The findings indicate that for many respondents, the testing environment is one of the most critical areas that needs to be addressed at the national level. The importance of creating a non-threatening assessment environment was a recurring theme throughout the survey. The respondents reported that the students find standardized tests such as the CAAT intimidating, and less formal measures such as intimidating, and less formal measures such as CARA and CABS non-threatening.
Assessment needs to be tiered to students ' levels of competencies. Students who are emergent readers and writers should not be subjected to formal, standardized tests during intake assessment, as these are reminiscent of their early school experiences. This means that credit-granting institutions that tend to favor standardized tests for intake assessment need to consider other alternatives for students with emergent literacy and numeracy skills.
The findings indicate that educators ' PD preferences for learning about assessment correspond to what they have been able to access in their jurisdiction. At the aggregate level, educators selected workshops, in-service, and access to resource people or expertise as their top three PD preferences for learning about assessment. Mentoring and on-line training ranked as one of the top three choices among many jurisdictions. The respondents indicated that they wanted on-going access to resource people and mentors. The findings also indicated that the three most highly ranked PD topics were how to choose assessments, how to interpret assessments, and how to use assessments to plan for instruction.
Assessment is an integral part of the teaching/learning process, and consequently, the subject of assessment should be a key element in professional development systems that are being funded by provincial and/or territorial departments of education. The subject matter should include a broad array of theoretical and practical topics on assessment.