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Whistler down, Howe Sound up in school rankings

School District doesn't acknowledge controversial Fraser Institute rankings
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The Fraser Institute released its annual ranking of secondary schools in British Columbia on Monday, June 17, with mixed results for schools in Sea to Sky for the 2011-2012 year.

The controversial rankings are based on provincial standardized testing for Grades 10 and 11, graduation rates and other data collected by the Ministry of Education.

Whistler Secondary School's overall rankings declined significantly compared to the last five years, but the school district is not concerned.

Lisa McCullough, superintendent of schools for the Sea to Sky School District, said the board doesn't give any weight to the Fraser Institute's rankings. Nor would she comment on why Whistler Secondary may have dropped.

"First of all, (the rankings) are unethical and secondly, we don't think they're informative in any meaningful way," she said. "The most valid and reliable information that a school can use is that information that is collected by the teacher in the classroom. The better job that a school does at collecting that information and using it to make decisions in changing instruction or goals, the more positively we can affect a child or family or group of students."

Whistler's overall score out of 10 was 6.8 this year, down from 8.0 in 2008. That in turn dropped the school to 88th out of 284 schools across B.C. — in the top third provincially but well back of the previous five-year average ranking of 41st out of 260 schools (top 16 per cent).

The percentage of provincial exams failed was a high 5.7 per cent, which is almost four times the failure rate of the 2011 school year (1.5 per cent). The average exam mark was 71.3, which is 2.7 per cent lower than 2011 and the lowest average in five years.

As well, the school versus exam mark difference — which is the difference between scores on provincial exams and the teacher's marks in courses covered by standardized tests — was 6.8. According to the Fraser Institute, a higher differential suggests that a teacher may be inflating grades, with a provincial average difference of around four per cent.

In comparison, the top-ranked school in the province — York House private school for girls — was ranked 10 out of 10 with average exam marks of 86.7 and a school vs. exam mark difference of 1.7.

But while Whistler's numbers are down in 2012, Howe Sound Secondary in Squamish is on the way up comparatively. The school finished with a 6.4 rating out of 10, which is its highest overall grade in five years. Average exam marks were up to 69.3 from a low of 63.9 in 2008, and the percentage of exams failed dropped to 8.7 from a high of 14.9. The difference between school and exam marks was 5.1 per cent.

The result was a jump in provincial rankings to 117th out of 284 schools, down from an average rank of 191 out of 260 the last five years.

Pemberton Secondary numbers stayed roughly the same. The school's overall grade was 5.3 in 2012, down from 5.4 in 2011 and a high of 6.3 in 2009. The average exam mark was 66.5, with a standardized test failure rate of 12.5 per cent. The school's rank was 197, down from a five-year average of 168.

The Fraser Institute rankings are considered controversial for several reasons, including the focus on standardized testing — something the B.C. Teacher's Federation opposes on the grounds that it forces teachers to focus more on the tests than the curriculum and doesn't adequately take into account things like culture or socioeconomics — or in Whistler's case the number of students focusing on sports or the arts.

Teachers are also opposed to the rankings being published publicly because it makes education competitive.

It's also been pointed out in news coverage that the 2012 numbers may have been skewed by the contract dispute between teachers and the province that resulted in teachers withdrawing additional services such as coaching for extracurricular activities — something that did not impact private schools. Students did not receive formal report cards until the end of the year.

McCullough says that standardized tests do have their place in schools, but only as a small part of the overall evaluation.

"In isolation the numbers are meaningless," she said. "They just help to inform the data on an overall story for a school."

There are several areas that McCullough says that standardized tests and ranking systems fall short, especially when it comes to a student's overall development.

"There are all kind of things you can't measure objectively in these tests and that the Fraser Institute doesn't take into consideration," she said. "Participation in society. Staying active and healthy. Contributing to the school and the community. Being active in art and music. Excelling in the culinary arts. Supporting a healthy and stable environment. None of those things are indicated in standardized tests or rankings.

"I feel families would rather choose schools knowing their child will be involved in those important things."

Peter Cowley of the Fraser Institute defends the annual report cards, and encourages school districts and schools to improve on the rankings by tracking other objective data on their students.

"You can say that it's not a fair way to measure students, that it's too narrow," he said. "But we base this report card on provincial test results in Grade 10 English, Grade 10 Math, Grade 10 Science, Grade 11 Social Studies and Grade 12 English, and in some cases French. These are courses that nobody could consider fringe."

In terms of the overall grades, Cowley said the year-to-year differences don't mean much but parents should probably pay some attention to five-year trends even if the system isn't conclusive.

"Take Whistler... they got a 6.8 and five years ago then had an 8.0 — then a 7.6, then a 7.2, then it went up to 7.7 and down to 6.8. I don't know, but it looks to me like it's going down."

Cowley would like to see parents take that information to Parent Advisory Council (PAC) meetings and school board meetings and include them in their discussions.

"If I were a parent, I'd go to the PAC and say... 'do we have a plan in place, an improvement program intended to ensure the improvement of the academic performance of successive classes?'"

Cowley said that there is a lot of interest in the rankings, despite the controversy. Last year he said 1.6 million unique visitors to the website looked at the rankings.