Report Card on Ontario's Secondary Schools : 2001 Edition
Notes
1 A good overview of the role of chief operating officers--and a school principal can certainly be considered the COO of a school--in quality and improvement can be found in J.M. Juran, Juran on Leadership for Quality: An Executive Handbook (New York: The Free Press, 1989).
2 Department for Education and Employment web site: http://www.dfee.gov.uk/perform.shtml (January 17, 2000)
3 See, for instance, http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/exams/standrep.htm for a selection of reports on student outcomes.
4 For further information, see http://www.cde.ca.gov/psaa/api/.
5 For further information, see http://reportcard.ode.state.or.us/ .
6 Peter Cowley, Stephen Easton, and Michael Walker, A Secondary Schools Report Card for British Columbia, Public Policy Sources 9 (Vancouver, BC: The Fraser Institute, 1998).
7 Peter Cowley and Stephen Easton, The 1999 Report Card on Alberta's High Schools, Public Policy Sources 29 (Vancouver, BC: The Fraser Institute, 1999).
8 Peter Cowley and Richard Marceau, Report Card on Quebec's Secondary Schools: 2000 Edition (Vancouver, BC: The Fraser Institute, 2000).
9 See, for instance, Michael Rutter et al., Fifteen Thousand Hours: Secondary Schools and Their Effects on Children (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979); Peter Mortimore et al., School Matters The Junior Years (Wells, Somerset: Open Books, 1988); and Joseph F. Johnson, Jr., Case Studies from the National Study of High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools, digital document: http://www.starcenter.org/priority/casestudies.htm (August 7, 1999) (STAR Center at the Charles A. Dana Center, University of Texas at Austin).
10 See the Beacon Schools program site at http://www.standards.dfee.gov.uk/beaconschools/.
11 Advanced level courses are designed by the local schools according to guidelines provided by the Ministry of Education. They are the most challenging courses in a given subject area at each grade level.
12 The poll was conducted by Ad Hoc Recherche for the magazine, Les Affaires; see Kathy Noël, Pour une école plus traditionnelle, Les Affaires 73, 9 (March 3, 2001): page 9.
13 Courses offered in secondary schools in Ontario will be basic, general, or advanced level. The Ministry of Education provides guidelines for each level and school principals determine the appropriate designation for each course offered. Advanced-level courses should focus on the development of academic skills and prepare students for entry to university or to certain programs of the colleges of applied arts and technology. Such courses should be designed to assist students to understand the theoretical principles, practical applications, and substantive content of a subject. The focus of these courses must be on academic preparation.
14 Rather than totalling courses enrolled in, we total course credits. Most courses are worth one credit but some are worth 2 or more credits. Multiple credit courses represent a greater investment of time and effort on the part of the student and, for this reason, they carry greater weight in the calculation of enrollments.
15 For a description of the seven correlates of effective schools espoused by the Effective Schools Research movement, see www.mes.org/correlates.html.
16 This indicator is based on student results in the English ENG4A (or French FRA4A at schools where the language of instruction is French) and Mathematics MAT4A.
17 Peter Cowley and Stephen Easton, Boys, Girls, and Grades: Academic Gender Balance in British Columbia's Secondary Schools, Public Policy Sources 22 (Vancouver, BC: Fraser Institute, 1999): page 7.
18 Cowley and Easton, Boys, Girls, and Grades: page 5.
19 The two Gender gap indicators each accounted for 12.5% of the overall rating. The other three indicators each accounted for 25% of the overall rating.
20 Peter Cowley and Stephen Easton, Second Annual Report Card on Alberta's High Schools, Studies in Education Policy (Vancouver, BC: The Fraser Institute, 2000).
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