End to Grade 3 PATs called for amid School Act consultation

By Kjell Wickstrom

EDMONTON— Edmonton’s public school board hopes the Alberta government’s recent moves to consider changes to the School Act will get rid of provincial achievement tests for Grade 3 students.

Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk has started a campaign asking Albertans for their feedback on how education can be improved. Lukaszuk is seeking input through his own social media channels (Facebook and Twitter) as well as by more traditional means.

The Edmonton Public School Board hopes to put provincial achievement tests on his agenda.

In a decision made on Nov. 8 by a 7-to-1, trustees expressed a desire to scrap the provincial achievement tests for Grade 3. (The tests are administered in Grades 3, 6 and 9 in Alberta.)

Premier Alison Redford expressed her desire to see the achievement tests for Grades 3 and 6 eliminated during her bid for the Progressive Conservative leadership.

Edmonton Public’s main concern is the stress the test puts on students, especially younger students in Grade 3, said Christopher Spencer, trustee for Ward C, which covers several west-end neighbourhoods.

The school board’s decision doesn’t stop the test, as it is a provincially administered test and can’t be scrapped without approval from Alberta Education.

“The curriculum is set by the province,” said Spencer. “But the reports from teachers about the stress that these tests are causing are coming to us. So that is something that we have to consider when providing feedback to the province.”

Lukaszuk appears to agree PATs are worth reconsidering.

The PATs were originally designed to “test our curriculum,” said Lukaszuk. “To see how the curriculum plays out in the classroom.”

The tests were originally designed “to see how curriculum plays out in the classroom,” said Lukaszuk in a phone interview.

The tests weren’t originally designed with grading the students in mind.

(The tests) only accurately test what they were designed for,” said Lukaszuk in a phone interview. “They aren’t designed to be the student’s mark.”

The Fraser Institute, for instance, uses a freedom of information request to obtain the results of the PATs and used them to grades schools based on the results, said Lukaszuk. “That’s ridiculous, it’s not what the test was designed for.”

The PATs are one of the many things Alberta education is considering changing.

“PATs are something we are looking at,” said Lukaszuk.

Alternatives in the future could include randomized testing of students. “But at the end of the day we do want to get that feedback.”

Standardized tests aren’t likely to go away, but changes to the current system could be in the foreseeable future.

“What we would look for is something that doesn’t just measure achievement, but growth,” said Spencer. “Something that can tell us that students are learning in the classroom.”

Other school boards will also be watching what Alberta Education does.

“We are not planning to come out with similar suggestions (to Edmonton Public),” said Lori Nagy, spokesperson for Edmonton Catholic Schools. “We will be looking to Redford. We are interested to see what the premier does.”

All of this came just over two weeks before the results of the Pan-Canadian assessment program found that Ontario and Alberta are leading the other provinces in their students’ performance.

The tests administered by the Council of Ministers of Education were given to 32,000 random Grade 8 students across the country.  The tests assessed theability of students to use the skills they had learned from provincial curriculum.

In the end the future of the PAT relies on Premier Redford and the Ministry of Education under, Minister of Education Thomas Lukaszuk.

The PATs will continue to be part of Alberta curriculum every three years until the government decides on an alternative.

Lukaszuk and Alberta education will continue looking for input from the public until Jan.8, 2012.  The new education act is expected to be tabled sometime in the spring, according to a Nov. 22 press release.