Thames Valley revises Assessment and Evaluation practices

Implemention: September 2011

The Ministry of Education recently revised assessment and evaluation practices for all Ontario schools. The revised practices – to be implemented this fall – are outlined in the document Growing Success, which can be found on the Ministry’s website www.edu.gov.on.ca. 

Teachers view “assessment” as the process of gathering 

information that accurately reflects how well a student is achieving the expectations of a particular subject or course. But assessment itself has three roles:

• providing students with feedback about their work (known as assessment for learning)

• helping students to set learning goals and monitor their own progress (known as assessment as learning)

• evaluation and reporting of progress in the form of grades or marks (known as assessment of learning). 

Both ‘assessment for and as learning’ provide students with day-to-day feedback on their work, and are far more valuable to the learning process than a final mark on a report card (an example of assessment of learning).  

The purpose of assessment and evaluation is to improve student learning

In the past, most of the attention was paid to marks/grades on student work. Today, the shift in thinking has moved more toward the on-going descriptive feedback that teachers provide to students so that they clearly understand what they need to do to improve their work. While the final mark/grade is important, it is provided at the end of the learning cycle.

The Growing Success document embodies these newer ways to view assessment, and it is the responsibility of all teachers to re-focus their teaching and assessment practices to provide opportunities for students to set individual learning goals and to provide on-going descriptive feedback to improve their learning.

As part of these revised assessment practices, the Ministry of Education also required all school boards to develop a policy to address:

So what does this mean for Thames Valley elementary and secondary schools? 

Details may be found in the new Assessment and Evaluation Policy and Procedure (available after March 8, 2011) on 

our website at www.tvdsb.ca/assessment.  Here are some of the highlights:

• Students in Grades 7-12 may have a mark as low as zero recorded on their provincial report card.

• Students in Grades 7-12 who submit a major assignment late may have marks deducted or receive a mark of zero. This may only be done after several documented attempts have been made by the classroom teacher to obtain the work from the student. The process for deducting marks and assigning a mark of zero is outlined in detail in the procedure.

• Teachers will inform parents/guardians of all cases of cheating and plagiarism. Parents will also be informed of the consequences for the student, taking into account the subject and grade level.

• Teachers will inform students about major assignments (Grades 7-12) at the beginning of each term/semester.

• The roles and responsibilities of teachers, students, parents/guardians, principals and superintendents are also described in the procedures.

We value the partnership between parents/guardians and our schools to ensure success for all students. We know that students perform significantly better when parents take part in the learning process and are true partners in education.

Coming this spring:  TVDSB New Homework Procedure and Parent Brochure 

View the PDF documents below for information about changes to assessment and evaluation practices.