PRESS MUST REMAIN FREE
Many educators have serious misgivings about standardized tests, especially when the results are used to judge students from different schools. Especially controversial are the biannual report cards issued by the Fraser Institute which use data from Provincial Achievement Tests to rate schools across the province.
Some concerns are understandable; it can be unfair to compare schools serving different demographics, with disparate levels of family resources and other factors, based solely on test scores. That’s why balanced news coverage includes context or reaction from schools, government officials or education experts.
Disagreeing with standardized testing is a right in a free society; seeking to dictate press coverage absolutely shouldn’t be.
But that’s exactly what the Alberta Teachers’ Association is suggesting government do. A package of policy resolutions for the union’s annual representative assembly in Calgary on the May long weekend contains one directive that accuses journalists across the board of impugning the professional integrity of teachers and calls for government to step in to sway reportage of the test scores.
“The failure on the part of the press to acknowledge the many factors other than schooling that are known to influence test performance is misleading and damaging to the integrity of teacher professionalism and student well-being,” the resolution reads.
It would “urge the department of education to encourage media to adhere” to a prescription set in 2000 by the associations of psychologists and school psychologists for reporting and interpreting diploma exam results that calls for a preordained disclaimer warning against using the results to compare schools.
The ATA says the intent isn’t to infringe on freedom of the press, but to curb “misuse” of test data by asking government to “encourage” media to include the disclaimer in its coverage.
It’s ironic that the ATA accuses media of damaging the professional integrity of teachers but does exactly that to journalists with a blanket denigration that seeks to restrict press freedom. Teachers doing their jobs would be the first to chafe at such ham-fisted intervention.
Standardized test scores are one of many measures of the education system — which must remain public information free of any suggestion of political interference. It is not for the education ministry to prescribe how media report on PATs or to sway public debate.
Doubly ironic is that the ATA resolution comes to light almost 80 years to the day that the Edmonton Journal was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for fighting a provincial government that wanted to control newspapers.