Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 31/01) - Yellowknife Catholic Schools administration is researching a variety of testing techniques to help cross reference Alberta-based exams in order to give a more accurate indication of how students are doing.

Part of this involves improving its electronic data collection and results monitoring system. Information can then be pulled from report cards, tracked and analyzed by category -- including grade level, class, gender and program.

"We will then be able to make decisions based on hard data so that we can make changes to correct problems," said superintendent Kern Von Hagen.

Von Hagen said that external tests, such as the Grade 12, Alberta-based diploma exams, are useful as a benchmark, but that other variables need to be considered.

"There's a real standards craze out there, but there's also the worry that people are looking only at that and not at other variables," he said.

Von Hagen said socioeconomic and cultural factors make a difference. "There are lots of pieces that might mean your students aren't the same as other students."

Last January, Grade 12 students scored below Alberta students in all diploma exams except for English 33 and Social Studies 33.

However, overall the results weren't bad. In English 30, just over 90 per cent of students scored in the acceptable range, 5.4 per cent received were in the excellent category and about 10 per cent failed. By comparison, 97 per cent of Alberta students achieved acceptable grades, 17.3 were in the excellent range and three per cent failed.

Our results were considerably worse in the sciences and math, compared with Alberta.

Grades between 50 and 80 per cent are considered acceptable while grades above 80 per cent are excellent. June exam results have not been released.

John Bowden, principal of St. Patrick high school, said it is unfair to compare the low numbers of Yellowknife students with the thousands of Albertans taking the tests.

He said the results must be put in context to make any sense.

"How do you compare numbers of 10 with 16,000 and draw any kind of meaningful analysis from that?" he said.