Amber Gove

The debate on learning assessments in developing countries

Over the past decade, international and national education agencies have begun to emphasize the improvement of the quality (rather than quantity) of education in developing countries. This trend has been paralleled by a significant increase in the use of educational assessments as a way to measure gains and losses in quality of learning. As interest in assessment has grown, low-income countries have begun to adopt and adapt international and other assessments for a variety of uses, including the comparability of national quality with other countries, improved ways of measuring reading achievement, and further attempts to reach marginalized populations within a country. The present group of papers provides multiple perspectives on the debate currently underway about the best approaches to create and use learning assessments in low-income countries.

Assess Reading Early to Inform Instruction, Improve Quality, and Realize Possibilities

Abstract In the more than quarter century since commitments were made under Education for All, low- and middle-income countries have made considerable progress in ensuring that more students are enrolled in and completing primary schooling. However, despite lofty promises to improve literacy and numeracy for all, UNESCO estimates that more than 250 million children are not learning the basics. Currently, a limited number of practitioners and policy makers have access to information on how well students are learning to read and perform basic math. As access to technology and globalization continues to expand, we expect increased demand for and democratization of information on student learning, particularly in the Global South. This chapter describes the influence of reading assessments at the child level on the focus on quality education in low-resourced contexts. Over the past decade, child-level assessment data have contributed to modifications in classroom instruction, teacher support, community engagement, and language policy. These data have led to the refinement of additional child-level and classroom-based assessments to inform and reflect context. Ultimately, the initial questions about child-level learning have facilitated successive improvements in understanding and bettering the results. This chapter suggests a prospective direction that the international education community should take to continue improving child outcomes.

Classroom-up Policy Change: Early Reading and Math Assessments at Work

This article reviews the development of the Early Grade Reading and Mathematics Assessments (EGRA and EGMA), which are locally tailored, timely assessments designed to directly inform policy and instruction for learning improvement, particularly for countries on the lower end of the income spectrum. The history of the design and implementation of the tools, as well as case studies of their use in Egypt and Kenya, are a useful counterbalance to the experience of the more traditional international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) documented in this special issue – in particular for understanding the needs of countries struggling to transform ‘education for all’ into ‘learning for all’.

Designing for Scale: Reflections on Rolling Out Reading Improvement in Kenya and Liberia

Since 2008, the Ministries of Education in Liberia and Kenya have undertaken transitions from small-scale pilot programs to improve reading outcomes among primary learners to the large-scale implementation of reading interventions. The effects of the pilots on learning outcomes were significant, but questions remained regarding whether such large gains could be sustained at scale. In this article, the authors dissect the Liberian and Kenyan experiences with implementing large-scale reading programs, documenting the critical components and conditions of the program designs that affected the likelihood of successfully transitioning from pilot to scale. They also review the design, deployment, and effectiveness of each pilot program and the scale, design, duration, enabling conditions, and initial effectiveness results of the scaled programs in each country. The implications of these results for the design of both pilot and large-scale reading programs are discussed in light of the experiences of both the Liberian and Kenyan programs.

Assessing the Impact of Early Learning Programs in Africa.

Abstract We present results from early learning programs in six African countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda. In partnership with ministries of education, RTI International has worked within government systems to support the design and deployment of locally contextualized materials, training, and assessment tools, with the goal of improving outcomes for early learners in primary schools, and in Kenya and Tanzania preprimary as well. Here we report on the experience and evidence of impact from specific programs in each country, including summary assessment results when available. In several countries with completed impact evaluations, there are significant and important learning gains of between 0.2 and 2.57 SD in effect size; in one case the percentage of students reaching grade‐level reading proficiency increased from 12% to 47%. In the context of increased urgency surrounding what UNESCO has called a “global learning crisis,” these experiences provide useful lessons for policymakers and practitioners alike.