Public Policy Sources 26: Boys, Girls and Grades

About the Authors

Peter Cowley is an independent education researcher. Upon graduation from the University of British Columbia (B.Comm. 1974), Mr Cowley accepted a marketing post with Proctor and Gamble in Toronto. He later returned to Vancouver to begin a long career in marketing and general management in the furniture-manufacturing sector. During his assignments in general management, process improvement was a special focus and interest. In 1994, Mr Cowley wrote and published The Parent's Guide, a popular handbook for parents of British Columbia's secondary-school students. The Parent's Guide website replaced the handbook in 1995. In 1997, Mr Cowley was co-author of A Secondary Schools Report Card for British Columbia and continues his research on education and related issues for the Fraser Institute.

Stephen T. Easton is a professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University and an adjunct scholar at The Fraser Institute. He received his A.B. from Oberlin College and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Recent works published by The Fraser Institute include Privatizing Prisons (editor, 1998), The Costs of Crime: Who Pays and How Much? 1998 Update (with Paul Brantingham, 1998), A Secondary Schools Report Card for British Columbia (co-author, 1998), and Rating Global Economic Freedom (editor, 1992). Recent publications about education include "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" in Stephen B. Lawton, Rodney Reed, and Fons van Wieringen, Restructuring Public Schooling (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1997) and Education in Canada: An Analysis of Elementary, Secondary and Vocational Schooling (Vancouver: The Fraser Institute, 1988). His editorials have been carried by the Vancouver Sun, the Globe and Mail, the Financial Post, the Ottawa Citizen, the Stirling chain and many other newspapers around the country.

Acknowledgments

The Fraser Institute wishes to acknowledge the generous support of the Lotte and John Hecht Memorial Foundation and the W. Garfield Weston Foundation for The 1999 Report Card on British Columbia's Secondary Schools, from which this project was derived. Thanks also to the employees of Policy, Evaluation, and Analysis; Data Management and Student Certification; and Communications at the British Columbia Ministry of Education. Their prompt, effective, and courteous responses to our many data requests made our work much easier.