While I agree with David Slocombe’s focus on finding a positive approach, and in the same vein agree with Heidi Hass Gable who says “Let’s Talk”… I also think, like Silvana, that ‘a real paradigm shift is needed’ and I’m not sure that shift is something on the radar with Peter Cowley and the F.I.

I was intentionally rude and hurtful in my opening remarks of this post. Why? Because the ranking of schools is hurtful and misleading and insulting. I was intentionally judging the Fraser Institute on narrow paramaters just as they do to schools… I did so to make this point.

And then Peter Cowley says, “I am sure you and I could think of other measurables in academics as well as many other aspects of schooling.”
But here is the thing, even if I help the F.I. widen the ‘measurable’ parameters, they are still ranking schools and that in and of itself is not healthy or needed.

I believe that schools should be held accountable to the communities they serve, and that schools have an obligation to provide a plan to improve themselves, (no matter how good or challenged they may be). I don’t believe that ranking schools achieves these goals. I don’t believe that the ranking is meaningful or informative to parents or educators, and I don’t believe that a better method of ranking will improve anything.

I believe, like Dave Maclean and Stephen Downes, that F.I.’s motives are not altruistic and I cannot see myself investing time to work with people who do not share similar goals. When the ranking ends, the conversation can begin.

sometimes I think our beliefs are poles apart and sometimes I know exactly what you mean….

Fantastic post again.

I love what Matt Kahn(www.TrueDivineNature.com) says in his beautiful essay

“…I know that whatever I know is only a point of view based on a past history of experiences, with every single point of view hiding in the minds of all, being equally unique and valid to their past, as similar or as different as it seems from mine. To only be focused on my individual point of view is to build a belief, that how I see things may be more right than the others around me. This keeps me isolated in my own limited world of opinion, without the opportunity to learn from the brilliance that we’re all here to offer.

I know from the lessons of past experiences, whenever I remained lost in my own view point, I’d have to ignore every other possibility in the entire Universe, just to keep my limiting opinion in focus.

I could either choose to be right and ignore the entire world around me, or I could choose to be in peace, and invite the world into this opening heart of mine, that only wants to be loved, appreciated, and free from the burden of needing to decide if anyone, including myself, is acting right or wrong…”

He goes on to say, “… I know that I’ll never be right, without someone else being labeled wrong…”

As I always tell my kids there is always a solution to every problem.

So the 64 000 dollar question is how can Peter be praised and rewarded for delivering the positive publicity for F.I. while at the same time delivering meaningful studies that incorporate and benefit educators, students and parents?

I unfortunately right now do not have the answers. However I know there is a solution.

Because there always is !

Learning…Enjoying…Sharing

David

P.S. I look forward to hearing that you and Peter found a positive solution. Yee ha!

You have correctly pointed out some of the “altruistic” reasons the F.I.(Peter, please feel the drippings of pure sarcasm when I use the term altruistic) completes this inane task. I’d like to suggest a couple more motivations the F.I. has for misleading the public with its poorly formulated rankings.

1. The Vancouver Sun newspaper, in which the rankings are published, is the number one purchased edition of the year. The revenue generated by this publication serves as motivation to perpetuate the lies. And don’t confuse its popularity for evidence of its quality. “Mall Cop” was the number one grossing movie last weekend and I can guarantee it won’t be up for “Best Picture”.

2. It is in the interest of the F.I. to show that private schools like St. George’s are ranked higher than the public schools because this makes the right leaning supporters of the F.I. feel good about sending their children to these private schools.

In addition to shedding some light on to the F.I.’s motivation for continuing to defraud the public’s view of our education system, I’d like to ask Peter some open letter questions. Perhaps he can respond to these questions in another comment here.

Are you aware that for the past 5 years (at least) that the way in which you have been interpreting the data you have been collecting is dramatically flawed?

I personally know of schools that are ranked near the top of your criteria where more than 80% of the eligible students did not even write the assessment.

Your fix last year for this glitch (that you fail to publish as a caveat in any significant way in any of your publications) was to count all students who did not write the exam as a “0″. Therefore, schools who had special needs students, students with learning disabilities and low level ESL students who are unable to participate in an assessment like the FSA in a meaningful way were ranked lower on your scale.

Are you consciously saying that schools with special needs students, learning disabled students and ESL students are inferior to schools without these students? (this is what your ranking system would seem to indicate)

It is our diversity that makes our schools places of real learning. It is shameful, dare I say discriminatory, to promote homogenous school populations as being ranked higher.

Peter, this is NOT a rant. It is a series of concerns that I have about your institution. Please respond directly to my points so that we can continue to have a public discussion about the merits of your work.

As a separate point, I’d like to say that the FSA’s, when used appropriately, are a decent tool for shaping provincial initiatives around curriculum, for guiding district resource funding, for shaping school plans and for understanding trends within our education system.

This was the intention of the FSA’s when they were first brought into existence. Peter, please tell me why you and your institute are not listening to every voice in education that is saying what you are doing is harmful to our children, teachers and schools?

Dave MacLean
BC Elementary School Principal

ps. Thank you for providing your phone number Peter. I look forward to the opportunity to discuss this further with you.

Free markets + schools and kids?? We’ve seen the results of combination with NCLB in the States. Someone thought, hey, you know what we should do with schools that have low standardized test results? We should cut their funding, that’ll make them do much better next time.

Would you rather have the capitalist model of education where, if a school is failing, that’s just too bad? Where the kids who already have the advantage of coming from a wealthy family can bypass those failing public schools for a private education?

Or… would you rather see a model of education where “failing” schools are seen as a sign that improvement is needed, rather than punishment? Where resources (not just money) are devoted to raising those schools to the same standard as the others, and a child can expect a quality education no matter what neighborhood they live in, or who their parents are?

There was a quote that really stuck with me from this article about public high schools in Washington DC:

“In my American government class, [Ms. Cruz-Gonzales] had brought a test from a private middle school, and the stuff that they were learning in eighth grade, we were just learning now. And I, like, literally started to cry because it’s sad. Like, I understand we go to public school, but that doesn’t mean that since we can’t afford the education, we shouldn’t have it. . . . It made me feel ignorant. Really ignorant.”

– Tiarra Hall, 17, 12th grade

I don’t think any kid deserves that. Free market inequality does not belong in schools.

Thank you for your response.

I was sarcastic, and feel free to call what I said a rant if you want to, but as Clayton suggests, your response glosses over the points that I am attempting to make.

In my Synthesize and Add Meaning post I quote Wesley Fryer, “We need to embrace differentiation, flexibility and high expectations for all students.”

And I go on to say, “But there is a dichotomy here: Our ‘educational language’ around standardization and accountability juxtaposed with differentiation and flexibility… we seem to have two mutually exclusive camps, yet there seems to be a move to embrace both. To embrace both is to accomplish neither.”

To be crass, I cannot help you add more pee to the pot when the pot needs flushing. If you are willing to publicly support the idea that ranking schools accomplishes nothing meaningful for students and learning, then you can get my support and the support of many more educators who will help you find meaningful ways to assess learning, (beyond what we already do as Clayton, above, suggested).

Imagine coaches spending an entire year assessing rhythmic gymnastics for creativity and execution of skills and then having someone evaluate the athletes with a stop watch. More accurate stop watches won’t help the athletes.

It is easy to say that I could be more influential without the sarcasm, but please also recognize that your organization could be more influential if it focused on reporting out something that meaningfully contributes to the learning of students rather than hindering what educators are trying to accomplish in their classrooms, their schools, and their districts.

‘One indicator that I think would be very valuable is a measure of the progress made by the students at the school in a given year. This is one very important measure that is not captured by the FSA.’

There is a measure of the progress made by students. It’s called a report card and it goes home to parents 3 or 4 times per year. This, along with parent teacher interviews, telephone calls, and emails provide significant and meaningful personal feedback. A ranking number for schools based on one test does not provide meaningful feedback.

It would be great if you would actually respond to the issues that David brings up in his letter rather than suggesting weak and, frankly, insincere solutions on how he can help you add more standardized testing to our schools.