You are absolutely right about the importance of reliable marking, meaning standardized marking by a centrally directed and monitored team of capable markers. This can be achievd but at a considerable cost, which of course the government is unwilling to pay.

By the way, the English 12 exam, which is the exam written by the most students, is no longer marked in a central location. It has been decentralized and the results are no longer reliable. Students, who depend on these marks for University entry and/or scholarship money, are helpless victims of more cost cutting which in this case runs counter to the need for reliable marking, while at the same time the ministry happily proceeds with even more test that are even less reliable.

The whole thing is more than anything else an exercise in public relations at the expense of education.

Oh joy, more exams. Which will create more incentives to teach to the test which will create a less creative learning enviornment and a more standardized product which is exactly what we do not need.

Sadly, because we have made universities both the key ticket to economic success and increasingly difficult to get into we are now driven to create ever greater hurdles at ever earlier ages.

Now, I am not at all an advocate of let it hang loose education; but the effect of testing is to create systems for passing the test not for learning.

"Provincial exams are the great equalizer: students know they've met or mastered the necessary objectives and teachers can see they're meeting the curricular needs of their students.

writes Russell. What "necessary objectives" - in actual fact it is a rare test which can meansure writing ability or creative thinking or the ability to organize and manipulate concepts. But these are the skill sets which may give us half a chance against our Indian or Chinese competition.

Unfortunately, we are gearing our school system to produce, for want of a better description, Commerce students. People whose existence is entirely predicated on the creative efforts of others. What we are measuring with any of the tests we administer is a sense of fitness to become a successful drone in a large corporation. But, hey, news from the front, as Thomas Freidman points out, those are exactly the jobs which are being outsourced.

The kids who are likely to actually make a contribution to their society (and ours) are probably going to be too busy to take these exams very seriously. And they will not be busy doing the drone work which would make for a good result however graded - instead they will be playing, thinking, writing, hanging out and, with luck, learning the world rather than the book.

As a grade 12 student at a desperate feeling highschool, I am appalled at the idea of a decentralized marking system. As noted above, how can the evaluation of important exams be considered reliable and consistent in the midst of such a system? Worse yet is the concept of declining students access to previous tests! If I had not had access to previous Principles of Math 12 and English 12 provincials before hand, I surely would have been not only underprepared, but entirely stressed out for this weeks coming tests. Knowing what I know now, I will be sure to make copies of the currently available tests for the next generation of students. How is this cost cutting fair game to us students?!? I suppose this is one more thing to thank our lovely Liberal gov't for.. :(
Ben Wells, Port Clements BC
PS: Why does the Ministry keep making English 12 provincials easier and Math 12 provincials harder? Could this be related to an influx of mathematically talented but English-as-a-second-language immigrants? (and Im not as racist as that sounds...)

Provincial exams, the GREAT equalizer! Have you been eating mercury tainted fish?

Perhaps it's because I've had a series of rotten experiences with the degree-mill educated westerner lately that I find this completely laughable. The worst flaw is the sense of entitlement and privilege that this piece of paper represents as compensation for myriad other shortcomings.

Here's a secret:

Anyone with incentive may be trained in all sorts of fundamental skills in a very short period of time. Other qualities used to considered important and necessary, even cultivated as part of the baccalaureate program, but no one educates themselves for the love of learning any longer. The cost of education is so pricey these days, that no one dares undertake a program where they ruin their grade-point average. So it's all about staying in safe and familiar learning territory.

Exams are no equalizers. They are for tilting the playing field in the direction of a certain kind of mental development. They are about mediocrity and limitation.

Te Aro Arahina: I can tell you as a veteran English teacher that as far as I am concerned you are absolutely correct in your assessment of these exams. so why do we have them at all?

these exams are needed b/c so many teachers do whatever the hell they want in the classroom without caring about the curricular objectives. in fact we need provincials at the grade 8 level in math, science, socials and english so that every teacher in the province is on the same page in june. besides, they're only worth 20% of the final mark until grade 12, so what's the big deal anyway?

Why does anyone think that centralizing the marking process will produce reliable results? I've had a number of opportunities to mark provincial PLAPP and FSA exams over the years in centralized environments.
Like the decentralized model, the driver here is cost saving. Too few markers, too many hours marking, wide ranging beliefs/expectations from the markers, invalid test questions are prevalent in either system. Every time I marked there were problems with all of the above. Every year the ministry announced it had 'fixed' the problems.
It's really the old story of expecting 'haut cuisine' at MacDonald's prices.
As to sirjohna's remarks - great let's have Kindergarten exams as well. That should vault our education system right down with the Americans.

excellent extrapolation rgw. what grade do you teach?

Sir John, your enthusiasm for more exams rings loud and clear, but I am curious: as a taxpayer, would you be willing to spend the $$$ required to make those exams as fair and reliable as possible?

I stated in an earlier post that I support standardized testing, certainly more so than most of my colleagues, but the stated objectives of those tests cannot be met if the government cheaps out on the marking process.

So what do you say? Are you willing to fund a full battery of tests, or are you truly Scottish -as your handle suggests?

Hey, that rhymes!

No, we don't need it. We need to get rid of it. This is exactly what I mean about a degree-mill education, where every child receives the exact same intellectual fare no matter what they require or enjoy. Standardization is great for packaged goods, lousy for human beings. In fact, in my business, that moldy degree is becoming a liability. I look for other indicators now, when I hire people. Been stung by too many no-talent shrink-wrapped brains.

It doesn't matter how much they are or aren't worth. It's the fact that they take place at all. Kids learn early that education is valued only in terms of how they are quantified and measured by standardized tests --- completely useless when faced with the unpredictable and evolving circumstances of business and other pursuits. Not that education should be directed to business, but sadly, that's the biggest scapegoat to justify today's die-cast learning models.

I agree with Jay Currie and Te Aro Arahina on all points. I retired after teaching Enmglish for 31 years in Ontario and, by the time I left, what had once been an enviably good system that catered to the needs of a broad range of kids had been reduced to an assembly line where the kids are treated like widgets (except, of course, in the classroom where, contary to the belief of some, the teachers care for the kids and still do their best to put a human face on things).

I think that a kid's school records should be as private as our medical records are. It should be illegal for an employer to ask to see them. Employers should (as they must in the case of physical fitness) set their own tests. Public education is not a training ground for the corporate world; nor should it play hand-maid to the universities and colleges.

As a teacher I think really effective testing (which is ultimately just feedback) is part of the learning process, integrated into it, and not separate from it. It should not be applied only at the end of the game in a useless results motivated "end of the game system" that works against "the ongoing process" that is real learning.

Like learning to rock climb, a really good teacher will monitor progress and readiness to move forward in an individual way and honour that individuality...you don't wait until the final day and watch someone slide off a cliff in anxiety-driven failure, nor do you allow others to leave the class with the dangerously arrogant assumption that by accomplishing or passing what Te Aro Arachina aptly calls "the limitations and mediocrity" of a certain kind of testing ... that they now know everything there is to know about rock climbing...

That's just setting someone up for quite a fall in life... and has nothing to do with real learning.

[I posted this in response to Tom Christensen's article, but since the main discussion seems to be happening here, I am reposting it, with modifications. My apologies for the cross-posting]

I am truly puzzled by the Liberal government's policy of introducing more and more standardized testing into our education system.

There is zero, I repeat, zero evidence that standardized testing of the type being imposed on students by our Ministry of Education will raise educational standards. There is, however, a substantial and continually-growing body of evidence of the damage such policies inflict, including the loss of innovative and creative educational experiences, and an increase in drop-out rates.

Let me start with a local example. A school in a Vancouver suburb showed significant improvement on a recent FSA test over the previous test. When asked to explain the change, the principal rather proudly explained that this time the students had prepared for a month for the test. A month represents 10% of the school year. Is this a productive use of instructional time?

In addition, Grade 10 exams are only part of a significant increase in mandatory graduation requirements, which include new exams in Grade 11, as well as Planning 10 and the graduation portfolio, without which a student cannot graduate. Pity a student who arrives from outside the province in the middle of his Grade 12 year, only to find that he must somehow complete Planning 10 and put together a portfolio of required work which other students have been working on for three years. It is inevitable that, in three or four years, the graduation rate will drop dramatically, as it did in Ontario.

In the United States, the country which has travelled furthest down this path to perdition, students consistently do badly on international measures of student performance, and there is scant evidence that their results are improving. Finland, on the other hand, consistently ranks at the top. Finland does not use standardized tests in its K-12 education system. Many people in the U.S. are now questioning the practice. Even USA Today has carried articles criticizing what it calls "the nation's overreliance on standardized exams". (http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinio...nt-oppose_x.htm)

The government seems to be feel that schools do not adequately test students. Nothing could be further from the truth. Teachers regularly test their students, with relevant exams that will do a far better job of assessing the critical thinking skills of their students than anything the Ministry can produce. Furthermore, most secondary schools now administer cross-grade, mid-term and final exams to all of their students. So, where exactly is the deficit in testing?

The fact is that more standardized testing will not improve the education system, but may well harm it. I urge you to read the articles on assessments and standards posted on the American Association of School Administrators website at http://www.aasa.org/issues_and_insi...sment/index.htm or the student-initiated http://www.nomoretests.com/ to become more fully informed on this terribly important issue.

Finally, why is it that, when we are searching for models for improvement, we look to to the US education system, which, according to all of the evidence, is heading in the wrong direction? There are better examples out there. Could it be that these decisions are not educational at all, but political and/or ideological, and that the decision-makers, for all of their rhetoric, have something besides the long-term best interests of our education system at heart?

Congratulations to you, Don Quixote, on a fine bit of writing. I wish I could have done as well.

So Don Quixote seems to think that we should just lead the students down the garden path to view the wonderful garden of life and let the students deal with it. What stupidity!

People only learn through trial and error, through confirmation by stages and through application.

If we were not to standardize the testing processes, then how do we know what knowledge the student has. Indeed do we wait until the student graduates only to find out the poor bugger is incompetent!

The other issue is that not all teachers are equal alas some are just barely able to teach, and some are put into teaching tasks for which they are most inadequate.

Go to China or most other Asian countries, and you find that education is is strongly based on the three 'R's and that substantial testing is conducted to ensure the student knows their stuff. It works!

Nay, the standard government examinations must continue and expanded.

The above statement is so silly! If the above statement were true, I am sure you would not have so many international students paying top dollar to sit in our public schools. As well, Asian countries spend top dollar recruiting Canadian teachers right out of teachers college. Some schools in Asia do not even require a teaching degree for Canadian instructors!

Besides, I do not hear of many Canadian parents lining up to send their children to China, which, according to some "is strongly based on the three Rs and substantial testing."

Give it some thought. Does it really "work"?

It's interesting how we are starting to again value the memorization and recall of facts as being more important than the recognition and application of general themes. Do standardized tests really allow a parent to see what is happening with their child's education? The do have value, but really on during discussions between the student, teacher, and parents. They are the real stakeholders.

Would it not be better for the parent to have a look at some of their child's homework? Most teachers that I know don't mind it when a parent comes in after school to chat for a few minutes. Most teachers I know are also willing to respond to phone calls or emails from parents.