Increasingly, our school schedule and resources are determined by the needs of standardized evaluation in literacy and numeracy. This page offers the beginnings of a resource collection on evaluation issues. Check back regularly for new additions.
Assessing Students' Ways of Knowing
This text will give the reader some understanding of the complexities of standardized testing and performance assessment in education – particularly for aboriginal students. The book and its contributors invite readers to consider carefully, assessment for accountability, particularly the use of standardized tests, and the value of assessment for student learning. Many alternatives to standardized testing are provided.
Assessing Student Ways of Knowing
Publishing test results - who benefits?
“We don’t need test results to tell us which schools need more help. We need only ask school trustees, superintendents, principals, teachers and parents. Identifying schools and needs is the easy part; getting the resources to do what is required is the hard part.”
- Shauna MacKinnon, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives - Manitoba.
Publishing standardized test scores: Who really benefits? (pdf)
Testing schedule for Saskatchewan
Standardized testing in Saskatchewan is carried out in two-year cycles for each grade. This link provides the schedule for testing.
Ontario teachers call for testing moratorium
Ontario's public elementary school teachers have called for a two-year moratorium on standardized tests in Grade 3 and Grade 6, saying the annual exams are expensive, detract from other subjects and give parents the wrong idea about what makes a good school.
"Something is very wrong when areas including science, history, social studies and the arts are getting sidelined in the race to get young students prepared for EQAO, which is focused solely on literacy and math," said Sam Hammond, ETFO's president.
Freedom to Learn Requires Freedom To Teach
A thoughtful view from inside the classroom by educator Nick Forte in Our Schools Our Selves, Summer 2009
"It seems that every professional development day brings forth a guest speaker who is an expert in the field of classroom management, assessment, or evaluation. They have never personally implemented their initiatives in a classroom; however, we as classroom teachers are expected to put into practice a new classroom management style, a new assessment strategy, or a new reporting spreadsheet. And in my experience these initiatives hardly ever bring forth the desired or intended results.”
Measuring success in First Nations, Metis and Inuit Learning
After an extensive nation-wide consultation, the Candian Council of Learning reports that although current learning indicators now widely used by governments and researchers are important measures, they fall short.
They must be broadened to measure more than simply years of schooling and performance on standardized tests. A more holistic approach to measurement that recognizes all aspects of lifelong learning is needed to measure the individual and collective well-being of First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities.
Read Redefining How Success is Measured.
Evaluation and accountability in Saskatchewan
The Saskatchewan Ministry of Education's Assessment for Learning Program “provides student achievement information from provincial tests to teachers to assist them in improving their instructional practice and students’ learning outcomes.” The program has been developed in concert with the Curriculum Renewal Initiative, designed to promote more “results-oriented” teaching. As in other provinces, this is presented as a way to make schools more accountable to the taxpayer.
The province’s “core indicators” of success are highly quantitative, focussing on graduation rates and test scores in math and reading/writing. As well, schools are expected to provide data on the financial cost per student in their schools in relation to provincial averages, something that potentially doesn’t bode well for inner city schools serving smaller populations with more intensive needs, or rural schools serving geographically scattered populations.
Education critics, especially in the area of Aboriginal education, have raised a number of problems with such indicators, which they argue have the effect of undercutting more holistic approaches to education, and of ignoring student success in areas beyond test scores. As well, teachers report higher stress loads both for themselves and their students, caused by the emphasis on preparing students for testing, which takes time away from other lessons and activities and exacts a heavy toll on students’ enthusiasm for schooling.
In response to these criticisms, a variety of cutting-edge alternatives to standardized literacy and numeracy testing are being explored across the country, some of which are posted on this website.
Meanwhile in Saskatchewan, below are the core indicators by which our students and schools are judged.The Road to Flobbertown
“All schools for miles and miles around
Must take a special test,
To see who’s learning such and such
To see which school’s the best.
If our small school does not do well,
Then it will be torn down,
And you will have to go to school
In dreary Flobbertown.”
- Dr. Seuss
Remember when grade school was all about crafts and field trips? In this thought-provoking Briarpatch Magazine article, teacher Sue Stock and her daughter Shayna find that "in a culture that places greater and greater emphasis on testing and accountability, activities that inspire creativity, innovation and imagination are the first to be cut out of the lesson plans when teachers need to make room for more standardized tests and the preparation that accompanies them."
Read 'The Road to Flobbertown."
Teachers Struggle To Meet Math Teaching Demands
A recent report shows teachers are struggling to keep up with Saskatchewan's required math teaching hours. This is one of the few things measured and compared between Saskatchewan schools, so there is a great deal of pressure to comply. To our knowledge, there has not been public discussion about whether or not the requirements are reasonable within a holistic learning timetable.
News Story: Teachers Struggle to Meet Math Teaching Demands (pdf)