National testing revisited

Setiono Lecturer Atma Jaya Catholic University Jakarta

All junior and high schools in the country are bracing themselves for the coming of the national examination (popularly known as Ebtanas), which will be held nationwide at the end of this month and at the beginning of June. Millions of junior and high school students are expected to participate in this annual event.

Efforts will be taken by schools to prepare their students so that they can perform at their best in the exam. Extra time, especially after school time, is given to train them on how to anticipate and to handle any possible questions asked in the exam. All of this is done to gain recognition so that the school really produces highly competitive students with satisfactory grades.

In the meantime, parents, particularly well-off ones, will be busy finding a bonafide institution that offers their services to those who seek additional schooling to prepare for Ebtanas. In short, time and money are sacrificed for the sake of attaining the highest exam results. It is commonly believed that it is this "Ebtnas true score" that eventually becomes the sole criteria for students entering elite schools or universities.

In the realm of education, it has been a long and ongoing controversy as to whether or not Ebtanas should be maintained as a valid and reliable national examination in the country. Many are likely to raise serious questions on the reasons why there is a government plan to abolish Ebtanas at elementary level only. Why the government is not planning to issue an equal policy to abolish Ebtanas at junior and senior school level has become an enigma among education practitioners.

Other points worth questioning are, to begin with, should the government maintain the existence of national testing at high schools? Are there any strong vested interests behind this? Further questions would be: What harm will it do if Ebtanas was dropped at high school level? Is an exam set by a school teacher less superior or less valid than the national examination?

We have been led to believe that Ebtanas, since it is used nationwide, is the most standard and valid type of testing.

This assumption, however, is misleading as no empirical evidence has ever been reported in terms of the standardization and validity of Ebtanas.

A test could be considered standard if it has been pre-tested in a certain target population. In other words, in order to achieve a standardization status, a test has to be adequately piloted and analyzed so as to reveal the level of difficulty. Obviously, the national testing used so far has satisfied none of the above criteria.

Moreover, it would be naive to claim that Ebtanas can be used as a valid assessment of the students' level of proficiency. A test can be claimed valid if it supposedly measures what it is intended to measure. In the case of national testing, the content areas to be tested are not totally representative of what the students have learned in the classroom. This is probably due to the fact that no test specifications have been made prior to the construction of the test. Such specification is of paramount importance in order to ensure the validity of the test contents. Too often the test items require students to recall what they learned at the previous level. Worse still, the test items measures beyond the students' level of competence. This all reflects the fact that Ebtanas clearly lacks validity. This is to say that what is tested is not in line with what has been taught.

It is indeed saddening to face the reality that the personnel assigned to construct the national examination are those who have no experience in teaching and testing. The production of the national test by such inexperienced personnel has been against the nature and the purpose of the test itself.

The top-down approach employed in the construction of the national test nationwide can be politically loaded. It can be a political activity. Brindley (2001), one of the noted testing specialists, describes the political use of test-based assessments for reasons of public accountability, often in the context of national frameworks, standard or benchmarking. He points out that political rather than professional concerns are usually behind such initiatives, and are often in conflict with the desire for formative assessment that is closely related to the learning process.

Maybe, the salient but neglected issue in our national testing is related to the ethics of testing. It implies that in testing, matters of fairness should become the primary concern. Striving for fairness in testing is an aspect of ethical behavior. The lack of test validity in Ebtanas mentioned above portrays the fact that we are still far away in our attempt to pursue fairness in testing, hence the ethics of testing.

Another aspect that merits consideration is that Ebtanas provides no guarantee that the results or scores obtained from such an assessment reflect one's competence. Criticisms have been voiced by education practitioners that the objective test (multiple choice type) used in the Ebtanas fails to genuinely measure one's knowledge, let alone encourages critical thinking. Therefore, the "true score" of the national assessment (known as NEM) should not in any way serve as the sole criteria to judge one's competence.

To measure one's language performance, for example, cannot simply be carried out using an objective test because this type of test does not measure language proficiency in real life settings. In fact, language testing is the most complicated type of test as it involves so many intricate aspects to measure.

With the introduction of a "competency based curriculum", which will soon be implemented in the country, the application of the Ebtanas is contradictory to the concept of such a curriculum.

The concept of such a curriculum implies students are assigned with real life tasks that should be performed in real life settings, be it in exact sciences or languages, that they are continuously encouraged to think critically, and to solve problems independently. This will undoubtedly require all sorts of assessment or evaluation that truly measure the students' true competence rather than that used in the Ebtanas.

Should the competency based curriculum be implemented, adjustments in the type of assessment is badly called for, and the implementation of the Ebtanas has to be seriously reconsidered. It is now high time for the Ministry of Education to prepare all schools in the country to gain total autonomy to organize and conduct their own examinations. Test items made by school teachers may not necessarily be inferior to those constructed by the assigned personnel.

In fact, school teachers know much better the content areas of the subjects that will be assessed to the students than those assigned by the education ministry. They know whether the items being tested to the students are in line with the syllabus or curriculum. By so doing, the validity of the test (at least the content validity) can be ensured, and fairness in testing can be pursued by millions of schools in the country.