CBE Doing A Lousy Job of Selling Report Card Changes

My latest Calgary Herald column looks as the Calgary Board of Education's push for a radical report card overhaul:

As most schoolchildren can attest to, there’s a great emphasis placed on being able to show your work.
In other words, a simple answer usually will not suffice. You must be able to demonstrate how and why you reached your conclusion so as to allow others to reach the same conclusion. Or, at the very least, it demonstrates that you grasp the concept behind your undertaking, and that you could offer a coherent explanation of what you were doing and why.
It’s a lesson that seems to be lost on the Calgary Board of Education as they tout their new plan for report cards. Step one is a pilot project commencing this fall for students at a number of schools. Step two would be to have the change implemented by 2014 for all students from kindergarten up to Grade 9.
The main thrust of the change is the removal of numerical grades. Instead, report cards will apply one of four assessment categories to children: “exemplary,” “evident,” “emerging” or “support required.” Additionally, personalized teacher comments will be removed from the report cards. Oh, and the new report cards will only be handed out twice a year.
All of this represents a significant overhaul in the way students are assessed and in the way parents are informed about how their children are doing in school. Despite that, the CBE has done a remarkably poor job in explaining why these changes are coming or how exactly they represent an improvement over the status quo.
Even some trustees feel as though they’ve been left in the dark about these changes. Last week, a motion was presented at a CBE meeting asking for more information. The motion was voted down. Not only that, but Sheila Taylor — the trustee who proposed the motion — was ruled out of order for her questions about the changes.
If trustees are confused about the changes to the assessment process, one can only imagine how parents must be feeling. Their children’s report cards are about to get more vague and less frequent, and they’re not really being told why.
The CBE is trying to assure parents that they will not be cut out of the loop. CBE chief superintendent Naomi Johnson has spoken of the need to “bring parents deeper into the school community,” which implies more direct contact with teachers and principals. Certainly there is value in such contact, but why does it have to be one or the other?
Johnson is similarly elusive on the much broader question of why. While it’s true that these changes are not cast in stone, Johnson has spoken of the “evolution” of learning and assessment and the themes explored in a recent provincial report called Inspiring Education, which explores what education in Alberta in the year 2030 might look like.
None of this constitutes a coherent explanation as to why report cards are being dramatically altered. It may well be that a 78 per cent mark in social studies doesn’t really tell the whole story of a child’s strengths and weaknesses or their grasp of the curriculum. But the word “emerging” seems to convey even less.
It’s not unreasonable that in the first few years of school, more generalized assessments be applied to children. But in the later years, when students are taking tests and completing assignments that are being graded, it seems quite reasonable that those grades mean something.
It also strikes me that we might be sneaking in a sort of no-zeros policy in that the vague new assessments being eyed by the CBE don’t rely on individual marks. Therefore, whereas a skipped assignment — and the accompanying grade of zero — might affect a numbered mark, it presumably would not affect an assessment of “evident.”
The CBE owes it to parents at this point to be as open as possible. That should start with an explanation of just how committed they are to this change, and why they feel it’s needed.
Based on what we’re seeing thus far, though, it looks more like change for the sake of change and a solution in search of a problem.

Bonus Battle: Fred Horne vs. AHS

UPDATE, 9:40am: Health Minister Fred Horne has fired the entire AHS board

ORIGINAL POST:
It's certainly not the first time that Alberta Health Services has made life difficult for the Redford government, but this time the Tories have a real mess on their hands.
It's taken the government a while to come around to the position that AHS senior executives might not be the most deserving of bonuses, and now might not exactly be the best time to be doling out bonuses to said executives. Yesterday, Health Minister Fred Horne decided to take a stand, sort of. He declared that the government could not and would not accept the bonuses. But his demand to the board was only that they reconsider their decision.
Well, the board reconsidered it, and decided they were confortable with their original decision. In other words, the bonuses stay. In fact, board chairman Stephen Lockwood was quite defiant and all but dared the minister to fire him. And maybe the minister will have to do just that - or maybe fire the whole board while they're at it. The government can't state that they won't accept something only to then decide that they'll have to accept it after all.
Now Alberta Health Services is supposed to be at arms length from the government. But does that mean that they can overrule the government? We have this odd situation where the government runs health care, but the Alberta Health Services board isn't accountable to the government - or to the voters, for that matter.
Keep in mind, that this is all of the government's making. They created this monster and now it seems they can't really control it anymore. Maybe the obvious response is to simply scrap the superboard. Unfortunately, it looks as though the government's going to continue to wrestle with this beast instead.

Why Raising the Body Checking Age Makes Sense

My latest Calgary Herald column looks at the decision to raise the body checking age in minor hockey from 11 to 13:

In this era of helicopter parenting and bubble-wrapped kids, there’s a growing pushback against those who are trying to remove all risk from children’s lives. Indeed, there’s growing evidence that such efforts may be doing children more harm than good. For example, the annual report card from Active Healthy Kids Canada once again gives this country poor grades when it comes to physical activity. Canada gets a D- for overall physical activity and a D in the category of active transportation.
This year’s report card focuses on the fact that where kids might once have walked or biked to school, today, they are much more likely to be driven there by their parents. Last year’s report card, which offered a similarly pessimistic view of children’s physical activity, focused on how parental fear is keeping kids from playing outdoors.
So clearly this is a problem. But as much as we need to be attuned to that problem, let’s avoid a diagnosis where it isn’t warranted.
The decision to change the age of the introduction of bodychecking in minor hockey seems to have struck many as precisely this sort of impulse: that we’re watering down our beloved game in yet another misguided and distorted attempt to shield children from risk. The fact that it involves the game of hockey, and all the passion and emotion that entails in this country, has raised the temperature of this debate even further.
Hockey is a game of speed and skill, but it is also a rough game. There may be those who would seek to remove all roughness from the game, which would indeed fundamentally change its character and therefore should be resisted. But the fierce opposition to changing the age at which bodychecking is introduced is misplaced.
Last month, Hockey Alberta made the decision to remove bodychecking from the peewee level (11 and 12 year olds) and have it introduced instead at the bantam level (13 and 14 year olds). Last year, Hockey Calgary’s consideration of the change led to an intense pushback, which eventually led to the resignation of the association’s president.
This time around, however, there’s a firmer commitment to this change. Shortly after Hockey Alberta’s decision, Hockey Canada voted to implement the change nationally. Saskatchewan was the only dissenter, but they are clearly not alone in their opposition. Don Cherry used his national platform on CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada to denounce the decision. In Manitoba, one entrepreneur is already planning to launch a peewee league separate from Hockey Manitoba that would include bodychecking. Such a response seems rather disproportionate. Why, for example, is there no denouncing the fact that there is no bodychecking at the atom level (nine and 10 year olds)? Why is there no push to create a separate league for atom players that includes bodychecking? No bemoaning the coddling of these children?
Presumably, everyone seems to accept that there is a line to be drawn between players who are too young to bodycheck and those who are able to handle it. We are merely adjusting that line. The adjustment appears even less dramatic when you consider that up to 2002, peewee — and therefore bodychecking itself — started at age 12.
Moreover, though, the evidence indicates that this is the right decision. Two separate studies out of the University of Calgary examined the experience in Alberta, where bodychecking began at age 11, and in Quebec, where the bodychecking age has long been 13.
The studies found that the rate of injury at the peewee level was far higher in Alberta, and that the rate of injury at the bantam level was more or less the same in both provinces. That certainly undercuts the argument that moving up the age only delays injuries and seems to offer proof that this change will result in fewer net injuries.
This is neither a fundamental change to the game of hockey, nor an irrational attempt to protect children from risk. It is a minor adjustment aimed at reducing injuries that will hopefully lead to more kids playing hockey. Given the concern about inactivity among Canadian kids, that strikes me as a win-win.