The purpose of the Secondary Schools Report Card for British Columbia is to provide a measure of the performance of the province's public and independent secondary schools.
In the fiscal year 1997/98, the government of British Columbia will spend four billion dollars—roughly 20 percent of its total budget—on providing primary and secondary education to students enrolled in the public schools. Grants to independent schools will add roughly $160 million more to the cost of education in the province.
The four billion dollars is allocated to the 59 school districts around the province with the intention that each of British Columbia's 680,000 public school students will have the same opportunity to learn the standard provincial curriculum, regardless of local circumstances.
How well does this system work?
While the Ministry of Education, Skills, and Training is not certain of the actual number, it believes that somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of grade 8 students do not graduate from high school within the normal five-year period. In substantial parts of the province, more than 50 percent of grade 8 students fail to graduate. Ref. 1
In the school year 1996/97, grade 12 students in British Columbia wrote nearly 16,000 provincial examinations for which they received a failing grade. For most of these students, failing the final examination meant failing the course. At a cost to taxpayers of over $700 per course, this represents a waste of $11.2 million. Similar rates of failure during the lower grades would push the bill beyond $134 million annually. Ref. 2
British Columbia's colleges and universities are no longer confident that students know how to read and write when they graduate from high school. The University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, and a number of British Columbia's colleges and institutes do not rely on the results of the grade 12 provincial examinations; they require students to write a literacy test (the Language Proficiency Index) prior to enrollment in certain programs and courses. The University of British Columbia waives this requirement only for students receiving a mark of A on the final provincial examinations, as well as for students possessing certain advanced English-language credentials.
Reason one for measuring schools: improving performance
But, it is teachers in schools, not the education system as a whole, who teach students. So the most important question for each individual student and parent is: how is our neighbourhood school doing? Remarkably, the British Columbia Ministry of Education makes no systematic effort to determine whether or not each school is effective in the discharge of its duties and, as a result, there is no easily accessible database allowing school administrators, parents, or other stakeholders to compare one school's performance with that of others—public or independent—in the school district or in the province as a whole. Nor is there a means to compare a school's present and past performances. Is the neighbourhood school doing a good job? Parents simply do not know. Is it getting better over time—or worse? They do not know that either.
The only way to find out whether our schools are doing their job satisfactorily is to measure results in an objective and quantifiable way. The only way to improve our schools is, using these statistics as a base line, to develop a plan each year for improving the school where it is shown to be weak. This “quality spiral”— measure, plan for improvement, execute the plan, measure—will bring continuous improvement.
There is no uniform system for evaluating the performance of individual schools in the province and none is contemplated. In the Comptroller General's Report on Accountability in the K-to-12 Education System, delivered to the Ministry of Education in June, 1996, just such a school-by-school performance measure was recommended. The authors, however, hastened to add that,
Reason two for measuring schools: consumer awareness
The Ministry of Education should make full disclosure of this kind of information to students, parents, administrators of schools, taxpayers, prospective employers, and any other concerned groups. Each of these groups has a stake in the four-billion-dollar expense of the education system. Yet, the Ministry insists that the performance of its constituent parts—your neighbourhood school—cannot, should not, and shall not be measured. This policy is simply unacceptable.
A measure of performance for British Columbia's secondary schools
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 less than fifteen students; centres for adult education and continuing education; schools which 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.
The keys to success
Successful schools must offer a well-designed curriculum, practical, well-informed counselling, and effective teaching.
Curriculum
A well-designed curriculum will provide the students with a selection of courses that is relevant to their educational needs.
Counselling
Without advice and encouragement, few students are able to take full advantage of the learning opportunities provided by a school. While parents have a significant role to play, school counsellors also play an important part in encouraging and assisting students in making informed and reasoned decisions about education.
Teaching
It is the teacher's role to develop the learning plan, select resources, and present the material in a way that will enable each student to master the skills and assimilate the knowledge to be derived from a course.
The available data
Although the Ministry of Education, Skills and Training is timid about measuring school performance and publishing the results, it does generate a substantial annual database that can provide clues about what is being achieved in our schools. Ideally, a measure of school performance would assess the quality of all three components of a successful school. As a first step toward a comprehensive measure of school performance for the province's schools, we have combed the limited data that the Ministry collects for useful and relevant indicators of secondary school performance. Unfortunately, the statistics available from the Ministry allow us to assess only teaching and counselling and this first edition of the Secondary Schools Report Card for BC attempts to measure only the extent to which each school offers practical, well-informed counselling and effective teaching.
The five indicators of school performance
We have selected a set of indicators that, taken together, can assess with some reliability the school's performance. Only indicators that are generated annually were used so that we can assess not only each school's performance in a year, but, more importantly, its improvement or decline from year to year. We have looked only at indicators available to the public—to parents and taxpayers. These indicators are contained in publicly accessible databases maintained by the Ministry. Because these databases were not created by the Ministry of Education for the purpose of evaluating the performance of schools, they are not entirely suited to the purpose and the indicators derived from them are far from perfect. Nevertheless, the databases include valuable information from which we have been able to extract five statistics for the initial Secondary Schools Report Card for BC. These indicators provide the best available picture of the performance of British Columbia's secondary schools. Ref. 5
These indicators are:
We have been concerned to protect the indicators from bias. The only built-in bias is the selection of the data itself. However, as noted above, we had very little data from which to choose. In order to avoid any further built-in analysis, the manipulation of the data from the Ministry has been kept to the very minimum required. Indeed, the process by which the five indicators are arrived at involves no significant editing of the Ministry's raw data.
In the construction of the Rate of Failure, Average Mark on Provincial Examinations, and Difference between Provincial Examination Mark and School Mark, course-by-course outcomes are aggregated into an overall average which is weighted by the number of examinations written in the course divided by the total number of exams written in the school. In the case of the difference between the school mark and the government mark, the average mark in the examinations for each course and the relevant average school mark are compared and the absolute value of the difference is determined. It is this value that is weighted and summed over all courses.
The other two indicators, Graduation Rate and Number of Examinable Courses Taken, are essentially unaltered Ministry data.
It is our intention that subsequent editions of the Secondary Schools Report Card for British Columbia will include more indicators from a greater variety of sources. In particular, we are anxious to examine the breadth and relevance of the curricula offered by schools in British Columbia. In addition, we would like to assess factors like the quality of the physical plant, the personal safety of the students, an atmosphere that fosters learning, and basic rules of conduct that indicate the sort of environment that schools provide for their students. We invite comment and suggestions from interested readers. Please contact the Secondary Schools Report Card Project, Social Affairs Centre, The Fraser Institute, 4th Floor, 1770 Burrard Street, Vancouver, BC, V6J 3G7, or email us at info@fraserinstitute.ca.
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