B.C. government’s changes to student testing deprive parents of high school rankings

The Fraser Institute’s British Columbia Secondary Schools Report Card—also known as the B.C. high school rankings—has been a popular and valuable tool for parents, schools, teachers and policymakers since first published in 1998. But due to the B.C. government’s dramatic dismantling of student testing in high schools, the institute will no longer publish the Report Card—unless the government reverses the changes.

Why? Because the Report Card relies on provincewide high school test data from the B.C. Ministry of Education and the government’s changes raise serious questions about the reliability of the provincial assessment data as a measure of student performance.

Here's how the B.C. government has dismantled provincial testing in high schools.

In 2015/16, B.C. high school students were required to write five provincial exams, including Grade 10 math and English exams, and Grade 12 English exams. Students were tested, on a fair and level playing field, on course content knowledge. Their provincial exam marks contributed to their final course grade and impacted their ability to graduate.

In other words, these provincial exams were meaningful to students. They had good reason to put in their best effort at providing an accurate picture of what they knew.

The resulting test score data was not only tremendously useful to parents who could then see how their child was doing in school, but it also provided teachers and school administrators a reliable picture of how students—and subsequently, high schools—were doing. It gave policymakers a look at how the education system was serving students in developing their understanding of core subjects.

Yet in 2015, the B.C. government began to reduce the number of mandatory tests. Between 2017/18 and 2021/22, the government replaced its provincial Grade 10 English and math exams, and Grade 12 English exam, with vague student “assessments” in literacy and numeracy. The new assessments don’t test specific course content knowledge but rather broad concepts. Consequently, the assessments are much less useful in measuring student progress.

In theory, students are “required” to complete the new assessments to graduate. But in 2021/22 (the latest year of comparable data), participation in the Grade 10 numeracy assessment was 22.3 percentage points lower than the 2015/16 Grade 10 Math exam with similar participation declines in the Grade 10 literacy assessment vs. the Grade 10 English exam (17.1 percentage points) and Grade 12 literacy assessment vs. Grade 12 English exam (14.2 percentage points) during the same period. And yet, B.C.’s high school graduation rate increased from 95 per cent in 2015/16 to 96 per cent in 2021/22.

Even among students who write the assessments, there’s little incentive to take them seriously—they don’t need to pass, and their mark doesn’t impact their course grade. In other words, the assessments simply don’t matter to many students.

In 2021/22, about three-quarters (76.4 per cent) of Grade 10 students were proficient in the literacy assessment—4.1 percentage points lower than on the 2015/16 English exams (80.5 per cent). In 2021/22, less than half (48.2 per cent) of Grade 10 students were proficient in the numeracy assessment—compared to 62.4 per cent on the 2015/16 math exams. And in 2021/22, 80 per cent of Grade 12 students were proficient in the Grade 12 literacy assessment, which was 2.1 percentage points higher than the Grade 12 English exams of 2015/16 (77.9 per cent).

But again, the assessment results should be viewed with skepticism because—as noted, fewer students now write these tests, which makes their average results less reliable. Indeed, there are serious questions about the reliability of the assessment scores and resulting provincial data.

Which brings us back to the Fraser Institute Report Card, which was based on reliable student testing data and showed parents how their child’s school was doing and how it compared to other schools.

The Report Card also noted special circumstances including the proportion of special needs students or English Second Language students, and highlighted the success of schools that improved over time, so school administrators could learn from the success of others.

Quality data is essential for a fair and objective assessment of school performance. Again, due to the B.C. government’s recent changes, the institute cannot publish these rankings unless the provincial government reinstates quality provincewide testing in high schools.

This new schoolyear brings a new reality in B.C. Parents, teachers, school administrators and policymakers no longer have quality provincewide data to guide decisions and improve high schools.