Many B.C. educators are so disenchanted with the Foundation Skills Assessment tests that many schools and districts have stopped using annual FSA results for their planning to improve student achievement.
As a researcher and education consultant, I was the person responsible for validating the Ministry of Education’s FSA data for seven years, and I am familiar with the flaws in the ways the results have been reported and used. I am also familiar with its strengths, so I suggest a more productive way that FSA data can be used to improve student achievement.
Instead of ranking schools as the Fraser Institute does, we can see how much students improve during their time at a particular school.
Based on privacy-protected individual student FSA results for Grade 4 in 2013 and Grade 7 in 2016, it is possible to link each student’s results for both Grade 4 and Grade 7 and determine if they improved or declined over the three-year period. Then, by applying a research design from the field of program evaluation, the effectiveness of instructional programs in reading and numeracy can be calculated for each school enrolling both Grade 4 and Grade 7 students. “Numeracy” means applying mathematics in a real-life context.
Using this methodology, the effectiveness of instructional programs in B.C. schools is not measured by average FSA achievement levels as it is by the Fraser Institute, but by the relative gain (or loss) in FSA achievement for students in Grade 4 in 2013 to Grade 7 in 2016.
Socioeconomic and cultural factors that affect Fraser Institute results are controlled by using the same students in both grades. This levels the playing field and allows the effectiveness of instructional programs in both low-achieving schools and high-achieving schools to be compared, regardless of whether the Grade 4 students were low-achieving or high-achieving.
The results present a much clearer picture of which schools are doing the most for their students (based on FSA reading and numeracy results) as they progress from Grade 4 to Grade 7. They are summarized in a new report entitled Instructional Program Effectiveness to 2016, available on my website at theschoolsinstitute.com/effective/.
The results are contrary to Fraser Institute findings because public schools dominate the schools with the most effective instructional programs.
Across the province, the last page of the report shows, in FSA reading, seven of the top 10 schools are public schools. Three are in the Surrey school district. In FSA numeracy, eight of the top 10 schools are public schools. The top schools include both low-achieving and high-achieving schools.
The top school in reading gained the equivalent of 24 per cent from Grade 4 to Grade 7, but is ranked 239 of 944 in the Fraser Institute’s Report Card on British Columbia’s Elementary Schools 2016. The top school in numeracy gained the equivalent of 33 per cent, but is ranked 622 of 944.
All gains made by the top 10 schools are statistically significant. The results confirm that schools can have effective instructional programs, even though they are ranked low by the Fraser Institute. This confirms the belief of many teachers.
What does this methodology show for schools on Vancouver Island? In 2013, the FSA numeracy results for Errington Elementary School Grade 4 students near Parksville were poor. Three years later, the students who remained in the school to Grade 7 had turned things around with the help of their teachers. As Grade 7 students in 2016, they had gained the equivalent of 15 per cent in their numeracy results from Grade 4 to Grade 7 — the highest gain in FSA numeracy on Vancouver Island.
The largest gain in FSA reading from 2013 Grade 4 to 2016 Grade 7 on Vancouver Island was in Wickaninnish Community School in Tofino, whose students gained the equivalent of nine per cent. How can we use these results productively? We can find out what makes instructional programs effective by observing practices in selected schools.
Then we can empower schools with less-effective instructional programs to improve student achievement by adopting the best practices of schools with more effective instructional programs.
A proposal to do just that, entitled The Empowering Schools Project, can be found on the above website.
John Taylor received his doctorate in education from UBC, specializing in mathematics education, research and statistics. Among more than 50 contracts with the B.C. Ministry of Education since 1990, he was the Ministry’s FSA data validator for seven years, and has developed an education-reporting system serving the information needs of B.C. schools and districts for over 20 years.
