Teacher strike: Shirley Bond needs to go

Shirley Bond decided to write a little diddy for the Vancouver Sun today. I didn’t know she was so pro-FSA.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/letters/story.html?id=cc28e40c-7b74-4f34-ae83-8fc8c3b4483e

Letter
Published: Thursday, March 20, 2008
It is disappointing to read that some members of the BCTF may be contemplating job action to express their opposition to the Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA), an important tool in assessing children's learning outcomes.
The FSA is an annual assessment of how students in Grades 4 and 7 are performing in reading, writing and math. It is a valuable tool for measuring individual student achievement and it allows us to address learning challenges early before they become real barriers to student success.
This form of assessment has been in place for almost 10 years and experts, including B.C.'s own representative for children and youth, have found it to be a useful tool. Over the last year, I also travelled to school districts around the province where I heard from numerous parents, teachers and students about the importance of this assessment.
Let's be clear: These are B.C. assessments, developed by our teachers and linked to our curriculum. Neither student grades nor district funding are affected by FSA results. The assessment simply shows how B.C. students are performing in key areas.
I welcome discussion around how to make the assessment more effective. In fact, in 2005 we established the learning roundtable, a body which brings together all education partners to discuss educational issues. If the BCTF has ideas on how the FSA could be made more effective, this would be the appropriate body for that discussion.
But for the BCTF to continue to oppose the FSA and put students' education in jeopardy by threatening job action over an assessment that is solely aimed at improving students learning outcomes is disappointing.
SHIRLEY BOND
Minister of Education

The Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) Test, written in grade 4 and grade 7 is a province wide standardized test. It is used by the Fraser Institute to give unfair rankings of schools. It is a horrid way to assess our children and a horrid way to assess out schools.
As a public school teacher, I am armed with the experience to speak in support of job action against the FSAs:

Some things you need to know about FSAs:

1) The FSA is an assessment of how well children understand the FORMAT of standardized test taking and speaks nothing towards their comprehension or skills. I have marked the test in several different school districts for a couple years now and I can say for a fact that a child can have a perfectly good answer but still be given a zero (out of a marking rubric of 4) for interpreting the question in a different manner. Children are blank slates and have the amazing ability to interpret things in wild and wonderful ways. Sometimes different interpretations are inappropriate because they are clearly not accomplishing a straightforward task, but often times they are beautiful expressions of diversity and unique ways to interpret the same problem. The FSA is built so that it FORCES a child to think in ONE way and it expects them to conform to a streamlined way of thinking. This is so inhibiting for our children.

And yes, the FSA questions ARE made by teachers. But honestly, if you have read some of these questions you would see how ridiculous they are. I challenge the Vancouver Sun to put up a copy of the FSA questions and let citizens answer them. They are only grade 4 and 7 level so they shouldn’t be that hard, but you will see that there are so many different ways to interpret the questions and there are so many different ways of answering them. I bet you almost 50% of Vancouver Sun readers would minimally meet expectations (2), not yet meet expectations (1), or worst of all, the dreaded 0 which shows absolute profanity, and erased answer, or refusal to take the test.

2) Now BECAUSE the FSA will only reward you for a very specific defined and streamlined answer, students must be taught towards the test. Many people don’t realize that children don’t know HOW to take standardized tests yet and they have to build that skill over time. Not that I am saying they should not have that skill whatsoever, but when we are assessing foundational skills of reading, writing and numeracy those results should not be affected by the simple fact that kids don’t know how to take tests. For example, if you don’t know the answer on a multiple choice exam you just take a guess and fill in a bubble (when in doubt pick “C”, right? Or over the years it became B). Kids don’t think that way. When I began teaching intermediate level kids I was surprised at how many kids didn’t’ want to answer the question at all for fear that they would be penalized for a wrong answer or wrong step in an answer. And this is not something you can just tell them once and it’ll be fixed. It takes YEARS of telling these kids to make educated guesses when you aren’t quite sure and to give your best try because they won’t lose MORE marks on a wrong answer. The SMALLEST thing such as that makes a world of difference on a 6 question FSA.

3) Furthermore, now that we have to TEACH TOWARDS taking the FSA it takes away from precious classtime. We must spend days, up to a week practicing how to take standardized tests and teaching them the “accepted way to answer” in these tests. This is a terrible lesson for our children- to teach them that there is only ONE acceptable way to solve a problem. FSAs stifle children’s natural creativity.

BUT, as teachers we HAVE to waste weeks to teach these kids how to take tests and take up valuable teaching and learning time to teach towards these tests because organizations such as the Fraser Institute http://www.fraserinstitute.org/ (a neoliberal organization) will take this information and distil it into unjustified rankings of schools. They will start off with the private schools ranking above and beyond (forgetting that students at private schools don’t have to admit, and don’t admit, special needs children or children under par performance- and incidentally public schools must take on these children with LESS ability because we have LESS resources and LESS money to support special needs). And at the very worst schools who do amazing organizing with the community to ensure children don’t’ waste their time writing these exams, will rank last because not taking the test will not take you out of rankings, it will just give you a big fat ZERO. There is no “omit” on FSAs, there is only a zero. And zeros make people fearful and want to shame a school that may be doing a perfectly fine job.

4) Which brings me to the point of accountability. So you want to know how your school is doing or perhaps if your teacher is actually doing their job? I will tell you that standardized tests tell you nothing of a child’s ability and TEACHERS tell you everything about a kids ability. The most important part of report cards is not the letter grade, it’s not even really the teacher’s comments, it is YOU as a parent taking the time to come in and speak to the teacher about your child’s progress. That is the MOST important indicator of a student’s success, parent, teacher, and community involvement. When we are ALL involved in the success of our students and when we ALL make it our personal business to get to know how our children are doing we do MUCH better as a school, community and society.

And by the way, many teachers spend more time productive time with kids than often parents do. Children are at school 830-3, do sports and after school clubs and classes which teachers are involved in and must also supervise (3-5). That is 8 hours out of a 16 hour day (8 hours for sleep) that we spend time with your children and BELIEVE me, we do NOT do it for the money. Teachers are talented people, if we wanted money we’d go into finance like every other person who graduates with more than one degree. Teachers do it because we CARE, believe it or not. Teachers work incredible hours (My first year of teaching I was in that high school from 730 in the morning to 8pm and night and THEN a I brought marking home). I still do those kinds of hours when I choose to take on a full-time teaching contract.

My point is that I spend almost 8 hours a day with your child. I KNOW them. Your teachers KNOW your children and we know where they need to be at their grade and age. And not to say we don’t need standardized tests all, but let teachers build in assessment into their own classrooms and their own school structure. I deal with the word “assessment” on a daily basis and I ensure that children are always being assessed. Let’s not stifle our children, waste their productive time, and give them stress (to the point of stomach cramps- I’ve seen this) unnecessarily for a stupid test that assesses nothing but how well you can conform.

To end, Shirley Bond needs to go.
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