Last year, the Saskatchewan party government made the ill-advised decision to go after teachers. From bad-faith bargaining through billboards to the roundly condemned attacks on students and teachers via Bill 137, the government approached public schools and teachers more like a political adversary than a partner.
If the hostile stance against teachers was part of a wider electoral strategy moving into this year’s election, it failed miserably. Urban voter concerns with education funding, classroom conditions and teacher burnout was most likely a significant contributor to the Saskatchewan party’s near shut-out in Regina and Saskatoon.
So, it is all the more surprising, particularly given the Premier’s election night promise to “listen and reflect more,” that the government seems to be preparing for yet another fight with Saskatchewan’s teachers by attempting to implement new standardized testing. Starting next school year, “students in grades 5 and 9 will participate in hi annual standardized math assessments, while students in grades 4, 7 and 10 will write English language arts (ELA) assessments.”
This government has tried to institute standardized testing before. In 2013, it made an ill-fated attempt to introduce annual standardized testing for grades 4 through 12. Faced with a barrage of opposition from teachers, community groups, and the Education Faculty at the University of Regina, the government relented—conceding that student evaluation “needs to be developed in conjunction with teachers and those who are on the front lines.” In that case, the government listened to the concerns of teachers and other educators that standardized testing was not in the best interests of students, or the wider goals of the province’s education system.
As educators argued, there is no evidence that standardized testing improves teacher or student learning, nor do they provide information to educators that cannot be gleaned through existing assessments. Teachers who perform regular assessments on a daily basis are best positioned to evaluate a student’s progress in relation to the curriculum. Moreover, the inevitable ranking of schools based on test scores can lower teacher and student morale as well as introduce perverse incentives to “teach to the test”—reducing time and resources dedicated to content outside the test.
Most importantly, these tests do nothing to address what is often the most significant obstacle for student learning—their environment outside of school. As the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) notes, “socio-economically disadvantaged students in OECD countries are seven times more likely on average than advantaged students not to achieve basic mathematics proficiency.”
All of those concerns hold equally true today—perhaps even more so given the impact of the pandemic on exacerbating many of the education inequalities that were already prevalent in our province. These inequities directly influence the classroom complexity that drove Saskatchewan teachers’ to strike last year.
Differing students’ needs in the same classroom may require a teacher to develop individualized student learning plans, refer students to ESL programs, request the support of Educational Assistants or assess the need for psychological evaluation. None of these educational inequities will be addressed by standardized testing—in fact it will make them worse.
Standardized testing regimes are expensive in money, resources and the time required to prepare, deliver and evaluate the results. In 2013, the Saskatchewan government estimated its test would cost $5.9 million to deliver—a number likely to be exponentially larger 11 inflationary years later and with an ever-growing student population. That’s money that will not be going to support students and teachers in the classroom, despite the very clear message from teachers that classroom investments are an urgent priority.
Following a Saskatchewan Teacher’s Federation’s protest at the legislature in May 2023, Premier Scott Moe said, “You’ve been heard.” In his election night victory speech, the Premier told us, “We’ve heard your message,” promising that his government would “do better,” including supporting children’s education. For all this government’s talk of listening, they seem profoundly deaf to the needs and concerns of teachers in our province.
Writing in the aftermath of the province’s failed attempt to implement a similar program, educators Marc Spooner and Paul Orlowski noted that “standardized testing is a pedagogical tool that makes the most sense to those who are the farthest removed from actual classrooms and actual students.” If the Saskatchewan government would hear the very clear message coming from those actually closest to the classroom and students, they would drop standardized testing and start supporting teachers rather than needlessly antagonizing them.
