Tag Archives: Assessment

The ARC Education Project: Rethinking Secondary Examinations and Credentials

Posted on December 9, 2021 by | Leave a comment

On November 9th 2021, the ARC Education Project hosted its bi-monthly ThoughtMeet (TM) event on ‘Rethinking secondary examinations and credentials.’ ARC Talks were provided by ARC co-founder Yngve Lindvig (CEO of LearnLab), as well as global thought leaders Dr. Linda Darling-Hamond (Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University) and Dr. Dylan Wiliam (Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment at the University of London). This article highlights the key ideas and issues that were discussed by the ARC TM participants, representatives from the seven ARC member systems and its global partners. A detailed description from the November meeting can be found here; additional videos and other resources can be found here. The Atlantic Rim Collaboratory (ARC) is an international policy learning network that was established in 2016 to advance educational change based on eight guiding principles: equity, excellence, inclusion, wellbeing, democracy, sustainability, human rights, and professionally run systems.

Progressive Pedagogy and Seamless Technology (opens in a new tab)

What is the key problem with secondary examinations and credentials today? 

With the coronavirus pandemic disrupting formal schooling for millions of students across the globe, the assessment of student learning remains a major challenge for education systems. Since 2020, there has been widespread interruption and cancellation of high-stakes national and graduating professional examinations, which has had an impact on student progression, certification, qualification and graduation (UNESCO, 2020; World Bank, 2020). This has left many education systems in a unique situation to explore new and alternative assessment approaches. In an effort to support ARC member systems in ways to rethink secondary examinations and credentials, the November 9th ARC ThoughtMeet challenged participants to consider: What kind of assessment do we need, and can we have in the future?

Whither Secondary Assessment? (opens in a new tab)

What’s been learned?

One of the key issues raised during the TM was that all assessment tools and methods have problematic elements and much depends on their purpose, use and context. As Wiliam highlighted in his ARC talk, “There is no perfect assessment system, there are always trade-offs and the big idea is: What trade-offs are you making?”  Specifically, the type of assessment used by education systems has meanings, social consequences and effects for members. They help us know something about students and send messages to all stakeholders about what is considered valuable.

Rethinking secondary examinations and credentials(opens in a new tab)

As Darling-Hammond points out, many of the high-stakes assessment policies currently in place are linked to systemic inequity and bias. For example, she described how the high-stakes SAT in the United States of America has become “a better predictor of race than it is of success in college.” For Darling-Hammond, more meaningful assessment methods focus on ‘learning ability,’ which she describes as the abilities to transfer and apply knowledge; analyze, evaluate, weigh and balance; communicate and collaborate; take initiative; find and use resources; plan and implement; self-manage and improve; as well as learn to learn. As such, performance assessments are gaining attention in a number of international education systems as a means to not only strengthen secondary education but also to better prepare students to succeed in post-secondary tasks. Yet, as Wiliam reminds us, there are also trade-offs when moving to use more authentic performance assessments. As he notes, there is an element of ‘luck’ around the particular type of performance assessment students are given, which brings in a degree of unreliability, referred to as person-task interactions in psychometrics.

What are the implications for policy/practice? 

As noted earlier, Wiliam invites us to be aware that assessment improvement always includes making trade-offs. Although some aspects will be better when implementing a change, others will worsen. It is therefore important to understand why things are the way they are in a particular system. Moreover, the politicization of assessment has led to money and resource allocation for high-stakes testing, and to decisions made by politicians rather than by education professionals. Thus, public education systems and post-secondary institutions need to work together to co-construct solutions and desired assessment outcomes. Additionally, Yngve Lindvig reminds us in his provocation that large-scale national exams are not measuring what they should and are in fact destroying schools’ opportunity to foster creativity, deep learning and problem-solving among students. He argues that locally-tailored, trusted, formative assessment systems, with clear goals, should be designed with the help of teachers and education experts. Darling-Hammond points out that there are several systems exploring alternative and innovative approaches to qualifications assessment that are being co-created between educators and policy leaders. For example, the Reimagining College Access (RCA) initiative in the US is a national effort to advance the use of high-quality performance assessments and evaluate students’ ability and agency through course completion, portfolios and a defense of ideas before a committee. Wiliam also reminds us that assessment developers should not do the work of curriculum philosophers. Curriculum content should be clear in order for assessment design to be a value free endeavor. He proposes a principled approach to assessment design (distributed, synoptic, extensive, manageable, trusted) with clearly defined underlying constructs, useful in the context where it will be implemented.

What’s next?

Like previous ARC TMs, this event stimulated thinking and provoked further questions for participants. A more detailed capture of the discussion can be found in the summary document. The summary also includes a number of questions to spark future discussions on assessment, secondary examinations and credentials, such as:

  • How do we make assessment relevant for the 21st-century skills we wish to promote?
  • What does a principled and decolonized approach to assessment design look like? How can we examine the voices that have been and continue to be marginalized and excluded in assessment processes?
  • How can systems make high-stakes assessment an experience of deep learning? Can it be an engaging and motivating process for students, while also assessing the skills and learning abilities of students?
  • What role does technology play in assessment, such as formative real-time assessment tools, digital portfolios, etc?
  • How can we move beyond the one measure of achievement and/or aptitude in the decision-making of high-stakes assessment?

— Mariana Domínguez González, Trista Hollweck & Daphne Varghese

Initial provocation by Yngve Lindvig: 

Progressive Pedagogy and Seamless Technology 

Yngve Lindvig’s provocation challenges systems to consider how to empower teacher and student voices in assessments, steer away from the practice of “teaching to the test”, and consider the benefits of using digital learning tools to collect data as a means to increase formative assessment and reduce summative assessments. He also urges policymakers to involve educators in the decision-making process.

Presentation by Linda Darling-Hammond: 

Whither Secondary Assessment? 

In this ARC Talk Linda Darling-Hammond challenges current assessment practices and offers “learning ability” as an alternative approach to measure student achievement. She outlines what she means by learning ability and provides examples from international education systems.

Other helpful resources relating to Linda Darling-Hammond’s presentation: 

Presentation by Dylan Wiliam: 

Rethinking secondary examinations and credentials

Dylan Wiliam reminds us that assessment systems are never perfect. Rather, they are contextual and all potential changes can lead to both positive and negative effects. In this ARC Talk he describes what he means by a principled approach to assessment desi

Other helpful resources relating to Dylan Wiliam’s presentation:

About the Atlantic Rim Collaboratory

The Atlantic Rim Collaboratory (ARC) is an international policy learning network that was established in 2016 to advance educational change based on eight guiding principles: equity, excellence, inclusion, wellbeing, democracy, sustainability, human rights, and professionally run systems. Headquartered at the University of Ottawa (Ontario, Canada) since 2019, ARC brings together senior public officials (i.e ministers and deputy ministers of education), professional association leaders (i.e. unions and inspectorates) and other key stakeholders from its seven education member systems (Iceland, Ireland, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Scotland, Uruguay and Wales), global partners (International Confederation of Principals) and international experts and scholars to discuss, debate and exchange knowledge about educational policy issues and to formulate responses suited to their contexts. One of the founding ideas behind ARC is to tear down the walls between countries and regions, as well as between educational researchers and politicians, in order to pursue the most fundamental ideas of what it means to be educated in today’s world for the mutual benefit of all ARC-systems and future generations of students worldwide. Every year, ARC members meet at the annual Summit hosted by one of the member systems. However, since 2020, in addition to a virtual summit, ARC has also hosted bi-monthly virtual ARC ThoughtMeets (TMs) for its members. The TM outreach series was designed to stimulate and support a global educational movement for equitable, inclusive and sustainable educational solutions to COVID-19.

https://atrico.org/about-arc

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How to Take Responsibility for the Future of Education

Posted on November 11, 2020 by | Leave a comment

This week, IEN shares a post from managing editor Thomas Hatch that is adapted from his forthcoming book The education we need for a future we can’t predict and “Building the capacity for collective responsibility in Norway” (to appear in Leading and Transforming Education Systems edited by Michelle Jones and Alma Harris). The post appeared originally on GettingSmart.com“

In a recent article in Forbes, Tom Vander Ark outlined 15 “invention opportunities” that can support the development of equitable high-quality learning opportunities in the future. Among the fifteen, are challenges to create an “accountability 2.0” and develop the mechanisms that can bring people together to share diverse perspectives and support community agreement on the aims and purposes of education. These mechanisms are essential for fostering the common understanding and collective responsibility that fuel the social movements we need to dismantle systemic racism, create equitable educational opportunities, and transform education.

Re-defining accountability itself serves as a first step in developing these new mechanisms. For too long, accountability in the US has been synonymous with answerability: Answerability reflects the beliefs that individuals and groups should be accountable for meeting clearly specified and agreed-upon procedures and/or goals. Yet the focus on answerability ignores responsibility another crucial aspect of accountability. Responsibility reflects the belief that individuals and groups should be held accountable for living up to and upholding norms of conduct and higher purposes that are often ambiguous and difficult to define in advance.

Individuals and groups should be held accountable for living up to and upholding norms of conduct and higher purposes that are often ambiguous and difficult to define in advance.

Although carefully specifying outcomes that need to be achieved and establishing consequences for failing to meet those targets can increase efficiency, it also ignores many other valued outcomes, and it can undermine the discretion and expert judgment that may be needed to make many decisions. When taken to extremes, this approach spawns a compliance mindset and leads to efforts to game the system that make it look like the goals have been achieved when they haven’t.

At the same time, simply leaving individuals and groups alone is not the same thing as supporting the development of individual or collective responsibility. Developing responsibility also involves developing the capacity—the investments, materials, abilities, commitments, and relationships—needed to carry out responsibilities effectively. In short, accountability comes from the capacity to support a balance between answerability and responsibility.

Finland’s PISA scores have slipped a bit in recent years, its education system still excels in many respects and continues to stand out as one of the most equitable high-performing systems. Even though many analyses highlight the autonomy of teachers as central to that performance, those analyses often fail to mention several other key aspects of Finland’s education system that support the development of the relationships, trust, and common understanding in education so central to developing collective responsibility and achieving equitable outcomes:

  • A well-established social-welfare state that supports all members of society by connecting education, health, social services, and other sectors
  • A national curriculum framework and a strong, coherent infrastructure of facilities, materials, assessment and preparation programs to support teaching and learning
  • A curriculum renewal process in which stakeholders from all parts of society participate in reflecting on and revising the curriculum framework
  • The use of a variety of high-quality informal and formal assessments that inform efforts to improve practices and performance throughout the education system

The Finnish approach to assessment plays a particularly important role in supporting the development of common understanding and common aims. That approach includes diagnostic and classroom-based assessments that elementary teachers can use early in children’s school careers to identify those who may need some additional help with academics and to ensure that all students stay on track. In secondary schools, well-known exit exams anchor and focus the system. The National Board of Education in Finland also regularly gives tests to samples of students and schools, providing an overview of national and regional performance in key subjects, such as Finnish and mathematics. Although the National Board doesn’t use that information for ranking (and can’t, because not all students and schools are assessed), it shares school-level information with the schools that participate and municipal-level data with the municipalities involved. In addition, the National Board makes these sample assessments widely available for free, so that any teacher, school, or municipality that wants to administer these tests can do so. As a consequence, even without national testing, Finnish schools and municipalities have government-paid tools that link directly to the core curriculum that they can use to benchmark their performance against regional and national samples.

Under these conditions, students don’t have to pass tests that require them to demonstrate proficiency by third grade; they hardly ever “fail” or have to be held back; and most students reach at least a basic level of educational achievement. At the same time, this approach both supports considerable autonomy for educators and schools and builds the common connections that steer the system toward broad education goals without having to rely heavily on rewards or punishments.

This approach contrasts sharply with those in contexts like the US that focus almost exclusively on answerability by using tests to hold teachers, school leaders, and schools “accountable” for reaching specified benchmarks and other outcomes. Rather than using assessments to look back to see whether educators did what they were supposed to do, educators and system leaders in Finland use assessments to look forward and to see if people, classes, and schools are headed in the right direction. Such an approach doesn’t require data on every single aspect of student, teacher, or school performance, but it depends on making sure no one gets too far off course. It means using assessment to look for outliers and listening for signs of trouble, not to check on each individual, or make sure everything is done a certain way or in a certain timeline. In the process, Finland supports the development of the collective responsibility central to guiding education into an unpredictable future.

Rather than using assessments to look back to see what educators did we need to use assessments to look forward and to see if people, classes, and schools are headed in the right direction.

New technologies, artificial intelligence, and many other kinds of innovations can help to improve education. But those technical achievements will not accomplish much without the personal commitments and broader social movements that can transform our communities. If we are truly going to develop collective responsibility in education, then we have to develop collective responsibility for education. We have to hold ourselves, our elected officials, and our communities accountable for making the changes in our society that will end segregation and discrimination, create equitable educational opportunities, and provide the support that everyone needs to thrive.

For more, see:

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Curriculum and assessment in African countries

Posted on October 7, 2015 by | Leave a comment

This week, we conducted a scan of education news published in the past month from countries in Africa. These articles highlight efforts to increase access and quality of education through the implementation of national curricula and assessments and through initiatives focused on teacher recruitment, salaries, and training.

South Sudan recently launched its first national curriculum. Gurtong.net quoted Jonathan Veitch, UNICEF Country Representative, as saying…

“For now the curriculum is complete, textbooks must be designed and published, teachers need to be trained to implement this curriculum, and school managers, inspectors and supervisors require training to provide the required management and oversight….”

Reports from South Africa (recently ranked “almost dead last in math and science” on this year’s World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness report, as News24 noted) show that even with curriculum and assessments in place, educators need to see their worth in order for them to be useful for instruction. The Daily Maverick recently reported that both the teachers’ union and the Department of Basic Education agree that the current national assessments are not effective, and some teachers’ unions have already promised to “opt-out” of administering the current assessments.

Tensions between teachers and the national government in Kenya also reflect something of a “Catch-22.” In a recent World Bank report, concern was expressed that the quality of education in the country was alarmingly inadequate. On the one hand, many critics of the government, including many teachers, argue that the reasons include the government’s failure to comply with a court order to increase teacher salaries by 50-60%. In response, teachers are engaged in a formal, long-term strike to protest inadequate salary, which they would like to see rise to the levels of other professions. On the other hand, supporters of the government suggest that the teacher strikes are contributing to the problems because they result in irregular access to classrooms for most students. In a stalemate, the Education Ministry ordered schools to close as of September 21st.

According to All Africa, Cameroon’s Education Ministry is taking steps to try to “professionalize” teaching by bringing in Dutch consultants to help refine teacher training, as well as curriculum. According to Roeland Monasch, the CEO of the Dutch NGO Aflatoun, the solution is simple: “He assured that once teachers are well trained, students will do well in class.”

—Deirdre Faughey

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Vietnam: Can one assessment meet the needs of all stakeholders?

Posted on July 22, 2015 by | Leave a comment

20150707071925-edu-exam-questionVietnamese students surprised the world recently when it was revealed that they outperformed many other advanced countries on the PISA exam. According to a recent BBC article, “the country’s 15-year-olds scored higher in reading, maths and science than many developed countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom.”

News of this achievement has received a great deal of media attention, however in an effort to learn more about recent developments in the Vietnamese education system today we reached out to Duy Pham, former Deputy Director of the Center of Educational Measurement, of the Institute for Education Quality Assurance, at Vietnam National University, and curent doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Pham explained that while the PISA exam has caught the attention of an international audience, the people of Vietnam have been wrapped up in a dynamic debate around high school graduation exams and university entrance exams.

This year, the Vietnam Ministry of Education combined the high school graduation exam and the university entrance exam into one 4-day-long exam. This move came in response to concerns about student well-being and assessment validity. Many felt that students and families were suffering under the pressure of two separate exams. Also, private universities, which admit students who do not get selected for prestigious spots in public universities, felt that the old exam system was too challenging and resulted in the exclusion of too many students. These universities wanted to be able to admit a greater number of students but found that these students were not able to meet the high bar set by the old entrance exams. As Pham explained, “This year the pressure comes from many stakeholders, saying the university system blames the previous entrance exam of not being able to classify students in a way that allows them to select the right students.”

As the new exam was administered in the first week of July, there is no consensus on the new process. While the Ministry of Education has expressed satisfaction with the new system, educators, policymakers, and researchers are concerned that the new exams might be too difficult for the purposes of high school graduation, yet too easy for the purposes of university entrance. The question is how to find one assessment that meets the needs of all students and institutions.

Also, the question of pressure and fairness remains. Students can only take the new exam in one of the approximately 30 testing centers. These testing centers are located in big cities, which means that students from mountainous and rural areas need to travel with a parent or guardian and find accommodations for the duration of the exam. Under the old system, students could at least take the high school graduation exam in their own school settings.

–Deirdre Faughey

For more information on this issue:

National exam for university, high school satisfies students – News VietNamNet http://buff.ly/1fQRVdu

One million students sit for national exams – News VietNamNet http://buff.ly/1fQRY9k

Volunteers swing into action for season of exams – News VietNamNet http://buff.ly/1fQS6FI

Vietnam school students and the exam of life in pictures http://buff.ly/1fQS8xe

Flashback: Volunteers devote themselves to helping Vietnam’s national exam contestants http://buff.ly/1OkqFiO

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Growth in national assessments?

Posted on March 18, 2015 by | Leave a comment

With the implementation of new state tests (PARCC and Smarter Balanced) connected to the Common Core in the US, it has been hard to avoid concerns about the quality and extent of testing in the US in recent weeks (including in Delaware, Minnesota, Ohio, and California among others). At a recent seminar series from the Laboratory of International Assessment Studies, however, I also heard reports about the marked growth in the use of national assessments in many other countries. Although the new state tests in the US provide data on the performance of individual students and schools, the 2015 EFA Global Monitoring Report to be released in April, will include data on the number of national learning assessments (designed to provide information on system performance) conducted worldwide since 1990. As initially reported in “Improving, not over-hauling learning assessments post-2015,” that report will show that the number of countries administering national assessments has doubled in the last twenty-five years:

Before 2000, national tests were conducted in:

  • 49% of developed countries
  • 34% of developing countries
  • 6% of countries in transition

Between 2000-2013, national tests were conducted in:

  • 82% of developed countries
  • 65% of developing countries
  • 78% of countries in transition

The FHI 360 Education Policy and Data Center (EPDC) also released results of the National Learning Assessment Mapping Project (N-LAMP). As described in a blog post on the key findings, the project reviewed data on standardized exams and assessments administered at the national level from primary to upper secondary education in a sample of 125 countries from 6 regions of the world. They identified 403 national-level learning assessments from 105 countries. The majority of the assessments (55%) were low-stakes national large-scale student assessments (NLSA’s sample-based assessments used to monitor the performance of education systems like those documented in the Global Monitoring report). Most of the remaining assessments were high stakes exams (mandatory assessments required for completing a given level of schooling or gaining admission to the next level). Not surprisingly, the project found that almost all of the assessments focused on “Literacy & Communication” and “Numeracy & Maths,” with more than half also addressing “Science & Technology.” Nonetheless, other domains were represented with 73 assessments addressing “Social & Emotional” domains, 33 addressing “Physical Well-Being” and 11 addressing “Learning Approaches & Cognition.”

Also worth noting for those interested in international assessments, Teachers College Record has a new theme issue focusing on PISA, “Moving Beyond Country Rankings in International Assessments: The Case of PISA.”

—Thomas Hatch

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News scan: Germany and Ireland

Posted on January 20, 2015 by | Leave a comment

This week, a scan of the news coming from Europe led us to put several links on Twitter; however, over the past year we’ve noticed more than one report on related topics. Here is a brief description of news coming out of Germany and Ireland. Next week, we will take a closer look at reports coming out of Central and South American countries.

Germany

According to a new study, Germany will not be able to meet ambitious education goals the country set for itself in 2008. Angela Merkel aimed to cut the dropout rate from 8% to 4%, but as of 2013 the rate stood at 5.7%. The German government is also struggling to reduce the number of young people (aged 20-29) who were without any professional qualification.  Interestingly, another report pointed out that there has been an ongoing Twitter debate (in German) about the country’s educational system, sparked by one girl who tweeted, “I am almost 18 and have no idea about taxes, rent or insurance. But, I can analyze a poem. In 4 languages.” The debate is raging over the purpose of an education and whether or not schools should prepare students for “life.”

 

Ireland

Teachers are protesting in Ireland because they disagree with government reforms that aim to move student evaluations away from standardized testing and towards a performance-based model, which would allow portfolios and other options. Teachers are concerned that the new assessments will force teachers to judge their own students, rather than advocate for them. They also object to the amount of time teachers will need to spend on the new assessments. Pasi Sahlsburg responded to the teachers’ plan to strike by saying that teachers need to take on more complex roles in order to boost the profession. In addition to seeing themselves differently, teachers need to see the students differently–and that’s what the alternative assessment model is all about. According to Sahlsburg, the situation in Ireland is “unique globally in many ways. Internationally it is more common that teachers are the ones that insist more freedom and autonomy in assessing and grading their students rather than the other way round.” In this case, an additional issue might be that teachers are wary of new, complex practices that they don’t have the capacity to carry out—practices that might seem unnecessary, particularly after Irish students just achieved test results that surpassed those the country set for the year 2020.

—Deirdre Faughey

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Assessment in Finland: Steering, Seeing, and Selection

Posted on June 9, 2014 by | 3 comments

In Finland, the notable lack of tests for accountability purposes receives considerable attention. In fact, when we talk to teachers, administrators, and policymakers here, the question “how do you know how well things are going in your …. (classroom, school, municipality…)?” elicits quizzical stares. It’s a question that doesn’t make much sense when the initial assumption is that things are going well. However, our discussions here over the last three weeks have highlighted a few other interesting aspects of the uses of assessment here.

Assessment for steering not accounting

The word “accountability” has been traced back to ancient “account-giving” and record-keeping practices, tracking how funds have been spent and ensuring those funds have been spent as intended. Correspondingly, in places like the US, tests have been used to hold teachers, school leaders, and schools “accountable” for their actions and to see if they have done what they are supposed to do. But rather than using assessments to look back to see what was done, in many ways, educators and system leaders in Finland use assessment to look forward and to see if people, classes and schools are headed in the right direction. Such an approach doesn’t require data on every single aspect of student, teacher, or school performance, but it does require paying attention to ensure that no one gets too far off course. It means a focus on looking for outliers and listening for signs of trouble, not checking on each individual or making sure everything is done a certain way or in a certain timeline. But such an approach also requires mechanisms (like the curriculum renewal process as we will argue in a later post) to support shared understanding of the goals and expected outcomes of the whole system and a wide range of supports to make sure that everyone can get where they are going. Of course, it also helps if the whole system seems to be moving in the right direction already.

Assessment by walking around

Given the focus on this kind of “steering” approach, questions about the data used to make decisions from an American seem odd. While we have only spoken to a small group of teachers and school leaders here, invariably, those we’ve met have explained that learning whether a class or a school is on the right path can be accomplished by regularly “walking around” (while our Finnish colleagues did not refer to it directly, a similar concept—management by wandering around—has been part of the literature in business for some time). That means getting around the classroom and the school; talking to students, teachers, staff, and parents; listening to needs for support; and being alert to any signs of trouble. Concerns that arise about particular classes, schools, programs, or practices (especially when they come from more than one source) can then trigger “a talk” with those involved and some further investigation. (Even at the national level, a policymaker we talked to said that they don’t need a lot of data to tell them that many Finnish teachers are not using the assessment criteria that are in the core curriculum because regular meetings with teachers make that clear all the time…)

Despite the benefits, however, such a personal approach leaves unspecified the basis for many important decisions. In fact, when we asked teachers how school leaders know what they are doing or how well they are doing, many weren’t sure. Similarly, school leaders often couldn’t tell us how their supervisors (municipal administrators) could determine whether or not they were effective leaders. This lack of clarity may become more problematic as at least some municipalities in Finland have begun piloting some ways of using bonuses and salary increments to reward some teachers. While it is not widely discussed, those we talked to in at least two different groups of schools reported that their school leaders could decide to give them small bonuses if the leader felt that they did a particularly good job with their students or were particularly engaged in professional activities like research or professional development. While teachers could make their own case and often came to mutual agreements, leaders and municipal administrators, not teachers, have the last word.

Assessment for screening, sampling and selection

Even with a focus on assessment “by walking around,” however, educators in Finland do make use of a variety of tests and assessments. In contrast to Norway (where students do not get any written marks and there is comparatively limited testing until 8th grade), teachers in Finnish primary schools regularly use assessments of their own design as well as tests and quizzes from the textbooks; students get a report card at the end of the year; and in some cases, high scoring students may be singled out for recognition and rewards (something that the Norwegians would find shocking). Finnish teachers use an array of diagnostic and screening tests extensively in the early grades in Finland to make sure that no students are falling behind, particularly in reading. For example in one municipality, primary school special education teachers administer a screening test in reading comprehension to all students at the end of 2nd and 4th grade across all schools (and many administer it at the end of every year). That information, however, is not used at the school or municipal level to “check” on who is and isn’t performing well, rather, it’s used to identify those students who will need extra help moving forward.

As many have reported, the National Board of Education in Finland also regularly gives tests to samples of students and schools that are used to look at national and regional performance in key subjects like Finnish and mathematics. While the National Board does not use that information for ranking (and can’t because all students and schools are not assessed), they do share school level information with the schools that participate and municipal level data with the municipalities involved. In addition, the National Board makes these sample assessments widely available for free so that any teacher, school, or municipality that wants to administer these tests can do so. As a consequence, even without national testing, Finnish schools and municipalities have government-paid for tools that are linked directly to the core curriculum that they can use to benchmark their performance against regional and national samples.

Despite this diagnostic emphasis, tests and assessments in Finland do have important consequences, however, even if they are not used to hold teachers and schools accountable directly. In particular, despite the emphasis on equity, in some municipalities, students can express a preference to attend a particular school and a students’ final exams and final grades at the end of basic education (9th grade) can have an influence on whether or not they get into their top choice upper secondary school. Thus, in some of the largest municipalities in particular, students with the highest grade point averages are likely to get into their first choice schools, while students with lower grade point averages may have to opt for less selective schools.

Furthermore, at the end of upper secondary school, students have to pass matriculation exams in several subjects, and their scores on those exams (in combination with the Universities’ own entrance exams) determine whether students can go on to university and which institutions and programs they can get into. In fact, the results of the matriculation exams are made public; and newspapers report on the highest performing students and rank the schools according to their students’ average scores (see “Lukiovertailu – Etelä-Tapiolan lukio Espoosta kärjessä” roughly: “Comparison of High Schools – South Tapiola in Espoo at the forefront of high schools”). In addition, even more information on the performance of vocational schools is made publicly available—including the numbers of graduates and the average time to completion—and that information is used by the government in decisions about funding.

As a consequence of the school choice options available and the selection practices of students, Sonja Kosunen and colleagues have argued that there is a kind of implicit tracking within the Finnish system that may have an impact on the equitable distribution of learning opportunities. (Nonetheless, as Jennifer Von Reis Saari has pointed out, in contrast to most countries like the US and Sweden the Finnish system is highly “permeable,” so that even students who choose a vocational track in high school can still end up studying advanced subjects and can still gain entrance to University programs.)

In the end, what we’ve learned makes it clear that teachers, school leaders, and policymakers in Finland have access to a robust set of assessments that are supported by a long tradition of work on assessment at institutions like the Centre for Educational Assessment at the University of Helsinki, the Centre of Learning Research at the University of Turku, and the Niilo Mäki institute, associated with the University of Jyvaskyla. Furthermore, those assessments are used for a variety of purposes that can have important consequences for students and schools. But at the same time, many teachers, school leaders and policymakers start with the assumptions that things are going (at least relatively) well, that they will know if things start to go off course, and that, if necessary, everyone will work together to get things back on track.

–Thomas Hatch

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India

Posted on September 4, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Poor PISA score: Govt blames ‘disconnect ‘ with India

Anubhuti  Vishnoi,  Indian Express online (September 3, 2012)

Indian students participated in Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) for the first time in 2009. 16,000 students from 400 schools across the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu took this test. Though Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are among the best performing states in India, the PISA scores of their students were dismally low, leading to much discussion in India. The Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD), however, is arguing that these scores are not a reflection of the country’s schooling but of the disconnect between the test questions and India’s socio-cultural specificities, especially that of rural India. The Ministry will write to the Organization for Economic Cooperation Development to address this disconnect.

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