3 Reasons why Alberta's Provincial Achievement Tests are inappropriate

Today I have to administer a standardized test for the Alberta government. (Here's how I live with myself)

In Alberta, we have Provincial Achievement Tests and I have to administer Part A for Language Arts. My students are required to write a news article and a story in 2 hours.

Here are 3 reasons why this test is not an appropriate use of our limited time, effort and resources.

1. Collaboration should not be Cheating. My students read and write almost every single class. My students sit at tables with their laptops, devices and peers so that they can accelerate and enrich their learning by collaborating. While students are encouraged to work together during our 50 minute classes, we routinely have 15 minutes of silent reading and writing; however, I would never ask students to complete anything that is worth doing in complete isolation from their peers, parents, books or the Internet. I've worked hard to encourage my students to see collaboration as a critical characteristic of learning.

Alfie Kohn reminds us that, "I want to see what you can do not what your neighbour can do" is really just code for "I want to see what you can do artificially deprived of the skills and help of the people around you. Rather than seeing how much more you can accomplish in a well functioning team that's more authentic like real life."

In the real world, there simply aren't that many times you are expected to solve a problem or perform a task in complete isolation - and even if you were, it would be awfully archaic to refuse you the opportunity to reach out for the help you needed to get the task done.

2. Writing should not be canned or rushed. It's true that a written response standardized test is better than multiple choice but that isn't saying much. In my class, we read and write every single class -- we blog a lot. The few blog posts that we actually start and finish on the same day are some of the most shallow and superficial writing my students produce. My students' best writing involves a process that takes days and sometimes weeks. This year, we have written many current event blog posts and news articles where the students play an active role in researching primary and secondary sources to discover the who, what, where, when, why and how for real events.

In sharp contrast, this test shutters up the real world and reduces authentic student research to reading a pre-packaged point-form list of fiction-filled "facts" that merely demands students regurgitate point-form into sentences. This is writing's equivalent to paint-by-numbers.

3. There is no substitute for what teachers and parents observe while children are learning. Through out the year, I tell parents not to bother wasting their time looking at their child's marks on Pearson's PowerSchool. If anyone wants to know the extent to which my students are learning, you can look at their blog which features a wide-range of writing assignments that occur over a 10 month period.

In my classroom, testsandgrades are replaced with projects and performances collected in portfolios.

I routinely remind myself of a powerful classroom teacher's testimony:

In the real world of learning, tests, and reports and worksheets aren't the most meaningful way to understand a person's growth, they're just convenient ways in a system of schooling that's based on mass production... I assess my students by looking at their work, by talking with them, by making informal observations along the way. I don't need any means of appraisal outside my own observations and the student's work, which is demonstration enough of thinking, their growth, their knowledge, and their attitudes over time.

Move to digital testing platforms raising questions

This was written by Phil McRae who is an executive staff officer with the Alberta Teachers` Association. Dr. Phil McRae’s Biography, Research, Writing, Scholarship and Presentations can be found at www.philmcrae.com, and you can follow him on Twitter here. This post first appeared here.

by Phil McRae

When Alberta Education announced it was moving away from provincial achievement tests (PATs) and toward digital student learning assessments (SLAs), many educators, parents and students cheered.

PATs did little to help teachers diagnose and respond to student learning needs, but they did much to create stress for students and to encourage school ranking. But will the new digital SLAs—to be administered at the beginning of each school year in Grades 3, 6 and 9—provide teachers with useful information? While the Association remains committed to working with government on the new grade 3 SLAs, important long-term questions need to be addressed.

PATs will be phased out over the next three years as the new digital SLAs are phased in, by 2016/17. Grade 3 PATs will be phased out first, with the new digital SLAs being administered to incoming Grade 3 students as early as September 2014. The aim of the digital SLAs is to support teacher assessments in literacy and numeracy benchmarks through the digital platform offered by Alberta Education. The proposed SLAs in Grade 3 will include both machine-scored short-response digital items and performance assessments marked by the teacher.

Although this form of assessment sounds promising, a few things should be considered. The current focus is on objectively scored digital assessment items, but examples are emerging of automated essay scoring of student-produced writing tasks. Alberta Education is piloting the machine scoring of student essays. Although details of the pilot have not been articulated, Alberta Education has contracted with LightSide Labs (www.lightsidelabs.com), based in Pittsburgh, to provide an “exploratory” pilot using student data. LightSide Labs claims its educational writing assessments “matched human reliability faster and at a fraction of the cost.”

The use of computer technologies (from word processors to on-screen testing programs) to assess student work is called e-assessment and includes computer-based testing, computerized adaptive testing, computer-based assessment and digital assessment.

Computer-based testing has three essential elements:

1. Test item development: Hundreds or thousands of digital items can be generated in seconds by a single computer program.

2. Test administration: Tests are administered online, thus eliminating or reducing the costs associated with exam delivery and security. However, the final access costs to e-assessments are borne by the end users (personal device, institution bandwidth or school computers).

3. Test scoring, analytics and reporting: Test reporting is fully automated and instantly reported.

The world of e-assessments is growing rapidly, as evidenced by a $1.4 million Canada Research Chair award in educational measurement to Professor Mark Gierl at the University of Alberta. Gierl, an international leader in the field, will research approaches to producing a large number of test items that university educators will require for the transition to computerized educational testing, also known as automatic item generation.

Gierl argues that the following four principles should account for adopting e-assessments:

1. There should be a shift from infrequent summative assessments (for example, two midterms and one final) to more frequent formative assessment (for example, 8–10 exams or more per term).

2. Testing on demand is required where students can write exams at any time and at any location.

3. Assessments should be scored immediately and students should receive both instant and detailed feedback on their overall performance as well as their problem-solving strengths and weaknesses.

4. There should be much less time and effort spent implementing these principles in large classes compared to the amount of time currently spent on assessment-related activities.

Proponents of e-assessments point to benefits such as cost-cutting, expediency of data transfer and an efficient and effective 21st-century learning system.

The move toward e-assessments is fundamentally about reducing costs associated with humans involved in the testing process, with a view to increasing efficiencies within the system. The e-assessment movement argues that paper-based testing is dead and it claims that computer-based testing will either eliminate or automate two-thirds of the testing activities that teachers currently do manually (for example, item generation, administration, scoring, analyzing and reporting).

E-assessment advocates assert that 16,000 essays can be graded every 20–40 seconds, as compared to the current six-week window for marking and returning tests to students. But additional challenges arise when writing tasks are coupled with machine scoring. Machine scoring is currently limited in its ability to handle the semantics of complex written responses. For example, where does the student’s writing in the margins or brainstorming work get accounted for in the e-assessment? Is process lost, while only the final product is assessed? How can a machine assess a student on critical thinking and effective communication in a personal essay? Although e-assessment can detect spelling and grammar errors, will it detect irony, subtlety, truth, emotion and depth in the writing? Will clichés and witty barbs go unnoticed (or misinterpreted)? In short, a machine cannot engage meaningfully with a person on an intellectual, creative or emotional level.

While Alberta Education maintains that the rollout of the SLAs in Grades 3, 6 and 9 will include classroom-based, teacher-driven assessments, there are indications that the government is committing resources to digital testing platforms with very limited resources to support comprehensive professional development for teachers. With the shift of the delivery of diploma examinations to a digital platform, the same problems persist: the excessively high weighting of the examinations and the refusal to give teachers access to the examinations following their administration.

In the end, it is important to remember that while technology has a place in education assessment, its mechanized and standardized valuations are no replacement for the sound judgment and ability to interpret context and meaning that teachers bring to the equation. If the new provincial assessment initiatives are to succeed, the government needs to invest in building the assessment capacity of teachers rather than what sometimes appears to be an almost single-minded focus on investing in digital technologies.  ❚

More about e-assessment
“Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics, or What’s Really Up With Automated Essay Scoring,” by Todd Farley, author of Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry
—www.huffingtonpost.com/todd-farley/lies-damn-lies-and-statis_b_1574711.html
“Computer Grading Will Destroy Our Schools,” by Benjamin Winterhalter
—www.salon.com/2013/09/30/computer_grading_will
_destroy_our _schools
Alberta Education
A presentation on the government’s move to digital assessments is available from Alberta Education
—http://prezi.com/dgr4tn_gn9g7/jtc-nov-2013/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Provincial Achievement Tests are dead-tests walking

In May of 2013, the Alberta Government had the insight and the courage to move away from standardized testing.

The proposed changes to Provincial Achievement Tests brings both crisis and opportunity. As a critic of standardized testing, I am ecstatic that Alberta is moving away from the 30 year old Provincial Achievement Tests.

I wrote a post here that detailed both how we could get these new tests right and how we could get them wrong. Basically my position is this:

Alberta's new tests shouldn't be tests at all -- they should be projects and performances that are collected in portfolios.

2014-2015 marks the first school year for the new grade 3 assessments, but in the meantime, Alberta's Education Minister Jeff Johnson should be praised for having the foresight to inform school boards that 2013-2014's grade 3 provincial achievement tests are optional. (Of course, they are optional every year for parents, but this time Government is making them optional for schools)

Jeff Johnson has shown a very keen interest in addressing teacher workload because he knows that a teacher's working conditions are a student's learning conditions. Rather than resorting to something as simplistic as work hour caps on schools, Johnson has made it clear that he would rather have school boards and teachers work together to identify government initiatives that are "not terribly useful but are still around and create legacy initiatives that pile onto the teachers".

Johnson has left the door open for school boards to see that the grade 3 achievement tests are now a government initiative that is not terribly useful but are still around as a legacy initiative, creating needless and distracting work for teachers and students.

Put simply, provincial achievement tests are dead-tests walking.

If school boards truly care about teacher working and student learning conditions, every single school board in Alberta should show the courage and the insight to opt out of the grade 3 achievement tests this school year. 

"As parents, you have the right to withdraw your child from participating in the PATs." Alberta Education Minister

Alberta's Provincial Achievement Tests (PATs) are optional.

In a letter to a parent, Alberta's Education Minister Jeff Johnson writes:

As parents, you have the right to withdraw your child from participating in the PATs. Please note that your child will be marked as absent on the school and school authority reports for the days the tests are administered.

Jeff Johnson's message has at least two important implications:

1. Provincial Achievement Tests are optional. Full Stop. Parents have the final say about whether their children write PATs. Parents need only write a letter to the principal stating that their child won't write the test. The letter doesn't require a reason. Even if the school uses the PAT as a final exam (which they shouldn't), the PATs are still optional.

2. Schools might (wrongfully) try and deny parents their right to opt out of PATs. I know parents who have told the school that their child will not write the PATs, and the school attempted to deny them this right. I wrote a post here that explains all this, but essentially the problem is Full-Cohort Reporting -- here's what's going on:

Whether a child writes the test or not, their score affects the school's performance report. While it's true that there should be no punishment for a child and their family who opts out of testing, the school is punished by the Alberta Government who assigns the school a zero. Imagine how few zeroes would be required to drag a school's average down, making them look far worse than they really are...

No one can deny a parent's right to opt their children out of Provincial Achievement Tests.

And now you know -- and knowing is half the battle.

Elimination of Provincial Achievement Tests a good first step

This was written by my friend and colleague J-C Couture who is an executive staff officer with the Alberta Teachers' Association. While I wish he did blog and tweet, he does not. I'll let you know if I ever convince him otherwise. This post was originally found here.

by J-C Couture

A good news story for Alberta students and parents is also being hailed as a great step forward for public education. On May 3, the Alberta government announced the end of its Grade 3 provincial achievement testing (PAT) program.

Alberta Teachers’ ­Association President Carol Henderson ­applauded the government’s decision and congratulated Premier Alison Redford for “fulfilling this important campaign promise.” Despite her accolades, the ATA president stressed that “important work lies ahead to ensure that a new provincial assessment program does not open the door to allow some of the abuses of the old testing program.”

In addition to ending the Grade 3 PATs, the government also announced that the Grades 6 and 9 programs would be replaced by 2017. Henderson hopes the government and school authorities will not view the end of the testing program as an opportunity to create new testing regimes driven by global reforms focused on standardization and the inappropriate use of technologies, options being advanced by corporations and bureaucracies.

Some pundits and ­columnists are calling for PATs to be ­replaced by computerized testing and elaborate data-gathering ­programs despite evidence that such programs are detrimental to public education. Research on school reform in Alberta and teacher workload has highlighted that governments and a percentage of the public refuse to acknowledge that such testing ­programs are ineffective and cause ­significant stress. “For too long, ­teachers have seen the negative side ­effects of this 30-year-old ­testing ­regime,” said Henderson. ­“Students experienced undue stress, and schools were unfairly compared without regard for the unique circumstances in which they operate.” Henderson went on to add, “These bad reforms are like zombies. They just never seem to die.”

Henderson hopes that the Association, along with other progressive organizations and individuals, will continue to advocate for a program to help teachers diagnose and respond to student learning needs to replace the current system, which detracts from real learning. “We look forward to working with government, based on the evidence of what is working in other jurisdictions, on developing an alternative that actually improves the information provided to teachers for supporting student learning.”

The Association has outlined options for advancing sound ­student assessment and ­reporting in A Great School for All—Transforming Education in Alberta. The publication is available on the ATA website and can be downloaded at no charge. Visit www.teachers.ab.ca and click on Publications and then on Research, Current. 

Provincial Achievement Tests are gone! Now what?

On May 9, 2013, the Alberta Government announced that they are dropping the grade 3, 6 and 9 Provincial Achievement Tests in favor of what they are calling "more student-friendly assessments".

Some history:

• In 2010, Alberta Education made changes to their organization structure by eliminating the Accountability and Reporting Division.
• In 2011, Alison Redford became Premier of Alberta and promised to bring an end to grade 3 and 6 Provincial Achievement Tests.
• Former Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk announced that the government wished to make changes to Provincial Achievement tests.
• Alberta teachers have long opposed Provincial Achievement Tests as the scores were either at best unhelpful for teaching and learning and at worst harmful.

What we know about the new tests:

• The new tests will be computer-based tests known as "Student Learning Assessment" and will be developed by "experts" and administered at the start of grades 3, 6 and 9. 
• They will focus on assessing numeracy and literacy while also assessing competencies such as creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving.

Skeptically Optimistic

The proposed changes to Provincial Achievement Tests brings both crisis and opportunity. As a critic of standardized testing, I am happy that Alberta is removing the current Provincial Achievement Tests. 

In fact, I'm ecstatic!

However, while we are writing epitaphs for the old tests, we shouldn't stand over the grave too long. After all, someone who the government is calling a group of experts is already planning the next foray of tests.

I'm also concerned that many Albertans have come to define their successes and failures with Provincial Achievement Test results, but now that these tests are on the way out, many Albertans will experience a kind of existential vertigo - how else can they define themselves if not by fancy bar-graphs and shiny pie charts depicting their test results? Many Albertans will need to be coached through this shift from test-based accountability to public assurance.

There are a lot of ways the Government could get these new tests right and there are a lot of ways they could get them wrong.

Getting the new tests wrong:

• Change for the sake of change is no better than tradition for the sake of tradition. If the only difference between the new tests and the old tests is their scheduling (spring vs fall) and their format (computer vs paper), they will only be "new" in name.

• Too many teachers and schools misused Provincial Achievement Test scores by making them count as a part of the student's report card or final exam. It would be educational malpractice to make these new diagnostic tests count on a report card.

• Putting these new tests online might be an improvement but not if they are still multiple choice. These new tests cannot be multiple choice. 

• If the government maintains their monopoly over accountability and public assurance and develop these tests in secret, we will have wasted the opportunity to involve the public in public assurance.

Getting the new tests right:

• The old tests were problematic for many reasons but here are at least three things the new tests should not do: (1) place undue stress on students or teachers; (2) unfairly rank and sort schools without regard for their unique circumstances in which they operate; (3) narrow educational opportunities for students.

• The old tests were terrible at helping teachers improve their teaching so that students could learn more. The new tests need to be diagnostic in nature which means the information would be used to improve -- not to prove.

• Ruth Sutton tells us, "Involving teachers, parents, students and the community in the process of assessment and evaluation is the key to a form of public assurance that serves to improve and develop our students and our schools, not just to measure them." The Alberta Teachers Association and the public must play an active and authentic role in designing and implementing these new tests.

• Public assurance needs to be more than a one-time computer test . We need to design authentic assessments that support learning while simultaneously assuring the public that students are learning. This includes the use of project-based learning, performance assessments, and learning portfolios. For more on this consider reading A New Look at Public Assurance: Imagining the Possibilities for Alberta Students.

What do you think? Will a shift away from Provincial Achievement Tests lead to a crisis or opportunity?

Is Alberta changing their standardized tests?

Alberta's Education Minister Jeff Johnson has talked for some time now about how Alberta's Provincial Achievement Tests (PATs) are going to change. Information about how they will change is hard to come by and only occasional musings in the press from Minister Johnson provide any insight. Expectations are high but details are scant.

Here's what we know so far:

• These new provincial tests (replacing grades 3, 6, and 9) will evaluate students' abilities more broadly. The shift is being described as a change from evaluating content coverage to something vaguely defined as "competencies" with a focus on numeracy and literacy.

• No changes will be made this year but prototype tests could roll out as early as next year. It is likely that grade 3 PATs will be the first to change.

• "We don't want to abandon standardized testing. We just want to modernize it," says Minister Johnson.

• The new tests would focus less on regurgitating facts and more on providing students with an opportunity to show how they can apply what they understand. In other words, the new tests would care less about what students remember and care more about what students can actually do.

• Parents want quality information on how their child is learning.

Here are my thoughts:

Assessing Competencies

The move from assessing content coverage to competencies is a sound one backed by research. Alberta Education and former Education Minister Dave Hancock should be applauded for such a move. However, Minister Johnson's somewhat confused messaging regarding sound assessment practices becomes glaringly evident when he asks for standardized tests that assess competencies. No matter where one looks where competencies have taken hold (now a twenty year old idea that Alberta claims is 'new') - there is no such thing as a standardized test that assesses competencies. The best way to assess competencies is via performance assessments collected in learning portfolios, and The Alberta Assessment Consortium and Alberta Teachers' Association have some excellent research on this topic here. Hopefully some of this thinking will inform the ministry.

Reporting Real Learning

Authentic accountability means that the public can access the information they need to know about their schools. In other words, accountability is really about transparency; and yet accountability begins and ends with standardized test scores which are anything but transparent.

If 70% of tax payers in Alberta do not have children in school, will they take the time to look beyond the limited and superficial information that a standardized test score can provide?
The best feedback parents can receive about their children's learning is for them to see their children learning.

No reductionist data or convoluted edu-jargon required. When we are offered the choice between the inconvenience of spending the time and effort required for observing the messiness of real learning with the arbitrarily convenient tidy test scores, I fear we are too often seduced by the spurious precision of the numbers.

Instead of moving beyond standardized test scores in favour of more authentic alternatives, we get Education Ministers who settle for merely "modernizing" standardized tests -- after all, it's safer and easier.

Inspiring Education and Standardized Tests

Through Inspiring Education, Albertans told the Alberta Government that they wanted "to inspire and enable students to achieve success and fulfillment as engaged thinkers and ethical citizens with an entrepreneurial spirit within an inclusive education system." Firstly, there are no standardized tests that assess engaged thinking, ethical citizenship and/or entrepreneurial spirit. 

Secondly, Albertans made it clear that they don't just want to "modernize" their education system -- Albertans want to transform it, and this requires courageous and collaborative leadership.

Ignoring The Profession

There is a big difference between keeping teachers passively informed and encouraging them to actively participate in the changes to Alberta's Provincial Achievement Tests.

The best decisions for the child are made by the child in collaboration with a safe and caring adult who actually spends time with them. Those adults are not bureaucrats or politicians -- they are the classroom teachers. Now is the time for the Government to work with teachers to develop alternatives to Provincial Achievement Tests. Again, here are two brilliant documents: Transforming Education in Alberta and A New Look at Public Assurance: Imagine the Possibilities for Alberta Students.

Johnson is Reckless

Trusting the profession means the minister must change his messages regarding the profession. Too often it appears Johnson tries to make change by imposing his will on those who have less power. First, he threw around the idea of merit pay (the bad idea that won't die). He threatened to remove teachers' collective bargaining rights with legislation. Using the teachers' registrar certification contact list, he sent an e-mail to 30,000 teachers, and now is being investigated by the privacy commissioner. He orchestrated an agreement with Alberta Teachers without including School Boards. And now Johnson thinks that Inspiring Education and transformation can be achieved by merely "modernizing" the government's current standardized tests.

Like his predecessor Thomas Lukaszuk, Johnson's strategy for transformation seems to be at best whimsical and unsophisticated and at worst inept. If aliens landed to observe Johnson's leadership, they might assume his strategy for enforcing his ignorance with the force of law to be: ready, fire, AIM!

Thanks to former Minister Hancock who set the stage for Inspiring Education, many of the conditions that will support informed transformation are now in place. What Alberta needs now is an Education Minister who is courageous enough to collaboratively create the conditions provincially so that local schools can be inspired and empowered to construct great schools for all.

I've changed my mind - Let's cut education

I wrote the other day about the Alberta Government's invitation to the public to get on-line and share how to cut the budget.

At first I was totally against cutting education, but I've now changed my mind - I can see now why we need to cut education.

Here's how:

When I got to the Education section, I clicked on the link that allowed me to submit my own idea for how to make cuts. I made two suggestions:

• Make cuts to standardized testing including Provincial Achievement Tests and Diplomas so you don't have to cut teaching and learning. Premier Redford already promised to abolish grade 3 and 6 Provincial Achievement Tests, so she could make good on her promise and save money.

• The Alberta Government could save money by turning teacher certification over to the Alberta Teachers' Association.

• Make cuts to Alberta Education's 640 full time staff. 100 full-time staff make decisions about curriculum and student assessment for the entire province, but if these decisions were made at the community level, we wouldn't need so many government bureaucrats.

Pressuring children to write Provincial Achievement Tests

Why is there so much pressure placed on students and parents to write Provincial Achievement Tests?

There is no one answer but consider this:

The Alberta Government enforces something called Full Cohort Reporting. Put simply, this means that the Alberta Government demands that school districts report all of their students' Provincial Achievement Test results whether they wrote the test or not.
This means that a student who writes the test is considered the same as the student who did not write the test.

Whether a child writes the test or not, their score affects the school's performance report. Imagine how few zeroes would be required to drag a school's average down, making them look far worse than they really are...

So what's the problem?

Consider this:

The Alberta Government says Provincial Achievement Tests are an instrument used to provide the public with the information they need to know about their schools. The government claims that Provincial Achievement Tests are about being accountable to the public in ensuring that the curriculum is taught.

Can you see the problem?

Because Full Cohort Reporting distorts the validity of the School's Performance Report (by treating absences as zeroes), the public does not get the information it needs to know about their schools. Because Full Cohort Reporting conceals more than it reveals by counting an absence as a zero, the School's Performance Report is not transparent -- and without transparency you can't have accountability.

Even though it is a parent's democratic right to withdraw their children from writing Provincial Achievement Tests, schools and school boards are pressured by the Alberta Government's Full Cohort Reporting to make all children write the tests regardless of whether it's in the child's best interests or what the parents feel is best for their children.

I personally know of a parent who is a member of their school's parent council who requested that their school remind parents that Provincial Achievement Tests are optional, and they were denied this request by an associate superintendent from their school district. Why would an associate superintendent deny a parent their request to remind other parents of their democratic right to opt their children out of Provincial Achievement Testing?

I am also personally aware of a grade 3 classroom that consists of 25 students where at least 8 of the families plan on opting their children out of the Provincial Achievement Test. If this were to happen, approximately one-third of the class would not write the test which could potentially cripple the school's performance report. The School's Performance Report may not affect the funding they get from the Government; however, it will affect how the School Board allocates that funding because they have to have a plan of action for how they are going to address their poor performance. Which means they may end up having to allocate their limited resources and funding towards fixing a problem that doesn't exist.

So who is responsible for the pressure placed on students and their parents to write Provincial Achievement Tests?

To answer this, it's important to remember that pressure can only be applied from those who have more power down onto those who have less power. So let's follow the chain of command:

children --teachers -- principals -- superintendents -- school boards -- Alberta Government

Let's be crystal clear here. The Alberta Government needs to take responsibility for the fear and pressure that Provincial Achievement Tests place on the citizens of this province.

Here are a couple solutions the Alberta Government needs to take responsibility for:

• properly inform parents that Provincial Achievement Tests are optional and that they have every right to opt their children out.

• stop enforcing Full Cohort Reporting so that children who are absent are not misrepresented as achieving zero. This would also relieve school boards, superintendents, principals and teachers from pressuring children and their parents into writing the tests.

• Alison Redford needs to make good on her election promise to eliminate grade 3 and 6 Provincial Achievement Tests. 

Withdrawing from Provincial Achievement Tests

An Edmonton father faces pressure from school administrators after he said he did not want his daughter to write the Provincial achievement test.

The CBC ran a story on how an Alberta mother received pressure about her decision to opt her daughter out of grade six Provincial Achievement Tests. This is the same mother who wrote a guest post for this blog on the pressure she received.

There are many teachers who opt their children out of Provincial Achievement Tests. Here is an anonymous post from a teacher on how they opted their child out. They decided to remain anonymous in fear of reprimand.

Here are more posts on Alberta's Provincial Achievement Tests:

Assessment and Provincial Achievement Tests

University of Saskatchewan waives PATs and Diploma exams

Alberta teacher excuses their child from PAT

Accountability and the Provincial Achievement Tests: Myth and Reality

Are Provincial Achievement Tests in Alberta High Stakes Exams?

The fear of Provincial Achievement Testing

The Folly of Provincial Achievement Testing

Exempting from Testing in Alberta

Alberta Provincial Achievement Test Taking Tips

Alberta axes written portion of PATs

Teachers know best

Standardized Testing is Dumbing Down our Schools

Misuse of Provincial Achievement Tests

Thomas Lukaszuk on Standardized Testing

More on opting out of testing

Another Parent opts their daughter out of Alberta's Provincial Achievement Tests

This was written by Tracey Loewer, an Albertan and mother of five, who recently opted her grade 6 daughter out of Alberta's Provincial Achievement Tests.

by Tracy Loewer

Before I get into my recent experience with withdrawing my 6th grader from writing the Provincial Achievement Tests (PATs), here's a little background.

I am the mother of five children (ages 9-15), and we recently moved to Edmonton from a smaller community in Saskatchewan. Although I knew (and expected) that there would be quite an adjustment period for my kids, particularly since we moved after the school year was well under way, I was unprepared for the added pressure of some unknown thing called the PATs. Within the first week of school, I think I heard my kids mention it fifty times.

I will be honest in saying that I didn't take it too seriously at first. After all, moving is fraught with many challenges and it takes time to become familiar with new ways of doing things. I started to wonder about the PATs when my 6th grade began making comments like "My teacher says that I need to know 'this' or 'that' for the PATs," but I didn't really look into it until she began completely stressing out and bringing home an alarming number of booklets so she could study.

I won't go into all of my reasons for withdrawing my daughter from writing the PATs or I will run the risk of hijacking this blog with my own rant about the state of education in Alberta, high-stakes testing (for little children, no less!), and the tremendous waste of resources - I'll leave that for the experts to debate. After all, I'm a newbie to the system. Suffice it to say that upon notifying the school that my daughter would not be participating, we were both invited in for a conference with her teacher. Long story short, I didn't change my mind, and my daughter was asked (very nicely) to keep quiet so her friends wouldn't complain to their own parents about having to write the PATs. I was also asked to keep her at home for the entire day on testing days (even though they only spend part of the day writing them) - again, so her friends wouldn't suspect anything. This certainly wasn't ideal, but we agreed, simply because we were not trying to make a huge statement; we were only trying to do what was best for us.

When the day of the first PAT came, I got an email from her teacher relaying a message from the principal that my daughter would be given a mark of "not meeting grade level", and that it was a shame because she would have surely done so if she had written them. It honestly felt like a last-ditch attempt to guilt me into allowing her to write, which I did not appreciate. In truth, I was a little scared by the tone of this email (my first thought was 'Did I miss something when I was researching - oh my goodness, what have I done to her???'). While I understand that the principal is required to report on every student who doesn't write the PATs, I was definitely relieved to know that this will not have a lasting effect on her (although I do feel badly that this appears to reflect poorly on an excellent school).

In all, this has been kind of a baptism by fire for me and my family. I certainly hadn't planned to take this on when I moved here, but I am not one to keep quiet when I see something amiss, particularly when it comes to children who often do not have a voice of their own. I realize, of course, that teachers have a lot on their plate and are required to do what is mandated, and I certainly do not expect preferential treatment or anything along those lines, but if I don't speak up for my own children, then who will?

Many parents that I have spoken with are dissatisfied with the standardized testing in this province, but because it's been like this for a long time, I think that few know that it is within their power to do anything about it.

In the end, I know that I am much more interested in being a part of a solution, and I sincerely hope that the government will keep the dialogue open and that they will find more effective ways to evaluate the progress of the children. To the parents out there I would say: don't be afraid to stand up for your kids! The only way to bring about change is to speak up and let your voice be heard. I guarantee that you are not alone.

Tracy

(In the interest of full disclosure, I did allow my 9th grader to write his PATs, but mainly because he wasn't incredibly stressed out about it and his school doesn't have any other formal exam to factor into his final mark. We decided to look at it as a practice for writing finals in high school. It is interesting to note that either way, I had the full support of his principal in making this choice.)

Redford's Broken Promise?

I voted for Alison Redford in the 2011 Progressive Conservative Leadership Race because of her promise to abolish the grade 3 and 6 Provincial Achievement Tests.

Redford's election promise was crystal clear. Her K-12 election platform called for:

An end to provincial achievement tests for Grades 3 and 6, as these are too stressful for students and do not impart the information we need to measure performance.

I've heard our Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk talk and write about standardized testing on the radio, in the newspaper and on Twitter (here and here). I was impressed when Lukaszuk took The Fraser Institute to task for their misuse of Provincial Achievement Test scores.

While I've heard Lukaszuk mention many times that Alberta Education is reviewing Provincial Achievement Tests (PATs), I did not vote for Redford because she promised to review them. I voted for Alison Redford because she promised to end them.

It's now 6 months later with a new election and grade 3 and 6 PATs are still here.

I held up my end of the bargain. Redford got my vote. I think it's only fair that she deliver on her promise.

And if she doesn't and this is indeed a broken promise, what good are Alison Redford's promises in this new election?

Provincial Achievement Tests as final exams for the Report Card

There are lots of reasons to like Twitter. Today I want to show how Twitter can provide anyone a direct, public line of communication with your local representatives and politicians.

The other day, I tweeted a question to Alberta's Education Minister, Thomas Lukaszuk:

Should teachers use the grade 3, 6 and 9 Provincial Achievement Tests as their final exam on the report card? @LukaszukMLA #abed
— Joe Bower (@joe_bower) January 6, 2012

Thomas Lukaszuk responded with this: 

@joe_bower This is not what #abed designed the test for.This would be another misuse of these tests.
— Thomas Lukaszuk (@LukaszukMLA) January 7, 2012

I agree with Lukaszuk that it is a misuse of grade 3, 6 and 9 Provincial Achievement Tests to include them as a part of the students' report card.

In light of this, I have a couple follow up questions for Thomas Lukaszuk:

• If Alberta Education never designed Provincial Achievement Tests to be used as a part of the students' report card, why does Alberta Education provide a form letter for schools and teachers to inform parents that the Provincial Achievement Tests will be used as a percentage on the report card? The letter can be found here on page 12. (I blogged about this two years ago, here.)

• I know of schools in Alberta that mandate teachers to use the Provincial Achievement Tests as a final exam and a percentage of the students' report card. I also know of Alberta teachers who do this voluntarily. According to Minister Lukaszuk, this is an inappropriate practice that Alberta Education never intended to have happen, so what will the government do to make this right?

In response to some of my questions, Lukaszuk responded with:

@joe_bower that is why I am reviewing the exam and practices surrounding it...
— Thomas Lukaszuk (@LukaszukMLA) January 8, 2012

I am eager to see how Provincial Achievement Tests will change.

The Folly of Ranking Schools by Test Scores

This was written by Alfie Kohn for the Calgary Herald in February of 2005.

by Alfie Kohn

There’s bad news in today’s Outlook section. It’s not that the test scores listed there are low. It’s that the test scores are listed there at all.

As a rule, the less people know about education – and about exams like the Provincial Achievement Test -- the more willing they are to judge schools (and students) on the basis of such scores. It’s not that standardized test results don’t tell us anything. They’re very accurate measures of the size of the houses near a given school. As many researchers, including Todd Rogers at the University of Alberta, have shown, a school’s test scores can be predicted with reasonable accuracy if one knows the socioeconomic status of its students – and nothing about what happens in its classrooms.

But what if a school’s scores are rising over the years despite having roughly the same kind of students? In that case, the results aren’t meaningless -- they’re worrisome. Better results on the P.A.T. may actually be a bad sign because of what had to be sacrificed in order to make that happen.

Those numbers in the Outlook section do not reflect academic excellence. Indeed, teachers in Alberta and elsewhere often tell me that some of their most impressive students don’t perform well on these exams, whereas other kids get terrific scores just because they’re good at taking tests. The research confirms this: Three studies have found that high standardized test scores often go hand-in-hand with superficial thinking. What’s true of individuals is true of schools. Some of the best may not be at the top of those rankings precisely because they don’t stuff kids full of testable (and forgettable) facts. Rather than slavishly covering the provincial curriculum, teachers in great schools help children to discover ideas. Their students are learning what it means to think like a scientist or an historian, not merely memorizing dates and definitions.

Indeed, in visiting Saskatchewan and Manitoba, I’ve been impressed by the nearly complete absence of standardized tests there. They spend their time and resources on teaching rather than testing, and their schools are better off as a result.

Any attempt to reduce learning to numbers is misguided. Schools just can’t be rated like laundry detergents. As one U.S. educational researcher put it, “Measurable outcomes may be the least significant results of learning.” The damage is compounded when those numbers are test scores. Exams like the P.A.T. tend to measure what matters least.

Worst of all is using these scores not just to rate but to rank, such that the emphasis is on who’s beating whom. This encourages a toxic competition between schools. Educators are less inclined to work together to do a better job at educating all our children because they’re forced to worry about their relative standing.

There are only two explanations for the wretched ritual of publishing these scores. The first is simple ignorance. The second is some sort of political agenda – exactly the kind, come to think of it, pursued by the Fraser Institute, which wants to privatize everything in sight and privilege profit-oriented enterprises over democratic public institutions.

Frankly, if my goal were to make public schools look bad and pave the way for vouchers, I would do exactly what they’ve done: use the language of “accountability” to push for more emphasis on testing -- and set schools against one another.

But a right-wing think tank can’t accomplish this alone. It needs Alberta Learning notonly to force schools to give all those tests but to boil down the results into summary statistics that are ripe for publication. (The State of Connecticut refuses to do this in order to thwart those who would try to reduce schools to a single set of numbers.) Last week, Education Minister Gene Zwozdesky told a CBC interviewer that it’s “patently unfair to make comparisons between schools based on scores.” The question is why he is pursuing policies that facilitate just such comparisons.

The Fraserites also need newspapers like the Herald to do their dirty work for them by publishing these charts. The effects aren’t always easy to see or measure, but every year about this time, Calgary’s schools become a little worse because this paper leads parents and teachers to focus on test scores rather than on more meaningful indicators of quality.

Elsewhere, I’ve written at length about those indicators. Is the focus more on understanding ideas from the inside out (rather than on memorizing facts)? Do students experience their schools as caring communities? Do teachers create democratic classrooms so kids can participate in making decisions? Do children often learn together (rather than alone)? Do parents receive qualitative accounts of kids’ improvement (rather than traditional grades)?

By contrast, the most constructive thing you can do with those pages in today’s Outlook section is use them to wrap fish. The numbers printed there are not only meaningless but dangerously misleading.

One figure, though, is worth looking at: the percentage of “exams not written” at each school. When that number begins to climb, it will mean that Calgary-area parents are realizing that they’ve contributed to the problem by allowing their children to write the exams. When enough of them get organized and decide to boycott the P.A.T.s, Alberta Learning will ask nervously, “What if we gave a test and nobody came?”

That will mean the flourishing of grassroots democracy and a more sensible set of educational priorities. And that, finally, will be something worth reporting.

Tidy test scores not true indicators of real learning

My letter to the editor appeared in the Edmonton Journal:

Our new Premier Alison Redford has committed to ending Grade 3 and 6 provincial achievement exams while offering “regular but sensitive measurements of academic performance and expected outcomes.”

The case against standardized testing goes something like this: It’s not that standardized test scores don’t tell us anything. A child’s test score is a reliable and accurate way of assessing the size of the houses near a school. This means that too many tests are reporting on what children bring to school and not necessarily what they learn at school.

It’s also important to note that a correct answer on a test does not necessarily signal understanding, and a wrong answer does not necessarily signal an absence of understanding. Real learning is really messy. Standardized tests are nothing if not tidy. See the problem?

The bane of reducing learning to a test score is that it inevitably overvalues whatever can be quantified and undervalues what cannot.

This is why any attempt to reduce learning to numbers is at best unhelpful and at worst harmful, and anyone who calls the process of reducing the messiness of teaching and learning to a tidy test score a "public service" is neglectfully ignorant, willfully blind or outright lying.

Ultimately, accountability should be about transparency. That is, people should be privy to the information they need to get a feel for the quality of their schools.

Because standardized testing conceals far more than it reveals, it cannot tell us what we need to know about our schools, which provides Alison Redford with all the mandate she needs to rightfully do away with the grade 3 and 6 Provincial Achievement Tests.

Provincial Achievement Tests are optional

In Alberta, the grade 3, 6 and 9 Provincial Achievement Tests are optional.

To exercise your democratic right as an Albertan parent, you can opt out of Provincial Achievement Tests by simply writing a letter to your child's principal. As a parent, here is the letter I have drafted:

Dear Principal, 

My child will not participate in writing any of the Provincial Achievement Tests. 

Sincerely, 

Joe Bower

You'll notice that I am not required to provide the reasons why I am doing this. Instead, I am only required to inform the principal that my child will not participate.

Because it is the parents' right to opt their chid out of Provincial Achievement Testing, the child can not and should not be punished for not participating. If all goes well, the only person I would need to talk to about this would be the principal; however, if they were uncooperative, I would move to discuss this with the Superintendent, and if they were uncooperative, I would then engage with Alberta's Minister of Education.




For more on Provincial Achievement Tests here are a couple posts:

Assessment and Provincial Achievement Tests

University of Saskatchewan waives PATs and Diploma exams

Alberta teacher excuses their child from PAT

Accountability and the Provincial Achievement Tests: Myth and Reality

Are Provincial Achievement Tests in Alberta High Stakes Exams?

The fear of Provincial Achievement Testing

The Folly of Provincial Achievement Testing

Exempting from Testing in Alberta

Alberta Provincial Achievement Test Taking Tips

Alberta axes written portion of PATs

Teachers know best

Standardized Testing is Dumbing Down our Schools

Misuse of Provincial Achievement Tests

Thomas Lukaszuk on Standardized Testing

Misuse of Provincial Achievement Tests

I was listening to Alberta's Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk speak about the misuses of standardized test scores when I thought of a time I saw with my own eyes how standardized test scores are misused by high schools.

For nine years I taught at a middle school. Every April, we took our grade 8 students to the high school for an orientation in preparation for their transition to high school. Every year, the gym was packed with anxious grade 8 students. Every year, the slideshow presentation went through all the cool extra-curricular clubs and interesting courses the students could choose from.

Every year, one of those slides was a graph showing how this high school outperformed other high schools in the city on the Provincial Achievement and Diploma Exams. The narrative went something like this:

Come to our school because we have good test scores which means we take academics seriously and you'll get a better education here.

Every time I had to endure this rhetoric, I would look around the gymnasium to see if others were as disgusted by this misuse of test score data as I was, and colleagues of mine (who have a very good idea how I feel about all this) would look my way and give me a smirk and a shrug.

When I shared this experience with our former Education Minister Dave Hancock, he immediately asked me:

That is ridiculous. Who is holding them accountability for this misuse of scores?

My response:

No one. But I am talking to you.

After listening to our new Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk talk about how third parties like the Fraser Institute misuse standardized test scores, and seeing for myself how even schools misuse them -- my question to Lukaszuk is this:

Keeping in mind that asking the Fraser Institute to use standardized test scores responsibly is like asking an alcoholic to drink responsibly, what are you prepared to do to ensure that standardized test scores are not misused?

#takethetest

Here is a two part story where a School Board Trustee in Florida took the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, commonly known as the FCAT.

Part 1: When an adult took standardized test forced on kids

Part 2: Revealed: The school board member who took standardized test

This story reminds me of an excerpt from Alfie Kohn's Confusing Harder With Better:

How many adults could pass these exams? How many high school teachers possess the requisite stock of information outside their own subjects? How many college professors, for that matter, or business executives, or state legislators could confidently write an essay about Mayan agricultural practices or divergent plate boundaries? We would do well to adopt (Deborah) Meier's Mandate: No student should be expected to meet an academic requirement that a cross section of successful adults in the community cannot. 

(In the same spirit, I propose Kohn's Corollary to Meier's Mandate: All persons given to pious rhetoric about the need to "raise standards" and produce "world-class academic performance for the 21st century" not only should be required to take these exams themselves but must agree to have their scores published in the newspaper.)

On Tuesday, I came across this Will Richardson Tweet:

Richardson's tweet inspired my brief Twitter discussion with Alberta's Minister of Education Thomas Lukaszuk:

Join #takethetest and invite your politicians to take your state or province's standardized tests and publicize their results.

Inspected by No. 24

This was written by Jonathan Teghtmeyer who is with the Alberta Teachers` Association.This post first appeared on the Alberta Teachers` Association website.

Alison Redford’s campaign platform for leadership of the ­Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta included a pledge to eliminate Grades 3 and 6 provincial achievement tests.

Elimination of the tests will come as welcome news to teachers, who have advocated against them for more than 20 years, but much work is required before Redford’s campaign pledge becomes government policy. Pressure from the Alberta School Boards Association and the Fraser Institute, both of which look for measurable results, could convince the government to keep the tests.

High-stakes standardized tests view education as an assembly line and treat students like boxes to be stuffed full of facts and figures. The provincial achievement tests are like inspectors at the end of the assembly line who open the lid and look inside the box to ensure that all the pieces are present. The statement of results sent to parents might as well come with a slip that reads: “Inspected by No. 24.”

Such a view of education is appropriate if you want your education system to push out identical cogs that take their place on some assembly line. This model is fantastic for ensuring high productivity when pushing out widgets. But how valuable is it in creating the 21st-century thinkers that we spent two years envisioning as part of Inspiring Education and that we’ll need for our future generation of leaders?

The Alberta Teachers’ Association has a vision for public education in which students are presented “with opportunities to develop ingenuity, creativity, critical-thinking skills and a strong sense of citizenship.” These attributes can’t be stuffed into a box and can’t be evaluated by simply lifting the lid and peering inside. They need to be assessed over time by a professional with an ongoing relationship with students, and they must be reflective of students’ individual circumstance and educational needs.

The Association’s vision of public education is neither confining nor uniform; rather, it is an organic process, similar in nature to a garden, which makes teachers gardeners who ensure that soil conditions are ripe for growth and that the plants get the right mix of sunlight, water and nutrition to grow healthy and strong. The serious gardener observes each plant’s behaviour, tracks its progress and makes adjustments when needed to encourage growth.

At a time when we want to create engaged citizens for a rapidly changing world, we also need to examine the tools we use to assess our students and to evaluate the public education system.

The proponents of achievement tests have an oft-repeated mantra: "If it matters, measure it." I agree to a certain extent but only if you add, "Measure what matters, because what is getting measured soon becomes what matters most." If we do it right, we’ll no longer rely on a tired model of assessment that churns out cogs; instead, we’ll nurture citizens for the 21st century.

Assessment and Provincial Achievement Tests

This was written by Don Wielinga who is an elementary principal in central Alberta.

by Don Wielinga

This Is What I Think:

"Assessment for Learning is the ongoing exchange of information between students and teachers about student progress towards clearly specified learning goals for the purpose of improving learning and informing instruction." Adapted fromAlberta Assessment Consortium, 2005.

PATs measure a narrow set of skills, which can be easily be memorized, and measured by multiple choice questions. They do not inform day to day instruction and do not support current educational research on assessment for and of learning. Also, few questions challenge the intellectual capacity of students, "dumbing down learning".

The tests reflect students' abilities on one day as opposed to providing an accurate portrait of a year's worth of leaning. Other issues which concern me is the stress it causes for students, that the PATs assess only a portion of of the curriculum and the results are not available until months later, hence they are of no use in the area of assessment for and of learning.

Recent research and practice in education has raised awareness about the impact of classroom assessment practises or student learning. More and more teachers are looking to explore and develop strategies in classroom assessment that improve teaching practices and student learning. As a result, classroom assessment and reporting practices look very different today from the practices that parents remember from their school days. Again, the practice of PATs do not support our current classroom practices and beliefs of assessment.

The word "assess" comes from the Latin root "assidere" which means "to sit beside". The phrase Assessment for Learning turns day to day assessment into a teaching and learning process that enhances student learning, unlike PATs. Teachers work alongside students to assess their learning as they move through the learning outcomes in the curriculum.

Assessment for Learning strategies are used in the classroom by both students and teachers in order to gather information on their learning. These strategies provide teachers, students, and parents with valuable information about student progress, and the next steps required for growth and improvement. The PATs are only a "snapshot" of student progress and do nothing for inform teaching and learning.

In summary, good assessment practices do the following:

• Increase student success when the students have clear learning targets.

• When students are involved in their own learning they are more likely to understand what is expected of them, assess prior knowledge, take ownership of their leaning and provide information to their teachers on how to adjust their teaching.

• Improve communication for parents about student achievement in relation to the learner outcomes from the Alberta Program of Studies.

Provincial Achievement Tests do none of the above!