Parents want answers on standard tests

Future up in air after union official says provincial testing will end soon

A Calgary-based parent group is asking if the province wants to eliminate standardized testing, after a teachers’ union official said that provincial achievement tests will soon be gone.

Education Minister David Eggen won’t confirm whether PATs are here to stay, saying only that the province has not yet decided on the “future of assessment” and will review the value of the different “assessment tools” as part of its curriculum overhaul.

“These tests demonstrate to parents how their kids are doing. They provide really important information, to parents and to teachers, especially at a time when math skills are declining,” said Althea Adams, spokeswoman for the Calgary Association of Parents and School Councils.

“Teachers can look at these results and see (for instance), students are doing well in subtraction, but not so well in fractions, and they can make adjustments.”

In the most recent edition of the Alberta Teachers’ Association newsletter, Jonathan Teghtmeyer, associate co-ordinator communications, criticized the introduction of a new math component in PATs, then concluding that “minor tweaks to PATs will become irrelevant once the tests have been eliminated, as promised.”

Teghtmeyer clarified he is referring to a 2013 promise made by former Tory education minister Jeff Johnson. But that he also expects that promise will be carried through by the existing NDP government.

Union president Mark Ramsankar argued that PATs are not a valuable assessment tool in that they don’t test important skills like “creativity, collaboration, citizenship.”

“They are not measuring what is embedded in the curriculum. The tests are about rote learning and memory recall of facts and figures,” he said.

“We would be very interested in the minister’s review of assessment. We are open to that.”

Eggen said the province has not yet made a decision on PATs and that they will review the new Student Learning Assessment model, a series of online tests introduced in 2014 after PATs were removed for Grade 3 students.

Teachers were highly critical of the SLAs, many saying schools are not equipped with enough computers to do online testing.

“Alberta Education has not made a decision in regards to the future of assessment and is committed to reviewing assessment tools to make sure they are aligned with our six-year, six-subject curriculum development,” Eggen said in an emailed statement.

“No decision will be made on the future of assessment tools until a review of the Grade 3 Student Learning Assessment (SLA) is completed this fall.”

Eggen also added that in response to concerns about Grade 6 math, “we recently added a new Part A to the corresponding Provincial Achievement Test as part of a broader strategy to improve our students’ math skills: 15 questions designed to test a student’s basic math skills without the use of a calculator.”

But Adams worries in spite of the addition, how much longer PATs will be around, particularly at a time when reporting periods are being reduced at the elementary school level, with minimal grading.

“A few years ago, there were three report cards sent home. Now, we get one in January, and one on the last day of school. And grades used to be out of 5, now they’re just out of 4.”

Adams explained while two students might get a grade of 3/4 in a certain subject, they could still be at completely different skill levels.

Adams argues parents need more detailed assessments, more often, particularly in math where students have fallen behind.

Many fear scores will continue to decline without the elimination of the new Discovery Math learning model, in which students are steered towards “inquiry-based” learning and away from memorizing facts like times tables, for instance, and asked instead to find several different ways to find solutions.

They are not measuring what is embedded in the curriculum. The tests are about rote learning and memory recall of facts and figures.

Last fall, PAT results showed a 20 per cent decline in the past five years in the proportion of Grade 6 students who scored 80 per cent or higher in math.

In Grade 9, the situation was worse, with over one-third of enrolled students failing to achieve 50 per cent on the test, an increase of nearly two percentage points from the previous year.

Eggen has said that the declining scores may indicate a need for a stronger focus on basic numeracy.

Alberta Education has launched a $64-million, multi-year curriculum in an effort to update parts of the learning program that haven’t been changed in more than 30 years.

The province has already said they will increase focus on the study of climate change, indigenous people, gender diversity and mental health.

But education advocate Dr. Nhung Tran-Davies, who collected 18,000 signatures from parents across Alberta concerned about declining math scores, has said there is no evidence to indicate Discovery Math will be eliminated.

While the teachers’ union is expected to play a leading role in curriculum redevelopment, the minister is inviting all Albertans to participate in public engagement sessions coming this fall.