The Alberta dark old physics teacher went fromzero’ tohero’ whenhe’ was justified, but this proved to be a small victory on a slippery slope by amazing standards. The dean of the University of Calgary described the high schools in Ontario as a “race of arms “A”. 2011 University of Saskatoon research of 12,000 freshmen found that Alberta high school graduates lost 6.4 percentage points compared to 19.6 points in other provinces. Since core courses take the tests required by the provinces, about 20 percent of Alberta’s 12th grade students received an “A” on average, compared to about 40 percent of Ontario’s high school graduates. What happened to Alberta school standards? Already in 2011, Maclean named Alberta the best education system in Canada based on its graduate scores. It originated in Alberta in May 2012, when Linden Dorval, an Edmonton physics teacher with thirty three years of experience and an impeccable educational history, was suspended and then fired for continuing to give zeros and refusing to obey changes in the school’s graduate policy. While the tests are far from perfect, they provide not only a more rigorous form of summary assessment, but also a fairly reliable measure of student performance in the provincial system. While some students and parents have retained the right to write their exams, steps have been taken that could be the death stone of the provincial final examinations in what was once known as Canada’s best education system. In June 2016, 96 percent of students between the ages of 30 and 1 in mathematics “passed,” compared to 71 percent of those taking the final exams – a 25 percent point difference. The policy of “no fail” and “zero fail” student assessments became widespread in the early 2000s, with secondary school teachers, especially in Alberta, being the most resistant. Compared to standardized tests, teacher assessments tend to show bias towards students with special needs, especially those with special needs, complex behavior, language problems, or different personality types of their teachers. These allegations are challenged by Canadian experts in adolescent mental health, including Stan Kutcher and Yfeng Wei, as well as cognitive scientists such as Erin Maloney, who rely on science-based research showing that these tests and studies are examples of the “normal stress” deemed necessary for healthy human development. Although at first glance the assessments made and assessed by teachers may seem smoother and more accurate than the tests, these assessments are often impressionistic, not always reliable and may yield less accurate results for students. The suspension of the Alberta Diplomas in October and November 2020 is understandable in the midst of a global pandemic, but will have unintended consequences.