Ask Sherrin Blog

Naplan & other exams – how can you prepare students for an exam without cheating? Are we measuring student performance against benchmarks? Are we looking for the problems only? Should we also be identifying the strengths for enrichment?  Is NAPLAN and its administration and preparation of students different to other in school exams and the QCS TEST, for example, for our year 12 students too.

The papers have reported that there was a group of children who were given additional time to complete the NAPLAN test in May. The NAPLAN tests are designed to see where our students have needs and to provide additional support. There are a number of issues this raises in relation to standardised testing, comparisons of children’s performance against benchmarks (and not comparisons between schools and student groups) usual test preparation, learning, how children’s brains process at different speeds, memorising and understanding:

• Treating all students equally – through standardised test - is this equity or does it disadvantage some children? To measure the outcomes against benchmarks the conditions of the test need to be administered in standardised ways. – this raises a good number of questions and issues
• Are we measuring students’ performance against benchmarks – is it criterion based assessment ? or are we using the data for comparisons between students and schools? Surely first and foremost we should be using the NAPLAN test to identify the individual needs of students … and this leads to another issue: 
• Are we ONLY looking for the gaps – operating within a paradigm of scarcity, deficiency, weakness – gaps (poverity) – lack and insufficiency? Or are we finding the gaps to build bridges AND also looking for the strengths – to raise up and expand and extend and nurture to fullness – prosperity mentality – abundance mentality …
• Are we testing to see how many finish within the time frame – and what are we doing with the results of who isn’t finished or left the last questions unanswered? What is the purpose of a time limit? Are we interested in what children know or are we interested in what children know within a time limit?  If a child is given more time, as a way to meet their individual needs, and in doing so demonstrates understanding and mastery – are we then identifying that they don’t need ‘additional support’ so to speak but they need additional time to answer the questions – isn’t that valid data and worth identifying for that child?
• This raises the issue that every learner learns differently; we all learn at different speeds – brains process at different speeds …. So for those brains process at slower speeds, they will not be able to complete the test … it is fairer to give learners as much time as they need …. There is no advantage nor disadvantage in doing this … everyone wins – they child who processes quickly will be finished more quickly and the child who needs more time will be able to take more time - if there was open ended testing without time limits, there would not be any cheating in this regard -  
• It is my belief that all children are prepared by teachers for exams …. QCS Preparation – takes place throughout the year even some schools begin QCS preparation while the students are in year 11; when we teach children in high schools for one Term, we are preparing them for the exam to come – we give homework, provide explanation and demonstration, and give additional work to be completed through text book questions etc – the exam will then have 50 – 60% recall of content/factual information – exactly as we have taught it AND a remaining % will be given in ‘application and processing’ questions ….   To test to see if the students to utilise the information and skills taught, in unfamiliar situations …. 
• All schools and parents can obtain past NAPLAN tests and sample questions from the website ….  All of this is done to adequately prepare the child for the exam or test …. One can even practice Intelligence Test questions – readily available in book forms and over the internet – and then score better in intelligence tests ….
• Psychologists who administer WISC R 3 tests – to measure how a child performs across many different areas, cannot administer such test twice within a specified time period, because this could advantage a learner who has a good memory – rehearsed memory allows a student to score well or higher due to having a good memory – this is different to measuring understanding and applications ….

Dowload the show here: Sherrin on 4BC 5-10-10.mp3