Measuring student success: what parents should know
Parents are partners in measuring student progress
Have you ever asked your child, "What did you learn at school today?" As a parent, you want to know how well your child is learning. Teachers and school boards need that information too. Teachers use many different ways of measuring student progress to improve the learning program and help all students succeed. As a parent, you're an essential part of this process.
Measuring results
In Ontario schools, we measure student progress based on the results we want students to achieve. We call these results learning outcomes. In the Common Curriculum, the provincial Ministry of Education and Training sets the outcomes for all students in Ontario.
The Common Curriculum describes 10 "essential outcomes" - important sets of skills all students will have command of by the end of grade 9:
- communicate effectively
- solve problems and make decisions using critical and creative thinking
- use technology effectively
- understand the world as a set of related systems
- work and get along well with others
- participate as responsible citizens
- explore educational and career goals
- apply aesthetic judgment in everyday life
- make wise and safe choices for healthy living
- use the skills of learning to learn effectively
The Common Curriculum has specific learning outcomes for grades 3, 6 and 9. These outcomes tell us what a student should be able to do by the end of each of these grades.
Outcomes tell us what tasks students should be able to do. But teachers need to measure - in an accurate and consistent way - how well students can perform each task or skill. To assist teachers, there are provincial standards in math and language arts. These standards describe, in detail, what students know and can do to demonstrate they have learned a skill. The ministry divides the descriptions into levels, so we can see how well a student has learned something. The standards also set expected provincial levels of performance.
Different tools for different types of learning
If you want to know whether someone can drive a car, you need to give them more than a written test. The same thing is true for students in Ontario classrooms. Students will write tests, quizzes and assignments. But sometimes these tests don't tell us all we need to know.
In today's classrooms, there are many different kinds of learning. Using only written tests would be like having only one piece of a jigsaw puzzle - you don't see the whole picture.
Different ways of measuring student progress give us different information about what students have learned:
What do students know? This is what we usually think of when we talk about learning. For example, we expect students to memorize math rules, geography facts, grammar rules and dates in history.How do students think? Can they apply what they know to new situations? Can they identify similarities and differences between things? Can they make predictions and draw conclusions?
What do students do? Can they finish their work, follow instructions, work well with others and try their best?
What can students produce? Can they demonstrate what they have learned by, for example, presenting it to their classmates or by doing a special project?
Are students developing values that responsible, caring citizens should have? Do they respect others, believe in honesty and fairness and have confidence in themselves?
Measuring student progress is part of the learning program
Measuring student progress is not just something that happens when the teacher has finished teaching. It's no longer true that learning stops when the testing starts. In fact, it's an essential part of the teaching program - students learn as much from the ways their progress is measured as they do from the rest of the program.
The shift to learning outcomes means that we measure the process as well as the product - not just the answer to a question, but the process the student used to answer the question. This approach helps teachers better understand the problem if a student isn't learning something. It also means that the student - and parents - are active participants in measuring progress and making improvements.
Here are some tools teachers commonly use to measure student success:
- teacher observations
- presentations
- student peer evaluations and self evaluations
- conferences and interviews
- paper and pencil quizzes, tests and assignments
- standardized tests
- journals
- performance assessment
- portfolios
- province-wide reviews and tests
Measuring student progress to improve learning
In Ontario, all educators are committed to measuring student progress. It gives teachers, parents and students the information they need to help all students achieve their best and succeed in school. The evaluation process, in which students actively participate, helps students learn important skills they will use in their jobs and throughout life. As the Royal Commission on Learning stated, "Unless the primary purpose [of measuring student progress] is to improve learning, we may as well not bother doing it at all."
It's been proven that students do better in school when their parents are active participants in their education. How can you be involved? It's important to find out more about how your child's progress in school is measured - and this handout is one step.
For more information
To find out more about the ways your child's progress is measured, speak with your child's teacher or school principal.
To get additional general information about any of the topics covered in this handout, speak with your child's school, your school board trustee or call the Ontario Public School Boards' Association at 1-800-268-5194.
