The Penwood High Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate School-based Assessment saga and the regional incident it almost started between the established examinations council and the Jamaican Ministry of Education makes vivid the importance of testing at all levels. While negotiations took place under the watchful public eye, students undoubtedly languished in fear. There was uncertainty whether there would be a favourable outcome for these students. The fact that the plight of these students made the headlines for weeks brought into focus the dominant role of tests and testing in our education system.

As an educator, this has caused me to reflect on the place of testing in our school system. Therefore, the dominant question is, does testing guide our educational situation or does our educational situation guide our testing practices?

Testing at another level

A few years ago a parent approached me with the news that she was advised by the class teacher to keep her child home on the day of the Grade Four Literacy Test because the child was not ready and could be retained in grade four, for a year, to become more mature to take the test. I was livid, to say the least, because only one major reason for this request came to mind: That the teacher wanted the ‘poor performers’ to ‘voluntarily’ withdraw from the test so that only the high performers would do the test.

I went to the school and discussed this with the teacher. I also spoke with a vice-principal and she informed me that there was nothing wrong with the practice and they did it all the time. The story ends where the child sat the test and did not achieve mastery that year. However, on her second attempt, in grade five, she attained mastery.

Why does that story remain with me until today? For many years, the school was unscrupulous in its practice and gave a false impression of literacy achievement at the grade four level. As a foundation member of the Literacy Improvement Initiative in 1999 when the Grade Four Literacy Test was first administered nationally, I learned that the test was to provide an indication of whether students had achieved the requisite literacy competencies for their grade level.

These first set of results were well below expectations and several initiatives were instituted to address the literacy challenges faced by Jamaican students. Summer literacy camps, literacy research and development centres established in Moneague and Bethlehem colleges to train literacy specialists, were only a few of these initiatives. The desire to want students to perform well on tests is not new. My visit to some of these summer camps revealed that teachers kept the literacy tests in their possessions and drilled the students in the items on these tests so they could pass. When I inquired about this I received reasons like, “This child gives so much trouble I would never want him to stay back in my class for another year,” or “If these students keep failing it would look bad on the school and our teachers; we would seem like failures.”

Labelling schools,

Jamaican schools and teachers have been historically rated (informally) according to the test scores their students receive. Recently, in more formal circles, the term “failing schools” have been offered by education officials to typify schools that have performed below par on selected examinations. I have visited schools that have been labelled the “dunce schools” because their students’ scores are not on par with national averages. I have also visited classrooms within schools where they are labelled the “dunce class”, or even further to label the teacher the “dunce teacher”, because those classes do not receive high scores in examinations. Even more importantly, within classrooms, there have been students placed in one section of the class and are sometimes openly identified as the dull ones.

However, I have always emphasised that often the high-achieving classes and the teachers of these classes sometimes do not make as much learning gains as the other classes. But the reality of our situation is that examination scores are used to define achievement and provide labels for schools, classes, teachers, and administrators.

High-stakes testing

One notable comparative education scholar, Robert F Dore wrote the book

The Diploma Disease, which underscores the high stakes involved in testing in developing nations. The book also highlights the sad reality that examinations normally serve as the gateway to limited opportunities that exist in these countries. While I do not discount the importance of testing for both educational and career advancement, it is important that we avoid double standards in our education system.

On one hand, the teacher is encouraged to cater to each student no matter at what level they may fall on the achievement ladder and, on the other hand, student scores on standardised tests is a major criterion in the teacher’s performance review, and may even affect that teacher’s ability to work. This is not unique to the Jamaican context, as schools in the USA have been so pressured to perform that even superintendents and principals have been cited for illegal activities, including changing responses on students’ test papers in order to ensure that schools in their district receive high ratings.

Therefore, the question lingers: Do we teach students to promote critical thinking skills or do we drill them in order to pass the high stakes test?

Next week, in Part Two, we will look at the business of teaching students to think and the stress on parents and teachers within the high-stakes testing framework.

Clement T M Lambert, PhD, is an educational researcher, consultant, and lecturer in language arts education at The University of the West Indies. He leads the Communication and Arts Cluster and coordinates literacy studies at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Send comments to the Observer or clementtmlambert@gmail.com.