Alberta Teachers' Association against student screening. Syda Productions/Dreamstime.com

By Jayk Sterkenburg

EDUCATION

Alberta’s school screenings ‘lost instructional time’ for teachers, advocate says

Dec 9, 2024 | 5:07 PM

This January, the government will require students in kindergarten to undergo three new evaluations throughout the school year.

Literacy and numeracy assessments in schools were implemented by the Alberta government back in 2022.

The Alberta Teachers’ Association has expressed its disapproval with the strategy from the beginning.

ATA president Jason Schilling explained how teachers find the recent literacy and numeracy screenings unnecessary.

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“We do have some opposition to that because it is taking away valuable class time,” Schilling told CHAT News on Monday.

Students in grades 1 to 3 are required to take screening tests at the beginning of each semester, and at the end of the school year.

Schilling said the assessments are a waste of time and resources, and weren’t formulated relevant to every specific classroom setting.

“The kindergarten screening testers aren’t related to the curriculum. They aren’t even tied into the curriculum,” he said.

“Why they’re doing these tests to get a sense of what’s going on, it makes no sense to them.”

Schilling said that, in talking with colleagues, it was determined that 90 hours of instructional time are lost with each screening.

He adds that facilitating assessments in September, January and June, takes up 270 of the 950 hours that students are in school, spent apart from the curriculum.

Schilling feels that the time is also not sufficient to evaluate the actual data that is being recorded from each test. Data that is meant to support students after being collected.

“A colleague of mine said she has 36 kindergarten students and 21 of them have identified special needs,” Schilling said.

“She actually doesn’t physically have the time in the teaching schedule to do all of these literacy assessments of all these students,” he added.

“She’s already identified that 21 students out of the 36 need extra support. So what are these tests in January going to tell her that she doesn’t already know?”

Schilling said that the ATA’s policy pushes back against any sort of standardizing testing of students.

Although they recognize that students will need testing to identify any kind of special learning needs, they believe the government’s screening methods are too broad.

“Kids come in from a variety of different skills and backgrounds and experiences,” Schilling said.

“Teachers use a variety of different techniques and strategies when they’re teaching students, and working with students, and also with testing students.”