scale.
Ideally, there's a lot of communication that takes place so that parents aren't surprised at what one of those scale placements means because they've got descriptive feedback to kind of back it up. Same with students, too.
Jason Peters is a journalist based in Prince George, B.C., on the territory of the Lheidli T'enneh. He can be reached at jason.peters@cbc.ca.
With files from Daybreak North
