Fake Teachers and Fake Marks

What’s behind awarding 100% to kids for literally doing nothing?

Creator: Eoneren | Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher, commentator)

According to a report in The Star, students in some grade 12 classes in a York Catholic high school who have not completed any evaluation whatsoever have been awarded “placeholder” marks of 100% to be used in their postsecondary applications. The classes have been running for nearly half a semester without teachers assigned to them. 

That means that the classes have been either covered by day to day supply teachers (who most likely were not qualified in the subject area), covered by “on-call” teachers  (permanent teachers at the school who probably don’t have the subject qualifications either but are directed to cover the classes), or simply canceled. I would bet it has been a combo of all of the above. The bottom line is that the kids have not learned much. 

So, having demonstrated no learning at all (there has been no evaluation of any kind), and facing a deadline for college and university applications, the school administration (with the support of the school board) has elected to assign a mark of 100% for every student enrolled in these teacherless courses. 

Totally unfair; dumb idea.

Competition for spots in post-secondary programs is intense. Acceptance is based largely on mid-term marks. It is most unlikely that any of the kids in these courses would actually have earned a mark of 100%. In spite of massive marks inflation, 100% is still a pretty rare mark. Thus, these kids will have an advantage over others who have actually been learning things. These century-mark achievers will, at best, learn half of the curriculum, and that is assuming the board soon finds teachers and the kids receive marks of 100% on evaluation from now on, neither of which is very likely. These marks of 100% will likely result in acceptances over kids who have actually earned their marks.

Then of course it is a horrible situation for the kids receiving these fake marks. First off, they are entitled to an education, which they have not been getting, and secondly they will be unprepared for the program of study they are accepted to based on these unearned marks. They will certainly struggle, and quite likely fail, as a result of this, so yeah, it’s a really dumb idea.

No one is really concerned about student learning

The board’s attitude about the whole affair speaks volumes as to their lack of concern for student learning and academic standards. They say that this mark is just a placeholder, that any acceptance is conditional, and that the universities and colleges will withdraw acceptances from students who do not keep up their averages. Since it is virtually certain that few, if any of these kids will end up with a mark even close to 100% can we expect most of them to receive withdrawals of their acceptances in a few months time? 

And the school board has no plan- nothing, to address the learning gaps these kids are facing as a result of the failure of the school to provide instruction for half a semester. No night or evening classes, no summer school make-up, no online tutoring, zilch.  They just want to pass these kids along to college or university and wash their hands of it all. 

How did it come to this?

There is plenty of blame to go around for this situation, which is just a drop in the ocean of similar problems playing out in the high schools on a daily basis and is about to get a lot worse. The problem is a lack of teachers in classrooms across Ontario. That is not because there are not enough people qualified to teach out there, though, it is because qualified teachers either don’t want to work in the broken system here, or would be willing to do so, but are not allowed. 

Who wants to work in a broken system?

Many young people who are qualified to teach have chosen other careers. Teaching is simply no longer a desirable job for most people. This has long been the case in many parts of the United States and the phenomenon is spreading north for largely the same reasons: Declining pay and terrible working conditions.

Pay has simply not kept up with inflation. While inflation has run at over 2% per year, salary increases for teachers have been less than 1% on average for the past 12 years. In 2023 inflation was 6.3% and teachers got a 3.75% raise. Young people see that trend and realize that 20-years from now they will not be able to live on that salary. And teacher pensions are no longer guaranteed to be indexed. 

But an even bigger factor is working conditions. People might be willing to take a job with declining pay and benefits if it were rewarding and socially meaningful, but, sadly, neither of those things is the case any more, and there is no sign that things are going to improve any time soon. 

Academic standards have dropped drastically. Marks inflation is just one symptom of that, and this case of the fake 100% marks shows just how much contempt today's education administrators have for objective evaluation of student learning. Teachers who expect regular attendance, punctuality, effort, and a generally positive attitude towards learning and who award marks impartially based on merit face blow-back from parents and administrators. Eventually, for their own sanity, they give up and just hand out whatever marks parents and administrators want. As a conscientious teacher, part of you dies when you do that. 

Then there is the exponential spike in unruly and violent student behavior. Criminal behavior such as physical and sexual assaults and drug trafficking and use are met with a slap on the wrist (if that) and teachers learn to turn a blind eye to such things because nothing is done when they report it. It is really discouraging and disempowering to see kids laughing at you when they get off Scot free. 

Finally, the grind of the daily Indigenous land acknowledgements, which incessantly remind staff and students alike that rest of us are on “stolen land” and the drumbeat of identity politics and “white supremacy” along with gender ideology (you are whatever you think you are) being crammed down kids’ throats is all just totally demoralizing.   

Retired teachers limited to 50 days a year of supply work 

The problem of the teacherless class will be particularly acute this year because the Ontario Teachers Federation has refused the government’s request to allow retired teachers to work past their 50-day limit. The unions say this is a band aid solution, which is certainly true, but is it really in the best interest of kids and teachers to “create a crisis”, to use a phrase by a former Ontario Education Minister who was looking to make systemic changes? 

Rather than exacerbate the problem to make a political point, the OTF could rise above that, be the adult in the room, and agree to increasing the limit in exchange for changes that would improve working conditions for teachers. But no, they would rather abandon the kids and shoot their own members in the foot. Nice.

Fake marks are nothing new 

All that said, marks have been a poor reflection of student achievement for a long time now- this case is just particularly egregious. To pass a course, a student needs to get a mark of 50%. Does that mean they learned half the stuff they were taught? No, not at all. It means that they did not demonstrate any significant grasp of the material (did not achieve a “level 1”), in other words they learned practically nothing. So really, 50% is the new zero.

On top of that, most schools have a policy that teachers cannot hand out marks of 46 to 49%. They must award either a 45 (fail) or a 50 (pass). Of course, the expectation is that you will raise the mark to 50%, and if you don’t, the principal can, and probably will, just raise it anyway. By the way, most schools have a policy that you cannot assign a mark of less than 20% no matter what. 

Marking is now completely subjective

So what do marks really mean? The fact is there is no longer any kind of formula for determining final marks. Most people probably assume there are objective criteria which are applied equally to all students to produce as fair as possible a mark which accurately reflects what a student has learned and allows for comparisons between students, at least within the same school. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Rather than awarding points for meeting specific criteria and receiving a specific mark (like 42 out of 50 for example), evaluation is based on a rubric like this one from the Ontario Math Curriculum Document.

As you can see, there is a great deal of room for interpretation. Level 4 (traditionally referred to as an “A”) for example represents a span of 20%. In terms of university admission, 80% is a million miles from 100%. Decisions for admission are often based on a fraction of a percentage point in final averages. Thus, who gets in and who doesn’t is often decided arbitrarily. 

Then there is the issue of the Regional Programs, such as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate, which charge fees and have their own curriculum and evaluation systems yet the students who enroll take the classes in regular, publicly funded high schools and receive Ontario Secondary School Credits towards the Ontario Secondary School Diploma, even though the courses they took do not match up the credits they are awarded. How can those marks be fairly compared? 

Finally, there are private “credit mills”- essentially marks-for-dollars shops found in industrial plazas where a student with a lousy mark can purchase a higher one. They just jump through a few hoops and then poof! The new higher mark appears on their school transcript with no mention of the fact that it was “earned” off site. 

A bad situation exacerbated by Woke policies

This move towards subjective evaluation based on murky and vague criteria was fertile ground for the explosion of school board woke-inspired “equity” policies. Boards are desperate to improve academic outcomes based on race and ethnicity. Certain groups are lagging. They don’t want a disproportionate number of black or indigenous kids failing classes, being declined admission to post-secondary education, or dropping out of school. While it is certainly a fair question to ask why kids from these groups are more often struggling at school, the boards’ solution of simply handing out credits and pressuring teachers to jack up marks is clearly not fair nor is it in the best interest of any of the students. Rather, we as a society need to take an honest look at what the socio-economic factors are that have led to these students so often struggling. But the woke mantra of “it’s always racism” simply will not allow that conversation to happen.  

What should be done?

The Minister of Education should intervene and demand that the 100% marks submitted on behalf of these students be changed to an average of what each student achieved in other senior level courses they have completed or are taking. This is far from a perfect solution but at least reflects what each of these students is capable of to a large extent. More importantly, the Minister should tell us what he is going to do, right now, to ensure that there is a qualified teacher in every classroom in Ontario starting next September. 

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Black Creek Pioneer Village Renaming

BREAKING NEWS:

1. A new long-form essay by Dr. M - Fulcrum and Pivot: The New Left Remaking of Toronto School Policy

2. James Pew has contributed a chapter to the new book Grave Error: How The Media Misled us (And the Truth about Residential Schools). You can read about it here - The Rise of Independent Canadian Researchers

Also, for more evidence of the ideological indoctrination in Canadian education, read Yes, schools are indoctrinating kids! And also, Yes, The University is an Indoctrination Camp!

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