 | Home page |  | Text size |  | E-mail this page |
Low test scores not the issue Trustee says issue is how those results are used in schools, and lack of attendance
Candace Thomson
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, August 7, 2013
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The debate on the use of standardized testing has plagued educators in recent years, but one Yellowknife trustee doesn't necessarily have a problem with the tests, merely how the results are being used.
Yellowknife Education District No. 1 Trustee Terry Brookes says poor attendance is the reason for low Alberta Achievement tests, not the results themselves. - photo courtesy of Wikipedia |
Terry Brookes, finance chair and trustee of the Yellowknife Education District No. 1, spoke with the Yellowknifer on his views concerning the Alberta Achievement tests, which measure broad scale strengths and weaknesses in English language arts and mathematics among Grade 3, 6, and 9 students.
"My criticism of the report is that it gives us all these statistics, and that's nice, but we need to look at what's really behind the statistics," Brookes said.
The results of the test should be as individualized as possible so teachers can focus on the needs of the student as a person, not as a number, he said.
"If the results were more focused on the student, then teachers could look back at results from grades three and six in Grade 9 to see what has changed," he said. "If a teacher could take that information and plan to move that student's scores up, that's where individual testing becomes important."
Alannis McKee, a Grade 12 student at St. Patrick High School next year, has taken the tests and said she was always nervous going in.
"It felt like a lot of pressure having one exam test your entire knowledge of a subject," she said, adding that increased expectation from parents and teachers adds to the stress.
In regards to the use of the exam, McKee reiterated Brookes' concerns.
"I feel as though the exams are useful when used to measure a level of understanding, but they should also be put into perspective and not used as the only tool in evaluation of a students' understanding," said McKee.
Results submitted by the Department of Education, Culture and Employment showed that across all grade levels in the NWT scores were higher in mathematics this year than in 2011, and lower in English language arts.
For Yellowknife students, however, the only grade level and subject lower than last year was the Grade 9 English language arts test, falling to 81 per cent of students achieving at an acceptable standard in 2012 from 84 per cent in 2011.
The Grade 9 mathematics test showed the greatest jump in the level of acceptable test results, which bounced to 66.3 per cent in 2012 from 53 per cent of students in 2011.
Brookes, while acknowledging that an improvement in test scores is a positive for the territory, doesn't believe the results are the most important number.
"Attendance is the most glaring problem," he said. "If (the department) wants better results on the AATs, they need to look at the absentees and work on that."
In the results released by ECE for 2012, the absence rate for the Grade 3 AATs was four per cent for the math exam and 10 per cent for English. That jumped significantly in Grade 6 to 18 per cent in English and 17 per cent in math. In Grade 9, the absent rate averaged around six per cent.
Students who are enrolled in Individual Education Plans, or two or more grade levels behind the national average, can be exempt by the superintendents in their school board. Those students are not filtered into the absence percentage but are classified as exempt.
Students who are ill or have family emergencies on the day of the test count for absences.
Brookes said the attendance issue is one that needs to be solved at home between the students and their parents, and worried that negative attitudes towards the education system from parents could be adding to the low rate of attendance.
"Our attitudes are our biggest handicaps and can be our biggest strengths," he said. "But if the value isn't there for education, in the end, who cares about the results? We're wasting a lot of money (on the AATs)."
| 
