Study
| EST. READ TIME 2 MIN.Nine out of ten elementary schools in B.C. showing improvement were public, according to annual ranking
Report Card on British Columbia's Elementary Schools 2017
The Report Card on British Columbia’s Elementary Schools 2017 collects a variety of relevant, objective indicators of school performance into one, easily accessible public document so that anyone can analyze and compare the performance of individual schools. By doing so, the Report Card assists parents when they choose a school for their children and encourages and assists all those seeking to improve their schools.
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.
Of course, the choice of a school should not be made solely on the basis of a single source of information. Web sites maintained by Ontario’s Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO), the provincial ministry of education, and local school boards may also provide useful information. Parents who already have a child enrolled at the school provide another point of view.
Naturally, a sound academic program should be complemented by effective programs in areas of school activity not measured by the Report Card. Nevertheless, the Report Card provides a detailed picture of each school that is not easily available elsewhere.
The act of publicly rating and ranking schools attracts attention and this can provide motivation. Schools that perform well or show consistent improvement are applauded. Poorly performing schools generate concern, as do those whose performance is deteriorating. This inevitable attention provides an incentive for all those connected with a school to focus on student results.
However, the Report Card offers more than just incentive. It includes a variety of indicators, each of which reports results for an aspect of school performance that may be improved. School administrators who are dedicated to their students’ academic success accept the Report Card as another source of opportunities for improvement.
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Peter Cowley
Senior Fellow, Fraser InstitutePeter Cowley is a Senior Fellow and former Director of School Performance Studies at the Fraser Institute. He has aB.Comm. from the University of British Columbia (1974). In 1994, Mr Cowley independently wrote and published The Parent's Guide, a popular handbook for parents of British Columbia's secondary-school students. The Parent's Guide web site replaced the handbook in 1995. In 1998, Mr Cowley was co-author of the Fraser Institute's A Secondary Schools Report Card for British Columbia, the first of the Institute's continuing series of annual reports on school performance. This was followed in by The 1999 Report Card on British Columbia's Secondary Schools, Boys, Girls, and Grades: Academic Gender Balance in British Columbia's Secondary Schools, and The 1999 Report Card on Alberta's High Schools. Since then, Mr Cowley has co-authored all of the Institute's annual Report Cards. Annual editions now include Report Cards on elementary and secondary schools in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario and on secondary schools in Quebec.… Read more -
Stephen T. Easton
Stephen T. Easton was a professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University. He received his A.B. from Oberlin College in1970 and an A.M. in 1972 and a Ph.D. in 1978 from the University of Chicago. He published extensively; his publications included Rating Global Economic Freedom (with M.A. Walker, Fraser Institute 1992); Education in Canada: An Analysis of Elementary, Secondary and Vocational Schooling (Fraser Institute 1988); Legal Aid Efficiency: Cost and Competitiveness (with P.J. Brantingham and P.L. Brantingham, Queen's University 1994). He was also co-author of the School Report Card Series.Professor Easton was an associate editor for Economic Inquiry from 1980 to 1984, on the board of editors for the Canadian Journal of Economics from 1984 to 1987, organizer for the Canadian Economics Association's Canada-France Roundtable in 1988 and representative for the Canadian Economics Association to the Social Science Federation of Canada Aid to Scholarly Publications from 1991 to 1994. He was a senior research fellow of The Fraser Institute.… Read more