Practice in Argentina

BOX 2.10. Using Large-Scale Assessment Results to Provide Feedback for Classroom Practice in Argentina

Experiences in Latin American countries highlight the relevance of communicating large-scale assessment results to schools, teachers, and students. De Hoyos, Ganimian, and Holland (2019) found that providing diagnostic feedback on large-scale assessment results to teachers in Argentina resulted in greater student achievement than for students whose teachers did not receive diagnostic feedback. When teachers receive diagnostic feedback on student performance, students report that their teachers devote more time to instruction and employ more learning activities in the classroom. Similarly, when teachers have access to diagnostic feedback, principals are more likely to use assessment results to make management-related decisions, including setting school-level learning goals, updating the curriculum, and make staffing decisions. Similar results highlighting the benefits of providing diagnostic feedback have been reported in interventions conducted in Mexico (De Hoyos, Garcia-Moreno, and Patrinos 2017).

of early primary teachers from Togo did not receive any pre-service training, whereas more than 72 percent of early primary teachers in Burundi had two or more years of pre-service training before working in schools (PASEC 2015). The assessment report also indicated that the most-experienced teachers tended to be assigned to the late primary grades, whereas less-experienced teachers started teaching in the early primary grades. Some countries have leveraged these assessment findings to support the development of better pre- or in-service teacher training programs or to inform better allocation of teachers to particular grades.

Using assessment results to improve teacher training is part of a broader education policy trend in terms of shifting away from an emphasis on inputs, measured by simply counting the number of trained teachers, and toward an emphasis on outputs, measured according to student learning outcomes. Countries with high achievement on international large-scale assessments are typically those that have invested in developing rigorous pre- and in-service teacher training programs backed by research evidence (Wei et al. 2009).

STRENGTHENING COMMUNITY AND CLASSROOM CONNECTIONS Large-scale assessment results can reinforce the importance of family and community support as factors influencing student achievement. Policy makers may use these findings to inform strategies to strengthen links between classroom activities and student home life. For instance, results from the 2018 Pacific Islands Literacy and Numeracy Assessment showed that 50 percent of students reported that they never or only sometimes had someone at home checking or helping them with their homework. Policy makers may wish to act on such results to promote greater caregiver involvement in home-based student learning activities, given the positive association that has been found between such involvement and student achievement on the Pacific Islands Literacy and Numeracy Assessment and other large-scale assessments (Pacific Community Educational Quality and Assessment Programme 2019).