The National Assessments at the end of the 2nd and 4th grade have just finished, and the 6th grade is about to take place. However, little is communicated about the real purpose of these tests. Although they were intended as diagnostic tools for the education system, in practice they are often perceived differently. Thus, instead of helping students, they become a source of stress. With better implementation, these tests could have benefits on three levels, experts say: at the classroom, school and system level.
For Gabi Bartic, specialist in Education, the key to the problem is the way in which the National Assessments from the 2nd, 4th and 6th grades are explained and understood, which the students give, but not all of them know why:
“They should be seen as a visit to the doctor, not as a visit to the court. You go to the doctor to know how you are, not to be judged. These assessments do not assign the child anywhere, do not certify anything, do not close or open any doors for him. This is the moment when the system asks: how is the learning going? Where do we need help?. The problem is that we have never said this coherently – to the child, to the parent, to the teacher. Without this story, any test it becomes a threat. The stress doesn’t come from the test, it comes from the absence of a narrative frame around it.”
In the methodology, the formative role of these evaluations is also emphasized. Practically, the results can be used to find out where students are, where they need support and to adapt teaching methods.
“The expansion, by testing the evaluated skills, in the direction of the new logic of learning (…) will provide data, objective information both to teachers in the classroom and to the educational unit, substantiating the personalized feedback to the student, to the parent and to the educational community”, emphasizes the Ministry of Education.
Tests do not influence environments, do not go into the catalog and have no ranking stake.
Good diagnosis on paper, but not used in practice
If at the level of intention, evaluations are useful, at the level of implementation things are different. Gabi Bartic claims that if the diagnostic role has not worked so far in practice:
“The initial idea is a good one and expresses a normality of a healthy educational system. The completion, almost non-existent. The results ended up in the reports, the reports ended up in the drawers. Very few schools knew what to do with them concretely: which child needs which intervention, which teacher needs which support, which national trend should change something in educational policy”.
Not for lack of interest, highlights Gabi Bartic, but “because no one has trained and equipped them to read, understand and use data. A system that does not have the culture of using data cannot validate a diagnostic tool, no matter how good it is.”
Are these tests age-appropriate or not?
From this year, the tests include PISA-type items, and the skills assessed have been expanded for greater relevance. But the number of subjects was too high, say some of the teachers.
The “Pearls” phenomenon: why our students’ blunders are no longer funny
“National assessment, mathematics, fourth grade – a 60-minute time trial through 20 items, many with a medium-high degree of difficulty. A simple calculation: 3 min/requirement. From this time we subtract a few minutes for writing the identification data and the final correction. Then, mathematics also requires a working draft. We also give the children time for tests, for thinking? What are we actually aiming for? I’m curious if for each item, in writing, a time was allocated, estimated. This is how I would proceed: I add up the partial times and arrive at a work time correctly adapted to the content”teacher Coziana Zaharia wrote on Facebook.
And in the 6th grade, where testing has not yet taken place, the official models published on the website of the Ministry of Education indicate 20 requirements with an even higher degree of complexity than in the 4th grade. The solution time is also 60 minutes.
Could we opt out of these ratings?
Gabi Bartic says that not because they can be useful, but with one condition: to know what we are doing with what we find out.
“The problem is not that we test. The problem is that we test and then look elsewhere. However, testing for the sake of the tested and collective anxieties only increases anxiety.”
Aggregated at the national level and well read, the data obtained from the evaluations are gold on several levels, Gabi Bartic believes:
“At the class level: the teacher or teachers receive a profile per student, and thus know concretely – this child needs more in understanding the text, the other in numerical reasoning – and act before it’s too late.
At the school level: the principal sees where the systematic weaknesses are and can ask for methodological support or reallocate resources.
At the system level: the ministry and ISJs see the real map of learning in Romania or in the county and can make decisions based on data, not impressions.”
To reach such results, three things are needed, says the expert: “training in the use of data, time in school for this analysis, and institutional willingness to act on what you find — even if what you find is uncomfortable.”
