Hello fellow educators welcome to Podcast #98. Today I want to talk to you about one of the biggest challenges as Christian Educators. How do we balance our persistent reliance on academic achievement with our goals of discipleship? Whether you are a campus school teacher or a home educator keeping the right focus of why we are doing what we are doing is a key element to the education process.

In British Columbia it is FSA time. FSA stands for Foundational Skills Assessment and it is our version of the "No Child Left Behind" policy in the United States. Over the next couple of months The FSA tests are given to our Grade 4 and Grade 7 students and it measures reading comprehension, writing and numeracy. These tests don't count for the student's grade and only give an indicator that the student is behind the prescribed skill level, on average, or exceeding the prescribed skill level. Here is what the BC Ministry of Education says what FSA testing is intended for:

"FSA provides a “snapshot” of how well B.C. students are doing. Results help answer important questions, such as: Are all students learning vital skills they will need in school and in life? Is student achievement improving over time? Are there any trends in student performance at the school, district or provincial levels? How are specific groups of students doing?"

The FSA tests aren't without controversy. The BC Teacher's Federation, our teacher's union, is vehemently opposed to FSA testing of our students. They have led long term advertising campaigns  against FSAs. They have encouraged their teachers to do everything short of direct job action to resist giving FSAs to their students. Here is a comment on the FSAs from their website:

"FSA tests undermine classroom assessment and have a negative impact on student motivation and learning. Teachers do not simply assess students’ learning so they have marks to put on report cards. The main purpose of classroom assessment is to support student learning, not simply to measure it. Constantly assessing the learning of students in their classroom allows teachers to monitor progress and adjust their teaching accordingly."

The BCTF has taken a very difficult stand here. The initial statement that "FSA tests undermine classroom assessment" just doesn't have any foundation. All one needs to do is talk with any Grade 4 or Grade 7 classroom teacher and at worst you will hear indifference to the tests. The biggest complaint is the time that is devoted to the tests. When FSA's first started we also administered them to Grade 10 students who didn't take them serious at all because they did not gain any personal value from the tests. The biggest question was, "why are taking these if we don't get marked.?" I would respond in Administration mode pleading for their help in taking the FSAs so that we could learn more about how we are performing academically as a school. This didn't seem to be a distinctive motivation because, at age 15 most kids don't care about the academic reputation of their school, they care about their own grades.

I do agree with the BCTF's comment that classroom assessment is "to support student learning" and it is here where their augment works against itself. The most important reason to assess student learning is to do exactly what they write, "The main purpose of classroom assessment is to support student learning, not simply to measure it." The implication here is that FSAs are only given to measure student learning and not to support their learning. But they are only seeing it from a student or classroom level as opposed to a school wide or province wide  level and they are allowing the politics of school cloud their thinking even at the student and classroom level.

 First, as a parent I am happy to take a "snapshot" of my student's skill level because I don't want my kids to get behind in their ability to continue in school and ultimately in life. Is this the only snapshot, of course not, but it is an outside criteria that I can also gage my student's progress in their form of school or the school they are enrolled in. Otherwise I have to trust my own sense of their schooling or their school's indication of their skills and have no comparative context outside of these.  FSA's help in answering the question like: is my home school student where she needs to be in her skills at Grades 4 and 7? Is my child's school giving their students a strong reading or math program as compared to the rest of the Province? Keep in mind that the FSAs only answer part of these question but they do give us somewhat of an objective perspective to assess our student's or school's skills. It is here where the "snapshot" can be helpful for the classroom and homeschool parent. If a specific classroom continues to perform at a lesser level than other classes in the school then it is important for teachers to look to answers why their students are not performing at the prescribed skill level. This is at the heart of why the Union is opposed to this testing. In the US the "No Child Left Behind" policies takes standardized testing to the level of teacher assessment. They are really assessing the classroom but rather how the teacher is doing with the his classroom. The BCTF like any union is about protecting its members. This will always be its primary motivation and when something outside of the union threatens its members you are going to have a reaction. Probably the biggest criticism of the FSA's is that the test is only a narrow indicator of how a particular class or school is doing and I would completely agree with this. Thankfully in BC the FSA's have not come anywhere near what the US "No Child Left Behind" policy has become and I would never advocate this.

The FSAs have to be considered in an even broader context. How are we doing as a school? Public School Superintendent from District 91, Ray LeMoigne, was very succinct when questioned by the media:

“The main purpose of this assessment is to help the province, school districts and schools evaluate existing programs and make plans for improvement. Another purpose is to give teachers, students and families an additional source of information about a student's performance,...We feel that the assessments give the schools and teachers the tools to help improve, this assessment is not to assess teachers but to show at a school level which skills need to be improved."

Many of the skills being tested for aren't learned in just Grade 4 or 7 they are learned all the way through to those levels. The best example I can think of is our own campus school. Heritage, throughout the late 90's, had performed well in our writing components of the FSAs, average in the Reading, but we were well below the Provincial benchmarks in our numeracy results. This wasn't a one year phenomenon which is a frequent point in many arguments against FSA's, but was a persistent problem. We had to begin to, at least, understand why this was happening. As we evaluated the process we discovered that we were weakest in our Math application questions, another words, we didn't apply our numeracy very well. We began to work with all of our elementary teachers on this area and in the next year we began to see improvement in our students. We continued this improvement over the next five years and were honoured at the Weston Awards in 2007 as one of the top schools in the Province for academic improvement. In the last decade our school has only had 3 of the 10 years where we haven't improved our scores as a school. It hasn't just been our campus school that has done well. Our Online school has had very good results the last two years where we have worked hard to get more participation among our home educators. HCOS is performing well above the Provincial benchmark as well.  This tells us that our Home Education program is working and it gives us credibility with those that would criticise our approach to schooling. It is important to know if we are moving ahead or behind our Provincial brick and mortar counterparts. Last year HCOS ranked in the top 15 percent of the Province. HCS was also ranked very high this year by the Fraser Institute and is in the top 30 percentile in BC.

The ranking of school is also a very controversial aspect of the FSA's in recent years. Here is what the BCTF says about ranking and the Fraser Institute:

"The misuse of FSA testing results is leading to narrow and misleading assumptions about how well schools are doing. Under pressure to find improvement, some districts and schools may be eager to report increases that are not statistically significant. Often the increases are a result of practising FSA type tests several times a year or simply a result of exempting low-achieving students from the test. The most blatant misuse of FSA results has been the ranking of schools by the Fraser Institute and then reported by the media. Unfortunately, it misrepresents the efforts of teachers and trustees to serve their communities."

As an administrator who has been on both sides of the rankings I have to agree with some of what the BCTF has complained about. First the idea that this a report card means that schools are judged by these 3 indicators only. Obviously, as a Christian School movement we don't want to be judged on these indicators alone. There are many aspects of a school that go well beyond teaching these skills. The FSAs don't test any socials or science curriculum. This is because these aren't, generally, skills based curriculum but focus on specific content. But if we believe in the ideas of multiple intelligences then the FSAs are really only looking for the skills represented in reading, writing and numeracy. Consider the students motivated to learn in the genres of art, mechanics or kinaesthetic learning. If a school desires to emphasize these disciplines early then they may struggle at FSA rankings. This doesn't mean that they are teaching these skills, it may mean that they are not at the rate of the rest of the Province at this time. Although, it is hard to argue that these skills are necessary for every genre.  One of the complaints is that all schools are not in the same socio-economic standing as other communities. This is obviously the case of the high end college-prep schools that charge a high tuition rate. This means that the students are coming from well off, high income family, whose kids typically will be high achievers in school. The Fraser Institute tries to factor family income rates into their ranking but still, typically, the richer the school the higher the ranking. I am proud of HCS this year for performing at such a high ranking yet with a below average rate of income for our parents. I have always believed that if we provide the right supportive community for our students with good teachers our lower income kids should perform at the same level of our high income kids.

So this leads us into a more important discussion as Christian Educators, how much do we emphasize academic achievement over discipleship? Should we give any credence to a set of comparative tests that measure ourselves to the world around us?  As I stated earlier it is important to use these standardized tests for what they were intended. Are we improving as a school in these three disciplines? Are we reaching our potential as students and as a school. Because the FSAs measure skills that are very important to us as Christian Educators then I think they can be very helpful. But as far as comparisons is concerned they only help us indicate where we are at in our journey in relation to the schools around us. Because FSAs have no competitive advantage we should resist the temptation of using them in that way. This is the big complaint with the Fraser Institute Report and the way the media likes to use it. We have experienced this at our campus school. For years we had to answer to parents why we weren't one of the top schools in the FSAs. We suggested that the FSAs are only a partial indicator, we are teaching other things in our school with different goals so please don't let this be a factor in your students enrolment. We have had to overcome the stigma that Heritage Christian School does a good job in spiritual formation but does a substandard job in academics. In recent years as our academics have improved we tend to use the FSA results as a source of vindication and I must admit it is nice to be able to dispel that stigma.

The fact of the matter is, Heritage is more about spiritual formation than academic excellence but the two concepts are not mutually exclusive.  Spiritual formation does not take place in some vacuum apart from the rest of the world. We become disciples as we encounter the world around us. We learn our lessons about the kingdom of God while we are living in the midst of the world. Much of our spiritual formation and discipleship takes place in direct relation to our God given tasks, callings and vocations in the world. School is where we prepare our children for this world. Therefore if we are going to engage this world, if we are going to be disciples in the midst of this world, if we are going to change and challenge the world then we must be able to interact, relate, compete with, invest in, work in, confront and any other active verb we can think of in this world. Thus academics become important as a means to an end. If our goals were the same as the rural Amish I don't think we would need to emphasise Math and Science the way we do at our schools. Our goals would be to raise strong agriculturalists who would also be disciples of Christ.  Because our mandate is to disciple 21st Century Christians in today's digital world we must raise up the type of Christian young men and women who will be able to impact that world. Academics are a part of their preparation but certainly not the only part or even the most important part. I should say that there is a role to academics that directly affects our spiritual formation. In that if students can't read or write then they will be limited in their ability to grow as Christians. They will always have to rely on others for their understanding and comprehension of the scriptures. Obviously, the academic level we hope to bring our children to is far beyond their ability to read. We want to teach our children to think for themselves. Something that isn't often tested for in our standardized exams. As disciples of Christ, the student's mind becomes a tool, or perhaps even a weapon for the kingdom of God. When we consider  great heroes of the faith, such as William Wilberforce, C.S. Lewis, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Francis Schaffer, even Mother Theresa we cannot avoid the obvious distinction that these were men and women of great mental discipline. We are all called to train the mind. This becomes all the more necessary if we are going to raise the next generation of leaders in the arts, law, science, politics, medicine, mathematics, business, education and the Church.

Discipleship is the great goal we must reach for every student. But every student has a distinct calling and gifting. The academics that we require in our educational program are the bare minimum to these callings. Thus the skills we are giving our children are necessary for their growth in Christ. Yes, to be a strong Christian your student will have to take learning reading, writing and numeracy. This is even more important in the digital world that we live in today.

Next week I have an interesting discussion on the question: "how much do we emphasize academic achievement over discipleship?" by our several of our Online school educators.  Please email us your comments and thoughts on this podcast. Also, if you would like us to mail you a free copy of my book or send you the download link for the audio version of, Discipling This Generation for a Digital World, simply send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and let us know what type of an educator you are, home schooler, classroom teacher, school administrator, or interested parent. Please let us know how you heard about the podcast and, of course, please include your mailing address. Thank you for listening and thank you for your commitment to discipleship-based Christian education.