Principal Points - "Standardized Tests

Past Principal Points

Standardized Tests—Pitfalls to Avoid

I am a fan of standardized tests, not because they tell us everything we need to know about students or our programs, but because they provide a third party perspective that can confirm or call into question our own evaluations. While standardized tests don’t reveal everything that is important to know, they don’t tell us nothing either. However, it is important that we understand how to interpret them so that we don’t come to the wrong conclusions.

First, some background about our standardized testing program. We use three different tests. The Canadian Tests of Basic Skills is used annually for all students in grades one through eight. This gives a lot of detailed information about how our students and classrooms are performing compared to national averages. They are very useful as a benchmark of the fundamentals of reading, writing, arithmetic, and study skills, and they help us plan for the individual needs of students.

The Alberta Achievement Tests are only used for grades three, six, and nine. They are specific to the Albert curriculum and give much broader data. They are primarily useful to inform Alberta Learning whether we are following the Alberta curriculum and to show how our program compares to that of other schools in the province.

Finally, the Alberta Diploma Exams are written for core subjects at the grade twelve level. These are considered "high stakes" exams because they count for 50% of a student’s mark. They are also useful for comparing the performance of students and schools across the province at the grade twelve level.

In interpreting these scores, it is important to understand some things about statistics. Often it is what you aren’t told that is the most important. I will use our recent Diploma Exam results to illustrate this point. The Calgary Herald recently ran a list of the scores of the various high schools on each of the tests. Public and separate schools were listed separately from charter and private schools. Not having all the information can lead one to think that a school is either doing much better or much worse than it actually is. Only by getting at the background information can you come to an accurate picture:

In the list of charter schools, Airdrie Koinonia came out on top with 100% of our students passing all of their diploma exams. It looks quite impressive, doesn’t it? However, the fact is that for all but the Chemistry exam, we had too few students writing the tests to make any valid conclusions. (We only had four grade twelve students!) In fact, the results shouldn’t even have been published. So one should simply ignore those numbers.

On the other hand, the Chemistry results don’t reveal the entire truth either. While 100% of our students passed and 35% at the level of excellence (Very impressive!), what wasn’t revealed actually shows that our students did even better than it appears. First, the majority of our students writing this test were actually in grade eleven. Second, 100% of our students in grades eleven and twelve took the course compared to a provincial participation rate of around 35%. So, the Chemistry test (with data from 14 students) indicates that our school is doing exceptionally well. Next week I will speak to the Achievement Tests.

Brian Hazeltine, B.Ed., M.A.
Principal, Airdrie Koinonia Christian School