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Introduction

Good schools meet the needs of their customers--parents, students, taxpayers, and employers. Only with those needs in mind can a relevant curriculum, effective teaching methods, and useful counselling services be designed and delivered. While Quebec's secondary schools may differ in the needs they serve, all schools must meet certain basic needs. Effective schools will ensure that their students master the skills and absorb the material presented in each course. They will design and execute lesson plans that take into account those differences in individual student characteristics inevitably present in every school. They will develop and use evaluation methods that provide accurate, timely feedback to students and parents regarding the student's progress. They will encourage their students to complete their secondary-school studies on time. They help their students prepare to take advantage of a variety of post-secondary opportunities.

The Report Card on Quebec's Secondary Schools (hereafter, Report Card) provides an annual, independent measurement of the extent to which each school meets some of these basic needs. By doing so, the Report Card serves several purposes.

The Report Card facilitates school improvement

Parents want better schools. Students want better schools. Teachers, counsellors, school administrators, superintendents, members of school boards, and officials in the Ministry of Education want better schools. Taxpayers and employers want better schools. But, how will the Report Card lead to better schools? Any serious attempt to improve an organization's results requires regular measurement of its output. Fifty years ago, Dr. Joseph Juran¹ and others reinforced the role of measurement in building more effective organizations. Juran recommended the adoption of a "quality spiral" approach to improvement. The approach is simple. The starting point in the spiral is the documentation of historical performance so that the schools will have a benchmark against which to improve. Once the benchmark is established, the school then adopts a short-term goal for improvement; develops a plan designed to achieve that goal; executes the plan; measures the results; revises the goal and/or plan as required; executes the plan and, thereafter, continues the spiral of action toward improvement into the future. It is to the continuous improvement of all Quebec schools that the Report Card is dedicated.

The use of the measurement of results as the basis for improvement is widespread. In many jurisdictions, relevant education-related data has become routinely available. For example, the United Kingdom's Department for Education and Employment annually produces and widely distributes detailed tables of performance-related measures for primary schools, secondary schools, and colleges.² Education authorities in Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta, and New Brunswick³ annually release data related to K-12 school performance. However, the mere public availability of raw data is not sufficient. Experience gained in British Columbia and Alberta suggests that action toward improvement is encouraged when clear conclusions are drawn from the data and then disseminated broadly. Education authorities in California and Oregon apparently subscribe to this notion. Both have moved beyond simply collecting and publishing performance data. This year, California, under the authority of the Public Schools Accountability Act of 1999, used an Academic Performance Index⁴ (a single statistic much like the Report Card's overall rating out of 10 (Cote globale sur 10) to rate its elementary, middle, and secondary schools. In Oregon,⁵ the Department of Education rates each of its public schools from Exceptional to Unacceptable in student performance, student behaviour, and school characteristics. It then uses these three ratings as the basis for an overall school-performance rating.

In Canada, the Fraser Institute introduced the first secondary schools report card⁶ in British Columbia in 1998, followed by the Report Card on Alberta's High Schools in 1999.⁷ Now, the Montreal Economic Institute in partnership with the Fraser Institute introduces the inaugural edition of the Report Card on Quebec's Secondary Schools. It combines a variety of relevant, publicly available data to produce an academic rating for each of the province's secondary schools.

For each school, for the six school years 1993/1994 through 1998/1999, we calculated four indicators of school performance:

1. the average uniform examination mark received by the school's students on four important Secondary IV and Secondary V courses;⁸
2. the percentage of these courses that the students failed;
3. the difference between their average, raw examination mark and their average raw school mark in these four courses (inflation of grades); and,
4. the average difference in the inflation of grades between male and female students: within each school, it is a measure of how well boys' examination results match their school performance relative to how well girls' examination results match their school performance.

From these four indicators, each school's annual overall rating out of 10 (Cote globale sur 10) is determined. The overall ratings are intended to answer an important question: "How is your school doing?"

An indicator of the cohort graduation rate⁹ at the school; a measure of any apparent trends over time in the results; and, background information on the school and its student body's average family characteristics complete the report.

The Report Card is designed to collect these objective indicators of school performance into one easily accessible public document so that all interested parties--parents, students, school administrators, teachers, and taxpayers--can analyze and compare the performance of individual schools.

Comparisons are at the heart of the improvement process.

• By comparing a school's latest results with those of earlier years, we can see if the school is improving--or not.
• By comparing a school's results with those of neighbouring schools or schools with similar characteristics, we can identify more successful schools and learn from them.
• Reference to overall provincial results establishes an individual school's level of achievement in a broader context.

Each of these comparisons is made simpler and more meaningful by the indicators, ratings, and rankings contained in the Report Card.

The Report Card can be used as the starting point for an annual review of the school's performance. This review should include all interested parties. The school community can decide whether each of the indicators is important. It can then decide whether the school's results are satisfactory. When the school is not performing to expectations, the school community can develop an action plan to improve the results. To the extent that the Report Card assists in planning for improvement and encourages significant action toward better results, it will have served its primary purpose.

The Report Card can help parents choose

Where parents can choose among several education providers for their children, the Report Card provides a valuable tool for use in the decision-making process. Because it makes comparisons easy, the Report Card alerts parents to those nearby schools at which students are having relatively more success academically. Parents can also determine whether or not schools of interest are improving over time. By first studying the Report Card, parents will be better prepared to ask relevant questions when they interview the principal and teachers at the schools under consideration. Of course, the choice of a school should not be made solely on the basis of any one source of information but the Report Card provides a detailed picture of each school that is not easily available elsewhere.

Taxpayers have a big stake in our schools

Finally, the vast majority of Quebec's students attend schools that are wholly or partially financed by taxpayers. For the school year 1998/1999, Quebec's elementary and secondary schools cost taxpayers approximately $7 billion in operating expenses and a further $450 million in capital expenditure. A public expenditure of such magnitude necessitates continued, independent measurement of the results flowing from that expenditure. The results should be easily available to any interested taxpayer.

What other features are being developed for future editions?

We could not encourage schools to engage in continuous improvement while not being equally committed to improvement of the Report Card. We plan to develop new indicators over the years that will make the Report Card more useful to parents, teachers, school administrators, and taxpayers. Among the new features under development are the following.

How long do students take to graduate from secondary school?

Earlier this year, the Ministry of Education released school-level data detailing the percentage of certain cohorts of students that graduated within the normal five years of entry into Secondary I. These are important data that reflect the success schools have in assisting and encouraging their students to attend class, stay on task, and complete secondary school in a timely manner. Unfortunately, these data were not available for private schools for inclusion in this edition of the Report Card. We expect that the data will be available for all schools in time for the second edition of the Report Card. In the meantime, we have included this graduation data for the schools for which it is available. It is not included in the calculation of the overall rating (Cote globale sur 10).

Is anybody there? Taking the pulse of the school by measuring student attendance levels

Good school attendance--when it is matched with effective teaching--does matter, and measures of attendance should be part of any assessment of school effectiveness. First and foremost, regular attendance at school is an important driver of academic success. A study of students in undergraduate economics classes found that "the difference in performance between a student who attends regularly and one who attends sporadically is about a full letter grade." ¹⁰ The study provided compelling evidence that attendance itself was a determinant of success in the course. But, it is not just grades that suffer when students skip classes. Research shows that grade-school truancy may lead to dropping out of school, may be a precursor to delinquent and criminal activity, and places students at higher risk of being drawn into behaviours involving drugs, alcohol, or violence.¹¹ The same research cited the remarkable statistic that a three-week sweep for truants in Van Nuys, California reduced shoplifting arrests during the same period by 60%. Since attendance matters to students' success and welfare, a measure of the effectiveness of schools in promoting good attendance is undoubtedly a valid addition to the Report Card's indicators of school performance.

Attendance data also provide a measure of the extent to which the school engages the students' interest. Secondary-school students will allocate their scarce time resources among school, leisure activities (both positive and negative in nature), and employment. The degree to which students make school their top priority will be reflected in the school's average attendance level. Schools where the attendance is high have found ways to motivate students to invest more time in their studies. If the school cannot compete with the local mall or play-centre, attendance rates will fall.

Since local school authorities are not required to submit student-attendance statistics to the Ministry of Education, such data must be gathered from each independent school and public school authority. We will request the assistance of these local school authorities so that we will be able to include student attendance data in the next edition of the Report Card.

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Last Modified: October 20, 2000.