David Staples: Alberta government is fixing the wildly irresponsible mistake of eliminating testing in elementary schools

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The vast majority of Alberta parents and teachers agree on one thing when it comes to education. We all want our children to thrive academically and socially in school, don’t we?

That’s why it’s been so painful to learn about a devastating trend in our schools. Over the past 20 years, the overall literacy level of Alberta students has declined, and tragically, the percentage of children who are functionally illiterate has nearly doubled. Results from the internationally recognized Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) have also shown that our students are three times more likely to be math illiterate than they were 20 years ago, and the problem is twofold: far fewer Alberta students can now do math at the highest level.

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We must do everything we can to reverse these trends, mustn’t we? But the devil is in the much-debated details of how best to create a school system in which this outcome is most likely to occur.

We are once again in the midst of a similar fight, this time over the issue of province-wide testing of children. It is something that many parents and teachers enthusiastically support, but which the Alberta Teachers Association has always opposed. It is doing so again with the Danielle Smith government’s new plan to regularly assess elementary students’ reading and math skills.

Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides has promised that starting in September 2024, province-wide assessments will be conducted for all students in grades 1 to 3 in September and January, with an additional assessment in June for struggling students.

But the Alberta Teachers Association is against the plan and has received a tremendous amount of attention for its criticism. ATA president Jason Schilling said: “Teachers don’t need a test to identify which students are struggling; they need smaller classes and more support so those kids get extra help.”

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Jonathan Teghtmeyer, a spokesman for the ATA, added: “I send my children to school to be educated, not to be tested. As a parent, I reject this obsession with over-testing… I believe in the professional judgment of teachers. I understand that they see dozens of children and can tell me where my child stands.”

A group of parents led by Jeff Park of Calgary’s Alberta Parents Union responded that the ATA is preventing the collection of even the most basic data on whether our children are learning.

“Studies show that if a child is not reading by the end of third grade, he or she will typically face significant academic obstacles for the rest of his or her life. But parents are too often left in the dark, because school boards have refused to put in place effective screening and reporting mechanisms to catch this early enough.”

My take?

We know that many of our children have significant problems in reading and math, that this problem is growing rapidly, and that the most vulnerable and disadvantaged students are the most at risk, right? But how can we try to address this if we don’t know in which areas of life our students are having the most difficulty, in which subjects, and in which classes, schools, and districts?

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Yes, parents can rely solely on the opinion and report card of the classroom teacher, but what if that teacher has missed something or is struggling to improve the literacy and numeracy of their class? Where is the second opinion? How can we be sure that that struggling teacher is getting the help needed to turn things around? Under the current system, the teacher may not even realize there is a problem.

We have lacked the ability to closely monitor these issues since Alison Redford’s Progressive Conservatives foolishly eliminated provincial Grade 3 exams in 2014 and the NDP made their replacement exams optional in 2017.

Jason Kenney’s United Conservatives promised in 2019 to reinstate provincial Grade 3 exams, but it has taken them years to do so, meaning we have had no second opinions or provincial data on the performance of our students, teachers and system until students take provincial Grade 6 exams.

This lack of provincial testing has been tremendously irresponsible.

I note that Alberta is fortunate to have one of the world’s leading authorities on the writing of our K-6 language arts curriculum, ATA award-winning University of Alberta professor George Georgiou. Georgiou supports this new plan, stating, “Research studies conducted around the world have clearly shown that there should be early detection and frequent monitoring of children’s reading and math performance.”

This new assessment system gives parents, teachers, and administrators one more tool to help identify and correct critical problems. These tests are not the ultimate panacea, they are just one more tool, but they are a vital tool and we can hope that the ATA will reconsider its position and support an excellent plan.

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