Assessment Literacy: Are Standardized Tests Designed to Measure or Improve?

Accountability, measurability, standardization; these are all ideas that have been used to describe standardized testing. Standardized testing has seen increased popularity in the last several decades, both locally and globally. In China, the Gaokao determines not only what university you go to but also how much money you may earn in the future. Japan uses a standardized test to determine if students can continue onto high school. In the United States, students face a standardized test every year (Salaky, 2018). Here at home, standardized tests are administered provincially, with each province having slightly different views of what and when to test. Overall, these tests aim to measure students in math and literacy to try and understand how students are doing in relation to preset standards (Johnson,2014). Wherever standardized tests are used, whether as low-stake or high-stakes testing, they can impact what is happening in the classroom.While their core aim is to improve student learning, including literacy, they have the potential to limit what teachers can do in the classroom and streamline the idea of 'literacy'. Whether you have children or not, as a society we are all impacted by what happens in the classroom. We want literate citizens who are able to be active participants in society and can read, write, evaluate, think critically and understand the world around them. So, let's take a little time to think about standardized testing, its perceived role in improving literacy, and how literacy is best taught.

What is the real point of all this standardized testing? Are we doing it as a way to feel confident in our child’s school? Are we doing it to create data that a politician can point to during an election? Or is the main point to ensure that students are learning? In a nutshell, these standardized tests are meant to tell us whether our kid are meeting standards and to determine if the government is getting its money’s worth from each publicly funded school. In Ontario, the Education Quality and Accountability Office, EQAO, is in charge of administering and scoring all standardized tests (EQAO, 2019). Think about that name, which itself is enough to tell us that it is about educational quality but also holding schools accountable to the government. In Ontario, students will take an EQAO administered test in Grades 3,6,9, and 10. EQAO claims that individual reports are given to students/teachers/parents to help give feedback and improve student learning (EQAO, 2019). Yet this feedback is overly general, and in proposing next steps points students towards their teachers for ideas of how to improve. So if a report meant to measure and improve student learning is relying on the student's teacher to provide specific feedback on how to improve, perhaps we need to be asking some questions. Perhaps we need to ask whether these one day tests, designed by people who have never met your child, are the best way to figure out what a student knows?

Before moving forward, let us conduct a little thought experiment. Think back to the last time you had a bad day. Could have been because the Leafs lost, your neighbour’s dog was barking the night before, or you woke up on the wrong side of the bed. You are having one of those days when you come home to the cereal in the fridge and the milk in the cupboard. Now imagine that on that day you had to take a test to determine how well you were doing at your job. Would you feel that you would be able to perform as well as when you are on your game? Bob Sternberg, Provost for Oklahoma State University, did not have a great initial experience of standardized testing when he was a child and this led to lowered expectations:

“My teachers thought I was stupid and since they thought I was stupid I though I was stupid. And since I thought I was stupid I did stupid work. And they were happy that I did stupid work because I was meeting their expectations. And I was happy that they were happy and everyone was pretty happy. And it was a nice happy environment except that I was a loser”- Bob Sternberg (Sternberg, "None of the above")

Now, imagine your child finding out they did poorly and deciding that they are no longer capable of producing good work so everything they produce is now poor, just like Bob Sternberg. Luckily for Bob Sternberg, and hopefully for any child that has a similar experience, he had a teacher who realized intelligence is not always best measure by standardized tests (Sternberg, None of the Above - Why Standardized Testing Fails).

Now, having a bad day on test day probably won’t happen to the majority of students. So perhaps best not to dwell on this one example. The bigger issue is that people look at these standardized tests as a way to improve student learning because they give us information on what a student has learned. But this misses the mark. Standardized tests are a poor way of understanding the literacy skill of students because it prioritizes one type of literacy over others, one way of learning over others, and relies on skills that were previously needed in the workforce. Additionally comments that are given are generic in nature and don't take into account the learning that has happened previous to the test. Taking a look at a sample student report and the feedback given "need to improve your ability to understand information that is clearly stated", highlights the lack of clarity on how to move forward on correcting the issue (EQAO Student Report, 2019). So how can we measure and improve student literacy?

If at this point you are ready to click away, feeling that if you are not going to get an easy answer you don’t feel so inclined to read further, or perhaps you are not really interested if other people can read and write, I ask before you go to watch a quick video that will give you pretty much all you need to know about how experts are looking at standardized tests (Darling-Hammond, “Testing-Testing”).

So what can we do to improve student literacy? First, let’s separate between two key terms, assessment for learning and assessment of learning. Assessment of learning is the type of assessment done by these standardized tests. They are used to gather information on what skills or knowledge a student possess in order to rank or score them. So, while these assessments can help us look at student achievement as a whole, it does little for the individual student. As far back as 1990, there has been an understanding that “rarely, if ever, are the results of large-scale testing meaningful for the interpreting the performance of individual students (Pikulski, 1990, pp. 686). However, most of the talk is on standardized test and the assessment of learning because it is measurable and easy to quantify. But if we want the overall ability of students to increase, the key is to focus on each student individually rather than as a whole.

Assessment for learning differs fundamentally in its purpose from assessment of learning. It is used to gather information on where an individual student is in relation to a learning goal and then use that information to decide how to get them closer to the goal (Chappuis, Stiggins, Chappuis, & Arter, 2012). Research has been being conducted on assessment for learning for decades and the results are clear. Assessment for learning improves student learning, simple as that. Chappuis, Stiggins, Chappuis & Arter, reporting on a study by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam from 1998, write that “certain formative assessment practices increased the achievement of low-performing students to the point that of high-achieving students” ( 2012, p. 22). It is results like this that helps solidify the role of assessment for learning in helping student improve and grow. Now, let’s turn our attention to how we can use assessment for learning to improve literacy, which is a complex task.

Literacy, while a simple idea to understand, is not the easiest to assess because of the wide range of skills that are associated with it. Are we looking to measure whether students can simply identify a protagonist or spot the climax of a story? The ability to compare two forms of writing? How about being able to push a conversation forward by linking themes? Or the ability to write an opinion essay with supporting arguments? These are all forms of literacy but each fall within a different category of learning target and each is best measured or tested by different forms of assessment. The majority of standardized tests utilize some form of selected or written response which is a good way to assess a student’s knowledge or reasoning but is a poor way of looking at a student’s ability to produce a finished product (Chappuis, Stiggins, Chappuis, & Arter, 2012). Standardized tests need to be treated with caution because they have the potential to shape our understanding of literacy to the type that is being tested.

The wide variety of ways of looking at literacy means that a multitude of assessments, done in different ways, need to be evaluated to understand what the student knows and what they need to know. Assessment for learning, is most useful when it is personalized, delivered in a timely manner, and is used to revise and improve on the task. This means, we continue a process of feedback on student work until the student has mastered the knowledge, reasoning, skill, or product target (Chappuis, Stiggins, Chappuis, & Arter, 2012). One way teachers can use assessment for learning to improve and track student learning is to coalesce all of these assessment methods is to collect them and keep them in a student growth portfolio. This allows us to look at where a student is, discuss with them where they need to get to and how to get there. This requires, time, patience, and constant feedback from the teacher. None of which work well with standardized testing.

One of the unintended consequences of standardized testing is that they are altering what happens in the classroom. In Australia, teachers are adapting how they teach to match the specific questions covered in the standardized tests (Comber, 2012). This is far from an isolated case. If teachers feel that their students are not prepared for the test, more classroom time may be used to teach to the test. This is especially true if student performance on the test is linked to school funding or teacher evaluations (Darling-Hammond, “Testing-Testing”). So more attention is being placed on what students will face on a test rather than in the skills they will need after school. Chappuis, Stiggins, Chappuis, & Arter write that "teaching to the domain of what is covered on the accountability tests often requires that we give short shrift to learning targets not assessed with this method" (2012, pp. 122). This means less individualized attention, less creativity, and less problem solving based activities in the classroom. What works for standardized tests is that they are easy to measure and score because everyone takes the same test. But the downside is that not every child needs to be taught the same way. Children need constant individualized feedback to grow, and this is delivered through assessment for learning.

Perhaps our understanding of literacy has become out-of-date. Today, the majority of reading and writing is done online. The term digital literacy is commonly being tossed around in school staff rooms. While literacy means to be able to read and write, digital literacy encompasses the ability to synthesize information, evaluate websites, conduct efficient research, and produce products through the internet (Lynch, 2017). I do not think anyone would disagree with the fact that students will need to know how to use technology for their futures. Linda Darling-Hammond mentioned that students are going to be using new technologies for new jobs that have not been invented yet (Darling-Hammond, “Testing-Testing”). Are we really content thinking a multiple-choice or short-answer test is the best way to prepare them for a fast pasted developing future? Assessment for learning in the classroom allows teachers to utilize new ways of learning and sources of information to enable students to interact with online media and technology to increase their understanding. This type of learning and interaction is critical to helping students acquire new knowledge and how to use it to problem solve.

While understanding that standardized tests can play a role in looking at how a grade is doing overall in their literacy skills, we should not assume that standardized testing is the only way to improve student literacy. Research has shown time and again that assessment for learning is the way forward for improving student literacy skills. So don’t worry too much over these tests, the government is doing that for you. Instead, ask your child what they learned today in school, engage them in conversation, and if nothing else, buy them a book every now and then.