Teachers and experts have called the Alberta government’s move to make literacy and numeracy screening assessments mandatory for young school children “controversial,” and some are questioning the efficacy of these standardized tests.

The Literacy and Numeracy Screening Assessments are a series of standardized tests that aim to “provide critical information” to teachers, parents and Alberta Education about numeracy and literacy skills in kindergarten children and students in Grades 1 to 3.

Previously they were optional, but the province made them mandatory for the 2024–2025 academic year in July.

According to the general information bulletin for the tests, school authorities must screen students at the beginning of the year to identify additional supports in literacy and numeracy skills and results must be reported in their Annual Education Results Report (AERR) to Alberta Education.

Independent early childhood services must complete a survey to report their kindergarten literacy and numeracy results to Alberta Education. Students will then have to be reassessed in January and June.

“The primary objective of the requirement to reassess is to ensure that children and students who are identified as requiring additional supports in their literacy and numeracy skills are identified and are provided supports that assist them in developing the necessary foundational literacy and numeracy skills they need to be successful in their education and beyond,” the document read.

“School authorities may use government-provided literacy and numeracy screening assessments or government-approved alternative screening assessments to help make this determination. Screening assessments are not intended to measure student mastery of the curriculum but to help teachers understand the child’s or the student’s foundational literacy and numeracy skills.”

Alberta’s Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said, “supporting our youngest learners as they develop their foundational literacy and numeracy skills is one of the most important things we can do.”

“These assessments serve as a means to tell teachers, staff and parents where a student’s literacy and numeracy skills are at. This will identify if a student needs a helping hand so they can get the intervention they need at an early age to ensure they can build the fundamental skills they need to succeed in the classroom and life.”

Steacy Pinney, a change maker in residence at Mount Royal University and former CEO of Calgary Reads, applauded the recent change and argued that data from these assessments is important for early intervention and identifying what supports are needed.

She said that the data is important so teachers and educational programs can provide evidence that the supports are working.

Pinney added that more and more students are struggling to read, and the COVID-19 pandemic escalated that problem because it highlighted inequities within the education system.

“We need the data, first and foremost, to be able to ensure that every child is learning to read by the third grade and without any kind of formal assessment, far too many kids were falling through the cracks and not being identified early enough,” Pinney told LiveWire Calgary in an interview.

“When you don’t have early identification, you also can’t provide the instructional supports that a child needs, depending on what the learning issue may be that they’re presenting… it’s been really easy for Albertans to ignore the fact that there are more and more kids struggling to read.”

Pinney, who was also educated as a Grade 1 teacher, said early literacy intervention is also important for a child’s social well-being.

She acknowledged the significant amount of time it takes to administer the literacy and numeracy assessments to kids (around 20 to 25 minutes per child), but said a lot of kids will tease and bully those who can’t read as well as their peers.

“I think for a long time, the rationale was teachers will just know who they need to help but in actuality, for decades now our post-secondary institutions have not been training teachers to know who’s a struggling reader, and the science of reading needs to be embedded within education systems so that teachers’ capacity to teach reading is enhanced,” she said.

“Kids who are identified by their friends, or shut out from playtime at recess by their friends because they can’t read, that’s the biggest stress of all.”

Assessments are stressful for teachers and kids: teacher’s union

Jason Schilling, president of the Alberta Teacher’s Association, said he’s received several emails from members talking about the negative impact the tests are having on instruction time.

He told LWC that the tests are taking away time for children to build relationships with their teachers, and ATA members are questioning whether there is value in these tests.

Schilling said what the student is doing in class is a better indication of what the curriculum is asking that student to do on a standardized test, whether it’s the numeracy and literacy assessments or diploma exams.

A lot of younger students are having a negative view of school because of these tests, he added.

“Some of the kids coming into Grade 1 who are being tested can’t hold a pencil yet. Now they’re supposed to fill in a bubble sheet, and the way that they’re doing that in the literacy tests is different than the math tests … So kids will look at [the tests] and say, ‘I don’t understand how this works. It’s not how they traditionally would have been seen in the curriculum,” Schilling said in an interview with LWC.

Schilling added that many young children do not have the skills yet to take a 20-minute exam and require many breaks to sit through the tests, and its unclear if teachers will be given resources to help students who are struggling with reading as a result of these tests.

“There’s no indication that there’s going to be supports provided to teachers during that September to January phase to do some direct one-on-one [teaching],” he said.

“The process with these literacy and numeracy exams when they were in a pilot form, was that kids were pulled out, they were worked with one-on-one. They had intensive work with other professionals to get their literacy skills brought back up, and that worked on a pilot. But when you scale it provincially, it’s not working, because the supports aren’t there, the resources aren’t there.”

Schilling said there are alternative ways for teachers to assess their students’ literacy and numeracy skills, including presentations and other creative assessments.

“Kids are saying, ‘Why are we doing this? What’s the point?’ I hear of a lot of kids crying because they’re not successful at these tests. They feel like they’re failing,” he said.

“I know critics will say, ‘Well, you know, this is not a test, it’s a screener to see what their ability is.’ Well, when you’re seven years old, you don’t understand that. What you understand is that you didn’t do well at this and that you didn’t pass.”

There needs to be a balance: MRU professor

Sarah Hamilton, an Assistant Professor at MRU and a former research lead for a K-12 school in Calgary, said standardized testing is beneficial only if they’re being used to align with the Alberta curriculum.

It is also equally important to communicate to students, especially younger ones, that the tests being conducted in the classroom are being used to identify how the teacher is better able to teach.

“How are they trained? How are [the tests] communicated? What do [teachers] do with [the tests]? Are there positive actions to that?” Hamilton told LWC.

She added that concerns about taking time away from learning and resources are valid, and it’s important that the Alberta government does not test the kids too often, and relies too much on the assessment results.

However, it is also important to determine where the kids are in their reading journey and how educators can help them, she said.

“It all comes down to balance, and it comes down to, I think, the actions that come from it. For some students, it’s probably not going to be in their best interest to put them in those situations,” Hamilton said.

“If [students] are stressed out about it, [teachers] may not get an accurate representation of what those students know and do either.”

Hamilton said assessments, other than diploma exams, don’t always have to be part of the grading scheme. Similarly, teachers should not be pressured to plan their classrooms and teaching plans around those assessments.

“It’s the first week of October, and there are Grade 6 teachers who are already talking about things they have to do because of the Grade 6 Provincial Achievement Tests coming up in June. That is not how we should envision education and learning,” she said.

“Alberta seems to be moving forward to put more on standardized testing, if they’re doing this in order to monitor learning progress, then that is something that can really benefit students… If they’re doing it to increase accountability and for grading, then that says a lot about the direction that we’re headed, because there’s just so many different things that go into the testing.”

Hamilton urged parents to consider the validity of both arguments. Standardized testing can give them an idea of where their children are at in school, but they should also respect the fact that teachers know their students well beyond what the assessment results say and indicate otherwise.

“I think we have to soften, not stop, and really ask the purpose of it. What’s going to be done with it. Is it going to be positive? Is it going to result in positive things from student learning?” she said.

“If there’s no action taken, then I would say there is not enough good consensus to do it.”