A couple of weeks ago the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development (MAESD) released a memo and accompanying reports announcing they will not use the Essential Skills for Employment and Education (ESEE) test to measure the skill gains of students who participate in LBS programs. ESEE was piloted in LBS programs in what was … Continue reading ESEE come, not so ESEE go… What went wrong with the Learner Gains Research Project and what can we learn from it?
Category: Learner gains test
ESEE Update and a Study of School Board Participants in the LGRP
The Learner Gains Research Project (LGRP) wrapped up on November 30, 2016. As far as I can tell, those coordinating the project at MAESD have not communicated directly with the field, nor the programs that participated in the project to share their findings. During a meeting I attended in late January, a MAESD representative said … Continue reading ESEE Update and a Study of School Board Participants in the LGRP
Messages of failure and not being “normal” are built into the ESEE
In a previous post, I wrote about the difficulty of the Essential Skills for Education and Employment (ESEE), an assessment being piloted as part of the Learner Gains Research Project (LGRP). The research involves 1800 learners who are to take the ESEE at the beginning and end of their time in a program to see if the … Continue reading Messages of failure and not being “normal” are built into the ESEE
The ESEE is not so easy: Results of readability analyses
In a previous post I described my attempt to respond to one of the Essential Skills for Employment and Education (ESEE) practice test items, the dosage chart for a liquid medicine. Since then, I have taken a close look at the ESEE test itself. The test has a major problem if adults with less than a … Continue reading The ESEE is not so easy: Results of readability analyses
What makes the spin-off tests so darn difficult (and frustrating)?
All spin-off tests share common elements since they adhere to the basic test development methods used to construct test items in the international literacy tests. Here are the main reasons that they are difficult and an inappropriate measure in the context of literacy learning programs: The spin-offs claim to be "authentic" and representative of a task … Continue reading What makes the spin-off tests so darn difficult (and frustrating)?
A decade of effort to make the unworkable work
Since 2007 the policy folks who oversee the literacy program at Ontario's Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) have been attempting to use an international literary spin-off test to produce a measure of what they refer to as learner gains. What they are after are test results that show an improvement or increased score … Continue reading A decade of effort to make the unworkable work
Fair Assessment Practices 