If you are in a semestered high school, you are about to finish semester 1 and start semester 2. That means it’s time to give students final marks in half of their courses. How do you work out their marks? Is it a matter of just looking at your mark book and averaging or tallying up marks from September to now?
Consider this little analogy I’ve shared before… and ask yourself if there’s a kid or two who might deserve a better mark considering how they are doing now compared to 4 months ago:
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The Parachute Packing Analogy
I love the simplicity of this example! There are 3 students who are in a parachute packing class:
Students take 3 tests during the course.
Student A starts off strong and gets an A on the first test, gets a B on the second test, is over-confident, flounders and gets a C on their final test.
Student B is a solid B student and gets B’s on all 3 tests.
Student C struggles on the first test and gets a C, starts understanding the concepts and gets a B on the second test, then totally understands all the concepts and finishes with an A on the final test.
All 3 students have a ‘B’ average in the course.
Which student do you want to pack your parachute?
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You don’t ‘need’ to mark the way you used to. You don’t ‘need’ to mark the kid getting 46% just by the numbers, especially if their mark was 36% at the start of the year and they are much more successful now. You can bump the one kid up 2% for the ‘A’ because they did poorly on one test the whole semester… And totally justify not giving another kid that 2% because they are short of getting an ‘A’ from consistently getting the harder questions wrong, and have not demonstrated that they are a ‘A’ student.
Equal ≠ Fair
Equal is not equal to fair. You can be fair without treating everyone equal… with assessments, with support, and even with how much homework you give them.
Assessment isn’t just about averaging and tallying marks, and fairness isn’t determined by equal treatment.
