5. Complicated Assessment
A principle of modelling is Ockham’s razor. It is the principle that
the simplest explanation or strategy tends to be the best.
If we apply Ockham’s Razor to the task of assessing mathematics ability, the obvious choice is
a mark out of 100.
Percentages are immediately understandable to everyone. Any other choice of assessment system, whether in numbers or words, will be less familiar, less simple and require explanation.
Over the last twenty years, teachers, students and parents throughout Queensland have wasted a lot of time and effort struggling to understand the complicated assessment systems we have adopted. The opaqueness and lack of consistency of our present assessment system
discourages students from studying hard to improve their performance,
wastes very many hours of every maths teacher’s time, taking them away from helping students learn,
excludes parents, and tutors from their appropriate roles in students’ learning and
lends itself to corruption.
Instead of applying Ockham’s razor to mathematics assessment, we unfortunately, listened to the fashions of pedagogy and are suffering under its weight and absurdity.