An algorithm used to create exam results for students in Scotland who missed the exams because of the pandemic unfairly penalizes students from poorer areas. The algorithm adjusts teachers’ estimates based on the prior performance of schools and effectively down grades students from poorer neighborhoods.
A more recent report indicates that although Scotland has abandoned the adjustments after protests, in England a similar adjustment is penalizing students in poor neighborhoods and adjusting upward the scores of students in wealthy schools.
This example illustrates the dangers of applying analytic methods without considering the consequences. It also demonstrates the hold of traditional conceptions of examinations on the educational system. Even in the face of a pandemic that prevented the exams from being administered the leaders of the educational system at first in Scotland and even now in England found it necessary to create exam results that advantaged well-resourced schools and their students. Of course, this all raises the question of whether the exam system is designed to reveal student learning or simply to justify and reinforce existing social disparities.
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