Provincial standardized testing is coming back for Grade 3 students "in the coming years," Alberta's deputy minister of education said in an email to all superintendents and education organizations.

Provincial standardized testing is coming back for Grade 3 students “in the coming years,” Alberta’s deputy minister of education said in an email to all superintendents and education organizations.

The Monday email, obtained by Postmedia, said the education ministry will develop new provincial achievement tests (PATs) for eight- and nine-year-old students “once direction on new curriculum is decided.”

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The email also says the now-optional Student Learning Assessments (SLAs) will be mandatory for all third graders in fall 2020, and that schools should expect no extra money to administer the tests. Deputy minister of education Curtis Clarke is “strongly encouraging” all school districts to have Grade 3 students write the optional SLAs in fall 2019, his email said.

“There will be many opportunities for school authorities to provide feedback and to support the development of these updated Grade 3 PATs in the coming months and years,” Clarke wrote.

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Bringing back Grade 3 PATs was a United Conservative Party platform promise during the spring 2019 election campaign. However, after hearing concerns from parents, a party spokesman said they were reconsidering that move because of the potential pressure the tests could put on young children.

In 2014, the former Progressive Conservative government replaced the end-of-year Grade 3 PATs with SLAs, which are administered near the beginning of the year and help teachers identify areas where students struggle. However, teachers said the SLAs weren’t that useful , and in 2017, then-NDP Education Minister David Eggen made the SLAs optional

Decisions about what subjects PATs will cover, the format they will take and when they will be introduced will be made once the government decides what it’s doing with a new provincial curriculum currently under development, said Colin Aitchison, press secretary for Education Minister Adriana LaGrange, on Tuesday.

The cost of developing and administering the test will also depend on the format, he said.

The Grade 3 PATs will allow parents and teachers to see students’ progress in the early years and take action if necessary, he said.

“We were elected with a clear mandate to reform student assessment, giving parents access to clear, easy to understand information about how well their children are doing,” he said in a Tuesday email. “Assessing progress in the critical early years is an important tool our education system can use to ensure the best possible outcomes for each and every child. Mandatory SLAs and PATs will also allow all Albertans to measure progress on the new curriculum and ensure that learning outcomes are being met.”

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ATA tells parents to subvert exam system

After the UCP’s apparent change of heart during the election campaign, Alberta Teachers’ Association president Greg Jeffery said he was shocked by Monday’s email.

Jeffery encouraged parents to opt their third graders out of the PATs, which they have the right to do, he said. He said non-participation is recorded as a grade of zero, and that if enough parents opt children out of the exams, the provincial data will become meaningless.

“Going back to Grade 3 PATs is something that should not happen,” Jeffery said Tuesday. “Parents need to be aware they have choices.”

Returning to a tradition of children taking high-stakes, multiple-choice exams would be a “huge step backwards” that is unhelpful for teachers, he said.

Mandating the current SLA tests across a district or the province is a misuse of the tool, Jeffery said. Currently, teachers have the flexibility to decide which students would benefit from completing the computerized assessment in September or October to identify areas where the student will need help for the coming year, he said.

Mandating the SLAs will create extra work for teachers and administrators to produce results that will be “meaningless” in some cases, he said.

“It’s a real step backward from professional autonomy, in our estimation,” Jeffery said. “This government has said so often they trust the professional judgment of teachers. They say it a lot. This certainly disagrees with that statement.”

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The first complete rewrite of Alberta’s K-12 curriculum began under the Progressive Conservatives and was supported and funded by the former NDP government. Premier Jason Kenney has said the process was too secretive and paused curriculum development to gather more input.

Drafts of the K-4 curriculum were complete and were going to be classroom tested starting in September.

Hundreds of teachers, academics, subject area experts, Indigenous people, francophones and representatives from the Northwest Territories and Nunavut were involved in writing the eight curriculum subject areas. The education ministry gathered about 100,000 messages of feedback from the public at public meetings, telephone town halls, online surveys and other methods.

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