Assessment
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CRITICAL DISCUSSION
Pendergast & Swain (2013) state that studies show that ‘standardised testing may improve test-taking skills and ability to memorise but it does not necessarily improve learning outcomes and deep understanding’. It can be said that the outcomes of NAPLAN and impact of PISA have been exploited and misused, as the vast number of stakeholders; education professionals, policy makers, parents and students, examine the results for reasons other than what the tests were designed for (Harris et al. 2013, p. 35). The growing culture of high-stakes testing is essentially altering the way that social justice is expressed as numerical equity within the Australian education system (Lingard, Sellar & Savage, 2014, p. 711).
PROGRAM FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENT ASSESSMENT (PISA)
The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international study that evaluates and measures how well students who are towards the completion of their compulsory education have been equipped for lifelong learning so they are able to contribute in the ‘real world’. PISA’s foremost purpose is to inform policy making at a national level, established by the educational results on an international scale. PISA seeks to measure the way in which students are equipped to utilise an array of skills in literacy and numeracy and apply their understanding in a general way as outlined by ACER. Additionally it considers students backgrounds. However, Lewis (2014, p. 318) proposes that the OECD’s ‘influence is driving governments to assess based on numbers causing policy overhauls based on this high-stakes testing. It also promotes a culture of comparison and competition between countries rather than the equity it set out to achieve’. PISA fundamentally assumes ‘that global variation in results can be attributed to national education structure and policies’ (Feniger & Lefstein, 2014, p. 845).
NATIONAL ASSESSMENT PROGRAM - LITERACY AND NUMERACY (NAPLAN)
The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is a government funded census test developed by ACARA, which runs annually and assesses students in grades 3, 5, 7 and 9 on their literacy and numeracy aptitude. The results from these tests are subsequently made public on the website My School for parents and schools to examine and evaluate with the intention of schools being transparent with the quality of learning. The publication of these results on the MySchool website tries to offer responsibility and accountability for schools, in addition to informing parents in their school choice. However, the assessment outcomes that professional educators are being arbitrated against are ‘based on a generalised notion of all students’, despite the Victorian Curriculum constructing an individualised approach to education. (Harris et al. 2013, p. 32)
Although the objective of making literacy and numeracy standards in schools a priority is positive in theory, schools might employ their scores as a marketing tactic to make the school more appealing to parents, increasing enrolments for the school. Consequently, some schools unfortunately move toward a method of ‘teaching to the test’ so they are able to improve students outcomes, which can see a follow on effect of increased enrolments and subsequently better funding. This is extremely problematic as it impairs the validity of the data (Lingard, Thompson & Sellar, 2015, p. 5). NAPLAN examines a limited scope of content and skills in a certain way that privileges some students over others (Harris et al. 2013, pp. 36-37) especially as it functions within a largely white, middle-class discourse.
Standardised Testing
CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF STANDARDISED TESTING
It is widely agreed that standardised testing ‘has the potential to positively affect teaching and learning particularly as schools and systems strive to reach benchmarks’ (Pendergast & Swain, 2013, p. 5). It is with this conjecture that high-stakes testing systems such as the Program for International Student Assessment, also known as PISA and National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy commonly referred to as NAPLAN, were implemented in the Australian education system in an effort to generate improvements to learning results.