By Andru McCracken

Some parents in McBride and Dunster decided to withhold their children from taking the provincial Foundation Skills Assessment because of perceived problems with the exam, but the school district wasn’t offering an option for parents to take their kids out. As a result, a few children were pulled from school during the examination.

The tests have gained notoriety in part because they are used for the Fraser Institute’s ranking of schools, some people feel the Fraser Institute uses the exams to promote private schools.

According to the Ministry of Education, the test itself is “an annual province-wide assessment of British Columbia students’ academic skills, and provides a snapshot of how well BC students are learning foundation skills in reading comprehension, writing, and numeracy.” The objective is to help educators evaluate whether students are gaining basic skills.

Each spring the test is administered to Grade 4 and 7 students in public and provincially funded independent schools.

Dunster school parent Lelani Arris found out that her daughter was to take the exam just a week in advance of the test. She was one of the parents who didn’t want her daughter taking the exam.

Arris surprised school district officials when she was able to find the results of previous exams online for the Dunster. With so few students, she feels that there are privacy concerns.

She also questions the exam’s usefulness when students are being tested on parts of the curriculum that haven’t been taught yet. She also said that with such a small sample of students average will vary widely and fail to give meaningful input to the district.

She also has issues with the Fraser Institute’s use of the figures.

“I’m not opposed to standardized testing in general, but aspects of the test need to be rethought,” she said.

Kairyn Russell-Janecke, the principal of both McBride Centennial Elementary School and Dunster Fine Arts School, said that a few parents at each school chose to withdraw their kids when the exam was given.

She said that the school district’s directive was that if students attend school they must write the test.

“The ministry gives this standardized test because they want to get a sense province-wide of how things are going,” said Russell-Janecke. “They want to see if there are any trends, themes, or things of concerns.”

She said that assessment is important but conceded that it may be time to refine the test.

She understands that parents are concerned that the test is comprehensive even though the whole curriculum has not been taught and that the tests take up a lot of time but don’t appear on report cards.

“There are a lot of viewpoints; the important thing for me is that there is a place of common ground.”

“Are there things to talk about? Perhaps there are,” she said.