Cancelling Diploma Exams is a Mistake

by Will Zahary Henderson

October 13, 2020

The morning of October 11, the office of the Education Minister, Adriana LaGrange, has confirmed that the Alberta diploma exams, scheduled to be held in late October and early November, will be made optional for twelfth graders. Let’s examine the implications of this.

In Alberta, diploma exams serve an important purpose as the only standardized exams for high school subjects. The scores on these exams provide valuable information to students, teachers, school boards, and the province. Most importantly, they provide information regarding grade inflation, the phenomenon of students receiving higher grades than deserved. Grade inflation is present at almost every school in the province, and it exists in stark contrast between schools.

I compiled a spreadsheet containing data regarding grade inflation at Edmonton schools, defining grade inflation as the difference between the average school-awarded mark in a class and the average diploma score for that subject. As an example of unequal grade inflation, see Jasper Place High School and Queen Elizabeth High School: Jasper Place has an average inflation rate of 4.40%, while Queen Elizabeth has an average inflation rate of 10.90%. In fact, I explained this phenomenon in-depth in an earlier blog post, which I encourage you to check out here.

It is worth mentioning that nearly every diploma course at every high school in Edmonton has a higher average school-awarded mark than average diploma score. For this reason, given the option of whether to take the diploma exam with no penalty if not taken, it would be illogical for the average student to take the exam if their primary goal is to receive the highest mark they can in the class, unless they believe they can achieve a higher score on the diploma than their current school-awarded mark. Though the data is not available yet, it is expected that the vast majority of students will choose to not take the diploma exam.

One of the present arguments used against diploma exams this quarter is the fact that approximately 30% of students are doing school online, and that it simply would not be fair to expect these students to go into a school to take the diploma exam. This situation clearly is suboptimal; however, the remaining 70% of students who are in-school would have no problem taking these exams in the exact same way that they have taken their other school exams. As such, this could be a valid reason to cancel exams for online students, but it certainly is not a good reason to make the exams optional for all students across the board.

Found in a Global News article, another interesting argument for the cancellation of these exams, espoused by Edmonton Ward C Trustee Shelagh Dunn, is that “the tests are standardized tests, but this year is not a standardized year.” This particular quote seems to misunderstand the premise of the exams themselves. The importance of standardized exams lays precisely in the fact that no year is standardized; if it were, we would have no need for such exams! If one were to argue that this year is less standardized than any other previous year, this simply serves as making diploma exams even more of an imperative. Adopting the argument that this is not a standardized year, and then removing the one thing that does standardize marks to some extent is effectively implying that marks awarded in this quarter will hold little to no meaning in comparison to others.