New Westminster student results are ahead of the B.C. curve in almost all aspects of the standardized provincial FSA tests.
The Foundation Skills Assessments are conducted in Grade 4 and Grade 7 across the province. The New Westminster school district reported the results of the 2021 assessments at its Feb. 8 education committee meeting.
The overall Grade 4 results show a majority of students in New Westminster rated as “on track” or “extending” in the three areas measured by the tests: reading comprehension, writing and numeracy. New Westminster’s numbers were higher than the overall B.C. percentage in all three areas.
New Westminster’s best result came in writing, where 97% of students rated as on track or extending, compared to 82% in B.C. as a whole. For reading comprehension, New Westminster stood at 86%, compared to 83% for B.C.
The lowest numbers came in numeracy, where 78% of New West students were on track or extending, compared to 72% provincewide.
At the Grade 7 level, writing was also New Westminster’s best subject area, with 93% of students hitting the on track or extending mark, compared to 85% in B.C. For reading comprehension, the local number was 81%, compared to 78% for B.C.
Numeracy was the only area where New Westminster fared more poorly than B.C. overall, with a local total of 64%, compared to 68% provincewide.
Maureen McRae-Stanger, the district’s director of instruction, learning and innovation, noted numeracy has been a key focus for the district and continues to be so. She pointed out that the impacts of those efforts around numeracy will take some time to be reflected in the data.
FSA participation rates in the district were significantly lower than last year, with just 370 of 521 Grade 4 students (71%) and 299 of 482 Grade 7 students (62%) actually writing the tests in the 2020/21 school year. That compares to 82% of Grade 4 students and 87% of Grade 7 students who wrote them in 2019/20.
The Ministry of Education requires the FSAs to be completed by all students, except those with moderate to profound intellectual disabilities or English language learners who have not reached a sufficient level of proficiency.
Families can also choose to withdraw their children for “extenuating circumstances,” and those withdrawals make up the majority of students who don’t write the FSAs.
The FSAs have become controversial in recent years, with the B.C. Teachers’ Federation leading a campaign to have them eliminated and encouraging parents to withdraw their children from writing them.
The union says the FSAs aren’t helpful to students, teachers or parents, arguing that test preparation takes away from classroom learning time and that test results don’t result in increased support for students. It also says the tests are a source of anxiety for many students.
The BCTF also argues that the test is not a reliable way to measure student success. In particular, the BCTF has objected to the FSA data being used by the Fraser Institute to rank B.C. schools based on test scores.
Want to know more?
You can find a more complete look at FSA data in the online agenda for the School District 40 education committee meeting from Feb. 8.
Follow Julie MacLellan on Twitter @juliemaclellan.
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