Grading Alberta's High Schools - Fraser Institute Releases Second Annual Report Card

Contact:

Peter Cowley, Director of School Performance Studies
The Fraser Institute, (604) 688-0221 Ext. 556 Email: peterc@fraserinstitute.ca

Release Date: 5 May 2000

VANCOUVER,BC>>>The Fraser Institute today released its Second Annual Report Card on Alberta's High Schools. This annual report rates and ranks 223 of Alberta's public, separate, private, and francophone high schools.

By providing a concise, objective overview of each school's academic performance, the Report Card is designed to provide a useful benchmark against which schools can improve.

"The Report Card brings together a variety of relevant objective indicators of school performance into one, easily accessible, public document that enables parents, students, school administrators, teachers, and taxpayers to compare the performance of individual schools. It also plays an important role in providing parents and students with the ability to make a more informed choice of an education provider," says Peter Cowley, the Report Card's co-author.

The foundation of the Report Card is an overall rating of each school's academic performance. Utilizing student results data provided by Alberta Learning, each school is rated on a scale of zero to 10.

For each school, five indicators of school performance are measured: (1) the average diploma examination mark received by the school's students; (2) the percentage of these diploma examinations that the students failed; (3) the difference between the student's average examination mark and the average school mark in the diploma courses; (4) the number of diploma courses taken per student; and (5) the percentage of students entering grade 12 for the first time who completed their diploma program in the same year. From these statistics, a rating for each of the four school years, 1995/96 through 1998/99, has been calculated.

This year the Report Card includes a measure of the socio-economic background of the school's student body that allows parents and school officials to compare their school's results with other schools that have similar student-family characteristics.

"Educators can, and should, take into account the abilities, interests, and backgrounds of their students when they design their lesson plans and deliver their curriculum," says Cowley. "By doing this, they can ensure good results regardless of any disadvantages that their students may have."

The Gender Gap indicator and ranking has also been incorporated this year as a measure of how effective the school has been at helping students of both sexes to succeed. This indicator reports which gender received the highest average school mark in each of two important courses - English 30 and Mathematics 30 - as well as the actual difference in percentage points between the two results.

Also included are the 1998/99 results in the four diploma courses most frequently taken at the school. Both the average final examination mark and the rate of participation are provided. This allows readers to easily compare a school's performance in a variety of courses and to compare corresponding results among schools.

"Constructive comparisons are at the heart of the improvement process and we hope that the report generates productive discussion among parents, teachers, and school administrators on how to improve school performance in Alberta," concludes Cowley.

Established in 1974, The Fraser Institute is an independent public policy organization based in Vancouver.

For further information contact:

Suzanne Walters, Director of Communications,
The Fraser Institute, (604) 714-4582,
Email suzannew@fraserinstitute.ca

info@fraserinstitute.ca
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