B.C.’s new student ‘assessments’ vastly inferior to previous exams in measuring student and school performance

The End of Accountability in British Columbia High School Student Performance

• 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.