King's View Academy has a low-anxiety, flexible and continuous approach to the way we do assessment. Assessment can be a significant source of anxiety for many students. Assessment also serves everyone's needs by providing information on how the student is progressing in his/her learning, and ultimately progressing through the outcome list for a particular course.

At KVA we start with the curriculum documents for the courses we teach (all can be found here.) The expectation, by the Nova Scotia Department of Education, is that each student in a particular course will learn and reach mastery of the knowledge and skills defined by the set of outcomes. All outcomes are reachable by any student in any class, as long as that student has the pre-requisite knowledge to start that class, and that student is an effective learner.

The assessment approach of KVA builds upon these outcomes. We assess mastery as interpreted by content experts supporting KVA learners in each discipline. The content expert is chosen to support KVA learners based on their expertise in a specific content area. This expertise allows them to make valid judgments on specifically what knowledge and skills are indicated by the outcomes, as well as what evidence, observed or collected from learners, constitutes mastery of any given outcome.

Additionally, assessment is continuous. One of the strengths of our educational model is the time that content experts and students can spend one-on-one. During this time the content expert is continuously assessing the student's grasp of foundational/pre-requisite knowledge, assessing the student's learning skills, and making judgments about how much mastery has been achieved and what the most approriate "next work" will be. This relationship is at the heart of a KVA student's benefit from KVA content experts.

Every outcome mastered or partially mastered is recorded and reported by each content expert, as they observe it. Part of the communication between content expert and student is this ongoing progress.

Students can continue working toward increasing mastery of any subject for as long as they choose, and are encouraged to revisit content until it has been 100% mastered. Grades are never withdrawn or reduced - only progress is recorded. This way, success is determined by the student (only supported and assessed by the content expert).