Dear Editor:
It beats me! Every year the teachers’ union mounts a campaign urging parents to remove their children from standardized tests of basic skills.
Sure enough, a quarter-page ad appeared in a recent issue of this paper, urging parents to exempt their children from Foundation Skills Assessment. The ad is co-sponsored by the public school teachers of North and West Vancouver.
Since education of the young is compulsory, I always find it distressing that teachers oppose testing of the basics, which are the first stepping stones children must reach in their continuing learning. The FSA is a government initiative and serves a number of purposes.
One purpose is to inform parents if their children are achieving the basic skills and if not, it signals to parents that they might need to get more support or hire tutors. Another purpose is to inform the school if their programming is successful. A third reason for FSAs is to show taxpayers that public funding is — or is not — achieving intended results.
It’s truly time that reliable measurement of public school efforts was seen as an essential step in the provision of a quality service.
This opposition to FSAs seems like an avoidance of accountability and can very well serve to actually undermine public confidence in the public education project.
Tunya Audain
West Vancouver
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