What's fair: hitting the mark.

• Author: Dalton, Danielle

The topic for this issue, "What's Fair?" prompted much discussion between the two of us. The philosophical underpinnings of the purpose of student evaluation and how to undertake that task fairly was such a significant aspect, we felt that the issue merited an entire article. It was felt that any discussion of legal obligations and remedies should be informed by this philosophical debate. Therefore, this article is the first in a two-part series devoted to student evaluation -- the next issue will explore the legal implications of evaluation.

"That's not fair!"

How often teachers hear the bold challenge echoing off assignment sheets long after the last bell has rung.

"I had a ball game last night and didn't have time to do homework."

"My grandmother was visiting from Scotland."

"I didn't know it was due."

"I missed the last two classes because I was sick."

And of course, who can forget the ubiquitous `my-printer-didn't-work' excuse? But no matter what the excuse, the implied message is always the same: the mark is not fair.

But what is fair? Excuses aside, the question of fairness is anything but trivial. The answer continues to elude not only students, but parents and teachers as well. In fact many teachers, perhaps punch drunk from years of battling accusers, are more uncertain at the end of their careers than they were fresh out of university.

In simple terms, the question of fairness is one of justice and might be considered to be giving each person his or her due and, like most questions of philosophy, will revolve around the question of what is the truth and the discrepancies that lie between what we believe to be and what really is. A fair mark is achieved as the mark that teacher gives becomes more objective and accurate and less subjective and partial. The degree of fairness will depend in part upon the distance between the mark that a teacher gives, believing it to suggest the truth, and the actual reality that it proposes to measure. This endeavour may be trickier than it sounds. The ideas of twentieth century philosophy of science suggest that there is no such thing as completely objective results because there is no such thing as completely objective experimentation -- the researcher always begins with certain biases, or preconceived notions of what the conclusion should be and therefore looks only in certain directions or only for certain things. In that case because we know that there can be a difference between what a student is able to do and what a teacher chooses to look for, the reality represented by the grade merely indicates the student's achievement as measured against selected curricular standards in selected skills and knowledge on selected trials.

But leaving aside the issue of whether we can ever measure academic truth, we are confronted by another obstacle. There is no consensus between educators and the rest of society as to what reality marks ought to measure. Is it the student's demonstrated performance in that subject? Or is it the student's raw ability we're after? Or is it demonstrated effort and diligence? Indeed, success in many walks of life will depend more on pure perseverance and other virtues of character than on academic proficiency. These measures are largely ignored by the criteria in common use in today's schools, which are heavily weighted in favour of academic mastery of material.

Perhaps fairness, like the underlying aims of education, should be directed at the future rather than the past.

In that case, we begin to ask a different set of questions. Do such grades empower the child with the confidence to succeed in life? Do such grades point the direction to a meaningful life? Ought grades not consider the reality of the larger picture behind an achievement result in order to accurately predict or me child's rightful place in society?

Inevitably, one begins to realize that questions of fairness in the classroom echo the same questions posed on the larger scale of public policy. How do we as a society, and more specifically the...