Ok. We HAVE to talk about this. In the 2017-2018 school year ABEd introduced a mental math component in the grade 9 PAT. It had been a couple of years since they did it in grade 6 and although that was also a total show off we went!

Note, it was 2 years after it was introduced in grade 6. So the students who had done the mental math component in 6 were only in grade 8 at that time. Not awesome.

The roll-out was less than ideal. Admin/schools/teachers seemed unaware of the component, well into the school year. My niece’s teacher didn’t know about it when I spoke to him in February.

In the bulletin they published to help prepare students we had 20 sample questions. We spent the year practicing mental math strategies in addition to a very busy and rigorous curriculum.

When the test was written we quickly discovered that the questions were NOT what we (or the students) were expecting. There were tears. There was frustration. It was stressful.

So yes. When we marked the exams that day we saw that many students struggled. Many adults would have struggled. When ABed marked the tests they saw what we saw and they deleted 4 questions.

It should be noted that PAT’s do not count as a student mark. They are supposed to be written to monitor student learning and make adjustments to teaching and learning to ensure student success. It worked! We LEARNED a lot that year.

If you are interested in that test and the struggles students encountered please visit the assessment bulletin produced afterwards. And maybe try a few of the questions! https://education.alberta.ca/media/3795489/04-math9-assess-highlights-2018_20181025.pdf