The Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) is raising concerns over the province's standardized testing for students in kindergarten, arguing that it exacerbates stress and anxiety, particularly among younger children whose developmental stages and learning speeds differ widely.
In partnership with Dr. Richelle Marynowski from the University of Lethbridge, ATA has reviewed the standardized diagnostic assessment tools (SDATs) and concluded that they offer no educational value to children, potentially hindering their learning progress instead.
These tests are designed to get a sense of where students are in terms of their literacy and numeracy; however, ATA president Jason Schilling says, “at this point of the school year with kindergarten students, teachers have already identified learning needs of students.”
“[They] need support now to address those needs [instead of] another test to tell teachers information that they already know,” Schilling added.
He explained that while the ATA is not opposed to testing students who may need it, the core issue lies in administering assessments to all students multiple times a year without providing the necessary support for teachers when learning discrepancies are identified.
Last year, Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides announced that kindergarten students will be required to take these standardized tests starting Jan. 2025, with Grade four and five students set to join the screenings in September 2026.
“The ATA’s characterization of these tools as standardized tests is wrong and misleading,” Nicolaides said. “I’m really unsure why anyone would object to giving our teachers every possible tool to help their students.”
Schilling acknowledges that kindergarten students come from diverse learning and cultural backgrounds and allowing teachers the professional discretion to decide whether testing is necessary for individual students is a more effective approach in his view.
“Providing teachers with support and judgment to test kids as they are needed would be more beneficial for a program that’s not mandatory in Alberta. These tests are mandatory for kids, but not the program. There’s a big discrepancy there.”
In contrast, Nicolaides believes that the screeners are grounded in scientific research developed in Alberta by academics at the University of Alberta (U of A).
“These quick screeners can accurately identify 95 per cent of students who will later develop reading difficulties,” he said.
U of A education professor George Georgiou was tasked with identifying suitable screening tools for provincial use and developed a guide on how to interpret the results of these tests.
“I’m confident that parents would appreciate these insights and I’m further confident that teachers and schools would benefit from knowing which learners need more help,” Nicolaides added.
Schilling expressed disappointment that, despite having raised concerns about the exams with ministers and government officials, they have ignored the profession's objections and pressed ahead with the implementation of the tests.
Schilling emphasized that the lack of resources in Alberta's educational institutions is a major concern citing overall education budget cuts as pressing issues.
He pointed out that some of the fastest-growing school districts in Alberta, such as Rocky View, require smaller class sizes but often go overlooked.
"We need more teachers in the system," he stressed.
In regards to the education budget, Nicolaides shared that, “more families are moving to Alberta so that's why we made [a] record investment of $9.3 billion into education through Budget 2024 to accommodate this growth.”
“Over the next three years we are providing $1.2 billion to hire more than 3,000 new teachers and other education support staff, and this summer we injected an additional $125 million into the education system which school authorities could use to hire up to 1,000 additional teachers. Further to this, we just recently announced a generational commitment of $8.6 billion to build schools now."
Despite the contrasting views of Schilling and Nicolaides, kindergarten teachers are raising concerns that the number of students in their classes versus time required for screenings could result in young children losing up to an entire week of valuable learning time.
