Now from Alberta

Jim Dueck
"more than 100 years in the world of assessment" in Alberta
as Canada uses "moral suasion" rather than laws to guide these practices, the system works differently; high rate of teacher involvement

thinks we ought to test in every grade
the high school exam is half classroom and half exam

myth of higher order thinking skils in mulitple choice; he refers to this as "the elephant in the room"...and thinks that one can have higher order thinking skills in multiple choice

Alberta is removing the written component of the math/science component, because the corration of the muliple choice to written is so high "temporarily" as a cost saving measure

photo montage of teacher involvement has a photo of...golf?

theme in marking is "fairness to students"
"we don't want to be a mirror; we want to be a prism" (takes the knowledge and breaks it apart to demonstrate higher order thinking)
Don't measure districts on the basis of raw score (because scores are affected by socio-economics)

ah...they were tops in the world until they dropped behind Finland (pop quiz, folks: what do we know about Finland?)