Come next school year, by law, your little ones will participate in comprehension screenings administered by teachers, all for feedback that those same teachers necessarily find valuable.

As announced in early November and then passed in December, standardized knowledge screenings for Kindergarten to Grade 3 students will become mandatory in Alberta beginning in the 2026-27 school year. Students’ results will be shared with relevant instructors, parents, and families along with the Ministry of Education and Childcare.

Despite Alberta Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides rationalizing these exams through their ability to identify learning difficulties early and Calgary Board of Education (CBE) data for similar exams showing early payoff, three-quarters of teachers report that mandatory testing isn’t helping students, according to a government report. Experts don’t like the screenings because of the limited return on investment compared to the difficulties they will bring to everyone administering and taking them.

As found in the early years (K-3) literacy and numeracy screening review Key Themes section, teacher respondents were concerned about the structure, curricular alignment, and usefulness of the screeners. Participants questioned whether the tools provided meaningful data and whether they were well-designed for instructional use.

“There was a preference for screeners that are more user-friendly and informative than the government-provided screeners. Some preferred screeners that appeared on the government-approved list and others preferred screeners that are not on the approved list, such as the Core Phonics or the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI) screener,” the section reads.

Alberta Teachers’ Association President Jason Schilling called these screenings a one-size-fits-none approach.

“The government needs to listen to teachers and respect their professional judgement about how best to assess student performance and progress. Then, the government needs to take the next step and provide teachers with the support and tools required to meet the needs of individual students,” he said in a statement.

Not capturing the transition from learning to read and reading to learn, says expert

These screenings, said to be short, simple activities that assess a student’s everyday reading and math skills, have a major oversight.

“What is missing is a measure of vocabulary, which is the big predictor of transitioning from early reading proficiency to really comprehending text information,” said Werklund School of Education Professor Dr. Hetty Roessingh.

Roessingh, who has more than 50 years of teaching experience in both K-12 and post-secondary, said that many kids fall into the fourth-grade slump, when school really pivots from learning to read to reading to learn. By measuring and logging students’ vocabulary throughout early school years, parents and administration could not only better understand each individual student’s language knowledge, but could also intentionally intervene when necessary, she argued.

“These screeners, the way that they’re now being proposed, are narrow and are not tapping the kinds of skills that put kids at risk. The (reading and math skills), it’s low-hanging fruit,” she said.

“Testing (vocabulary) might be a bit more time consuming to administer and mark, but that would be worth your time and would yield interesting and good information for where to go next.”

When Bill 6 was announced, Nicolaides said that with up to 95 per cent accuracy, screeners can predict whether a student will experience learning difficulties in the future. Given the complexity and diversity of Calgary’s school system, seeing a child excel in basic social interaction but struggle with classroom understanding is all too common.

“If you listen to kids just playing on the playground, you think, ‘wow, no problem at all, they are polite, they’re having fun, they interact with other kids,’ but the amount of language you need to work your way around the playground might be 2,000 words. But really, by grade four, kids need 1000s of more words than that, maybe closer to 9000 words and they don’t have them,” Roessingh told LWC.

“You won’t notice that without doing some kind of an assessment that really targets that gap.”

Screeners can be insightful, need to be executed properly

Sarah Hamilton, assistant professor at Mount Royal University, said that in theory, having a deeper understanding of an individual student’s knowledge can be valuable, but that all depends on presentation.

“Our students are going into kindergarten, we are not expecting them to be readers or writers. There’s zero expectation from a teaching perspective,” she said.

“So number one, how are (screeners) being presented to the students? Is it a ‘hey, show me what you can do, show me if you can do this,’ so that a teacher has a better idea of where they’re starting from and the wide diversity of skills that might be in their classroom, instead of it seeming like a test, I don’t think that kindergarten teachers are looking at this as a test. That’s not the way or the mentality of our kindergarten teachers.”

For students coming back from summer, getting into the flow of school can be jarring, even more so for the students who’ve never been away from home for long periods of time. A high-pressure test can be the worst thing for a student’s adjustment.

“They’re coming back from a summer off, they may need a little bit of time before they’re actually like, ‘oh yeah, I remember all this. I’m getting back into it,’” Hamilton said.

“With the kindergarteners, if we’re choosing to do early screening early in the year, there is so much change already happening in those children’s lives. Some of them may have been going to preschool for a few years, and they may be really comfortable with the idea of going into a class, being with other students, and being there all day. For some, this might be their first day away from a caregiver or home, ever.”

According to Hamilton, it’s important to keep the screener’s purpose in mind and recognize that these are just going to be one snapshot at one moment in time on one day.

Bottom line, teachers need to be present and heard during all provincial announcements with in-class implications, Hamilton said.

“I really think that it’s important that we’re listening to our teachers. They are professionals. They’ve been working with children in classrooms and they are the ones who know. I think it’s really important that we’re not ignoring the feedback that’s coming from them,” she said, referencing the government’s early years (K-3) literacy and numeracy screening review.

Teachers may not have the expertise needed to effectively administer screenings

Both Hamilton and Roessingh agreed that, in their current form, screeners may be outside of a teacher’s experience and may need some instruction on the ideal way to administer them.

“Teachers have to be supported with what happens after… how do they look at them, how do they analyze them, how do they interpret them and we cannot make assumptions that they’re automatically going to know how to do that,” Hamilton said.

As presented during the Dec. 17 CBE meeting, CBE data is trending positively for exams similar to those becoming law next school year.

“Our investment in early years assessments and interventions for literacy, mathematics are working. In literacy, the percentage of students requiring additional support over three years, as initially measured in their grade one year, has declined from 34 per cent to 13 per cent by the time students are in grade three. For students continually enrolled within the CBE, the rate is even lower at 10 per cent,” Dr. Mike Nelson, Superintendent of  School Improvement, said during the meeting.

In a statement shared with LWC at the time of Bill 6’s announcement, the Calgary Catholic School District said it was aware of the screenings and would work with Alberta Education.