Alberta teachers will have to test Kindergarten students for literacy and numeracy starting next January, the province has decided — a move one University of Alberta researcher says could help nip more learning disabilities in the bud.
Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides sent an email to school board officials July 5 saying that teachers would have to give Grades K-5 students regular literacy and numeracy tests as of the 2024-2025 school year.
Since 2022, Grade 1-3 teachers have had to give students such tests twice per school year to spot students with reading/numeracy difficulties, target them with support, and track the results.
As of Fall 2024, Nicolaides said Grade 1-3 students will instead be assessed in September and January, with students in need of extra support tested again in June. Kindergarten students will do literacy and numeracy tests in January starting in 2025. Grade 4-5 students will have to do an unspecified number of such tests starting September 2026.
In a July 11 press release, Nicolaides said these additional tests will help teachers spot learning issues and better support students. The 2024 budget includes $10 million in Learning Disruption Funding school boards can use to support students assessed as needing literacy/numeracy support.
Alberta Teachers’ Association president Jason Schilling criticized these changes in a July 11 press conference.
“By the time a student leaves elementary school they will have written as many as 32 standardized exams,” he said (assuming two tests in Kindergarten, 18 in Grades 1-3, eight in Grades 4 and 5, and the four Grade 6 Provincial Achievement Tests), up from the current 10.
Schilling said teachers already monitor their students’ education every day, and have called for more specialists and smaller class sizes to help students in need. Instead of more tests, he said the province should provide teachers with resources to support reading and math, noting that Alberta spends the least per student on public education of any province in Canada.
“Alberta is not going to test its way out of underfunding,” Schilling said.
“When so many kids are falling through the cracks, we need to be giving them a safety net instead of measuring how fast they’re falling.”
St. Albert school officials were unavailable to comment on this new testing policy.
Proactive, says prof
U of A professor of early literacy assessment and intervention George Georgiou, who has worked extensively with the province and Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools on literacy issues, said the province’s plans were supported by the latest educational research.
“Alberta Education has made the correct choice to be proactive here.”
Georgiou said research suggests early intervention is vital to help students overcome learning difficulties, with some researchers calling for literacy and numeracy tests to start at age four. Researchers have found students have the best chance of overcoming learning disabilities if those trouble are detected by Grade 1. Some 75 per cent of students with learning difficulties that do not resolve them by Grade 3 never will.
Georgiou noted that GSACRD has for many years tested K-9 students for literacy and numeracy multiple times a year, and has excellent educational results to show for it. Ontario does mandatory literacy testing in Grades K-2, while B.C. plans to do so for K-3 students starting this fall. The Ontario and Saskatchewan human rights commissions have both called for government-mandated literacy testing in Kindergarten to protect students’ right to learn to read.
“It’s a human rights issue,” Georgiou said.
