Coast Grade 7s outperformed the provincial average on the province-wide Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA), while local Grade 4s underperformed, according to just-released results from the Ministry of Education.
The FSA measures reading, writing and numeracy skills at the Grade 4 and Grade 7 levels.
Province-wide, two-thirds of students are meeting or exceeding expectations at both grade levels. For the Sunshine Coast, slightly more than two-thirds of Grade 7s are in this category, and slightly less than 60 per cent of Grade 4s.
School District 46 (SD46) assistant superintendent Tom Hierck said that over the last three years, District FSA performance has held fairly steady, though he noted a slight downward trend.
"There's a slight dip. Whether or not that's significant, statistically, I can't say for certain," he said, noting that Coast FSA participation dropped by 10 per cent at the Grade 4 level this year, and by three to four per cent at the Grade 7 level.
Hierck attributed the participation drop to the Sunshine Coast Teacher's Association (SCTA)'s campaign against the FSA. The SCTA has decried the FSA as providing no useful teaching feedback for teachers, given that results don't come through until year end. It also lambastes the FSA for enabling the Fraser Institute to rank schools in the province -a practice it finds harmful.
SCTA president Jenny Garrels commented that the participation drop shows that "parents share teachers' concerns about these tests."
Hierck expressed concern that, according to FSA results, approximately 20 per cent of Coast Grade 4s and 7s are not yet meeting expectations. The percentage of Coast students not yet meeting expectations exceeds provincial averages in every category except Grade 7 writing skills.
"Twenty per cent not yet meeting is something that we've got to look at to say, 'OK, what's this telling us?'" he said. "That's the conversation piece that I'd want to have going on at all the schools."
Hierck said that while the FSA provides one piece of information about student performance, parents will glean far more from report cards and parent-teacher talks. At most, he said, parents could look for progression between their children's Grade 4 and 7 FSA results.
SD46 board chair Silas White cautioned that the FSA is "a single, limited assessment of student achievement," and decried the Fraser Institute's use of FSA results.
"Our board has requested on multiple occasions that school results be publicly masked so they are not misused, and so individual student privacy is protected," he said. "We also implore the minister to work with teachers on developing a standardized assessment, and a way of utilizing the results, that is more useful and less divisive."
