What Justice Requires when Grading and Testing

Should test scores and grades be used outside of school?

Brian Valenzuela Sotomayor 2011

Within a meritocratic society it is very agreeable that man develops little by little through his own efforts (Kant, 1960), after all academic performance is based on the judgement of a students ability in producing work that satisfies a particular expectation of a test. Within this process teachers approve or disapprove the attempts of students who aim to achieve the required standards required for educational attainment, those fortunate phew who receive an accumulation of approval are rewarded with credentials that open up a world of opportunities in employment or in further education. Those who accumulate disapproval miss out on such opportunities. With future opportunity and disadvantage at stake, there is a huge responsibility amongst teachers and external verifiers when grading and testing children, a responsibility that coincides with the immorality of creating social injustice.

According to Curren (2007) teachers have a constitutive responsibility towards their students state of intellectual virtue (ibid, p7), or you could say intellectual worth; where each student should be finding within themselves the purpose and worth of intellect in their lives. By combining the prior meritocratic example with the teachers constitutive responsibility of a students intellectual virtue, can it be justifiable that children should suffer as a result of bad grades and experience fewer opportunities than others? According to Curren Adults, teachers and institutions have a constitutive responsibility of formulating academic and moral standards that are largely out of a childs control (ibid, p7). So, if children are in fact subordinated by the educators duty of intellectual stimulation, why are childrens opportunities in life being determined by a childs intellectual ignorance? Curren identifies this paradox where children are being made to learn with an unnecessary burden because accumulated grades are in fact morally illegitimate (ibid, p28). Furthermore if indeed a teacher is responsible for the intellectual and moral virtue of children, teachers should also take various factors in to account when grading students, such as the possible advantages and disadvantages caused by a childs constitutive luck.

Constitutive luck is believed to be an affect that has impeded the moral and intellectual virtue of a child, formed outside of a childs control; such as problems at home, interpersonal problems at school or the effects of malnutrition and health care. So if a childs intellectual and moral virtue has been at the mercy of constitutive luck why are the lives of children being determined by grades that bear the constitutive responsibility of teachers, parents and institutions; who are all responsible for flourishing the intellectual worth and values of children?

Curren (2007) believes children should not be held accountable for their choices until the constitutive responsibility of teachers, parents and institutions has been borne (ibid, p18). It seems as if the immaturity of childrens choices and academic performance are being allowed to form a childs lifetime credentials that will provide a particular access to employment and educational opportunities. We must ask ourselves whether this promotes a sense of social justice and whether children should be solely held accountable for their academic performance at school. After exploring the constitutive responsibility of teachers, parents and institutions, as well as the possible impacts of constitutive luck; it appears that grades and test scores being used outside school could arguably be viewed as not only unfair by socially unjust to children, therefore possibly morally illegitimate. For example, according to Curren (2007) Fair equality of opportunity is said to require not merely that public offices and social positions be open (to all, in accordance with talent) in the formal sense, but that all should have a fair chance to attain them (ibid, pp9-10).

This meritocratic evaluation seems to described the pillars of a liberal and democratic society in which mans effort and reward must be fair, this aligns with a Kantian ideology that man develops little by little through his own efforts, but according to Rawls those who have the same level of natural talent and ability and the same willingness to use these gifts should have the same prospects of success regardless of their social class origin, the class into which they are born and develop until the age of reason (Curren pg.: 10). What is striking about Rawls reference to the age of reason is that according to Curren (2007) before a child has reached the age of reason a child will have already have been unnecessarily burdened with illegitimate credentials as a result of a Russian roulette experience with

constitutive luck or the mere absence of constitutive responsibility from their teachers, parents and educational institutions.

It is clear in my mind that with clarity Curren and John Rawls have demonstrated that justice requires that grades should not be accumulated until a child has reached the age of reason and only after constitutive responsibility has been provided in abundance; only then should a childs tests scores be used outside of school and determine their position with a meritocratic society.

Bibliography Curren, R. (2007). Academic Standards and Constitutive Luck, in Maureen Eckert and Robert Talisse (eds.), A Teachers Life: Essays for Steven M. Cahn. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, pp.13-29 Curren, R. (2007). Coercion and the Ethics of Grading and Testing, in Philosophy of Education: An Anthology: Oxford: Blackwell. pp 465-476. Kant, I. (1960). Education, United States of America: Michigan Press. pp 2-3