Blog from the Vancouver Sun, about the FSA tests in BC schools (which the Fraser Institute uses to rank schools)

http://communities.canada.com/vancou...zed-tests.aspx

"The union's campaign has been most successful in Vancouver, where last year 37 per cent of Grade 4 students and 39 per cent of Grade 7 students did not participate (likely invalidating the results). Province-wide, 19 per cent of B.C. students did not write the FSA, up from 12 per cent two years earlier."

A culture of altruism is something union leaders share with bank chief executives of course.

I don't know many people who are fans of the BCTF. But what the Fraser Institute is doing is playing into their hands.

But what does the FI do that is so wrong? It just consolidates the test results which are freely available anyway.

It is suprising the BC teachers employers tolerate undermining of the tests by the teachers and the union. Do they not have the appetite for a confrontation over it?

There will be more complaining than usual from certain head teachers and unions in England tomorrow with the publication of test results by schools showing the % pass rate for 5 core subjects rather than two subjects plus any other three used previously. What it will do is show up the schools which have been encouraging taking weak subjects to look good in the league tables.

The FSA was not designed as a tool to rank schools, however, that is exactly what the FI does. I don't agree with that, and neither do lots of other parents apparently. THe BCTF can't "make" anyone pull their child out of the test, but if you don't agree with school rankings then pulling your child out of the test is the only way to protest the way the data is being used for political purposes. PEsonally I love it.

Why would the BC teachers' employers go against many taxpaying parents who don't agree with the FSA? Any party looking to gain public support is going to have to tread carefully on this issue.

You could write a book about it. A long one.

The BCTF take the position that the school boards, the government or the public have no legitimate role scrutinizing teachers performance because:

a) "We are a profession, you know, and we are therefore self-regulating", and

b) There cannot possibly be such a thing as a below average teacher.

Not wishing to put words into Kiwilass' posts, but I think she may mean that the FI rankings are pretty meaningless i.e. they measure what they measure, but they don't necessarily measure good educational outcomes. This is fairly obvious to anyone who sees the schools in action. It allows the BCTF to denigrate the whole notion of trying to measure teacher's or school's performances. It is support to their contention that only a teacher can judge another teacher.

So if the FI took out the table with the schools ranked it would be okay then?

This debate over testing takes place the world over. What do you mean by:

but they don't necessarily measure good educational outcomes ?

Passing standardized tests is only part (and I think a small part) of child education. The FI rankings tell you the pass rates of the tests. It doesn't tell you which school has the best teaching because it takes no account of the abilities of the students to start with. It tells us that schools in well to do areas have kids that are better at passing standard tests. I think I could have worked that out myself.

They do not measure the success of the school to mold young people into participating and contributing citizens with the courage to pursue their ambitions. IMO this is a more important educational outcome than test or exam results.

right.

I think there should be more flexibility to hire & fire bad teachers, but what the FI is currently doing is not helping the school boards win that fight. They may think it does, but it's just pissing off some people, like me, who feel their children's education has become a political football. I don't believe for a second the FI really cares about improving public schools, any more than I believe the BCTF cares more about kids than teachers. They're both stuck in their entrenched positions and kids and parents are in the middle.

No.

Why not?

It does attempt to take into account of abilities of students. It does this by assessing average parental income within catchment area together with average level of education achieved by parents. It also , if I remember rightly, provides an added value figure, forgotten how it comes to it, but think its some combination of parental income, parental educational level and grade 3 vs grade 6 results. Eg a school that has added value will show significant imporvement from 3 to 6

I actually found the FI report cards useful, obviously only one facet of a particular picture of course; but my general rule in life is arm yourself with all the information and then dissect it. Here in Calgary some schools in very similar areas (in terms of parental level of education) have very different results and I am still not sure I would send my child to a significantly underperforming school (why would I?) given its catchment. That said, on balance we chose the area to live based on the school, but we had a different criteria to frasercard and chose a school that doesn't even appear in it as it stops before grade 6. Was it useful reading it? yes absolutely. Did we take it as gospel? of course not.

There's nothing wrong with conducting research in public policy if it is fair and as objective as possible but the Fraser Institute uses research to mask and justify its ideological positions. Positions which are very loosely based on some twisted notion of right-wing Lockian frontier libertarianism but in reality they simply want to peruse personal and corporate economic wealth without any oversight or taxation from the wider populace. They want liberty, but liberty to, discriminate, subjugate and consolidate. So when such "institutes" exist to simply promote a narrow ideological agenda, one distrusts any and all their so-called research.

I think what you've said is fair enough. The FI report cards gave a rough starting point to start considering schools/areas but aren't the full picture by a long way.

I had wondered how they (the FI) obtained the parental income value I highlighted in your posting. I suppose its explained in the report somewhere but I'm guessing its not a true parental income ie the average of the parents of the children actually attending the school but rather from the census data for the catchment area? The official test results in England can be used with the free school meals value for each school to identify more and less affluent areas to see if the school outperforms the norm for that FSM %.

Overall I think the testing and publishing of results is reasonable enough. If unions can campaign and pursuade parents not to support them well fair enough but it does seem blatent self interest on their part and naivety on the part of the parents going along with it.