Dear Editor:
Predictably, as in the last few years, the BC Teachers’ Federation places an advertisement in local papers urging parents to withdraw their children from the annual Foundation Skills Assessments in public schools (Sept. 25, North Shore News, page 7, Request That Your Child Be Excused From The FSAs).
I hope parents do not follow this advice. Using the BCTF link in the quarter-page ad, we read that the FSAs are considered a waste of time, that “they do not help students learn or teachers teach.” Perhaps, but that is not the intent anyway. The intent of FSAs is to ascertain if the fundamental skills of reading, writing and numeracy – the most basic of tools needed to learn – are being acquired by students.
The results of the tests help the decision-makers – the Ministry of Education, the school boards, and parents – play their role in education. The ministry can determine if its programs and curriculum are working and producing results. The school boards judge if taxpayer dollars are being spent productively and where priorities and resources might need to be shifted. And parents (who receive their child’s results) can proceed according to choices available to them.
It is the parents I am most concerned about. The tests are organized at crucial turning-points in the lives and expectations of students. By Grade 4 most students should feel comfortable with the elementary skills of reading, writing and arithmetic. If not, it is parents who should advocate for more services for their child or consider extra private tutoring or find another school. By Grade 7 if the 3Rs are shaky and likely to risk success in high school, then the parents must really step in.
FSAs should be supported rather than being seen so negatively.
Tunya Audain (parent and grandparent)
West Vancouver
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