Single question does not a difference make.

There has been a lot of hot air about the NAPLAN question that has skewed the NAPLAN results of Australian School kids, and this will reignite the usual flap about whether it is worth it.  There are a few things That need to be realised before this media and left wing fueled flap-fest gets going again.

The test generates information used by government, parents and schools, not future universities or employers.

Despite the reports that are trotted out every year from left leaning media, and a few educationalists. The results from NAPLAN are used.  At a large scale they are used by the Government and published in the myschool.edu.au website.  This is to give an air of transparency, and an element of consumer choice.  The actual marks are quite irrelevant, although statisticians go to some lengths to ensure parity between tests from year to year. It is the comparison values that offers value.  

NAPLAN data is used by schools.  As a former head of department data from NAPLAN was available for my cohort, and provided a very useful summary of questions against responses.  I and many of my colleagues used this data to evaluate the performance of our schools curriculum to identify weaknesses and strengths in relation to other mathematics and english departments around the state, or country.  There is no other source of data quite like this in Australian Schools, and for this reason alone it is quite invaluable.

Parents do worry about NAPLAN, if their child is scoring straight C's and achieves a band 10 in numeracy then there are usually some questions to be answered.  In the most cases NAPLAN provides parents with a sense of security in their school choice.  Some parents choose to withdraw their child from the test, In this educators opinion this is always a shame.

The data used by employers and universities is based off year 12 results, which vary by state.  The long term effect of a poor result is minimal.  

The data generated from NAPLAN is unique, and therefore important.  The key is to use the information correctly.  It does not matter particularly if 92% of students can't answer a question, The standards are published for all to read. The test tests the standards.  A test needs to distinguish between the top 10% and the next 10%, therefore some of the questions should be too hard. The main point each test is internally consistent then the data generates is as valid as it can be. and as consistent as can be made possible to other tests in the sequence.  

Children are not harmed by the process.

There are a number of critics of the test stating that the test places students under undue stress.  This is pointed to as a failing of the testing schedule, and a criticism of the results.  Whilst this is true - some students are stressed out by an exam, this is not however a rational response, nor is it a rational response to end the exam.  

The over-stress response to an exam is not rational, examinations have been used for many years to measure understanding, and will be used by schools in their internal curricula.  Stress is a normal response, but to be crippled indicates unusual conditions.  Since most schools use examinations to assess their internal curricula, this should be a non-event. 

There are a number of reasons students become over-stressed, and these all indicate problems that should be addressed early. Some students are over-driven by performance pressures.  If these pressures are internal, then they should seek help from the schools councillor with regards help handling these pressures before they become too heavy.  If these pressures are external then the locus needs to be identified, and addressed.  If the external stress is from a teacher, that teacher needs to be aware of this.  The most frequent source of stress in my experience has been parents.    

Some poorer performing schools do teach to the test.  this is unavoidable, with such a high profile test.  However there is little to gain from this. Teacher Pay is not linked to performance, nor in the most cases is the pay of middle or senior leaders.  Whilst I have heard of some teachers in state schools being grilled about performance by senior management, this has not been related to NAPLAN.

NAPLAN does provide a focal point for inappropriate stress responses, mostly from parents, and students with deeper issues.  That these responses are fired early is usually a good thing if they are handled properly.  Part of the job of a school is to instil a sense of resilience into students, and a proverbial knock is occasionally essential to ensure that they are able to bounce back.  

If students are harmed by the test process itself, and not factors external, then this has yet to be researched and reported.  The state of research is quite limited at the moment, and to be perfectly honest there is a low flow though of information from the researchers to frontline educators.