Trustees want to shield test scores
Trustees have long complained the Fraser Institute, a right-leaning think-tank, uses the results to rank schools
The public should not have access to test results from Grade 4 and 7 students that measure how well they can read, write, and do math, local trustees say.
Central Okanagan trustees this week agreed to ask the B.C. government to release the results of the Foundation Skills Assessments only to districts, teachers, and parents.
Trustees have long complained the Fraser Institute, a right-leaning think tank, uses the results to rank schools.
“It was never the intention of the FSAs to be used this way,” board chairwoman Moyra Baxter said Friday. “There’s a lot going on in schools, and the FSAs just measure a very narrow part of that.”
The Fraser Institute says its annual ranking, based on 10 indicators, provides parents and taxpayers with insights they couldn’t otherwise get into how well schools are doing. On Wednesday, trustees denied a request by the Kelowna-area teachers’ union that they encourage the government to cancel the next FSAs.
Union president Susan Bauhart says children have been exposed to “trauma” during the COVID-19 pandemic and it’s not fair they should have to write the FSAs.
“We do feel the FSAs are important and that children should write them,” Baxter said.
In practice, however, many Kelowna-area children in Grade 4 and 7 already do not write the FSAs. Teachers are allowed to send home a letter encouraging parents not to have their children participate in the assessments, Baxter said.
Children are supposed to be excused from the FSAs only if there are “extenuating circumstances,” district superintendent Kevin Kaardal told local trustees on Oct. 14.
But 31% of Kelowna-area Grade 4 students did not take the FSAs last year, compared to a provincial exemption rate of 26%. At some Kelowna elementary schools, such as Hudson Road, Watson Road, and Rose Valley, more than half of the eligible students did not take last year’s FSAs.
“There’s supposed to be a good reason why a child doesn’t take the FSAs, but it’s very hard for anyone to define a ‘good reason,’” Baxter said, adding the board is concerned about the fact that nearly onethird of students are not taking the FSAs.