While province-wide participation in the Fundamental Skills Assessment Test (FSA) is down 16 per cent, S.D.54 assistant superintendent Chris Vandermark said that the Bulkley Valley is not effected by the drop.

“If I look at our participation rates over the last five or six years, if anything our participation rates are probably going up,” Vandermark said.

The president of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation Irene Lanzinger attributes the participation drop to parents pulling their children out of the test that the parents see as ineffectual and a waste of their study time.

“Teachers do not believe that the FSA... is an appropriate measure of student learning,” Lanzinger said. “More and more parents are pulling their children out of these controversial tests because they do not see the value the vague results provide.”

The FSA is taken by students in grade four and again at grade seven every February, and began in the 1999-2000 school year. S.D.54 reported a 12 per cent non-participation rate at the grade four level, which at grade seven was at 10 per cent, both of which were under the provincial average.

“Generally speaking our participation rates have been above 90 per cent,” Vandermark said.

At the board level, Vandermark added that there hasn’t been much feedback either way from parents who are for or against the FSA, and that in some areas it seems to be more of a political lightning rod than it has been here.

“I think it somewhat depends where in the province you are in terms of where you are in terms of the environment of [the FSA],” Vandermark said.

The FSA is merely one tool that schools use to assess students, Vandermark added, and in this case is just a snapshot of how things are. In no way does this test equal the multiple other methods of assessment over each student’s 12 years, and yet it is the one test that the Fraser Institute is using to determine the rank of schools across the province.

“That’s why it becomes a bit of a political hot potato,” Vandermark said. “The Fraser Institute uses the FSA results to rank schools and that practice may be questionable.”

At the B.C. Teachers’ Federation 2009 annual general meeting teachers voted to encourage government to implement a two-year moratorium on all standardized tests. The moratorium would mean the discontinuation from FSA testing as well as provincial exams which universities in B.C. no longer use for admission requirements. Instead, the teachers’ ask that the government create a Testing and Assessment Task Force to find better models of testing and assessment that enhance student learning.

“Teachers are not opposed to assessment,” said Lanzinger. “The BCTF believes more appropriate assessment tools can be developed with all of the education partner groups, including government, trustees, principals and parents.”

One of the alternatives that Lanzinger said would support student learning and provide accurate information would be to implement the FSA on a random sample basis. This would prevent the unfair and inappropriate rankings, Lanzinger said, and still provide data to track outcomes across the province.

“Random sampling would also ensure teachers are not pressured to teach to the test at the expense of other learning opportunities,” Lanzinger said.