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Large-scale testing, or what many know as standardized testing, often carries important consequences for students. The results of large-scale tests may be used by schools or policy-makers to make important decisions .

Yet when it comes to literacy testing, , the methods that many educational systems use to assess literacy have not.

One recent analysis of standardized tests in the United States, for example, found tests haven't changed much over the last 100 years: tests are .

In Canada today, on such large-scale standardized tests, students are . Students might have an opportunity to write a short answer or essay response. Provincial tests, for the most part, continue to prioritize measuring traditional literacy skills of reading and writing with answers primarily communicated via pencil-to-paper. Such a testing structure forms the basis for public accountability in many provinces.

Across Canada, researchers and educators have documented the need and consider more innovative designs. Testing should accurately capture what children are learning .

What literacy means today

Formerly, literacy was broadly understood to encompass four domains: reading, writing, speaking and listening. But today, how we define literacy has changed.

Firstly, literacy is now understood to involve skills and knowledge related to all modes of visual representation and digital communications. Today's students tend to read shorter texts within a variety of platforms on social media, websites and apps. Schools now teach literacy through visual, moving image and even sound-based texts that children and teenagers encounter when reading and writing online.

Secondly, literacy today is also understood to be about . According to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), literacy involves the ."

These forms of literacy teaching and learning —both multimedia literacy related to varied forms of representation and applied literacy —.

Large-scale literacy testing needs to keep pace with how the skills related to these concepts are practised in classooms, assessed by teachers and mandated by provincial curriculum.

Overall, curriculum is increasingly emphasizing . acknowledges students' literacy development is not understood solely as reading and writing. similarly recognize the changing nature of literacy.

Revamping large-scale testing for the 21st century

The need to was recently acknowledged by , director for the directorate of education and skills for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—the organization that administers the most prominent cross-comparative test in the world, (PISA). He recently .

In Singapore— —the minister of education recently announced a ."

When we understand literacy to also be about developing adaptive and connective skills in our rapidly changing world, we can see that such decisions to transform assessment are not potentially downplaying literacy, but rather, potentially enhancing it.

In Canada, assessment reforms and innovations are slowly taking shape. For example, British Columbia . Alberta also made changes to large-scale provincial achievement tests to focus on .

And in Ontario, a 2018 report to the Premier recommended , now a graduation requirement. Researchers who conducted the review (including one of the authors of this story, Carol), as well as those invited to comment as assessment experts (Chris and Louis), made a number of other recommendations including integrating technology for large-scale asessment of students' learning and progress.

If we are to support literacy skills for the 21st century then we must explore how large-scale testing might capture students' contemporary literacy competencies, and also how the testing itself might integrate contemporary practices and .

For example, computerized testing could allow for timely feedback that would close the gap between testing and feedback for learning. Right now, any curricular changes to address demonstrated gaps in learning are often communicated months after the large-scale test.

We need to change how we assess literacy. Ministries of education have the expertise and capacity to modernize our assessment systems. We are hoping there is the political will to do so.

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