IDEA to implement standardized testing

PATRICIA D’SOUZA

Members of the Iqaluit District Education Authority voted this week to implement standardized, or “assessment,” tests in Iqaluit schools before the end of the school year.

The motion passed narrowly, with three votes for standardized testing, two votes against it and one abstention.

The vote ended a heated discussion during the Feb. 10 meeting that had some members questioning why the IDEA was pursuing special measures for the most privileged group in the Nunavut education system.

The two tests — math and language — would be administered in English to Grade 3, 6 and 9 students in the English stream.

“At the end we will have taken a bold step, but we will have served 15 per cent of the population,” said Caroline Anawak, one of three members appointed to the IDEA last fall.

The IDEA has been pursuing the issue of standardized testing for about four years, but has received only vague responses from the department of education.

In a meeting with IDEA members in December 2001, Education Minister Peter Kilabuk said the complicating factor is language. “Standardized testing is probably going to be difficult in Nunavut,” he is recorded as saying in the IDEA minutes of the meeting.

“Students are taught in Inuktitut. We could not implement this. How do I put students to a test when there is such a lack of curriculum for Inuktitut?” he said.

Letters have gone back and forth between the department and the IDEA several times since then. Each time Kilabuk has reacted negatively to the proposal but come short of saying no.

Kathy Smith, the chair of the IDEA, suspects this is because the Education Act may actually give DEAs the right to administer such tests.

“They’ve said, ‘We’ll form a committee,’ they’ve said, ‘We’ll look at it,’ but they haven’t said no,” she said. “Possibly because they don’t know if they have the authority.”

So IDEA members did some research. They found that the Alberta government was willing to administer the tests and provide results for free under the same arrangement the province has with the Northwest Territories.

The curriculum used in Nunavut schools is adapted from the Alberta curriculum, so this wouldn’t be such a stretch.

The IDEA registered with test administrators and ordered information handbooks for parents. All that’s left is for testing to begin in late May or early June.

Although the work has been slow and plodding, some members wondered this week if they were moving too fast.

“I think we’re a little premature in trying to get standardized testing. When there is an Inuktitut curriculum in Nunavut, then we should have our own testing,” said Annie Ford, another newly appointed member.

“If you want to wait until the Government of Nunavut creates a Nunavut-wide curriculum and creates its own tests, then the next 20 years of children, might as well write them off, say, ‘We’re not going to worry about them,’” Smith said.

Ford said testing makes sense in Grade 9, when students have a grasp on the English language. But she said that students in Grades 3 and 6 are still learning to learn.

“I have a child in Grade 3. He’s not going to pass that test. He’s going to fail. What is the purpose of the test?” she said.

“Not to pick on your son,” Smith said.

“Are we going to get more funding if our kids are failing?” Ford said. “That’s not going to happen because it’s from the Nunavut government that we get our funding — not from Alberta.”

Exactly how the results will be used is a question that can’t really be answered until the results come in, but it seems that the only results that will benefit the IDEA are poor results.

“If students are at grade level at Grade 3 and they’re not at Grade 9 — that tells a story,” Smith said. “That tells us something happens between there where something isn’t happening.”

There’s another problem, too. Alberta posts school results online, for anyone to see. It’s a way of keeping the system accountable. Would the same practice be used in Iqaluit? IDEA members weren’t so sure.

“I know many teachers will not be happy. Many parents will not be happy,” said longtime IDEA member Jeannie Eeseemailie. “I, too, am very scared what the results will be.”