Jennifer Geens
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Nov 23/05) - The results are in for students at Yellowknife Catholic Schools and they look good, according to the board.

Principals of St. Patrick high school and Weledeh and St. Joseph elementary schools presented their students' results on the Alberta Achievement Test to the board last Wednesday.

A group of Math 10 students learn under the tutelage St. Pat's teacher Don Reid, Nov. 22. Student Brenda Stevenson is given some valuable one-on-one guidance from her teacher. - John King/NNSL photo

The tests are taken by students in Grades 3, 6, 9 and 12.

At St. Pat's, students wrote the tests in January and June. Most of the questions are multiple choice, and the test is timed.

Johnnie Bowden, principal of St. Patrick high school, said one of the drawbacks of the tests is that it assumes everyone learns at the same rate, and answers test questions at the same speed.

"Some of our best thinkers don't do well on standardized tests," said Bowden.

Nevertheless, Bowden said that last year St. Patrick achieved its best results so far.

St. Patrick, Weledeh and St. Joseph teachers use the test results to identify areas in the curriculum where students need help. Though their results have been improving over the past few years, Bowden said the school doesn't want to fall into the trap of teaching to the test.

"Our task is to make students excited about learning," he said.

"Everything about standardized testing goes against that. They're important tools to give us information, but they're not the be-all and end-all."

Trustee Debbi Ross commended the team from St. Patrick who conducted the school's analysis, and congratulated them on the consistent improvement in the school's results.

Merrill Dean, principal of Weledeh school, said her school's scores saw a marked improvement last year, with increases ranging from three to 27 per cent in each area.

Since all the schools have now been testing for at least three years, the board suggested the schools track the test performances of groups of students from the Grade 3 test to the Grade 6 test, and so on.

Dean said Weledeh has done comparisons of last year's Grade 6 test results with the group's previous Grade 3 results, and found that overall percentages tended to remain the same while individual scores decreased slightly.

With so few students taking the tests compared to Alberta, the performance of one person can alter the overall course average by anywhere from five to 15 per cent.