Measuring academic Achievement

Our goal at the Schola is to cultivate wisdom and virtue in our students. Our intent is to help form their intellect and character and help them develop habits. 

Academic achievement is not just about test scores. It includes what a student knows and understands as well as how a student thinks and communicates. The habits they develop such as attention, diligence and perseverance as well as their growth in honesty, responsibility, and respect for others forms part of how we define achievement.

In this context, what does it mean to truly measure achievement?

There is natural tension between quantitative metrics (grades, scores) and qualitative growth (virtue, thinking, perseverance). Achievement is not merely output, but formation over time. When assessment is ordered toward formation, it becomes not a burden but a guide, helping students, tutors, and families see clearly the slow, sometimes hidden work of growth. 

Typical classroom-based assessments focus on exams, quizzes, essays, etc. These types of assessments provide insight to the tutor and ensure that there is alignment with instruction.  However, we endeavour to include more formative assessments by performing ongoing checks for understanding and emphasizing growth over final outcomes. We also include more alternative measures such as presentations and oral exams which demonstrate deeper learning.

Of course, there are limits to what can be easily measured, such as critical thinking, intellectual curiosity and moral and spiritual development. We must be intentional about not reducing education to data points. This creates unintended consequences such as stress, competition, and a loss of intrinsic motivation.

If educators only measure what is easy to quantify, they will gradually value only what is measurable. The Schola must resist this by intentionally elevating what is harder to measure, such as love of truth, capacity for wonder and moral responsibility. Even if these cannot be reduced to numbers, they can still be named, observed, and cultivated.

A holistic approach does not reject academic rigor. It situates it within a richer vision of the human person. Therefore, a holistic model of measurement attends to:

• Intellectual mastery: clarity of thought, depth of understanding, and the ability to articulate truth
• Habits of learning: attention, diligence, perseverance, and intellectual humility
• Moral formation: honesty in work, responsibility, and integrity

At SJCS, we look to a balanced model that includes both number grades as well as tutor observation and narrative feedback. 

In a classical classroom, assessment is not just an event at the end of the lesson. The tutor is constantly observing how a student reads, how they speak, and how they reason. The tutor, in the spirit of Socrates, draws out understanding through dialogue, not just written demonstration.

One of the distinctions of a classical education is the prominence of the spoken word. Students are regularly asked to recite poetry, Scripture, or historical texts from memory. They narrate what they have read in their own words, participate in guided discussions and defend ideas or interpretations. This reveals the depth of understanding (or lack thereof) and trains the students in clarity of thought and expression. Unlike multiple-choice tests, oral assessment can’t be faked. It requires presence and attention.

The Schola emphasizes memory as foundational to thinking. Assessment includes memorization of key texts, dates, formulas and passages. Rather than seeing memorization as rote, we observe that it furnishes the mind with the material needed for higher-order thinking.

Thomas Aquinas suggests that the intellect works upon what it has first received. Nihil est in intellectu quod non sit prius in sensu ("Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses"  ~ De Veritate ) If the intellect works upon what it first receives through the senses, then learning is not primarily the transfer of abstract ideas. It begins with reality as it is perceived, experienced, and attended to. The intellect does not create knowledge out of nothing. It receives, reflects, and orders what has first been given. As such, assessment cannot be limited to checking whether a student can reproduce ideas. It must ask a deeper question: What has the student truly received, and what have they been able to do with it?

Written work is assessed not only for correctness, but for order and reasoning. Not did the student include all the right points but is the thought clear? Is it ordered? Is it true?

A classical classroom does not ignore HOW a student learns. Tutors observe the students’ attention and focus. The recognize the students’  diligence and perseverance, their humility in receiving correction as well as their charity in discussion. These habits are not graded in a superficial way but they are named, encouraged, and corrected. Formation of character cannot be separated from formation of intellect.

Our ultimate goal is to see each student clearly and support their growth with care and honesty.