Provincial achievement tests will be replaced by online exams in three years, says the province – a move a local Catholic trustee says will help teachers better help students.
Alberta Education announced Thursday that it plans to phase out Provincial Achievement Tests (PATs) for students by 2016. The written tests, which have been in place for about 30 years, test Grade 3, 6 and 9 students on their skills at the end of the year.
Instead of a single, high-stress written test at the end of the year, said provincial spokesperson Kim Capstick, these students will now take a series of smaller online tests at the start. Written tests will still be available for those who need them.
The old tests told teachers how a student did during a year, Capstick said, which wasn’t that useful. “By next year, you can’t use that information to help little Johnny do better in Grade 4, because it’s about the Grade 3 curriculum.”
The new tests will help teachers and parents spot learning difficulties early on, Capstick said, giving them the rest of the year to address them. The tests will also be easier to take and give compared to the big exams of the past, and will focus more on creativity and problem-solving skills.
PATs are stressful to students and don’t really test critical thinking, said Jacquie Hansen, local Catholic board trustee and president of the Alberta School Boards Association. “They’re basically a regurgitation of what a child has learned.” These new exams are a great shift that will help teachers and parents draw up a roadmap for each child’s education, she said.
The new Student Learning Assessments will be piloted in Grade 3 classes in September 2014, with full implementation in 2015. Pilots for Grades 6 and 9 will occur in 2015 and 2016, respectively.
In a related announcement, the province also said this week that its Grade 12 diploma exams would go online as of next year.
About 190,000 Alberta high-school students write diploma exams each year, the province reports. The tests are administered by the province and are often worth as much as half of a Grade 12 student’s mark.
The new tests will be online and offered about five times a year, Capstick said. Instead of sitting in an exam room filling out Scantron sheets in pencil, students will now sit in a supervised room typing answers onto a secured computer.
“You walk into schools in Alberta and you see kids with laptops and tablet devices taking notes,” Capstick said. Online tests will better reflect the way students learn today.
Students will also get their results back faster, she continued, which will help with scholarship applications. Written tests will still be available.
Online tests will be great for students at St. Albert’s St. Gabriel High School, said principal David Feist, many of whom are upgrading courses or doing distance learning while on sports teams. “We’re not locked into these two or three or four writing periods now. Students will complete exams based on their personal need.”
Still, Feist says there are still a lot of details to be worked out about these new tests. “What’s the backup plan if you go to log in and the Internet’s down?”
The online tests would roll out in select schools in September 2014, Capstick said, and all schools by 2017.
St. Albert’s school boards and its Catholic teachers have said yes to a provincial framework agreement on wages.
The St. Albert Public School board voted 3-2 in favour of the proposed provincial framework agreement with the Alberta Teachers’ Association Wednesday. The Greater St. Albert Catholic Teachers’ Local No. 23 approved of the deal on May 3. The Sturgeon School Division and its local have also approved of the deal.
The deal, if approved, would freeze teacher’s wages for three years and up them by two per cent in 2015-2016. Teachers would also get a one-time lump-sum payment of one per cent of their salary in 2015.
St. Albert Catholic teachers would also get a 0.75 per cent raise in 2014 to bring them up to the provincial average, said Sean Brown, president of Local No. 23.
“The deal was far from perfect,” he said, but teachers felt it was the best they could get at the moment. While it did nothing to improve class sizes, it did protect the local’s cap on teaching hours. “Money is certainly not the issue.”
St. Albert public trustees wrestled with the deal Wednesday, with many, including trustee Joe Demko, concerned that it took away their ability for local bargaining. “Every school district isn’t the same,” he said, yet this deal proposed the same solution for all of them.
The deal must be approved by all 62 teachers’ unions and their respective boards by May 13 if it is to go into effect.
The St. Albert Public Teachers’ Local No. 73 and a handful of other locals and boards have rejected the deal.
Roughly 57 locals and 53 boards had ratified the deal as of Thursday.
