School board takes little stock of Fraser Institute report

Jeff Green | Apr 05, 2012

Based on standardised testing results, the Fraser Institute published “A Report Card on Ontario’s Secondary Schools” last week.

But this is one report card that parents should not pay much attention to, according to Limestone School Board Director of Education, Brenda Hunter.

“Limestone does not use the Fraser Institute Report in school improvement planning,” Hunter said in an email to the News. “We do not believe in ranking schools, as it does not support or improve student learning. The Fraser Institute report offers an incomplete, skewed picture of school performance and is based on faulty assumptions that do not take into account a number of demographic factors, such as English as a second language populations, students with special education needs, or social risk factors.”

Secondary schools in Frontenac and Lennox and Addington Counties finished in the middle of the pack. Of the 718 schools in the study, Sharbot Lake High School, with a 6.8/10 score, is ranked in 253rd place, while Sydenham High School, with a score of 5.9/10 is ranked 422nd, and nearby Ernestown High School, at 5/8/10, is ranked 452nd. North Addington Education Centre, because its sample size is too small, is not ranked by the study.

The report card ranks schools based on six different criteria, but it only uses the results from two sets of tests: the math proficiency assessments that grade 9 students complete, and grade 10 literacy test results. Both of these tests are administered under the auspices of the Ontario Education and Accountablity Office (EQAO)

In the preamble to the Fraser Institute report card, the authors claim it can be a valuable tool for parents who are looking to choose the high school they should send their children to.

“Where parents can choose among several schools for their children, the Report Card provides a valuable tool for making a decision. Because it makes comparisons easy, it alerts parents to those nearby schools that appear to have more effective academic programs. Parents can also determine whether schools of interest are improving over time. By first studying the Report Card, parents will be better prepared to ask relevant questions when they visit schools under consideration and speak with the staff.”

However, before parents from South Frontenac pull their kids out of Sydenham High School and start demanding bussing up to Sharbot Lake or down to KCVI in Kingston (which the report card ranked the highest among Kingston schools) some of the idiosyncrasies of the report might be considered.

For example, in comparing Sharbot Lake and Sydenham high schools, Sharbot Lake grade 9 students had higher math test results, a 3.0 average in both academic and applied level math scores as compared to 2.9 (academic) and 2.4 (applied) at SHS (the provincial standard is 3). However, 79.2% of SHS grade 10 students passed their grade 10 literacy test as compared to 74.5% of Sharbot Lake High School students. The Fraser Institute also does a gender gap analysis, with the ideal being a 0 gap. The grade 10 Sydenham High girls had better literacy scores than the boys, a gap of 13 in the Fraser calculations, and this hurt the school’s final score. Sharbot Lake High School had too small a sample for the gap to be statistically significant, so it was not calculated.

One clear limitation of the report card is that any of the efforts made by teachers and students in areas other than math and literacy, and in all areas after grade 10, are not captured in the report card at all.

Nonetheless, the institute is confident that the report card results are something that parents and educators should heed. Again, from the preamble to the report:

“There is great benefit in identifying schools that are particularly effective. By studying the techniques used in schools where students are successful, less effective schools may find ways to improve. Comparisons are at the heart of improvement: making comparisons among schools is made simpler and more meaningful by the Report Card’s indicators, ratings, and rankings.”

For her part, although she rejects the Fraser Institute report out of hand, Brenda Hunter said that the EQAO results, upon which it was based, are valued.

“We use EQAO provincial assessment results (which are shared with parents and publicly on our website) to help inform and improve our learning programs. It is unfair and misleading, however, to compare schools based solely on these scores, as the Fraser Institute report does. We use several tools to help inform our practices including individual student achievement results, school-based assessments and a host of other indicators,” said Hunter.