Public Policy Sources 29:
Introduction

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The 1999 Report Card on Alberta's High Schools (hereafter, Report Card) combines a variety of relevant, publicly available, data to produce an academic rating of the province's high schools. This first Report Card is based on student results provided by the Alberta Department of Education (Alberta Education). We calculated five indicators of school performance for each school: (1) the average diploma 1 examination mark received by the school's Grade-12 students; (2) the percentage of these diploma examinations that the students failed; (3) the difference between student's average examination mark and their 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 2 in the same school year. From these indicators, each school's overall academic rating for the three school years 1995/1996 through 1997/1998 was determined.

Some of the data upon which the indicators are based are already publicly available. However, to our knowledge, only the Report Card combines individual course results to provide an overall academic rating for each school. The publication of school results in this format invites comparisons between schools. We realise that some observers will feel that such comparisons--given the admittedly individual and complex nature of each school community--can lead to frustration, confusion, and antagonism among parents, teachers, and school administrators. Others will focus too narrowly on a school's rank in the district or the province and ignore the considerable detail that the Report Card provides. However, we trust that such a format---specifically by making comparison of schools easy--can be both an effective tool in the effort to improve our schools and a useful input for parents interested in selecting the school best suited to their children's needs.

Why Should We Measure the
Performance of Schools?

Reason : Improving Performance

Emery Dosdall, Superintendent of Edmonton Public Schools, states, "Our number one priority at Edmonton Public Schools is student achievement. Everything we do supports this." 3 We hope that the Report Card can help Edmonton's school communities, as well as those in districts and divisions around the province to improve academic performance. All schools can improve and good schools do, constantly.

There are three ways in which Report Card can assist this improvement. First, any process of improvement includes four main components: (1) a measured assessment of the status quo; (2) the definition of one or more objectives; (3) a plan of action by which to achieve those objectives; and (4) a final assessment to decide whether the objectives have been met. The success of such improvement programs is more likely when all the organisation's shareholders have access to the data upon which the plan is based and by which improvement is measured so that everyone involved can be "reading from the same page." They recognize both the data and the objectives that others see. Further, in order for the data to benefit those not involved in the detailed day-to-day execution of the plans for improvement, the data should be available in a format that does not obscure the overall picture in a mass of detail. The Report Card provides just such a concise, objective, overview of each school's academic performance. It answers the question: "Overall, how is this school doing academically?"

Second, the Report Card focuses parents' attention on academic achievement at the school. If the information contained in the Report Card causes parents to become more involved in the improving the school, administrators may be encouraged to accelerate their timetables for improvement. They may also discover considerable resources among the parents that can be tapped to assist in the planning and execution of improvements.

Third, as noted above, the Report Card makes it easier to conduct school-by-school comparisons. In our view, the single greatest driver of improvement is competition: "If another school can achieve higher levels of performance, why not our school?" Just as competition in sport improves the calibre of play, competition in academics improves school performance.

Nevertheless, should we rank schools from best to worst? What purpose does this ranking serve? Does it not destroy the self-esteem of students in low-ranking schools? We maintain that self-esteem should be based on accurate information and that everyone associated with a school should know where it stands in the overall provincial picture. If a school's ranking is justifiable or explainable, it is the administration's responsibility to address the issue. If no reasonable justification or explanation can be produced, then effective plans for improvement should be developed immediately. In short, rankings are simply another useful benchmark against which to judge both the need to improve and the improvement gained.

Reason 2: Consumer Awareness

Parents and students in many parts of the province have some choice in their selection of a school. They may choose from among several options including public or separate schools in the neighbourhood, "magnet" schools (for example, Calgary's Jack James High School) that have a specific focus, alternate programs within schools, private schools, charter schools, and home schooling. In order to make an informed choice, parents and students need indicators of school performance. While Alberta Education and the province's school districts provide varying amounts of information about school results, none assembles the information in such a way as to provide the Report Card's overview.

Do we suggest that parents choose a school only on the basis of this Report Card? We do not. Parents should take advantage of information from a variety of sources. The Calgary Board of Education, for example, provides extensive profiles of its high schools on a publicly accessible web site. 4 Information from such web sites can be combined with data from the Report Card to provide a more complete picture of the school and used, during visits by parents to candidate schools, as the basis for discussion with school officials.

What This Report Does and
What It Does Not Do

The Report Card provides parents and others with information about their children's school and schools around the province. To be a useful tool towards improving schools and aiding parental choice, some of its inherent limitations should be clear from the outset.

The Report Card Presents
Overall Academic Results

The Report Card is designed to provide an overview of school performance in academics. Effective training in academic subject areas is--or at least should be--an important part of any school. However, it is not the only ingredient in a student's experience. Depending on the school's mission, many aspects of education such as trades and technical training, sport, the fine arts, the development of personal and inter-personal skills, citizenship skills, religious training, and community service form part of a high school's curricular and extra-curricular activities. The Report Card does not measure school effectiveness in any of these areas. Does that make the overall rating of each school invalid? No. It simply means that the Report Card is concerned with one aspect of the school's mission. We plan to include a measure of school success along additional dimensions in subsequent editions of the Report Card.

The Report Card Is Based on Grade-12
Diploma Courses

We see value in the Report Card extending well beyond a simple rating of each school's Grade-12 diploma program. Students do not begin their senior studies from ground zero. They are methodically prepared for more advanced studies throughout their years in elementary school and junior-high and the quality of this preparation will obviously have an impact on results in their senior year. When we measure school performance in terms of results in senior-level courses, we are also assessing to some extent the effectiveness of the high-school's feeder system in adequately preparing its students.

The Report Card Analyzes Results from
Public and Separate Schools Only

For this inaugural edition, we were only able to obtain results from public and separate schools from Alberta Education. We hope that next year the results from the province's private schools will be added since private schools are a choice that will be considered by some parents. More importantly, an awareness of the success (or failure) of alternative education delivery systems provides useful information for the effort to improve all schools--public, separate, and private.

The Report Card Does Not Provide
Socio-Economic Data

It is not the purpose of the Report Card to discover the reasons that one school does better than another. Nevertheless, we had hoped to include objective data describing the home characteristics of each school's student body in this year's Report Card. Socio-economic background is often mentioned by school officials as a critical--if not the most important--determinant of a student's success. Preliminary analysis of the relationship between home characteristics and school performance indicators in The 1999 Report Card on British Columbia's Secondary Schools, however, shows that it is likely not the major determinant of school effectiveness as measured by the indicators we use.

We believe that educators can and should take into account the home circumstances of their students when they design their lesson plans and deliver the curriculum. By doing so, they may be able to overcome any disadvantages that their students have. A socio-economic indicator enables us to identify schools that are successful in spite of adverse conditions faced by their students at home. Similarly, it also identifies schools where students with a relatively more positive home situation appear not to be reaching their potential. Thus, by comparing school performance to the characteristics of students' families we may be able to develop a measure of the added value being delivered by the school.

Regrettably, we were unable to convince Alberta Education to provide us with the enrolment data necessary to describe the characteristics of each school's students with sufficient accuracy. We hope that we are sufficiently persuasive in time for next year's edition.

The Report Card Does Not Note Whether Changes Are Statistically Significant

An important aspect of the analysis of measurements is the ability to determine whether changes in a statistic indicate real change or the inevitable random fluctuation that will happen from year to year. We believe that data from at least five years are required to provide a useful measure of statistical significance that would be widely applicable. Unfortunately, according to Alberta Education, changes in the diploma examinations made year-over-year comparison of results prior to the school year 1995/1996 impossible and, for this reason, they provided us with just three years of historical data. We plan to include an indicator of statistical significance once we have five years of data.

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Last Modified: Tuesday, June 8, 1999.