A Vancouver Island teacher remains unbowed after being given a letter of reprimand because she refused to give her Grade 3 class a reading comprehension test.
 
Kathryn Sihota faced a disciplinary hearing over the matter before the Sooke District School Board this week. On Thursday the board decided her actions amounted to insubordination and said a letter of reprimand would be included in her employment file.

Kathryn Sihota says she's upset with the letter of reprimand, but doesn't regret her actions.
(CBC)

Sihota had a spotless 27-year record as an elementary school teacher. She said she was upset with the letter, but she doesn't regret what she did. 

Sihota said the District Assessment of Reading Test, or DART, causes undue stress on young learners and are given to get data that the school district can collect in other ways.

The tears of a little girl in her class made her defy the Sooke School District order, Sihota told CBC News on Tuesday before the hearing.

"When that happened, I immediately went to the assistant superintendent and told him I just couldn't do that to my students anymore," she said.

Sihota's union, the B.C. Teachers' Federation, plans to launch a grievance against the disciplinary action. Sihota said she isn't sure what she will do next spring, when the testing takes place again.

"I've got to do a lot of thinking about this and decide," Sihota said. "My intention is to provide the best learning environment for my kids and if that means standing up again, well, maybe that's what I'll have to do."

Margot Swinbernson, the chair of the Sooke District School Board, said she is open to examining the efficacy of the DART test, but added that the district isn't ready to throw it out yet.

"We need to continue to measure and have an idea of what's happening with our students, so that we can provide the appropriate material to our teachers," said Swinbernson.

Over the past four years, the data collected from DART has helped direct more resources to First Nations student readers, and to young male readers, who were found to be behind the girls in comprehension skills, Swinbernson said.

DART is a performance-based assessment of learning, administered to students in Grades 3 to 9 on a voluntary basis in the fall and on a required basis in the spring.

The school board said it introduced the district-wide reading assessment test four years ago, with the goal of helping teachers and parents assess the literacy levels of students.

But Sihota and her colleagues argue the teachers themselves can gather the same information and analysis for the district without the tests.