Norm referenced or standards based?
Is competition a good thing?
Norm referenced means that the qualification sorts out candidates from the best to the worst. It does not show the standard of performance of the candidates.
Standards based assessment assesses students against a specified standard of knowledge or performance. It does not always produce a ranking of students from best to worst although it can do so.
Both are competitive systems. Competition is a good thing. But there are different types of competition.
The competition with others to be the best.
The competition against a standard to reach a top level of performance
The competition against your own levels of performance to produce a personally excellent result.
In everyday life, and in school, we experience all these types of competition. Each can be good and each has its place.
In the Super 14 we want to find out who is the best. Go the Blues!
In Dragon boating we want to be the best. And we are.
When Alice Krzanich won the Prime Minster’s essay competition we were very pleased.
Last year Ronnie Gane was one the best Year 13 students in the country.
The wine companies compete to win gold medals. We look for them on the shop shelves.
Our chefs compete in the culinary fare and win bronze and silver medals.
We celebrate when our students get a full slate of Excellent grades in a subject.
When students get excellence grades they are very happy.
A golfer challenges herself to lower her handicap.
Our athletes try and improve their best performance in the Heptathlon.
A student resubmits work to get a better grade.
Students work hard to get better grades than last year.
Each type of competition is valid, but each has its limitations.
Being the best doesn’t tell you if you have reached the highest standard.
Reaching the highest standard doesn’t tell you if you are best.
A personal best for one person is completely different for another.
Tiger Woods may win a tournament, but it doesn’t mean he played his best golf.
Tiger Woods results and professional ranking suggests he is a golfer of the highest standard.
A personal best round for Tiger Woods is a little different from my personal best round.
NCEA as a matter of principle is based on competition against standards. It is therefore like the golf handicap system, the wine awards, the chefing awards and the ISO system for rating the quality of businesses.
The reasons for this are simple. It has been judged that in education it is better to encourage as many as possible to reach a specified standard than to know just who is best, second best or worst.
In sporting terms the tennis ladder only tells you who is best in the Tennis Club. The golf handicap not only tells who is among the best but the standard of golf that the club plays.
The College supports standards based assessment and believes that it is fairer, clearer and better for all students to be measured against a standard rather than be ranked among their peers. Of course, it is quite possible to get a broad idea of ranking by looking at the number of standards reached. Not only did Ronnie Gane reach high standards he is in top ten in New Zealand.
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