I’m a little late to the game on this one, but I have blogged about assessment and evaluation in the past.

A few weeks ago, a high school physics teacher in Edmonton was suspended for refusing to honour the school’s “no zero” policy.

Many of my friends and colleagues assume that because I’m a teacher, I’d be opposed to a no zero policy but in the past, I have defended the theory if not the practice. My reasons for defending the theory were as follows:

1) The purposes of assessment are to provide students with ongoing feedback to allow them to improve and to inform the teacher’s instruction.

2) Assessment is not intended to be punitive.

3) Assigning a grade of zero for lack of evidence due to incomplete work is an assessment of behaviour, not an assessment of knowledge or skills.

On the other hand, I also had reasons for not being able to defend the practice of a “no zero” policy. And those reasons are as follows:

1) Teachers are still expected to adhere to specific timelines with regard to calculation of grades, but many of my students, if given the opportunity to procrastinate, will take it. Teachers have very little incentive or disincentive they can use to encourage students to hand in work on time (or at all) that is more powerful than the allure of procrastination.

2) If not handing in work is truly a behavioural issue, then it should be dealt with in the same manner as other behavioural issues in school. Unfortunately, there are a number of behavioural issues that teachers are already dealing with that tends to take precedence over not handing in work.

3) Receiving a grade deduction for late submission of work or lack of submission of work is a natural consequence that both students and parents understand, even if we have some issues with it from a pedagogical perspective.

That’s what I still think. I think.

The thing is, the other day I was listening to someone being interviewed on CBC radio and I’ve tried to find his information but I can’t at the moment so until I have time to do more digging he’ll just be Mr. X. Mr. X raised a simple but very interesting idea. He said that the rationale that zeroes should not be used because they assess a behaviour rather than knowledge and skills is flawed, since all we can observe is behaviour–we can’t observe the thoughts in the students’ heads. We can only observe what they do with those thoughts. Behaviour. It may not be the same kind of behaviour as refusing to submit work, but to delude ourselves into thinking we are grading thoughts only.

So what do I think now: I still think zeroes and late marks should be a last resort. I think there should be disciplinary consequences for not submitting work on time. The key to success with this practice in my experience has lots of communication with both parents and students. I’ve also held mandatory lunch hour help sessions for students who don’t submit their assignments on time. Students aren’t exactly big fans of this. They value their lunch breaks (so do I), so they’re more likely to get their work done on time. On the other hand, sometimes the reason why the work wasn’t completed was because the student needed extra help but didn’t realize it or did and didn’t want to ask for help.