Report Card on British Columbia's Secondary Schools: 2001 Edition:
Introduction
The Report Card on British Columbia's Secondary Schools collects a variety of relevant, objective indicators of school performance into one easily accessible public document so that all interested parties—parents, school administrators, teachers, students, and taxpayers—can analyze and compare the performance of individual schools. Since its introduction in 1998, however, the Report Card has often been criticized by teachers and education administrators as being too narrow in its focus and many discussions with these critics have ended in disagreement about a fundamental, very pertinent question: what is a school supposed to do?
What is a school supposed to do?
Teaching children to read with understanding, to communicate with clarity, and to reason soundly is at the heart of our idea of an effective K-12 education system. It is with these basic skills in hand that children are able to develop the other abilities and attitudes that will allow them to become responsible and productive participants in the political and economic life of our country. If schools are unsuccessful in achieving these basic objectives, it is difficult to understand why they should continue to operate.
Yet, often during the last three years, educators have argued the importance of those aspects of the curriculum that the Report Card does not measure. They point to their schools' mission statements1 as evidence of the breadth of purpose. These statements suggest that taxpayers are paying the schools to provide far more than academic training. Schools have taken upon themselves the responsibility of teaching the fine arts to their students. They promise to instill in the students an understanding of sport as an important aspect of a well-rounded life. They declare that their graduates will fully appreciate their rights and responsibilities as citizens of Canada. Are educators delivering on their promises? Do they have the slightest idea of their degree of success?
Apparently not. At least, they have not yet provided us with any data that records their results in non-academic activities. Nor have they established their own annual reporting mechanisms so that parents, taxpayers, and other interested parties can compare and judge the schools in these areas. Why not? The results of teaching students fine arts, physical education, leadership, and citizenship can be measured. Yet, it appears that schools only report results that they are required to report. With a few important exceptions, the Ministry of Education does not require schools to report data on student performance. Perhaps, the Ministry does not think such information is sufficiently important.
If individual parents were paying for their student's education and if each could choose from a variety of education providers, then some might be willing to credit the promises made in school mission statements. Competition among schools would help to ensure performance. Other parents would require objective evidence of past success and expect regular report cards that measure school effectiveness against a variety of objectives in much the same way that the Consumers' Union2 organization measures the performance of a wide variety of goods and services.
But, in British Columbia, it is taxpayers and not only the parents of today's students who foot the bill for the education of the next generation. As long as this is the case, taxpayers should have easy access to reports about the effectiveness of every school in all the areas for which funding is provided. The Ministry of Education should insist: "No results reporting. No funds. Period."
In the meantime, until more data becomes available to us, the Report Card will maintain its focus without apology.
What is new in this edition of the Report Card?
A new method of calculating the Overall rating out of 10 and the Trends indicator
The Report Card on British Columbia's Secondary Schools: 2001 Edition is based on the same sets of data from the Ministry of Education as the previous editions. However, we have adopted a different method of calculating both the Overall rating out of 10 and the Trends indicator. The raw data is first transformed into "standardized" or "Z" scores. This transformation is a well-accepted statistical method used to make differing sets of data more comparable. For example, by first standardizing the examination marks for all courses taken by students at a school, we can compare a school's most recent average examination mark with its historical results more accurately. This is particularly important as the number of years of data that we report increases. A detailed description of the method used to calculate the Overall rating out of 10 is presented in Appendix 1.
Because the two methods of calculation can produce somewhat different results and to ensure that historical data remain comparable, we have recalculated the ratings for all eight years reported.
The Gender gap indicator contributes to the Overall rating out of 10
As we discussed in detail in the third edition of the Report Card,3 there is widespread concern that, in some schools, boys and girls are not equally successful in academics. Last year we introduced a measure of this "gender gap." This year, we improved the indicator's design and included it in the calculation of the Overall rating out of 10. For the first time, each school's overall rating will be affected by the extent to which the school ensures that both boys and girls are able to succeed. The recalculation of all previous overall ratings allowed us to reflect the Gender gap in the historical results. The introduction of this new indicator will change some schools' past overall ratings.
Tracking each school's results in English 12 from 1992/1993 through 1999/2000
In this edition, we introduce a new feature that focuses on a school's success in a single subject over the entire period for which we have data. This year, we look closely at English 12. Each school's average examination mark and participation rate for the school years 1992/1993 through 1999/2000 are compared to the provincial average and the difference is reported. We also show in the column, Trends, any statistically significant change over six years in this difference.
What plans do we have for future editions?
Measuring the value added by the school: The Foundation Skills Assessment Tests
The annual Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) tests measure students' ability in reading, writing, and mathematics at grades 4, 7, and 10. We plan to include the results from the grade 10 tests in the Report Card. By comparing grade 10 FSA results with the same cohort's results in English 12 and Mathematics 12, we hope to establish an estimate of the "value added" by the school during the student's final two years of secondary school.
Anybody there? Taking the pulse of the school by measuring student attendance levels
Since the province's public school districts refused to provide us with data on student attendance, we requested the information under the Freedom of Information Act. By fall of 2000, we had received historical data from almost all of the districts and are currently analyzing these data to determine its value. We will request the data for the school year 2000/2001 at the end of this school year and we plan to include a measure of student attendance for all schools in the 2002 edition of the Report Card on British Columbia's Secondary Schools.
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