ATA Levellers

Dave Miller, a guidance counselor with the Calgary Catholic School District, says Alberta Education marks Grade 12 achievement tests so that only a certain percentage of students get above 80 per cent.

"And so now we are faced with a situation where a student works very hard, gets a mark in Alberta, it's not the same as the one in British Columbia," Miller said. "Therefore, they don't get into a school or get the scholarships that they might otherwise deserve."

ATA [Alberta Teachers' Association] president Frank Bruseker, who sat on the panel discussing standardized tests, said the marking rules mean more students from other provinces receive higher marks.

Is Alberta Education standardization, as a matter of policy, keeping students from getting grades above 80% --and therefore harming them? The immediate question is why? The accusation demands evidence because conspiracies will simply not do.

ATA teachers may have their heart in the right place. They care for their pupils, no doubt. If Alberta is doctoring the grades, they would be right to complain. But the argument is misplaced. Grades should not be doctored, not because the children will have lesser access to scholarships, but because it is wrong.

The teachers' concern betray what precedes it. ATA teachers don't like the government to be undoing the high grades that they distribute to their students. High grades, to their minds, are in the best interest of the students. Teachers inflate the grades for their pupils to access money going into university, and the government should not interfere. It is a competition for power in which the children's interests are now secondary. If pedagogy was the central concern, there would be a pedagogical argument in defense of the "grade doctoring." The concern about scholarships is secondary to education. The purpose of education is not to get money.

So, who is doctoring what? It appears to be a case of the government undoctoring grades. And if so, it's the pot calling the kettle black. In fact, it may be that the government has the best interests of the children at heart.

The ATA spokespersons may need to take a basic university-level economics course. Those who sometimes have wanted to erase poverty have resorted to giving everyone money. If lack of money is the condition of poverty, giving them money supplies the want and levels the problem. That makes apparent sense. How much to give them? Well..., lots. If we are going to print extra dinero for all people, we may as well not be stingy --that's what the scroogey kapitalists who cause poverty would be. But not us. Let us give them mucho money. Give them enough so that we'll all be millionaires. Why not? When we wake up in the Weimar Republic or in Sandinista Nicaragua, we'll think that reality is the nightmare.

Those who are earnestly worried because Alberta is not giving marks away are hoping for a variation of the money pumping solution. They may be concerned that the students are getting hurt by tougher marking because they might not receive scholarships in other provinces, but in the long run the temptation of relinquishing to grade inflation will hurt the students even more. Grade inflation hurts students. Interestingly, I do not see the advocates of higher grades saying that students are getting hurt by the easier marking.

The useful CBC reporters even called universities to confirm their suspicion that universities do not consider anything other than grades in the admission process. One has to wonder how many universities they called finally to get the "right" answer from Simon Fraser.

But why only keep the scheme to a selected few? If we are so concerned why not just simply give any student in the general vicinity of a 60-70% mark a 100% mark, and the problem will cease to be a problem. People who get a 70% work hard, I am sure, and sometimes some of them work as hard as those who get 90s, and perhaps even more. So they would be deserving as well.

We're trying to compete in the Olympics with the same fighting spirit, by the way, and then we wonder why even Costa Rica gets [per capita] more medals than we do!

Considering the argument that universities do not look at the particulars of where the students come from with low or high grades, if we give A's of all kinds to all the B- students and above, they will get into the Simon Frasers of the country (and into the good universities too). No one will know. No one will ever think to question that so many Alberta students have As (just like at the faculty of Education at the University of Calgary). They will all think that we are just inordinately bright and genius producers in Alberta --and we are.

That way, the ATA cannot complain that students are getting hurt. And when universities everywhere stop taking Alberta high school graduates altogether, the ATA and CBC geniuses of Education might perhaps revise their notion that no one looks at where people come from. They might come to the understanding that grade inflation, like real inflation, hurts those it is supposed to help. All will have A's but no one will take them. A little economic theory from the real world might dissuade the egalitarian levellers that we should make all people equal by making them all equally "deserving." And, let us not forget how much that will boost their self-esteem.