A full description and discussion of the method used in constructing The 1999 Report Card on British Columbia's Secondary Schools is provided in Appendix 1. Below is a brief explanation of the indicators and the overall rating.
The Teaching Indicators
Average provincial examination mark
Good teachers get the best out of each of their students. They can help all students--from the bottom of the class to the top--to reach their potential. In order to see how all the students of a particular school are doing, we can look at the average mark that students at that school receive on their provincial examinations.
These uniform provincial examinations are especially good for comparison purposes because, no matter what school the student attends anywhere in the province, the content of the examination is the same. Also, as most of these grade 12 courses require students to have successfully completed courses in the early grades, they not only indicate the teaching quality at the grade 12 level, but also that at the earlier grade levels.
Percentage of provincial examinations failed
A very important responsibility of teachers is to ensure that all their students are able to pass the course. For this indicator, we ignored the actual examination marks and simply determined two numbers--the number of provincial examinations written which received a failing grade; and, the total number of these examinations written. We divided the first sum (all failing examinations) by the second sum (all examinations written) to get the percentage of all examinations that were judged a fail.
Difference between examination mark
and school mark
An important part of good teaching is accurate feedback. A student whose level of achievement has remained consistent at, say, 75 percent throughout the year should reasonably be able to expect that--by investing roughly the same effort--she will receive roughly the same mark on the examination.
To assess the accuracy of feedback at each school, we compared the average examination mark (see above) with the average school mark--the total of all the results from tests, essays, quizzes, and so on given in class--for all the provincially examinable courses offered at the school. This indicator, the difference between exam mark and school mark, records the average size of the absolute difference between the two average marks for all the provincially examinable courses completed at the school.
The Counselling Indicators
Graduation rate
This indicator compares the number of "potential" graduates enrolled in the school on September 30 with the number of students who actually graduate by the end of the same school year. Only those enrollees who are capable of graduating with their class within the current school year are included in the count of potential graduates.
Provincial examinable courses
taken per student
The provincial examinable courses are of value to every student, regardless of post-secondary plans. They develop or enhance skills that are useful in a wide range of future activities. These are also the courses most likely to be accepted as prerequisites to further training at colleges, technical institutes, and universities. A high rate of participation in provincially examinable courses indicates a school's success in helping students get the most out of high school while, at the same time, keeping their post-secondary options open.
The participation rate is the average number of provincial examinations written by each student in the school. First, the number of students who wrote a provincial examination in each of the courses is determined and the total for all the courses is calculated. This total is then divided by the grade 12 enrollment.
The overall school rating
While each of the indicators is important, it is very often the case that a particular school does better on some indicators than on others. So, just as a teacher must make a decision about a student's overall performance, we need an overall indicator of school performance. Just as teachers combine test scores, homework, and class participation to rate a student, we have combined all the indicators to produce an overall rating out of ten for each school.
We arrived at the overall rating as follows. For each school, we calculated a decile value for each indicator from the raw score. To do this, we compared each raw score to corresponding results in the base year (1992/93). The raw scores in the base year for each indicator were sorted from highest to lowest and then divided into 10 equal groups. The range of scores in the group that contained the highest scores was assigned a decile value of 10; the next range of scores was assigned a decile value of 9, and so on until the lowest range of scores was assigned a decile value of one. For each indicator, we looked at the range into which the indicator value fell and assigned the appropriate decile value. Finally, to derive the overall rating, we averaged the five decile scores.
Parent's average education
For each school, the average number of years of education of female parents or lone parents in single-parent families is reported in the first line of each school's results table. Higher values of this statistic are associated with higher average marks and lower average fail rates. When schools with similar values for parent's average education record different results on either of these two indicators, it suggests that one school is more successful in taking the student's home life into account in the teaching and counselling practices that it employs. More information on the measure of parent's average education is contained in Appendix 2.
Grade 12 Enrollment
The size of the grade-12 class at the school is also indicated in the first line of each school's results table. It should be remembered that indicator results for schools with fewer students tend to be more variable than do those for larger schools. This is because the school's overall results can be affected by the results of a few individual students. The smaller the school, the more caution should be used in interpreting these results.
The Progress indicator
In the last column of each of the indicator rows, improvement, if any, in the school's performance for that indicator is shown. An upward pointing arrow ( ) indicates that the school's pattern of improvement is statistically significant. In this context, the term "statistically significant" means that, nine times out of ten, the change reported is significantly different from zero. A downward pointing arrow ( Ø ) indicates that the school is very likely experiencing a statistically significant deterioration in performance as reflected by the indicator. A double arrow ( ´ ) indicates that no significant change has occurred over the study period. Trends were calculated only in those circumstances where at least four years of data were available.
Important note on interpreting the Progress indicator
For three of the indicators--Average provincial examination mark, Graduation Rate, and Provincial examinable courses taken per student--an upward pointing arrow ( ) will accompany increasing values in the statistics. For example, increasing average mark values indicate improvement. For the other two indicators--Percentage of provincial examinations failed, and Difference between examination mark and school mark--an upward pointing arrow will accompany decreasing values in the statistics. For example, a decreasing rate of failure also indicates improvement.
Other notes
(1) Where no values appear in a school year column, it indicates that the school either was not in operation during that year or that it did not meet the several criteria for inclusion (numbers enrolled, provincial examination results reported, and so on).
(2) In the interests of fairness and reliability, not all of the province's secondary schools could be included in the survey. Excluded are schools at which the grade 12 enrollment is fewer than fifteen students; centres for adult education and continuing education; schools that cater solely or largely to non-resident foreign students; and certain alternative schools not offering a full program of courses. All other secondary schools are included.
We have used the 90 percent confidence level in this case in order to bring attention to developing trends.