In the period between the election of Alberta's new NDP government and the sweaing in of its new premier and cabinet members, a deputy director of education announced the mandatory pilot of Student Learning Asssessments (SLAs) for grade three students in the fall of 2016. The fall pilot of 2015 was a disaster with multiple implementation issues that resulted in weeks of extra work for teacher with very little return for their students. Despite these issues and crystal clear feedback from teachers across the province, Alberta Education has decided to continue with its announced mandatory pilot for all grade three students. For more information on the short dark history of SLAs, click here. You can try to decode the oxymoron of "mandatory pilot" if you like, but if you're going to give it any thought I'd recommend avoiding the cognitive challenge and just writing your MLA to ask for SLAs to be cancelled and for grade six and nine provincial achievement tests to occur from now on using the census model that assesses a random sample of schools and subjects each year. With the economy taking a downturn, this will save millions of dollars.
The Alberta Teachers' Association posted the following on its Facebook page this afternoon: We want to hear from teachers with opinions on the Grade 3 Student Learning Assessment program! Do you have concerns? What aspect(s) concern you? Are you feeling hopeful that there will be a smoother implementation this year? What should be done with this program? Post your responses below.
So I posted my response. I wasn't brief, but it can be found below.
Although educational negligence is not really defined, it is a helpful concept to consider in relation to the province's testing regime. There are three types of negligence: nonfeasance (doing nothing when something should be done), misfeasance (doing the right thing incorrectly), and malfeasance (doing the absolutely wrong thing intentionally). The government (past and present) seem all too willing to commit combinations of all forms of negligence in relation to testing. Despite overwhelming evidence and lobbying, for years they took no action on cancelling the grade 3 PATs even though there seemed to be ample political and public support for doing so; thus nonfeasance. Rather than abolishing the test, Alberta Education created the SLA which was to be of assessment value to teachers but created confusion, frustration, and outrage when piloted last fall; ergo misfeasance. A year later, after nothing but consistent and conclusive feedback from schools and the profession, the decision to continue with a mandatory province-wide "pilot" (ordered by a bureaucrat during the period between the election and the new party's assumption of power) certainly must qualify as malfeasance.
The three goals of the SLAs as stated by the deputy minister who called for the mandatory pilot in May and clarified the department's direction in June are as follows:
- to improve student learning (primary purpose);
- to enhance instruction for students; and
- to assure Albertans our education system is meeting the needs of students and achieves the outcomes of the Ministerial Order on Student Learning.
At the very least the final goal is at odds with the first two.
My favourite issue of Educational Leadership has an editorial which describes the "new stupid" of the neoliberal education industrial complex's addiction to data. I had hoped that Minister Eggen would have quickly moved to disenthrall Alberta Education from the student achievement data cravings it had developed over the past thirty years, but, alas, we see no such indication since May. Testing 8 year-olds is wrong. Commiting so much time and energy from the halls of the government to the classrooms of the province to such an endeavor is wasteful, shameful, harmful. Not taking the opportunity to immediately set a new path for a more progressive education system is a loss. The profession through their association have been vigilant and vocal on the issue of grade 3 SLAs, but Alberta Education has been negligent.