British Columbia teachers union plans boycott of annual test

The British Columbia Teachers’ Federation in Canada is planning job action to get rid of standardized tests in reading, writing, and math that are used every year by the Fraser Institute to rank schools. In a secret vote Monday, March 17, 2008, delegates to the union’s annual meeting approved a plan for a boycott next year of the tests known as the Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA). The tests are delivered early each year in Grades 4 and 7.

Teachers want the government to stop testing every child and return to the random sampling that was in effect prior to 2000. That would bring an end to the Education Ministry’s practice of releasing school-by-school results and kill the rankings by the Fraser Institute, an independent nonpartisan research and educational organization based in Canada. Read the article in The Times Colonist online.