11/29/2017
NAPLAN has done little to improve student outcomes
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
NAPLAN has done little to improve student outcomes
November 17, 2017 6.09am AEDT
Authors
Radhika Gorur
DECRA Fellow and Senior Lecturer In
Education, Deakin University
Steven Lewis
Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research
Fellow, Deakin University
Results from the 2017 NAPLAN results showed very little improvement since the test was introduced
10 years ago. Richard Wainwright/AAP
Since it was introduced in the 1800s, standardised testing in Australian schools has attracted
controversy and divided opinion. In this series, we examine its pros and cons, including appropriate
uses for standardised tests and which students are disadvantaged by them.
In recent years, we have seen a global surge in standardised testing as nations attempt to improve
student outcomes. Rich nations, as well as many middle- and low-income nations, have participated
in international assessments such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA),
and also developed their own national standardised assessments. But can such assessments improve
student outcomes?
Information from standardised tests is too limited to improve outcomes
The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) was introduced in Australia
in 2008. It is a standardised test administered annually to all Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7 and
9. These tests are supposed to perform two functions: provide information to develop better schooling
policies, and provide teachers with information to improve student outcomes.
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NAPLAN has done little to improve student outcomes
However, a decade on and many millions of dollars later, student outcomes on NAPLAN have shown
little improvement. Australia’s performance on international assessments such as PISA has actually
fallen over these years. Standardised testing has not produced a positive effect on student learning
outcomes.
Supporters of standardised testing see NAPLAN as necessary to know which schools and school
systems are doing well and which ones are not. It is undoubtedly useful to know if certain parts of the
country (such as regional or rural areas), or certain student populations (for example, students with
an immigrant or low-SES background), are underperforming. Such information is also crucial when it
comes to arguing for resource redistribution, as we see in debates about Gonski.
However, there are clear limits to what NAPLAN can tell us. While it helps us understand schooling at
the system level, the information gained from NAPLAN about individual students, classrooms and
schools is too limited and error-prone to be of use.
For instance, there is a limit to the number of questions NAPLAN can ask to assess a particular
student’s skill or understanding. It may determine that a student cannot perform addition using
“carrying over” based on their performance on one or two such items on the 40-item test. This means
the error margins in these assessments are very high.
Such errors may be neutralised at a system level, when the test is performed at a sufficiently large
scale and with a large sample of students, but when used at the level of individual students,
classrooms or schools, NAPLAN assessment data is seriously flawed.
Assessment versus standardised testing
Assessment is integral to the teaching process and occurs almost constantly in good classrooms.
Teachers have a range of assessment techniques, including questioning during the course of a lesson,
setting assignments, using data from standardised testing, and developing more formal exams. These
different assessment techniques fulfil a variety of different purposes: diagnosing student knowledge,
shaping student learning and assessing what has been learned.
Increasingly, teachers are encouraged to individualise their teaching in order to accommodate the
needs of individual students. This focus on “inclusion” extends to assessment, and teachers are
expected to provide a variety of formats and opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning.
Education policy statements, such as the 2008 Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for
Young Australians, emphasise the valuing of student diversity.
Standardised assessments, on the other hand, assume that particular levels of achievement are
expected of certain ages or year levels. Students are then classified as meeting, exceeding or being
below these expectations. This flies in the face of the realities that teachers observe daily in their
classrooms: students do not present themselves as “standardised” humans.
Geoff Masters, Chief Executive of the Australian Council for Educational Research, claims that in any
given classroom, the differences between students can be multiple years:
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NAPLAN has done little to improve student outcomes
Some Year 9 students perform at the same level as some Year 5, and possibly some Year 3,
students.
By this logic, the notion of providing a standardised NAPLAN test for all Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 students is
inappropriate.
Teachers who see their students all year long will always have a deeper knowledge of their students
than point-in-time standardised tests can offer. Teachers can make better, more nuanced, more useful
and more timely assessments of their students. They may choose to include standardised assessments
in the suite of approaches they use, but NAPLAN should not be solely privileged over teacher
assessments.
Despite this, enormous amounts of money and time have been spent training teachers to use
NAPLAN results to inform their teaching. This not only provides an unnecessary and misleading
distraction to already over-burdened teachers but it undermines their own professional knowledge
and judgement.
Stepping up accountability doesn’t necessarily translate to better outcomes
One of the goals of NAPLAN was to enhance accountability. By judging all schools on the same
measure, comparing schools with similar populations, and then making these comparisons public, it
was expected that all schools would lift their game.
This strategy assumed that schools could improve but were choosing not to, and that the inducement
of market logics (such as school choice) would motivate all schools to do better. It also ignored the
many out-of-school factors, such as poverty and geography, that affect the ability of teachers and
schools to improve student outcomes.
The other logic was that schools that performed worse could learn from schools that were doing
better. Besides minimising the importance of local factors to student learning and suggesting there
are universal “silver bullets”, setting schools in competition with one another hardly provides
incentives for better performing schools to share their knowledge.
Blame alone is not the answer
Accountability is important and standardised testing can inform policies and improve accountability.
But to function as an instrument of accountability, these tests should not be high-stakes, high-stress
or high-visibility, particularly since they are so error prone at the student, classroom and school
levels.
The use of sample-based tests, such as the United States’ National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP), may instead provide useful information by state and territory, as well as by
categories such as social capital, ethnicity and gender. This information could highlight problematic
areas, and trigger closer and more targeted explorations.
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NAPLAN has done little to improve student outcomes
To get this type of information, the tests need not be conducted every year, since effects of any
reforms are seldom evident in one year. The error margins also make year-on-year comparisons of
limited value. Sample-based tests will also remove the pressures placed on schools and students,
which have proven so detrimental.
As recent NAPLAN results have shown, “blame and shame” alone does not improve student learning.
Indeed, focusing solely on NAPLAN scores distracts from broader efforts to provide teachers, schools
and school systems with the support needed to ensure all students are given the best chance to learn
and succeed.
To date, NAPLAN has been largely used by politicians and the education system to hold teachers and
schools accountable. But accountability can work both ways. If NAPLAN is to be used, we should also
use it to also hold the education system and politicians accountable for the resources and funding they
provide to schools and to the local communities they serve. Perhaps then we would see some real and
sustained improvements in student outcomes.
School funding
NAPLAN
PISA
School assessment
standardised testing
Standardised testing series
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