Report Card on Alberta's High Schools : 2001 Edition
Other indicators of school performance
Since the inception of the Report Card, we have added other indicators that--while they are not used to derive the Overall rating out of 10--add more information on the school's effectiveness.
The Trends indicator
Is the school improving academically? The Report Card provides five years of data for most schools. Unlike a simple snapshot of one year's results, this historical record provides evidence of change (or lack thereof) over time.
In order to detect trends in the performance indicators, we developed the Trends indicator. This indicator uses statistical analysis to identify those dimensions of school performance in which there has been real change rather than a fluctuation in results caused by random occurrences. To calculate the trends, the standardized scores rather than raw data are used. Standardizing makes historical data more comparable and the trend measurement more reliable. Because calculation of trends is uncertain when only a small number of data points is available, a trend is indicated only in those circumstances where five years of data are available and where it is determined to be statistically significant. For this indicator we have defined the term "statistically significant" to mean that, nine times out of 10, the trend that is noted is real, that is, it did not happen just by chance.
The socio-economic indicator
To what extent do socio-economic factors affect the school's overall rating out of 10? 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 effective school will produce good results regardless of the family background of its students.
The socio-economic indicator was derived as follows. First, using Alberta Learning enrollment data sorted by census enumeration area and census data provided by Statistics Canada,19 we established a profile of the student body's home characteristics for each of the schools 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 10.
Taking into account all of these variables simultaneously, we identified one characteristic which 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 about 17% of the variation between schools in the Overall rating 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.
Results of the multiple regression analysis used to derive this socio-economic indicator can be found in Appendix 2.
Specific Course Results
Are there any academic strengths or weaknesses at the school? While the basic academic indicators and the Overall rating 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, the students at Strathcona School in Edmonton do better in some subject areas than in others relative to the provincial average. In Biology 30 and Chemistry 30, for instance, the Average exam mark at the school is substantially higher than for the province, whereas, the marks in Social Studies 30 and Physics 30 are close to the average.
These data, noted in the tables as Most popular courses (1999/2000) provide a snapshot of the most recent year's results in those diploma courses most frequently taken at the school so that comparisons between different departments at the same school can be made. We report the Average exam mark for each of these courses as a measure of the department's teaching effectiveness. The Student participation rate indicates the extent to which the students have been encouraged to involve themselves in the subject area. The Student 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 table 1 (page 21) can help parents, teachers, and administrators select specific subject areas where student achievement or participation rates might be improved.
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