2009 FSA Updates

Effective September 2008

• FSA will be administered from February 2 to 27, 2009.
• FSA online field test units will be available from December 8, 2008 to January 23, 2009.
• Students will continue to respond to multiple-choice questions of 2009 FSA online, and will continue to respond to written questions on paper.
• Updates have been made to the FSA Specifications, including Sample Questions and Scoring Guides. Examples of student responses have been added to the samples.
• Similar to the 2008 FSA, content of the 2009 FSA has been developed to reflect a February administration timeframe. In Reading and Writing, the materials and the questions were selected for a mid-year profile. The Grade 4 Numeracy will continue to assess learning outcomes from K-4; the Grade 7 Numeracy will continue to address learning outcomes from Grade 7 and from previous years. Generally, if a concept has been introduced in Grades 2/3 or 5/6 and is expanded upon in Grades 4 or 7, the concept is considered to be valid for inclusion on the 2009 assessment.
• The 2009 FSA reports for individual students will be ready to send home, along with the students’ written response booklets, by the end of March 2009. The 2008 FSA has been established as the new baseline for student performance. School reports will be ready before the end of the school year. Both student and school level reports will have four reporting categories of performance: performance level unknown, not yet demonstrated meeting expectations, meets expectations, and exceeds expectations.

Update on Scoring

• All written-response questions for the 2009 FSA will be scored at the district level. Funding will be provided to support scoring activities.
• The Ministry provides support for scoring/training that include:
  • a set of provincial exemplars using the 2009 student responses for the written-response question in reading, writing and numeracy by the end of February 2009
  • Scoring Guides and training papers posted at http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/assessment/fsa/training.htm
  • Ongoing support at email address EDUC.Fsascore@gov.bc.ca
• A sample of FSA papers from public and independent schools will be rescored in a summer monitoring session.