School rankings given a failing grade

Olivia Lepoidevin, a Grade 2 student at Queen’s Park Elementary gets some help sculpting a dog from her teacher, MaryAnn McLean. She runs what’s known as a “smart learning classroom” a new approach to helping children learn. The work being done by McLean and other dedicated instructors on staff, said principal Kelly Jones, is at odds with the low ranking the school received in the annual Fraser Institute report card.

The Fraser Institute’s annual report card on elementary schools in British Columbia was released this week and once again, school districts are denying that it is a realistic assessment of their effectiveness.

Elementary schools in School District 67 cover nearly the whole gamut of rankings. Naramata Elementary rates the highest in the region, at 7.9 out of 10 — the same ranking as the prestigious St. Michael’s University School in Victoria. Queen’s Park marks the other end of the spectrum, scoring just 2.9, and ranking 942 out of the 980 schools listed in the report.

However, the top-ranked schools in the province are almost all private schools, with Crofton House retaining its five-year hold on the No. 1 ranking. This imbalance has led to claims that the rankings are biased in favour of schools with better social and economic conditions, not necessarily more effective teachers or academic programs.

Rankings, though, don’t always reflect reality, especially in the opinion of Queen’s Park principal Kelly Jones. There’s a banner in the main hall that reads “This school is full of terrific kids” and Jones couldn’t agree more, extending the sentiment to include the teaching staff.

“We have such a dedicated staff here,” he said, adding that the instructors are on the cutting edge of research into how children learn and developing learning strategies. “We have a number of teachers here that do demonstration classes for other teachers in the district.”

Good ratings or bad, school district superintendent Gary Doi considers the Fraser Institute report card to be an inaccurate picture of the effectiveness of locals schools.

“I don’t pay any attention to the Fraser Institute report,” he said. “Schools are so much more complicated than that.”

Jones also said he doesn’t pay any attention to the institute’s rankings, and has no doubt that Queen’s Park is on a positive path.

“We’re very confident that the strategies that we are using are making a difference and that we’re moving in the right direction,” he said. “We feel that we know our children quite well and that we know what their needs are. That’s what really drives our instruction.”

There’s a wide range of factors that he would consider as academic indicators, far more than the provincial Foundation Skills Assessment tests that the institute’s rankings are largely based on.

“I think it’s an unsound use of the Foundation Skills Assessment tests,” said Doi. “The Fraser Institute does a disservice by taking this one measure and using it to rank schools.”

Terry Green, president of the Okanagan Skaha Teachers’ Union, also sees the report card as presenting a skewed picture of conditions at the elementary schools.

“It’s raw score data that they’re using, based on one reading, one writing and one numeracy test.”

Unlike many of the 980 schools listed in the report, elementary schools in SD67 only offer classes to Grade 5. However the rankings still include results from the FSA test conducted in middle schools, two years after the student has left the school in question.

For these “type-2” schools, the Fraser Institute explains, the provincial government supplies enough data from the middle school tests that they can work backwards to group the results by the original elementary schools.

“It goes to show that they manipulate the data. So, even the data that they do report is not accurate reporting,” said Green. “I’m very frustrated with the Fraser Institute.”

The number of students being reported on at each school is also a difficulty, Green added. The size of the samples vary widely — just 17 at Naramata Elementary opposed to more than a hundred students at some of the larger urban schools. Small samples, Green explained, means just one or two students can change the school’s average.

“The minimum for reliable validity would be 30 students and even that would be a very at-risk number,” he said. “When you have schools with less than 30, the results are not valid for basing any premise on.”

“FSAs certainly have value, but not for the way the Fraser Institute uses them,” agreed Doi.

The Fraser Institute said it also takes into account the socio-economic differences, based largely on the average years of education obtained by parents of the school’s students.

This indicator often points to large differences between school populations — Naramata parents, for example have an average 15.1 years education, Queen’s Park 13.2 and Crofton 16.9. But Green reacted strongly to the report’s suggestion that educators could even out the effects of this disparity by taking into account the background of the students.

“A blanket statement like that is ridiculous,” he said, adding that teachers do try to adapt their instruction to student background with the intention of fostering individual growth and success. “But it is virtually impossible for teachers to take all 30 students in a class and have all of them progressing at the same rate at the same time.”

Green agrees with Doi that the rankings are irrelevant to real-world academic success.

“We have a great school system here and regardless of what those silly numbers on the rankings say, our students do really well,” he said. “Our students are hugely successful and for the most part we have a really high rate of students graduating.”