Norma Delima: PILOT ADOPTION OF STANDARDS-BASED ASSESSMENT

RATING SYSTEM AT THE SECONDARY LEVEL FOR SY 2011-2012

Assessment shall be used primarily as a quality assurance tool to track student progress in the attainment of standards, promote self-reflection and personal accountability for one’s learning, and provide a basis for the profiling of student performance – the Philosophy of Standards-Based Student Assessment and Rating System at the Secondary Level. Dep Ed Memorandum No.158, s. 2011 features the assessment process as holistic, with emphasis on the formative or developmental purpose of quality assuring student learning. It is also standards-based, because it seeks to ensure that teachers will teach to the standards and students will aim to meet or even exceed the standards. Standards in terms of content, is the target in this memorandum. Content as contained in the Philippine Secondary School Learning Competencies.

Honestly, some teachers especially in the Fourth Year, do not exactly know the learning competencies, because they don’t have a copy. In Basic Education Curriculum 2002, the learning competencies were identified only from first to third year, in all subject areas.

This Dep Ed Memo was released July 15, 2011. No wonder, that this was not discussed during the teachers’ training in Summer 2011, although Understanding by Design is already applied as an approach to the 2010 Secondary Education Curriculum.

I remember, last March 2011, most teachers in our school do not even know what to write on the space for curriculum in the Form-18, the Promotional Report. And most did not really bother to write, for them it was up to the Checking Committee to tell them what to write when it is their turn for the checking of forms. Teachers were not informed about the name of the curriculum either.

Moreover, the Level of Assessment which is at four levels, namely knowledge, process of skills, understanding(s), and products/performances, with its corresponding weights, 15%, 25%, 30% and 30% respectively, is again, not yet implemented in our school, or perhaps in the entire division. It is evident in the copies of CVIF Basic Education Curriculum given to us just this June 2011, and no other or new rating system was given.

As I read the DepEd Memorandum No. 158, s. 2011, I felt like being OUT, outside of what is IN, because I did not really know about this BIG CHANGE in the grading system.

It was emphasized, especially on page 5 of the enclosure to the memorandum, that HOMEWORK for example, in the 2002 BEC, may be viewed as an opportunity for integration of learning and as an avenue for producing PRODUCTS AND PERFORMANCES under the 2010 SEC. Homework is not rated. What is rated is the product or performance it produces.

Likewise, PARTICIPATION as a factor in student rating in 2002 BEC, is not rated separately in the 2010 SEC. In the 2010 SEC, participation may be taken in the context of transfer of understanding which may include one’s involvement in community projects, in which, this participation becomes PERFORMANCE in the 2010 SEC.

How I wish I could tell the people in the division about this, but I know they know this very well. Perhaps they have the reason why this was not yet disclosed to their constituents. Maybe, one of the reasons is to understand and focus first on the implementation of the Dynamic Learning Program.

But I don’t see anything wrong in the simultaneous implementation of the DLP approach and Understanding by Design in the 2010 SEC. What I do not see right is for the public not to know what the public secondary school teachers have to know, this DepEd Memorandum No. 158, s. 2011, which I find is a more sensible way of assessing and rating the students.