As parents and students consider schooling options for the following school year, I often receive requests to provide additional information on Carson Graham Secondary. On every occasion, I am always happy to meet or speak with parents to provide a better understanding when deciding which school their child should attend. Often, the discussion on the Fraser Institute rankings surfaces as parents admit that they are puzzled by our ranking when compared to the positive comments they receive from the community.
Today, I felt inspired to put my thoughts in writing and provide some insight on my conversations with parents. Surprisingly, I do not try to ‘win’ a parent over to register at Carson Graham. Rather, I do my best to remove emotion out of the equation and present a logical argument against using the Fraser Institute rankings as a sound measurement tool and spend my efforts helping parents select the best school for their child.
As a parent, I completely understand the appeal to go online and retrieve a tidy list of numerical rankings which compares schools under the general premise that the higher the mark (conveniently out of 10), the better the school. Frankly, who wouldn’t want a system that simply computes a simple score for school performance.
Now the bad news – it’s not that easy! Before getting into the complexities of individual schools, let me ask if you can come up with a formula that computes the effectiveness of your organization into a score rounded to the nearest decimal point? Or, can an outside organization audit your business using selective performance data without stepping foot into your workplace and engaging in a single conversation with your employees or clients? My money is that you answered no to both questions.
I have been an educator for over sixteen years, and it that time, I have learned that measuring learning is complex. Our teachers are continually reflecting on their assessment practices and have implemented a grading system that is criterion based which produces a level for that individual student. As an International Baccalaureate (IB) school, we focus on student inquiry, international mindedness and approaches to learning skills (thinking, communication, social, self-management and research). We as educators understand that our assessment is not so precise that we can equate student learning into a single percentage. Nor can the Fraser Institute.
Over the years, there have been many questions surrounding the validity of data used to produce a school ranking. I will focus on two particular components to prove my point. First, the delayed advancement rate is one the indicators used to compute a total school ranking. This rate is defined as “the estimated percentage of the school’s grade 10 students who will not complete grade 12 within three years” (Fraser Institute School Report Cards, 2015). This one factor alone is suggesting that such an estimation on student failure is even possible, let alone educationally sound. A research paper on the Fraser Institute by Helen Raptis notes:
Canadian media have given little coverage to the Institute’s unorthodox methodology that combines multiple indicators into one overall rating. Moreover, although the Fraser Institute insists that its rankings are based on academic achievement, a school’s rank does not reflect its test scores. This is because the Fraser Institute generates overall rankings by combining and weighting multiple indicators, including some that are unrelated to academic achievement (Canadian Journal of Education, 2012).
This brings me to the second piece of data – provincial exams. For secondary schools, students write English, Math and Science provincial exams in Grade 10 that make up 20% of their overall mark. In Grade 11, students take the Social Studies 11 provincial exam which is also worth 20% of their overall mark. Finally, in Grade 12, student write English or Communications 12 which accounts for 40% of their final mark. While exam marks should be considered at some level, the school marks for these courses are not authentically considered. Earlier, I mentioned Carson Graham uses levels to report student achievement with our new IB report card. There are no percentages or letter grades, rendering the Fraser Institute’s school ranking statistically invalid.
And what about the other academics and grades beyond these select provincial exams? Should they not be considered to provide a broader picture? Surely, as a parent, you want your child to receive a quality education. How do you define quality education? Common themes such as strong academics, positive school culture, caring and dedicated staff, strong parent support, diverse curricular and extra curricular programs would certainly emerge. None of which are factored in a Fraser Institute school ranking. At Carson Graham, I know we possess these characteristics and believe we are one of the top schools in the province.
Both our IB Middle Years Programme (Grades 8-10) and our Diploma Programme (Grades 11-12) undergo intensive audits from external teams every 5 years. A few years ago, our Middle Years Programme passed with flying colors and collectively, we were proud of our results. The difference being the external team spent 3 days at our school and went into our classrooms. Moreover, they met with all of our departments, the school administration, students and parents. At the conclusion of the process, the evaluation team drafts an extensive report providing invaluable feedback including areas for improvement.
Allow me to play the other side, you may be thinking that schools receiving a “low score” would naturally be defensive. I certainly discount the rankings as severely flawed, however, you can find a number of schools at the top of the rankings that share my perspective. Mulgrave school, for example, a private International Baccalaureate school, one that Carson Graham Secondary recently entered into an Innovative Partnership, is one of these schools. The Deputy Head eloquently stated:
The Fraser Institute ranks our school highly every year. This is flattering, but I wonder: How would they know? Actually, the answer is they don’t know.
Finally, let’s look at two statements from Peter Cowley, one of the Report Card’s authors, who stated in 2007 that the rankings “provide accurate, objective, understandable information about the performance of individual schools” (Ranking the Schools, 2007). In a recent blog post this month, Cowley (Fraser Forum, 2016) acknowledges a particular criticism, saying:
There is one with which I agree: the rankings don’t consider how well the schools do on the many other aspects of education beyond the acquisition of basic academic skills.
Accountability is not new phenomenon for educators and our stakeholders have the right to understand how a particular school is performing. But please, stop paying attention to the nonsense coming from Fraser Institute school rankings and find out more about your child’s school. I must warn you it will take more effort and involve a visit to the school giving you an opportunity to ask real questions and collect real data. Start by asking the principal or staff member: Would you send your children to this school? Speaking for my children, in a heartbeat.