When thinking of holistically of the total child my first thoughts are you look at the components of reading , writing and listening and speaking . How they learn in all aspects , the problem lies with the shortage of emphasis on not being placed on listening and speaking. Testing now has a prime focus on reading and writing which is not meeting the need of the total child. They want comprehensive, but that excludes auditory and visual learners. There just is not an even balance, an example of this is the TELPAS. TEA designed the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System (TELPAS) and TELPAS Alternate to assess the progress that limited English proficient (LEP) students, also referred to as English learners (ELs), make in learning the English language (TEA,2019).
SAIP programme of pan‐Canadian assessment focuses on school achievement indicators in mathematics, reading and writing, and science. SAIP is conducted by the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) and tests a random sample of more than 35,000 13‐ and 16‐year‐old students. The first cycle of assessments began in 1993 with the administration of the mathematics assessment. The reading and writing assessment followed in 1994 and the science assessment was administered in 1996. The second cycle of assessments was administered from 1997 to 1999. Another important consideration is that provincial/territorial assessment programmes tend to have ‘high‐stakes’ consequences for students, but not teachers or administrators. For example, the results of most provincial assessments comprise a significant percentage of a secondary student’s final grades (i.e., typically between 30% and 50%) or serve as a graduation requirement or compulsory requirement for post‐secondary university attendance, as is the case in New Brunswick, Ontario, and Quebec. Conversely, educators are not officially sanctioned for poor student performance ( Jaafar, 1970).
What I would really like to see is a more balanced system of assessing for both students and educators that does not negate the capabilities of either, an assessment that does not take the student hours to complete and devalue the instructional abilities of a teacher.What is the purpose of issuing textbooks if majority of the semester is spent prepping for an exam that determines a students placement a teachers income and the financial contribution to their institution ?
Reference
TELPAS Resources. (n.d.). Retrieved October 11, 2019, from https://tea.texas.gov/Student_Testing_and_Accountability/Testing/TELPAS.
Volante, L., & Jaafar, S. B. (1970, April 1). Educational assessment in Canada. Retrieved October 11, 2019, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09695940802164226.
