IMAGES

Rick MacWilliam, The
Journal

Teacher Rick Rakowski
teaches a Grade 6 class at St. Bonaventure Catholic elementary school in
northeast Edmonton.

City schools score well on new report card; C.D. Howe study factors in neighbourhoods, parents' incomes
in measuring performance
The Edmonton
Journal
Wed 19 Sep 2007
Page: A1 / FRONT
Section: News
Byline:
Bill Mah
Dateline: EDMONTON
Source: The Edmonton Journal

EDMONTON - One school is near the university. The other
is in one of Edmonton's poorest inner-city neighbourhoods.

Nearly two-thirds of Grade 3 children at the campus-area school earned
excellent marks in provincewide tests.

Only 23 per cent of the downtown Grade 3s did as well.

But a new report card for over 1,000 Alberta elementary schools gives both
Windsor Park and Mother Teresa schools equal marks for those disparate results.

Why? A comparison released today by the C.D. Howe Institute is the
first measure of school performance that considers student characteristics such
as the neighbourhood they live in and how much money their parents make.

Until now, ratings such as those from the Fraser Institute have pitted
schools filled with students from disadvantaged homes directly against schools
with children from families that can afford computers or tutors -- as well as
plentiful food and clothing.

"What you typically see if you only use the raw scores that you can get on
the Alberta Education website is highly correlated with the socio-economic
environment in which those schools operate," said Yvan Guillemette,
senior policy analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute, a national non-profit think-tank on social
and economic policy, which sponsored the study.

"Schools that come from richer areas tend to look much better than schools
from really poor areas."

Since Windsor Park and Mother Teresa, for example, are so different they
don't compete head-to-head in the C.D. Howe's yardstick,
School Grades: Identifying Alberta's Best Public Schools, which was prepared by
economics professor David Johnson.

"This study is a way of comparing schools where children come from the same
kinds of families," Johnson said.

So when Johnson factored in the socio-economic backgrounds of Mother Teresa
students, he predicted only 7.1 per cent of its children would achieve excellent
marks on Grade 3 achievement tests because many of its students face challenges
of poverty, language and culture.

The school in the Boyle-McCauley community offers hot breakfasts and lunches
to children who may arrive hungry and mittens from the school's clothing bank.
Nearly half the students are recent immigrants; about one-quarter are
aboriginal.

Despite all that, almost 23 per cent of Mother Teresa Grade 3s achieved top
grades, more than three times better than expected over the three class years of
the study -- 2003-04 to 2005-06.

So the C.D.
Howe Institute
rates the school at the 97th percentile -- which means Mother Teresa does better
than 97 per cent of schools with students from similar backgrounds.

The higher the percentile, the better a school does compared to similar
schools.

A school with a score in the 50th percentile is performing as expected. A
parent with children at a school with a low percentile should expect better
results, Johnson said.

"It's certainly an affirmation," said Mother Teresa principal Corinne King.

"What I've seen there is that most important is the care given to the kids
and trying to meet all their needs. Once all the basic needs are met then the
learning can happen."

At Windsor Park elementary, Johnson predicted 39 per cent of the Grade 3s
would hit the mark. The students surpassed that expectation -- 63 per cent
achieved excellent marks.

For a school filled with high achievers such as Windsor Park, the yardstick
gives it something to cheer about too -- that all things being equal, its
teachers and support staff are making a difference. They aren't relying on the
calibre of their students to get those results, the C.D. Howe study suggests.

Windsor Park principal Joanne Bergos said the study validates the work of her
staff and the contributions of parents, but she's still cautious about the
ratings.

"It's still just one piece of the puzzle," she said.

"When you level the playing field, you're left with truer picture of how
students are performing -- on one day, on one assessment."

The study gave Windsor Park a percentile of 100; no similar schools did
better.

"It's good news for people who work in education because it means what they
do matters," Johnson said.

"You can do a better or worse job with the same kids. I think for most of us,
that really shouldn't shock us if you remember teachers that you learned a lot
from."

Guillemette says the Fraser report card gives parents and educators an
absolute measure of school performance while the C.D. Howe gives a relative measure of results. "There is no
better or worse. It just depends on what question you're asking.

"But when a ranking that uses the raw scores is used to say that a school is
better or worse than another, that's where you get into problems."

Alberta Teachers' Association president Frank Bruseker remains wary of any
rating system of schools based on snapshots of student performance.

"It certainly sounds like a step in the right direction," Bruseker said.

"We've always had a problem using only the information from a single event, a
single day. One of my fears is that if you're using just information from a day
each year, even if it is for three years, it ignores the other 199 days of the
school year."

Anne Mulgrew, supervisor of student assessment at Edmonton Public Schools,
bristled at using a "tiny snapshot" to grade schools.

"I don't know why they bother. There's so much more about what is going on in
a school than a very limited set of test numbers can provide," Mulgrew said.

"Teachers know so much about the kids they teach and teachers can tell you
stories about the kids they teach that are valuable and meaningful," she said.

"That all falls through the cracks when all we see is a score."

Guillemette countered that standardized tests of curricula are something that
can be measured and evaluated objectively.

"Then you can go in and say what are they doing that's different? Then you
can try to apply those best practices to other institutions."

When a similar study was released earlier this year in Ontario, parents took
the results to school boards and city council and wanted to know why some
schools did better than others, he said.

"Schools and teachers and administrators can be held accountable, and I think
that's a really useful thing."

[email-masked]

Illustration:
• Photo: Rick MacWilliam, The Journal
/ Teacher Rick Rakowski teaches a Grade 6 class at St. Bonaventure Catholic
elementary school in northeast Edmonton.

Idnumber: 200709190006
Edition: Early
Story
Type: Statistics
Length: 1038 words