Alberta Secondary Schools Report Card, 2000: Other Indicators of School Performance
This year, we have added other indicators that, while they are not used to derive the Overall rating out of ten, add more information on the school's effectiveness.
How well does the school take into account differences among students?
The socio-economic indicator
Educators can, and should, take into account the abilities, interests, and backgrounds of their students when they design their lesson plans and deliver the curriculum. By doing so, they can overcome disadvantages that their students may have. The socio-economic indicator enables us to identify schools that are roughly similar to each other with respect to the home background of their students.
The socio-economic indicator was derived as follows. First, using enrollment data from Alberta Learning sorted by census enumeration area and census data provided by Statistics Canada,9 we established a profile of the student body's home characteristics for each of the schools listed in the Report Card. We then used multiple regression--a tool used in statistical analysis--to determine which of the home characteristics were associated with variations in school performance as measured by the Overall rating out of ten.
Taking into account all of these variables simultaneously, we identified one characteristic that possessed a statistically significant association with the Overall rating: the average number of years of education of the most educated parent in a two-parent family (or of the lone parent in a single-parent family). When a school had children whose parents are more highly educated, the overall rating at the school was likely to be higher. We have adopted this statistic--noted in the tables as Parents' average education (yrs)--as the socio-economic indicator for this edition of the Report Card.
This measure of the socio-economic background of a school's student body is presented with two important notes of caution. First, when all the schools in the Report Card are considered, only a small degree of the variation in the Overall rating from school to school is associated with the socio-economic factors studied. Clearly, many other factors--including good teaching, counselling, and school administration--contribute to the effectiveness of schools. Second, these statistical measures describe past relationships between a socio-economic characteristic and a measure of school effectiveness. It should not be inferred that these relationships will or should remain static. The more effectively the school enables all of its students to succeed, the weaker will be the relationship between the home characteristics of its students and their academic success. Thus, this socio-economic indicator should not be used as an excuse or rationale for poor school performance. Rather, it should be used simply as a tool with which to identify schools whose student bodies have similar characteristics. The effective school will produce good results regardless of the family background of its students.
Results of the multiple regression analysis used to derive this socio-economic indicator can be found in Appendix 2: Measuring socio-economic context.
The Gender Gap indicator
Data from Alberta Learning reveals systematic sex-based differences in academic results in Alberta's high schools. These differences are particularly apparent where the local school rather than Alberta Learning makes the assessment. However, previous research has found that "there appears to be no compelling evidence that girls and boys should, given effective teaching and counselling, experience differential rates of success." 10 Further, "[t]he differences described by each indicator vary from school to school over a considerable range of values."11
The Gender Gap indicator measures the difference, if any, between the average school marks for male students and female students in two of the most popular diploma courses--English 30 and Mathematics 30. It reports the size of the difference and the more successful sex.
The Gender Gap indicator provides a measure of the effectiveness of the school in helping all of its students to succeed. Schools with a low gender gap are more successful than are others in helping students of both sexes to reach their potential.
Are there any academic strengths or weaknesses at the school? Course Results for specific courses
While the basic academic indicators and the Overall rating described above provide an overview of the effectiveness of the school's academic programs, they do not tell us anything about the relative effectiveness of the specific academic departments within the school.
For example, at Foothills Composite in High River, the school's average mark on the English 30 examination was 61.8 percent, within one and one-half percentage points of the provincial average. On the other hand, the school's average mark on the Mathematics 30 examination was 57.1 percent, seven and one-half percentage points below the provincial average.
The Second Annual Report Card on Alberta's High Schools introduces a snapshot of the results in the diploma courses most frequently taken at the school (noted in the tables as 1998/1999 Course Results) so that comparisons between different departments at the same school can be made. The indicator reports the average examination mark as a measure of the department's teaching effectiveness. The Participation rate (shown in brackets) indicates the extent to which the students have been encouraged to involve themselves in the subject area. (The participation rate is the ratio, for a school, between the number of students who have completed a given diploma course and the number of students enrolled in their third year of high school--usually grade 12.) This information along with course-specific data from the province as a whole (provided in the notes on page 17) and from other schools can help parents, teachers, and administrators select specific subject areas where student achievement or participation rates might be improved.
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