The End of Accountability in British Columbia High School Student Performance
— Publié le 29, August, 2024
- The British Columbia government has changed provincewide student testing in high schools so dramatically that it no longer produces quality provincewide student assessment data.
- Three significant changes have been introduced that weaken the results and usefulness of high school testing in BC:
- The assessments no longer affect a student’s grade for the related course.
- Students are not required to pass the assessment to graduate.
- The assessments no longer test course-specific knowledge but rather broader concepts and ideas. Because of this, the tests are significantly less consequential for students.
- In 2021/22, participation in the Grade 10 numeracy assessment was 22.3 percentage points lower than the 2015/16 Grade 10 Math exam; participation in the 2021/22 Grade 10 literacy assessment was 17.1 percentage points lower than the 2015/16 Grade 10 English exam; and participation in the 2021/22 Grade 12 literacy assessment was 14.2 percentage points lower than the 2015/16 Grade 12 English exam.
- While writing these assessments is “mandatory” for graduation, fewer students are writing them, and BC’s graduation rate—96 percent—hasn’t plummeted.
- This reduces confidence that the new assessments reliably measure student performance. As a result, the Fraser Institute will not publish its Report Card on BC Secondary Schools, which has been published since 1998, unless the government reinstates quality provincewide high school testing.
- Teachers, school administrators, and policymakers have lost quality provincewide data to guide school improvement.
- BC parents have lost a valuable tool in understanding how their child and their school are performing.
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