SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
About half of Yellowknife students in Grades 6 and 9 achieved adequate math scores on last year's Alberta Achievement Test (AAT), according to data provided by the Department of Education, Culture and Employment.
Rita Mueller, assistant deputy minister for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, said the government is undergoing an education renewal to address low test scores in Yellowknife and across the NWT. - NNSL file photo |
The 2015-16 results show 54.3 per cent of Grade 6 students achieved the acceptable standard when that number was calculated as a percentage of total enrolment.
Only 51.8 per cent of Grade 9 students in Yellowknife were up to par in math last year.
"Yellowknife is, in all the categories ... doing better (than other NWT regions)," said Rita Mueller, assistant deputy minister in the Department of Education, Culture and Employment.
"Are these the kinds of levels we would like to see? No."
Achievement scores are slightly lower in regional centres (Fort Smith, Hay River and Inuvik), where 52.8 per cent of Grade 6 students met math standards. That number was 39.8 per cent for Grade 9 students.
But the picture is drastically different in small communities, where not even a quarter of enrolled students hit the benchmark.
Just 10.6 per cent of Grade 6 students in NWT communities met acceptable math standards for the test, according to the data calculated as a percentage of total enrolment.
That number increases slightly to 11.2 per cent for Grade 9 math students.
The outlook was slightly better for English.
About 70.3 per cent of Grade 6 students in Yellowknife achieved the acceptable standard for English on last year's test, compared to 62.2 per cent in the regional centres and 16.1 per cent in the communities.
About 64 per cent of Yellowknife students in Grade 9 met English standards, while that number was just slightly lower in regional centres, at 54.9 per cent. Only 15.2 per cent of students in the communities met the benchmark for English.
"AATs are really a snapshot of how students are doing in language arts or in math," Mueller said, adding many other factors can also show how students are doing, such as graduation rates, diploma exam results and attendance.
According to departmental data, the average attendance rate for most grade levels is more than 10 per cent higher in Yellowknife than in NWT communities.
"The more that students attend every single day and are in class, engaged, part of what's going on, the chances of them doing much better in their achievement is much higher," Mueller said.
How ready students are for school by the time they're five-years old also plays a role in how well they do in the classroom, she added.
Low achievement rates have encouraged the education department to undergo an education renewal.
It involves the introduction of junior kindergarten across the territory next year, a 10-year framework to improve early childhood development and pilot programs to better engage students, Mueller said.
But change can take time.
"We might not see the positive differences immediately," Mueller said. "But we're hoping ... we should have major, different results in the next 10 years in the territory."
Yellowknife school officials also have their own worries.
"It is a concern," said John Bowden, assistant superintendent of learning for Yellowknife Catholic Schools (YCS). "We're not happy with the current results."
Bowden could not share the Catholic school board's individual scores.
He did say the district is working with a southern consultant to establish a variety of academic assessment tools in addition to using the Alberta test.
Rather than measuring math as an entire subject, for example, Bowden said the other tools target students' strengths and weaknesses in individual strands of mathematics.
The district is also trying to strengthen teaching around the most essential elements of the curriculum.
"That enables us to be more focused and targeted," Bowden said.
While the AAT scores provide critical data about how well students are meeting the curriculum, Bowden stressed that they don't tell the whole story of who a student is.
Long-term trends are also telling.
"The most important thing is people understand that these tests represent a point in time," he said.
"That our students are much more than a test score, that their education is much more complex, and that the kinds of skills we develop are not going to be measured on a standardized test."
Metro Huculak, Yellowknife Education District No. 1 (Yk1) superintendent, said the most important thing is to help students be as ready as possible for the workforce or for university once they graduate.
"One of the things we're proud of is our graduation rates," Huculak said of the public district.
"And as well, our at-risk program. We have students who are graduating who probably never would have been graduating if we weren't meeting with them and talking with them ... to get them into school."
Yk1 assistant superintendent Ed Lippert said the school board is always working to address learning gaps.
Teacher development is one way that can happen.
Huculak said Yk1 has also taken on initiatives like a breakfast program, increased literacy programming and counselling to help students address a wide variety of issues that can affect them in the classroom.
"We're always looking at ways that we can make our students successful," Huculak said.
