Large scale assessments are used to measure student achievement but they continue to provoke intense debate. Educators, teachers and parents are increasingly looking into the purposes of these tests such as student’s learning, teacher’s goals and accountability of education system. The concept of large scale assessment is not new, it has been a norm in many countries for a long time. I have taken these tests myself in my home country but I guess reform mathematics is changing what was being initially expected from these large scale assessments.

It is important to point out that Canadian teachers are responsible for the development and grading of provincial and territorial large-scale criterion- referenced assessments. The national SAIP instruments are also developed and graded by classroom teachers. These activities are coordinated with respective ministries or departments of education. This is in stark contrast to the United States, where large-scale assessments are typically norm-referenced and are run primarily by commercial organizations outside of the education system. This distinction is important and may account for the fact that Canadian testing programs tend to account for greater linkages with classroom practice than their American counterparts (Gambell & Hunter, 2004).

The reliance on criterion- referenced testing also suggests that Canadian testing programs tend to be more aligned with mandated curricula, and as our Ontario curriculum prompts to take an investigative approach to learning mathematics then its not fair with the students and teachers that our assessments do not go far enough in addressing investigative component.

The article of Suurtaam (2008) states that problems in EQAO are the scaffolded version with multiple steps and suggests that problems should be rich and open ended, but I was wondering, are the inherent issues of grading such open ended questions and the excessive time that might be involved in solving such problems, the restraining factors keeping us from achieving this goal?