Variety of final tests hinders insight into language and math education
Due to problems with the various final tests, the Education Inspectorate is unable to properly assess how language and maths education is going in primary schools. This is what education minister Dennis Wiersma writes in a letter to the House of Representatives. The Inspectorate confirms that it cannot use the 'impure data' for an important part of its supervision.
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Normative differences between the five different end keys*The Central Final Test, IEP, Route-8, AMN and DIA developed by Cito. already caused problems with the assessment recommendations in 2019. That point has been resolved, but similar issues still affect an 'important building block' in education supervision, the new education minister Dennis Wiersma wrote. the end of January to the House of Representatives.
That building block is the reference levels. Since 2010, these describe what a student should be able to do in certain school years in the field of language and math. Schools set their own results against these agreements. And the Education Inspectorate uses them as a gauge for the performance of individual schools – which is not an issue at the time of corona – but also for monitoring the development of children throughout the Netherlands.
margin of error
It is the intention, explains inspectorate spokesperson Daan Jansen, that at least 85 percent of all students achieve language and math level 1F before they go to secondary school. “It is currently insufficiently clear what the precise mastery is at the different levels of language and math. This is due to the differences in standardization between the final tests.” There is a margin of error 'of a few percentage points at the macro level', Wiersma wrote to the House. “This bandwidth makes the data unusable for precise statements,” said Jansen of the Education Inspectorate. “You can no longer compare past years properly.”
The Inspectorate and OCW emphasize that the problems did not affect the assessment recommendations in 2021. Jansen: “These are established independently of the reference levels.”
Inspectorate: 'Our view has become more limited'
As a result, the Inspectorate for the annual State of Education, which will be published on April 13 this year, cannot identify trends in language and math education in the past three years. Janssen. “Our vision has become more limited. Of course, we will soon provide an annual overview of 2021, based, among other things, on data from the student tracking systems about language and maths. But at the macro level, we cannot pinpoint exactly how 2021 compares to previous years. The data is not pure enough for that.”
Wiersma's predecessor Arie Slob informed the House of Representatives June last year about the problems. As it turned out - as a by-catch in the measures following the standardization blunder in 2019 - that the final test indicators for the reference levels also differed from each other. Slob launched an investigation. The results of that study indicate that 'the exact cause of the problems surrounding the reference levels can no longer be traced', Wiersma writes. Rectification of the final exams of 2019 and 2021 is therefore not possible. There was no final test in 2020 due to corona.
The Inspectorate is still investigating options for including the results from 2019 and 2021 in the supervision of schools. In order to avoid the same problems in this year's final assessment, all providers committed at the end of January to 'use the same principles for the purpose of unambiguous standardization', according to the minister. There will be an interim solution for this year. This is currently being tested for 'soundness and validity' by the Research Center for Examination and Certification (RCEC).
Legislative proposal for transfer tests
Then it must Legislative proposal for flow assessments po, which the Senate debated at the beginning of this week, put an end to the standardization hassle. If this law is passed, all final test providers must follow the standardization model originally developed by Cito, says Wiersma in his letter. Tomorrow the Senate will vote on this bill, which also proposes one registration moment for secondary education.
