The National Assessment Programme: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), implemented by the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA), is a system-wide standardized assessment program which measures high risk outcomes for all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 across Australia. Rather than focusing on content, NAPLAN is a basic skills assessment program that tests essential skills in reading, writing, language conventions, and numeracy. While there are many resources available to teachers on the nature of NAPLAN, the ways in which NAPLAN improves the literacy and numeracy skills of Australian students, and what stakeholders should do with system-wide data from the program, all There continues to be an excessive debate within the world of work. education sector on the impact and usefulness of NAPLAN in Australian schools as a measure of student and teacher performance. Recent research implies that NAPLAN heavily influences how teaching and learning are planned and executed in schools. Hughes (2003) refers to this type of accountability testing as backwash, explaining that teachers can too easily fall into the trap of simply “teaching to the test” for their students to perform well. Borlagdan (2014) argues that this teaching-to-the-test phenomenon can actually “distort” and “narrow” curriculum content, spending more time on test preparation than meticulously navigating curriculum content. Despite this research, ACARA's infographic brochure clearly states that familiarity is important, but over-practicing and practicing is not necessary (ACARA, n.d.). Furthermore, Barry McGaw, president of ACARA, defends that “NAPLAN takes… front and center… the problems students are experiencing in the classroom. The key to getting the most out of NAPLAN results is to use NAPLAN data in conjunction with other evaluation methods. If problem areas were identified in my students' NAPLAN results, I feel I could use the data, along with other assessment results, to identify trends, compare their results, talk to colleagues to see if the same problem is common among students their students. students and develop strategies and lesson plans to overcome problems. Additionally, the data could help me identify learning difficulties among students and prompt me to seek the right strategies to help students, whether that means adding or modifying my current teaching strategies or seeking advice and resources from school counselors. curriculum, special education consultants, or other support agencies.