BC teacher groups sponsored a full page advertisement in the yesterday’s Vancouver Sun urging parents to opt their kids out of the provincial FSA testing.
FSA (Foundation Skills Assessment) test scores are used by the neoliberal Fraser Institute to rank all elementary and secondary schools in British Columbia.
The ad urged parents to “Withdraw you child from FSA testing!” and described out teachers are concerned about the negative effects of FSA tests on student learning. The ad included a form parents can complete asking their school’s principal to excuse their child from FSA testing.
Today’s Vancouver Sun reports on the ad and reaction from parents and Shirley Bond, the BC Minister for Education.
…Education Minister Shirley Bond said she doesn’t like the Fraser Institute’s rankings either and would be willing to discuss that issue with the BCTF. But she said she won’t drop the FSA because it provides valuable data that can guide school improvements.
“We do think it’s an important tool,” she said in an interview. “Having that snapshot at two points in 10 years in a student’s life is not overly onerous.”
BCTF president Irene Lanzinger said teachers would be satisfied if government would change the FSA so that it did random sampling of student performance — as is the case with international assessments — rather than testing every student. Results from such a sampling would be too small to be used to rank schools.…
The BCTF is also encouraging its members not to mark the tests and late Monday sent out an alert stating that the B.C. Public School Employers’ Association has a legal opinion saying FSA scoring is not teachers’ work. But the association sent out its own release minutes later, saying it has no such legal opinion.
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Tuesday » January 22 » 2008
Teachers step up battle over skills testing
Instructors oppose tests because ‘they consume valuable time and money’
Janet Steffenhagen
Vancouver Sun
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Teachers have intensified their campaign to win public support in their battle against a provincewide test that is used by the Fraser Institute to rank B.C. elementary schools.
In a full-page advertisement Monday in The Sun, teachers urged parents to use any excuse to pull their kids from the Foundation Skills Assessment when it is delivered next month to test reading, writing and math in Grades 4 and 7.
The government insists the tests are not optional and students may be excused only if they have special needs, low-level English, a family emergency, a lengthy illness or “other extenuating circumstances.”
But the locals of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation that sponsored the ad say “other extenuating circumstances” can mean anything, including parental objections to standardized tests, concerns about tests in general or frustration over the way results are used to rank schools.
“We think that is broad enough to encompass all kinds of legitimate reasons a parent might have,” said Linda Watson, president of the North Vancouver Teachers’ Association, one of a dozen teacher locals sponsoring the advertisement.
Teachers say they oppose the tests because they consume valuable time and money and do not improve learning. They also object fiercely to school rankings — produced by the Fraser Institute using government data — which they say pressure schools “to pump up test scores” rather than focus on student learning and teacher assessment.
Education Minister Shirley Bond said she doesn’t like the Fraser Institute’s rankings either and would be willing to discuss that issue with the BCTF. But she said she won’t drop the FSA because it provides valuable data that can guide school improvements.
“We do think it’s an important tool,” she said in an interview. “Having that snapshot at two points in 10 years in a student’s life is not overly onerous.”
BCTF president Irene Lanzinger said teachers would be satisfied if government would change the FSA so that it did random sampling of student performance — as is the case with international assessments — rather than testing every student. Results from such a sampling would be too small to be used to rank schools.
Lisa Cartwright, head of the North Vancouver district parent advisory council, said government needs to take another look at the tests to ensure they are worth the annual tug-of-war that leaves parents stuck in the middle. “We really need to ask somebody to look at this situation that is causing angst on all sides of the community,” she said.
“It doesn’t make sense to be doing this in an environment where everybody is uptight about it,” added Cartwright, who has a child in Grade 4 who will be writing the FSA next month.
Bond said she hates the fact that parents are caught in the middle but has a responsibility to ensure there are achievement measures in the system.
The BCTF is also encouraging its members not to mark the tests and late Monday sent out an alert stating that the B.C. Public School Employers’ Association has a legal opinion saying FSA scoring is not teachers’ work. But the association sent out its own release minutes later, saying it has no such legal opinion.
jsteffenhagen@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
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Unfortunately, many schools in Ontario teach to the test a few weeks before students take the EQAO tests. I also noticed that one school had fewer students per teacher ratios in grades three and six so that these students could focus on the tests.
The problem with the Fraser Institute ranking the schools is that it does not know the types of students who attend those school. One school may have a gifted program while another may be a feeder school for special education programs for autism, developmental delayed students, and mild intellectually delayed students who may or may not write the provincial tests. The Fraser Institute incorporates the results of not only the students who write the tests, but also includes those who don’t. A DD student will not write the test and the school will receive a zero level mark based on that student.
Finally, I remember hearing complaints about parents who wanted to transfer their children to a neighbouring school because of higher test scores. Little did those parents realize was that many of their children were English as a Second Langugage students (officially or unofficially) while the neighbouring school had fewer ESL students and therefore higher test results.
Shirley Bond has to go
http://thevancouvermanifesto.blogspot.com/2008/03/shirley-bond-needs-to-go.html