CHAPTER ONE

Elmira District Secondary School

1.

Elmira District Secondary School sits in a small rural community in southwestern
Ontario, a place full of farmland and a slow pace of life. The highschool is one of the pillars of
the town, located in the heart of Elmira.
The school has always been well-known for its successful students, with names like
Malcolm Gladwell and Bruce Headlam on its roster. In 2014, the schools marks ranked among
the highest in Ontario, placing thirty-ninth out of seven hundred and forty schools in the
province
1
. In 1980 there were 892 students attending the local high school. Of these 892
students, the graduating class held 223 of them. Of these 223 graduating students, sixteen of
them received the golden pin. The golden pin is an award given to students who have acquired
seventy nine point five percent, or 7.2 percent of the student population. Another thirty
students were on the honour roll for three years and in turn received the silver pin. The
percentage of students who received either award totalled to 20.7 percent.
In 2009, the percentage of students from the graduating class who received a gold or
silver pin escalated to 40.4 percent. Why this sudden increase in students who have attained
honour roll status?
The increased percent may be one of two reasons: the students are getting smarter, or
the curriculum is getting easier. The simplicity of these terms may sound ludicrous, but lets
take them into more detail.
The word curriculum pertains to the subjects comprising a course of study in a school or
college
2
. In an Ontario high school, each student must complete thirty credits in their respective
areas, ranging from science to math, and English to physical education. In addition, the student
must complete forty hours of community service. Changes in the curriculum can be an
enormous influence on the overall mark of a student. Lets take a look at how this can happen.
Teachers who began their teaching career in the mid 1980s to early 90s were told by the
provincial government to raise the Ontario high school average from sixty eight percent to
seventy percent. Who doesnt want a higher average anyway? So this is what the teachers did.
In such a small community, in one class with one group of students, the tampering of marks
wouldnt skew the fairness of marking that much. Or would it? Sure enough, in the late
eighties, the provincial average was raised to seventy percent. The Liberal party in power at the
time of the announcement heavily promoted Ontarios increase in averages across the high
schools in the province, taking personal credit for these increases. In addition to the provincial
average rising two percent, the curriculum was refined and in short, made easier. In the
seventies and eighties, students learned at a grade level higher than students attending the high

1
http://ontario.compareschoolrankings.org/secondary/SchoolsByRankLocationName.aspx I actually boast about this quite
frequently to my friends who come from other schools. Especially those coming from St. Davids, for some reason.
2
http://edglossary.org/curriculum/
school in 2009. If a 2009 grade twelve math test were compared to a 1980 math test, the
differences would be rather obvious. From a 1980s standpoint, the test would look
astonishingly close to a grade eleven test. Although subjects like math, physics, and chemistry
have extremely objective marking, the tests are skewed to represent higher success in the
students. In other subjects that hold more subjective marking like English and other creative
arts topics, marking has been adjusted in turn.
Everybody needs to feel good. For high school students, a major sense of
accomplishment can be found in their academic success. In the eyes of a teacher, raising a mark
from seventy-three to seventy-five, although unfair, does not play a vital role in their academic,
or life success. In fact, it does. Raising one class two percent can be the difference between
attending post secondary education and not.

2.

This brings us to the topic of post secondary education. If the high school averages in the
most populated province in the country have increased, then the university cut off admissions
must follow suit. Ontario is home to twenty-two universities, each with their own specialty. The
province is also home to some of the most well-known and prestigious universities in the world,
including University of Waterloo and Queens University. In the mid 1980s, the provincial
government did not consider factors that would affect both secondary school education, and
postsecondary education forever.
When a student applies to university, he or she is competing against hundreds, if not
thousands of other students, depending on the competitiveness of the program. When a student
who has graduated from an Ontario high school applies to university, they hold a competitive
advantage over other applicants who have applied outside of Ontario, where the marking is
more fair. In short, high school teachers in Ontario have created false opportunities for
thousands of students in the province. A false opportunity translates into an undeserving
opportunity. Many of the students who have been accepted into a program as an Ontario
applicant simply do not deserve to be in that program with other applicants from around the
globe.
Each year, Macleans magazine releases a report on the performance of universities
across Canada as well as the performance of the students attending the university. In 2005,
Ontario universities student population was sixty-two percent Canadian. In the same year,
Ontario had the highest first year dropout rate by twenty-two percent. Twenty-two. If you were
to walk across the campus of any university in Ontario, only one of every four students you saw
would be back next year. Due to the curriculum change by the provincial government, Ontario
education was falling behind once the students were put to test on a global scale. So what was
the solution to this obvious problem?

3.

Back at EDSS, the students were not getting smarter. Quite opposite in fact. The
curriculum continued to get easier. In 2013, a new type of mark analyzation came into play
called professional judgement. The marking scheme attempts to give every student in the
class as high of a mark as possible. Every teacher in the province was required to apply the style
of grading into their current classroom, in order to have each student succeed in their own
unique and special way. The two percent that every student still receives, and the lower grade
level learning of the new curriculum has been made easier. Some of the major codes that the
new procedure of marking holds include
3
:
Fairness is not sameness
Some students require more time than others; some students need more than one
attempt to be successful
Separate academic achievement from learning skills and work habit

When these students graduate and go on to pursue postsecondary education of any sort,
fairness will be sameness. They will fail the course if they were not successful on their first
attempt. Why is the Ontario ministry of education setting up the provinces students for
imminent failure? Professional judgement will be the marking scheme until a new idea is
proposed, and students will continue to be weeded out in their first year of university. Other
components of the new marking strategies include no late marks. For example, a student can be
assigned an essay on the first day of school, and hand it in on the last day of school, ten weeks
overdue, and receive the same mark as the student who handed in the assignment the day it was
due. In any workplace, these students will be fired if they choose to simply hand in something
late. I polled a number of teachers from across the province, and the responses were all
relatively similar. Here is what a typical response would look like:

My class continually argues me over the new AER system. I give them late
marks, incompletes, or a completely new assignment after they refuse to meet
deadlines and they are appalled. The grey area of the marking is far too big for
any teacher to handle as it varies from class to class, and subject to subject. I do
believe that every student has a different way of learning, and a different way of
succeeding, but if the student does not meet the deadlines or the big ideas of the
course, we (as teachers) should not be held responsible to track students down
and force the success into them.

I received thousands of other responses with the same ideas presented. If teachers feel this way,
then how can the ministry of education ignore the educators of our future generation? If the
teachers are unwilling to use the marking scheme laid out for them, then they might as well quit.
They have an established curriculum that they must follow, just like a student must follow their
own curriculum. Lets face it, without teachers, there is no schooling. With no schooling, there
are no jobs. And no jobs translates into no economy, or a recessive one that is.



3
http://www.wrdsb.ca/programs/about-report-cards-grades-7-12/frequently-asked-questions-responses/