To the chagrin of many educators, the Fraser Institute’s rankings of elementary schools came out this week.
We understand the discomfort over this ordering of schools based on certain academic test scores that puts some at the top and many others…further down. Those rankings by themselves lack context.
The Fraser Institute’s use of the data as an inroad to promotion of private schools over public is also off-putting.
But we would urge everyone not to toss the baby out with the bathwater.
Scores on the Foundation Skills Assessment tests themselves still provide our education system with valuable data on competencies that remain key to students’ future success in school.
Along with other information, the data helps administrators know if there are problems and where resources should be focused. At a provincial level, it helps academics and policy makers identify areas of concern, possible solutions and trends over time. The scores may also point to successes and the reasons for them.
On a micro level, parents, while embracing the “big ideas” of the new curriculum, still want to know if their kids are learning to read, to write and do math in accordance with standardized expectations.
It would be ideal if the school system itself could find a way to publicly present this kind of data in a way that was less politically loaded. Until that day, expect parents and others to continue to have a morbid curiosity for the Fraser Institute’s rankings.
We might not like their take on it, but we should not be frightened of the information on which it is based.
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