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How Good Is My Kid's School?

Great Schools Project aims to give parents clearer answer than implied by Fraser Institute rankings.

By Katie Hyslop, 24 May 2011, TheTyee.ca

An elementary school classroom

Parents want accountability, and a commitment to improve.

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David Chudnovsky feels for the parents who wonder, "How good is my kid's school?"

"We in education often answer, 'The Fraser Institute sucks, and standardized testing doesn't tell you much about how the school's doing.' And that's true, we're right about both of those things, but we haven't answered [their] question," says Chudnovsky, a public education advocate and former New Democratic Party MLA.

Chudnovksy hopes to find a better answer through the Great Schools Project, a group of roughly 50 volunteers from a variety of backgrounds: academics, educators, statisticians, former politicians and parents, who have been meeting for the last year and a half to discuss a better way to measure school performance.

But with a wide variety of methods to choose from, and previous efforts to rate school performance marred by controversy and failure, picking the measurement that encompasses the diverse qualities of a "great" school won't be easy.

'We'll come up with suggestions'

The Great Schools Project consists of two committees: all 50 members are in the big committee, while the working committee, which meets more often, consists of seven members including Chudnovsky, former Simon Fraser University dean of education Paul Shaker, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives economist Iglika Ivanova, and Larry Kuehn from the BC Teachers Federation. The group has no official leader, though it was Chudnovsky's idea originally, and he recruited other friends and colleagues to join.

"We've made no conclusions yet; we're in the middle of a process, rather than at the end, but we've looked at a whole number of processes in some depth," Chudnovsky told The Tyee, adding they've narrowed the choices down to seven methods from 15.

Some examples include assessing inputs, examining what effect factors like cleanliness of the school and class size and composition have on academic outcomes; professional engagement, where academics and educators visit schools to watch how classes are run and offer mentorship and support for teachers to improve instruction; and broadening what we measure in students, moving beyond the literacy and numeracy measures of the Foundation Skills Assessment to include problem solving, democratic citizenship and individual responsibility in students, to name a few.

Most project volunteers are from the Lower Mainland, which Chudnovsky admits narrows the scope of the discussion; however, they aren't organized enough yet to reach across the province for involvement. He insists that the Great Schools Project is not about forcing methods onto schools, but fostering discussion among the greater public.

"Our sense is not that we will come up with answers for people to salute and then implement, our notion is that we'll come up with suggestions that then will become part of a discourse," he says.

Accreditation 'not perfect, but good': former deputy minister

The Fraser Institute isn't the only method of school evaluation B.C. has ever had. When Charles Ungerleider was deputy minister of education for the province under the NDP, the government was assessing schools through an accreditation process.

"In part teachers would say it's too onerous for the teachers that were involved, it was too time consuming, although under my watch we tried to address some of that and make it less onerous," says Ungerleider, now a professor of the sociology of education at the University of British Columbia.

Accreditation involves an external team visiting the school, meeting with teachers, parents, administrators, and students to discuss issues and areas of concern about the school. A report is then drawn up and recommendations made.

"I thought it was not a perfect process, but a good process because you had to do a lot of self-study before an external team came and visited you and made a comment or a series of comments about how well you were doing," Ungerleider told The Tyee, adding the BC Liberals ended the practice early in their first term.

Chudnovsky agrees with teachers, however, that accreditation took too long and rarely produced positive changes for the schools.

Great Schools Project founder David Chudnovsky

David Chudnovsky got the Great Schools Project going.

"There was nobody accountable for making sure that the recommendations were followed through, and there was no money or resources available to do whatever it was that the whole community came up with as a recommendation," he says.

Using measurements for change

Accountability is what Joanna Streetly wants. As a mother living in Tofino, Streetly doesn't have much choice of where she will send her daughter for secondary school.

"I live in a remote community, so unless I want to do correspondence or break the bank and send my child to a boarding school, I don't have a choice over what school she attends," she told The Tyee.

The only public school option for Streetly's daughter is Ucluelet Secondary School, which hasn't always received positive ratings from the Fraser Institute in the past. It wasn't included in the most recent secondary school report card.

Streetly says she doesn't put much stock in the Fraser Institute results, preferring to assess the atmosphere of a school herself instead. But she's still concerned about her daughter's future and frustrated the rankings aren't used to create positive change in the schools.

"I would like to see that a poor ranking would mean the province would sit up and take note that this school needs more funding, or needs to be more closely evaluated in terms of the atmosphere, the teachers," says Streetly.

Going public

Vancouver School Board chair Patti Bacchus says parents are facing more school choice today than ever before and it's creating a lot of stress for parents who worry about picking the best school for their child. But she encourages parents to be like Streetly and not put too much stock into school evaluations.

"Schools are very complex, they comprise a range of programs, a range of staff, a range of families. Every student is different: some thrive in one environment that might not in another; and I caution people from being too simplistic in thinking that you can look at one set of attributes and make a decision based on that," she says.

"I always tell parents to go visit the school, talk to the staff, talk to parents, think about your own child, what's going to work for your family. To think there's one set of indicators that will really give people a clear idea or a good way to look at it, I don't know if that's going to be helpful."

It's measurements like this that the Great Schools Project wants to avoid, and they're taking steps to enlist the public's help in achieving that goal. Next month is the official public launch of the project at SFU's Faculty of Education Summer Institute, happening July 14-16.

"The [institute] invites people much more widely than academics: they invite teachers and administrators and people from the education community, and people who are interested in education issues," says Chudnovsky.

"And we're doing an additional invite to people who've indicated an interest in the Great Schools Project and to people from the principals organization, and the parents, and the teachers, and the BCSTA."

The first in what they're hoping will be a series of events with education stakeholders and the public. Audience members will be given a chance to give their feedback on what the project has done so far.

One prime stakeholder that won't be in attendance, however, is the Ministry of Education. Chudnovsky says some project volunteers have made individual attempts to contact the ministry about the project, but nothing formal has been done yet.

"We've talked about that and there will come a point fairly soon where we'll want to talk to them, but that's not on the agenda quite yet," he told The Tyee. [Tyee]

Katie Hyslop reports on education for The Tyee Solutions Society, and is a freelance reporter for a number of other outlets including The Tyee. To republish this piece, please contact Michelle Hoar here.

9 Comments:

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  • danneau

    1 year ago

    A Good School

    Even in a good school, it's possible to get some less-than-stellar schooling, and in schools not held in high esteem, some will find inspiration and solid learning. The biggest influence on a young person's learning must be the home, where the child gets help making sense of dicey situations both at school and the community as well as the support in optimizing the good things that may happen in a classroom or on the soccer pitch. Much of the core curriculum is bunk, a series of hoops to jump through, but a student who learns to read and write competently, to discern a need for further learning and to find the source of that learning, to differentiate between quality and dross, and to be ready, through curiosity and some kind of work ethic or inspiration, to find or make opportunities, will likely find success as a citizen, even when the tap of institutional learning is turned off. Regardless of the quality of educational experience at places like Ucuelet Secondary, there are myriad occasions on the West Coast to engage in social and nature studies that can frame learning in Math, Science, Art, Language Arts, and all the other nook-and-cranny aspects of curriculum. To paraphrase Tom Lehrer: "School is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it."

  • Name

    1 year ago

    My idea of a great school

    ...is one that does its part to help every child who shows up achieve his/her individual potential.

    So there are no great schools as long as BC is failing 20% of its students, and over 50% of its Aboriginal students, no matter how well the rest may be doing or how good we can make the averge stats look, whether it's the FSA or some sophisticated new tool that's measuring achievement far more broadly.

    The schools can't do it alone, but since they're the experts on education, it's incumbent on them to call out the other partners who need to come to the table to help make it happen, whether it's the supporting role of families, community services, businesses, other levels of govt, or health/mental health services.

    But the whole premise of rating *schools* so that people can shop around for the one that suits them is insane and unsustainable, especially in a province with such a geographically dispersed population as ours. The flip side of this is the no-less-bizarre notion of fixing class composition by restricting the allowed proportion of "problem" students to make a school look great. ("Sure, Johnny, if you want an A on that math exam, just delete all but 3 of your wrong answers and I'll recalculate your grade for you based on what's left.")

    If we want great schools, therefore, there needs to be accountability for the individual outcomes of all students, relative to their individual goals and potential.

    The Ministry's personalized learning agenda offers what would seem to be an entirely suitable avenue for pursuing student-centred learning and accountability, so it seems odd - to say the least - that Ministry staff and a group like this would NOT be working together.

  • OwlRol

    1 year ago

    Great idea to open a window into K to 12 education

    Its time to show parents and other education stakeholders how flawed the Fraser Institute analysis of B.C. schools is and what their real ideological agenda is. I'll never forget Mr. Walker's comment regarding Canada's universal public health care as being a mistake, right from its Tommy Douglas influenced start.

    Like so many Conservative doctrinaires, privatization of as many social services as possible is one of their priorities, ostensibly to cut taxes, but in reality...

    There were a number of tensions and local political implications associated with the accreditation system.

    Consider that many senior school and board administrators want to bask in showing off how good their schools are compared to others across the province. This is obvious when looking at board admin. vis a vis provincial exam results.

    Then, a teacher or other senior school staff volunteered to take on the many hours, (even weeks) and efforts to organize, prepare and present the accreditation to the incoming team.

    If the school did not meet the accreditation expectations, it was supposed to be the responsibility of the entire school community. But, despite a curt "thank you", to the organizer, guess who the scapegoat was and where (s)he was headed, despite all their efforts?

    Schools in communities are so much more than a table of marks and numbers espoused by the F.I.

    With staff that aren't just trying to climb the ladder and with a little skill and luck in trying to sync them in well thought out, compassionate similarities, rather than differences, they will serve their students well, work hard but have fun and do a good job.

    The first priority should not be about marks, but to do their best to make a school a welcoming place for as many students as possible. When comfortable, most students take interest and want to learn.

    This project has an interesting and proficient team, but it needs one or two members that represent the more conservative 3Rs type of education proponents, so as to be viewed as balanced.

    As to the Ministry of Education, they have their own agendas. They will be hesitant until this project gets public support, especially in the mainstream media.

  • DC604

    1 year ago

    Less Formal Systems to Evaluate Schools

    I'm a school teacher, working as a teacher on-call. I've worked with youth in and out of schools for the last 10 years or so and like many have often thought about this subject. I highly commend the Great Schools Project for pushing this forward.

    My essential suggestion is this: to obtain a worthy evaluation of a school, which is both accurate and useful, we should (must?) rely on an informal system, rather than a formalized one. I believe that any attempt at a formal evaluation process inevitably becomes a set of awkward and burdensome forms and questionnaires, boxes to tick and categories to score. The teachers feel like they should be let to teach and not have to spend valuable time awkwardly crunching what they do, into some format that can be interpreted through a formal system of analysis.

    Sure, but we want accountability, and we want parents to have some information for making choices. So my suggestion to the Great Schools Project is to tap into new tools, such as social networking, to set up places where parents and teachers and administrators, counselors, etc., can post their imput on all areas of whichever school they choose. A parent could go to the website and see what current and former teachers have to say about this and that school, can read what other parents have said, and could also look at comparative data and statistics. Parents know when their child is at a good school, or a bad one. For many people, one insightful post from one parent would outweigh a pile of Fraser Institute rankings - cutting through misleading statistics to give a real-life, full-color, human perspective. This could be combined with professional evaluators who drop into schools to observe, participate, interview, and then write critiques and features for the site... (???)

    Think of how the restaurant industry evaluates itself, i.e. critics who write blogs, and "urban spoon" type of websites... think of how you evaluate all sorts of services and products... word of mouth? professional recommendations?

    Going "open source" has its risks. One disgruntled parent or teacher could tarnish a school's reputation, while other staff would be reluctant to make open criticism of their own employer... But note how the Tyee and other online news sites are now managing their comments section, with buttons for 'liking', 'voting', 'rating', 'recommending' etc. Social networking and informal systems of evaluation have both come a long way, and our public school system should take note. I think a well designed site, properly managed, could provide something really valuable to everyone. And it's cheap!

    (my two cents) :)

  • nermal

    1 year ago

    School Assessment

    Thanks to Mr. Chudnovsky et al for tackling the gargantuan task of developing an effective program of school assessment. British Columbians need to know how well their schools are meeting the established goals of the public education system. The void in that quest has been filled by the simplistic and values laden rankings of the Fraser Institute.

  • RickW

    1 year ago

    Attn: Fraser Institute

    There are some things in a nation that are NOT MEANT to show a profit (in the mean monetary sense).
    Among these (but not restricted to) are education, the postal service, and the military.
    And I defy anyone from the FI (or their sycophants) to show otherwise.

  • reality_check

    1 year ago

    Comparing apples and oranges?

    I am not that smart, but if you assessed THOROUGHLY (as in COSTLY) using all diagnostics in math and literacy as kids enter schools (BEFORE ANY TEACHING HAS RUINED THOSE KIDS), AND compare the results from one school to another, then you could equalize things (take out the head-start that kids from affluent (more educated) background have. Unfortunately, it won't be able to rule out the extra tutoring that affluent parents can use to help little RICHard or the extra help that parents can give, but all least you will be able to measure the intrinsic differences between different demographics. Factor that in in the comparison and the Fraser Institute's results will be the laughing stock of all statistical studies (as they should) and, finally, you will get something that is a bit more meaningful. Trust me, as it is now, the dice are loaded. I would love to teach in a pricate school that handpicks the good apples (and reject the bad ones).

  • frommycolddeadhands

    1 year ago

    Parents want an objective

    Parents want an objective way of comparing how students from School A perform compared to other schools district wide. Province-wide tests and comparisons assist in this. But, the Great Schools Project? Headed by names like Chudnovsky, Kuehn, Shaker, Ivanova? What a motley collection of Policy Alternative-ites, BCTFers, all with decidedly left-wing agenda. Thanks, but no thanks. I want my boys in a school where the average marks are high and teachers are not there to indoctrinate their students in the latest left wing fetishes. (Sorry, I should say 'social justice issues'.)

  • korie

    1 year ago

    what i want!

    i want a school where my child will thrive instead of being held back for the slowest learner (afterall, a slow learner will never catch up if the others are not held back for them) i want a school where students are treated equally (no first nation 'chill out' rooms or special tutors, if it is offered to one group of children, what about every other group!) i want the teacher to be an educator (that is the job, i will the parenting at home) i want teachers to not be afraid of hurting feelings (a little social shame will not scar them for life, it will set acceptable social boundaries) i want a second language (and the local native dialect does not count)! i want kids who fail the class to fail the grade (no more grade 6'ers reading at a grade 2 level) i want this 'self regulation' shanker crap to be scrapped (of course kids who have had gym class cut, who have done their grade 2 work again in grade 4, who are not challenged are going to show signs of his philosophy...) and a move towards self reliance, pride in work done, reward for excellence and bring back competitive sports. kids are too self entitled and parent enabled and the problem is in the school system itself. junk it and hire teachers based on merit and not union time served. my son's teacher was the worst match for him and his education suffered.

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