Most Rocky View County (RVC) elementary schools rank above provincial academic averages, according to the 2015 Fraser Institute Report Card on Alberta’s Elementary Schools, including several Cochrane schools.
The report, which was released March 14, ranks 813 schools from across Alberta, utilizing province-wide exam results to grade schools based on seven indicators derived by the Fraser Institute.
But it’s a system that continues to frustrate local educators, who said the results ignore larger variables.
“I guess from a district perspective, the rankings provide us with a snapshot with one day of performance with a specific set of exams – it doesn’t take a holistic look at learning,” said Tania Younker, Calgary Catholic School District (CCSD) director of communications.
The report, which focuses on improvement in elementary schools, indicated that three RVC schools saw their academic performance increase from last year’s rankings. Rocky View Schools (RVS) Westbrook School north of Cochrane is up from a 7.4 to an 8.5 out of 10, ranking it 41 out of all provincial schools.
Fellow RVS school Cochrane Christian Academy is up from a 6.9 to a 7.3, while Beiseker Community School rose slightly from a 4.2 to a 4.4.
Other RVC schools included in the report were Chestermere’s Our Lady of Wisdom, which dipped slightly from a 7.5 to 7.3, and Cochrane-based CCSD school Holy Spirit Elementary School, which remained at a 6.5 from 2013. The provincial average is a rating of six.
RVS associate superintendent of learning Dave Morris said the rankings weren’t of particular concern to the division.
“We never read them nor pay any attention to them,” he said. “We have other references that we pay attention to in terms of achievement rankings.”
Despite the negative reaction, Fraser Institute director of school performance studies Peter Cowley said perspective from an independent institute provides valuable insight.
“We don’t have a stake in the success – we’d love to see more success everywhere. We don’t have skin in the game,” he said. “If we’re talking about Airdrie, that’s a long way from Vancouver (where the institute is headquartered). We tend to be more objective than some folks.”
The Fraser Institute examines results of Grade 3 and Grade 6 Alberta Provincial Achievement Tests (PATs) to determine their academic rankings, but it’s a process that Alberta Teachers’ Association president Mark Ramsankar said was “completely unfounded.”
“The provincial exams don’t cover the entire curriculum – it covers a snapshot of some of the curriculum. So when you take this series of marks and make sweeping observations about a school, that’s completely unfounded,” he said. “It’s an absolute misuse of this kind of data.”
Cowley said the observations of the institute are based on development of schools over a long period of time.
“One of the most important things people have to remember is that it’s important to look at more than the most recent year – in most cases, we have five years of data,” he said. “We had in this (latest) report 52 schools who showed statistically improved results. Any school that defends poor results by saying something along the lines of we have our own (data), oftentimes that says that school didn’t do very well.”
Ramsankar said the rankings the Fraser Institute offered failed to consider factors that might fall outside results from high-pressure exams.
“Students are placed under pressure to write these exams – it’s a one-off, one-day snapshot of who that student is. So if you want to get a more in-depth view of what a school is, you need to be inside the school,” he said. “Our goal is to enhance public education systems in the world. That’s what it should be about.”
A number of area elementary schools were not included in the report because the schools do not offer both Grade 3 and Grade 6 classes.
The report ranks public, private, Francophone, charter and separate schools. For more information on the report, visit compareschoolrankings.org.
