Last week I attended a meeting convened by the World Bank on Assessment for Global Learning. There was intense discussion and a sense among many participants that we are facing a learning crisis which needs to be tackled directly and forcefully by the international community.
The target of achieving primary education set out in the MDGs and the six goals set out in the Education For All declarations have been effective drivers of change, and the available data have shown significant increases in access to education (In recent months there have been intense international discussions (and a good number of publications) about what the world goals for education should be after 2015. It seems that the majority of opinions lean towards what has been called access plus learning (i.e. to continue the trends for all children to be enrolled in pre-school and finish at least primary education and to make sure that all children are learning well while at school). There are many issues around the second component of this, however, such as: learn what? measure how? what age (grade) groups and learning goals should we collect data on? who should do the measuring so that it’s comparable across countries and over time? And, most importantly, how should the data be used most effectively in order to improve quality and reduce inequality in education?
Some of this ‘access plus learning’ approach by the Learning Metrics Task Force, sponsored by UNESCO and Brookings, which proposed seven recommendations, seven skills, and seven indicators. And this formed the basis for discussions at last week’s meetings.
A first identifiable tension is how to set up world indicators that can be measured realistically and can produce comparable results. Educators will argue that all domains of human development are important, while professionals from other disciplines often argue that testing all areas of human learning at a standardised, international level is unrealistic (at least in the medium term), so the targets should focus on the building blocks for further learning: reading and mathematics. This would not preclude other forms of assessment (e.g. at the classroom level or standardised national evaluations). Perhaps this is the way to go: each country should develop a testing plan to cover the intended curriculum, but internationally we need to agree on a reduced plan that allows for collective action to take place. National and international evaluations should be coordinated so that the information is complementary.
Second, there is the issue of what to do with the information. While many countries have moved towards ‘high-stakes testing’ (i.e. the use of student test scores to sanction or reward specific actors or institutions, for example to promote or fire teachers), research suggests that this is not a desirable course of action, for a variety of reasons. The main argument against high-stakes testing is that it incentivises all kinds of gaming behaviour, by which learning and education become secondary to finding ways which produce better results in a specific test .
Campbell's Law was cited as a principle that explains negative consequences of high-stakes testing: "The more any quantitative social indicator (or even some qualitative indicator) is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."
‘Low-stakes testing’ would be the
The conference ended with a sense of urgency about the need to develop indicators, targets and comparable measures of learning, at least for basic skills at selected grades. This seems to me an important task in the continued dialogue between evidence and policymaking that only now is starting to bear fruit. For any new indicators and targets, it is imperative that not only national averages of learning should be considered, but also gaps within countries, especially among the poor and non-poor.
Last week I attended a meeting convened by the World Bank on Assessment for Global Learning. There was intense discussion and a sense among many participants that we are facing a learning crisis which needs to be tackled directly and forcefully by the international community.
The target of achieving primary education set out in the MDGs and the six goals set out in the Education For All declarations have been effective drivers of change, and the available data have shown significant increases in access to education (In recent months there have been intense international discussions (and a good number of publications) about what the world goals for education should be after 2015. It seems that the majority of opinions lean towards what has been called access plus learning (i.e. to continue the trends for all children to be enrolled in pre-school and finish at least primary education and to make sure that all children are learning well while at school). There are many issues around the second component of this, however, such as: learn what? measure how? what age (grade) groups and learning goals should we collect data on? who should do the measuring so that it’s comparable across countries and over time? And, most importantly, how should the data be used most effectively in order to improve quality and reduce inequality in education?
Some of this ‘access plus learning’ approach by the Learning Metrics Task Force, sponsored by UNESCO and Brookings, which proposed seven recommendations, seven skills, and seven indicators. And this formed the basis for discussions at last week’s meetings.
A first identifiable tension is how to set up world indicators that can be measured realistically and can produce comparable results. Educators will argue that all domains of human development are important, while professionals from other disciplines often argue that testing all areas of human learning at a standardised, international level is unrealistic (at least in the medium term), so the targets should focus on the building blocks for further learning: reading and mathematics. This would not preclude other forms of assessment (e.g. at the classroom level or standardised national evaluations). Perhaps this is the way to go: each country should develop a testing plan to cover the intended curriculum, but internationally we need to agree on a reduced plan that allows for collective action to take place. National and international evaluations should be coordinated so that the information is complementary.
Second, there is the issue of what to do with the information. While many countries have moved towards ‘high-stakes testing’ (i.e. the use of student test scores to sanction or reward specific actors or institutions, for example to promote or fire teachers), research suggests that this is not a desirable course of action, for a variety of reasons. The main argument against high-stakes testing is that it incentivises all kinds of gaming behaviour, by which learning and education become secondary to finding ways which produce better results in a specific test .
Campbell's Law was cited as a principle that explains negative consequences of high-stakes testing: "The more any quantitative social indicator (or even some qualitative indicator) is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."
‘Low-stakes testing’ would be the
The conference ended with a sense of urgency about the need to develop indicators, targets and comparable measures of learning, at least for basic skills at selected grades. This seems to me an important task in the continued dialogue between evidence and policymaking that only now is starting to bear fruit. For any new indicators and targets, it is imperative that not only national averages of learning should be considered, but also gaps within countries, especially among the poor and non-poor.