School rankings out

In the Fraser Institute’s study on school boards published last Wednesday in the Journal de Montreal LBPSB ranked 42nd out of 70. Last Thursday, a report card on high school’s by the MEI in the magazine l’Actualite showed St. Thomas High School placed 90 out 477 high schools in the province.

The Pearson West Island high school ranking closest to St. Thomas was John Rennie at 174, followed by Pierrefonds Comprehensive at 247, Beaconsfield at 274, Lindsay Place ranked 358, Riverdale at 389, Westwood placed 397 and MacDonald finished at 412. “School performance reporting is to give facts, we don’t answer why,” said Peter Cowley, author of the Fraser Institute study. “It’s not to embarrass anyone, but to bring out the truth of who is doing better.” “Our study is very accurate; the margin of error is three per cent,” said Mathieu Laberge, co-author of MEI’s research. “We went into more detail this year (in our study), we considered the socio-economic factor and many other indicators like the education level of the mother, because historically she is the one who helps most with homework until a certain age and would better help.”

The Fraser Institute, a right wing think tank, was able to determine their school board ranking from the results of their previous high school portrait published last month. In the recent study, the Fraser Institute also showed each school board’s success and failure rate in standardized subjects like physical science, history of Quebec and Canada, math 436 and 514.

Pearson placed an impressive third in math 436, but failed to crack the top 30 in any of the other subjects mentioned. “Math 514 success levels are (generally) lower than 436. In certain school boards the failure rate (of math 514) goes up to 50 per cent,” said Cowley. “On average British Columbia and Alberta do better on the exit exams (of standardized classes) than Quebec, the failure rate (in those two provinces) is 20 per cent.” “A lot of people criticize the research because it encourages teachers to teach to the test, but when you have results like this, they should. What are they doing to the classes? Maybe the research will generate some questions on improving education,” added Cowley.

LBPSB’s performance in the Fraser Institute research does not reflect the full reality of Pearson’s ability to send students to higher education institutions, according to Pearson chairman Marcus Tabachnick. The school board does plenty to ensure all students are integrated into the curriculum and graduate their own pace. “Nobody wants to finish 42nd,” said Tabachnick. “But our success rate of students graduating with a certificate in seven years is very high. We have a lot of programs to encourage studying (after secondary five) because everyone learns differently.” “Our policy is to integrate every child, we encourage everyone with special needs or learning difficulties in grade 10 and 11 to write the exams even when they are not ready,” he added.

In MEI’s report of Quebec high schools, private and public schools with strict “selection criteria (of its students) separated top schools from the rest,” according to Laberge.

For more information of the Fraser Institute study visit www.fraserinstitute.org or for the Montreal Economic Institute research visit www.lactualite.com.