National Assessment Program : Literacy And Numeracy

6. Purpose of test or measure. Describe what the test is intended to measure and give your critical analysis of the tests ability to measure the intended construct(s):

This $340 million-dollar program could have applied its money more effectively elsewhere, instead of expecting an improvement in literacy and numeracy while effectively holding back resources that allow parents, students, and teachers to do so. The extra pressure faced by students in the creation of such a test based education system is expected to contribute to wider segregation of underperforming and academically successful students, which may see HSC turnout numbers plummet. NAPLAN results are grossly inadequate to elect students which are deemed “below the standards” and we should be doing more to act on information gained on NAPLAN, instead of using it as a

These tests will provide teachers and administrators a diagnosis of how the school is performing and in which areas the school needs to improve on. This will also inform policymakers which schools are doing well and why. Then that technique can be applied to schools in which the scores were not meeting standards. President Bush and the U.S. Congress have challenged educators to set high standards and hold students, schools and districts accountable for results. (Dept. of Ed, 2004)

* This is to determine if the delivery and assessment meets the requirements of the standards or assessment criteria , the whole assessment process needs to be accutat, consistate, safe and meets all organisation requirements.

In May 2018, more than a million school-age children from Grades 3 and 5 in primary school and Years 7 and 9 in secondary schools across Australia will complete the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy Test (NAPLAN). Millions of students around the world are similarly tested in schools with their own versions of standardised testing. I am going to discuss that NAPLAN and other forms of testing excludes specific groups of people such as students with an Indigenous background, an English as an Additional Language background and students with a disability using critical race theory. From my own personal experience, NAPLAN was not around until I was in Year 9, I remember being stressed about NAPLAN and as I am on the Autism Spectrum,

“No issue in the U.S. Education is more controversial than (standardized) testing. Some people view it as the linchpin of serious reform and improvement, others as a menace to quality teaching and learning” (Phelps). A tool that educators use to learn about students and their learning capabilities is the standardized test. Standardized tests are designed to give a common measure of a student’s performance. Popular tests include the SAT, IQ tests, Regents Exams, and the ACT. “Three kinds of standardized tests are used frequently in schools: achievement, diagnostic, and aptitude” (Woolfolk 550). Achievement tests can be used to help a teacher assess a student’s strengths and weaknesses in a

Tests are everywhere and there’s nothing we can do about it because they are in fact important to any student’s school life as they test his or her academic skills to show that they do indeed have those academic skills to pass and to get a better grade. Anyone who has gone to school would have heard or have done the famous NAPLAN test, it’s a test that doesn’t pass nor fail you which seems completely different to normal tests. NAPLAN short for The National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy is a “test” that diagnostics the student for government uses but doesn’t affect the student's overall grade. The Naplan test is a broken system that could ruin a student’s current and future studies and that’s why Australia should stop with this

Describe with examples the importance of recognising and responding to concerns about children and young people’s development.

The 1980s brought a new reform movement in education, accompanied by a new emphasis on testing. The effort to improve education at all levels included the use of standardized tests to provide accountability for what students are learning. Minimum competency tests, achievement tests, and screening instruments were used to ensure that students from preschool through college reached the desired educational goals and achieved the minimum standards of education that were established locally or by the state education agency. As we continue in a new century, these concerns have increased.

When addressing the reliability of the NAPLAN it is important to consider the restricted number of test items included, and how this minimises the test scope and impacts on very high and very low achievers (Howes, 2013). While the move to an online format will help address some of these, there remains a belief that the test goes against what is recognised as effective assessment practise due to an inconsistency with what is being measured and what is being taught within school curriculum (Facchinetti, 2013). It is contended that NAPLAN items are more strongly based on commonsense or traditional views which can shape the results rather than providing an accurate insight into the learning of individuals or the

The educational system in the United States has gone through many changes over the last century. These changes are a part of a constant movement toward educational excellence for every child in this nation. One of the most recent acts placed on public school systems by the government is to create more accountability for schools in order to ensure that all children are receiving the proper education. Part of this mandate is that public schools will require students to take tests in order to gather information about their academic achievement. Although educators and administrators claim that the mandatory ability testing programs being initiated in America’s public schools will hold students and teachers accountable for academic

NAPLAN. A series of literary and numeracy tests to allow teachers to be informed of their students progress. Introduced in 2008, the grades 3, 5, 7 and 9 took the test merely to inform parents and teachers about their performance. But, as of 2017, the year 9 NAPLAN is now affecting the entry into HSC. This, for some may be excellent news as it allows the nation's academic average to rise, but to others, it

vi). The NAPLAN rhetoric is reflective of previous educational policies in Australia linking national assessment with greater equity in education and promises of ‘targeted intervention’ for disadvantaged students (Klenowski & Wyatt-Smith, 2012, p. 67). However, since the introduction of NAPLAN there has been no improvement in ‘reading scores’ for LBOTE or Indigenous students in Year 7 (ACARA, 2016, p. 301). In fact, ‘no change’ was evident in reading for any Year 7 students between 2008 and 2016, which at a surface level may indicate that there is no difference in student achievement when comparing disadvantaged students to their peers (ACARA, 2016, p. 301). To truly understand the implications of this data it is important to consider existing gaps, with one example from the 2016 NAPLAN results demonstrating that 59.4% of Year 7 Indigenous students in the Northern Territory were below the national minimum standard for reading compared with 5.3% of non-Indigenous students (ACARA, 2016, p. 132). Additional statistics from 2016 can be seen to further highlight differences in educational outcomes according to Indigenous status, LBOTE status and geolocation for writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation as well as numeracy (see Appendix 1). This data from the 2016 national report indicates that to date NAPLAN has

The National Assessment Program- Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is designed to test the knowledge and abilities of students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. It is undertaken nationwide, every year, in the second full week in May, by over 1 million students (ACARA, n.d.). Also, NAPLAN comprises of four domains, including; reading, writing, language conventions (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and numeracy (NAP, 2016a). The NAPLAN numeracy assessment evaluates students’ mathematical knowledge, skills and understanding. It also assesses the students proficiency, understanding, fluency, problem-solving and reasoning across the three content strands of mathematics: number and algebra; measurement and geometry; and statistics and probability (NAP, 2016b).

Although testing has been around for a long time, I instinctively believe that testing doesn’t give a clear picture of student’s achievement. Thus, I make strong connection to the following quote: “A central question has been whether accountability policies and standardized testing helping or harming those children the polices are most often designed to serve” (Skrla, p.11). For instance, when I analyzed and interpreted the TAPR of Richard J Wilson Elementary school, I found valuable information that all teachers should know at the beginning of every school year. Specifically, when I examined the categories of testing and the students’ performance on individual TEKS. This practice would allow teachers to have a clear picture of what exact skills and content knowledge students are expected to achieve throughout the school year.