Recently, the Ministry of Education announced a significant shift in how teachers will evaluate high school students: attendance and participation will soon be incorporated into final grades. Specifically, for Grades 9 and 10 students, 15% of their grade will be devoted to attendance and participation, with 10% for students in Grades 11 and 12. Education Minister Paul Calandra stated that this idea came exclusively from his engagement with teachers.
Let’s be clear: the issue of low student attendance must absolutely be addressed. Provincial data shows that attendance has been decreasing and has hit a low of 40% of Ontario high school and 55.5% of elementary students meeting the standard of attending 90% of classes. To lend evidence that poor attendance leads to academic trouble, research from the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) found that high absenteeism (above 10%) in Grade 4 was a risk factor for not applying to post-secondary education.
The goal of increasing student attendance and engagement is an important one, but many people, including researchers and students, aren’t convinced that attaching attendance and participation to a grade is going to move the needle on this issue. Rather, many see this as further punishing students who are already marginalized and struggling in school.
Given the need to address this attendance crisis, I want to add three thoughts to the conversation regarding this announcement.
Grading attendance and participation seems misaligned with a meritocratic stance to education
Based on previous decisions, it is evident that this government believes that merit should be the basis for gaining access to opportunities in education. A lack of a merit-based application system for TDSB’s Central Student Interest Programs was the reason for scrapping the lottery admissions process in favour of a return to one that involves auditions, entrance exams, and using report card grades. The Supporting Children and Students Act forced publicly-funded universities to “have clearly outlined, merit-based admissions policies.” Also, Policy/Program Memorandum 165 shifted teacher hiring away from a seniority-based process to a more merit-based system.
So, given this history, it was quite surprising that report card marks, on which placement on high school honour rolls and admissions to colleges and universities are primarily based, would now be used in part as a carrot to reward students for their mere presence in class.
To contrast this approach with Ontario’s current grading policy, Growing Success, teachers are mandated to provide a grade based solely on how well students demonstrate achievement of the overall expectations of a course. In other words, the current grading policy is fully merit-based. However, teachers will now be instructed to move away from that policy to include a mark based on effort without any direct connection to demonstrated skill or learning, and this mark will then be used in a merit-based process when applying to college and university. This all seems rather incoherent.
Grading attendance and participation will exacerbate grade inflation
Another education issue that has recently made its way into the news is grade inflation. The grades that students need to get accepted into university are getting higher and higher. Since 2006, average Grade 12 marks for first-year students in various Ontario universities have increased anywhere from 4% to almost 10%. Rising Grade 12 marks are a runaway freight train, and it doesn’t look like it will slow down anytime soon unless there’s direct government intervention.
However, rather than addressing the issue, providing attendance and participation grades will only add fuel to the fire. Let’s lean on some math to illustrate this.
First, let’s make some assumptions: a keen, prospective Grade 12 applicant to a competitive university program is very likely to regularly attend class, and when they are there, they actively participate and work hard.
Let’s now look at one case of a student who, in the current merit-based grading system, receives a mark of 80% in their Grade 12 Advanced Functions math class. What would this student receive in a new system where they may very well receive the full 10% grade for attendance and participation?
- 90% of the final mark is based on merit, so 90 x 0.80 = 72%
- 10% of the final mark is based on attendance/participation, so this student receives the full 10%
So, 72% + 10% = 82%
So, a hard-working student who would receive a mark of 80% in a merit-based grading system would in the new system have their grade increase by 2% without doing anything different.
Scale this case up to the tens of thousands of students across multiple courses, and you’ve just made a grade inflation problem even worse.
Without clear guidance, the judgement of participation will likely be subject to racial, gender, class, and (dis)ability biases
In line with Growing Success, teachers already assess students’ learning skills and work habits that are not reflected in their report card grade. These skills are described in Growing Success with student behaviours related to participation in class routines, tasks, and activities:
- Responsibility: “The student fulfils responsibilities and commitments within the learning environment”
- Organization: “The student devises and follows a plan and process for completing work and tasks”
- Independent Work: “The student uses class time appropriately to complete tasks”
- Collaboration: “The student accepts various roles and an equitable share of work in a group”
- Initiative: “The student looks for and acts on new ideas and opportunities for learning”
- Self-regulation: “The student perseveres and makes an effort when responding to challenge”
In an influential study of how teachers in the TDSB assessed students’ learning skills, researchers found that there was “a clear bias in favor of students who identify as White, female, nondisabled, and whose parents have university education.” This finding is well-known by the Ministry of Education. In Policy/Program Memorandum 169, it states:
“As emerging research shows the impact that the evaluation of social-emotional learning skills can have on particular groups of students (e.g., Black, Indigenous, racialized students, male students, students with disabilities and students experiencing other socio-demographic disadvantages), educators are not to assess, evaluate or report on the overall expectations related to social-emotional learning skills in the Ontario curriculum.”
So, it is surprising that the government has not yet connected the dots between discriminatory biases related to the assessment of social-emotional learning skills and that of students’ participation in class, which is just the active demonstration of those same skills. Without clear practice guidelines along with significant investment in anti-bias training, it would not be surprising if the systemic bias that impacts the assessment of learning skills will also influence the assessment of participation and negatively impact academic outcomes of Black, Indigenous, and disabled students, and students from low-SES communities.
Absenteeism amongst students is a multifaceted and complicated challenge that requires addressing root causes through a multi-pronged approach. It is not a simple issue of students not caring enough about their grades that can be addressed by tangling a carrot of free marks. An issue as systemic as this requires extensive stakeholder engagement beyond just teachers – it should include parents, community organizations, researchers, and healthcare professionals to fully understand its multiple dimensions. Not only can this change in grading make little to no difference in getting students to class, but it also holds the potential of further disenfranchising the very students it is trying to help.
Jason To 
