The place of national testing educational development: The faces of "strong and "weak" assessment

Abstract

There is considerable agreement among educators that national assessment and testing is capable of meeting both summative and formative goals. This paper employs illustration from Caribbean countries, as well as from countries outside of the region, to show that the summative purposes are generally realized, but that evaluators and policy makers have not done a particularly good job in providing teachers and schools with kinds of information from these national testing programmes that are needed to realize the formative purposes. In order to increase the likelihood that both the summative and formative purposes of national testing programmes are realized, a case is made for: a) considering selective sampling of participants in the testing, b) exploring the alternatives to paper-and-pencil testing formats, c) combining school-based teacher assessments that are derived from national examinations, d) improving the match between the form and the use of the results of national tests. Several scenarios derived from the consideration of work done in the Caribbean and in other countries are described, that go beyond assessment for certification, selection, and placement of using results to improve teaching and learning, audit curricula, and monitor national performance.