Two local schools made it on the Fraser Institute’s Top 20 Fastest-Improving Alberta Elementary Schools list as part of the most recent edition of the institute’s annual elementary report card.
Ashmont Elementary and Two Hills Mennonite School were both singled out for improvements being seen over the past five years. A total of 665 elementary schools were included in the most recent report card.
“According to the rankings, the 20 Alberta elementary schools showing the fastest academic improvement over the past five years include nine public schools where parental incomes are below average. At one of these schools, ESL students account for 86.3 per cent of the total student population; at another, 44.3 per cent of students are special needs,” says a press release from the institute. Both statistics in the statement relate to schools from St. Paul Education Regional Division (SPERD).
Two Hills Mennonite School has 86.3 per cent ESL students, while Ashmont Elementary has 44.3 per cent students who are special needs. Although both schools still fall below the average for their score out of 10, the improvements are promising.
“As long as there’s improvement, as I see it anyway, you’re doing what you’re suppose to be doing,” says Peter Cowley, Fraser Institute director of school performance studies. He says there’s only one thing that can be asked of any school and that is to constantly find ways for the next group of students to do better than the last.
The two schools are showing “real change” and this is a reflection of the work being done by the staff at the schools, says Cowley.
“Student learning is our number one priority,” says Glen Brodziak, superintendent for SPERD. He says that any gains are very much welcome news and that the information from the Fraser Institute is simply another piece of data.
Sometimes, the division does feel the Fraser Institute is a bit more “narrow” in its focus, says Brodziak, adding, SPERD relies on Alberta Education’s Accountability Pillar, the division survey that is done every two years, and SPERD’s own internal goals and measures to gauge improvements.
Cowley says it’s important to look at data from past years to determine if there is in fact a trend emerging. It’s not uncommon for a school to have one really good year out of five, or for a school to have one really bad year out of five.
For both Ashmont and Two Hills Mennonite schools, the institute believes the results being seen are too consistent to be random.
The Fraser Institute is unhappy with the possibility that Provincial Achievement Tests (PAT) might be discontinued or changed so that results cannot be used to create the well-known report card that rates hundreds of Alberta school.
“There’s absolutely no basis for it,” says Peter Cowley, Fraser Institute director of school performance studies. The thought that achievement tests are stressful for students is unproven, he says. He believes that if anyone is making provincial testing stressful, it is the teachers who put more emphasis on the tests.
And to say something is being misused simply because it wasn’t designed for a specific purpose, isn’t a smart thing to say, says Cowley.
“It’s a very strange argument.”
Cowley points to the Internet as an example to support this thought. The minister of education himself uses Twitter to communicate with Albertans and his constituents, says Cowley of MLA Thomas Lukaszuk.
Neither the Internet nor Twitter was originally designed for how they are widely being used, says Cowley. The Fraser Institute believes the province should allow parents to decide on the validity of the “hugely popular” report card, he adds.
Some local schools are not included in the report card due to less than 15 students being enrolled in Grade 3 and Grade 6, or less than 15 PAT results being available. Also, if a school only goes from Kindergarten to Grade 5, it cannot be used in the rankings since the statistics rely on both Grade 3 and Grade 6 PAT results.
Local results/rankings included in the report card are:
Glen Avon (SPERD) – 6.7/10 (up from 5.8)
Glendon (Northern Lights School Division) – 6.4/10 (down from 6.5)
Two Hills (SPERD) – 6/10 (previous results not available)
Elk Point (SPERD) – 5.9/10 (down from 6.4)
Mallaig (SPERD) – 5/10 (previous results not available)
Two Hills Mennonite (SPERD) – 4.1/10 (Up from 2.4)
Ashmont (SPERD) – 3.5/10 (up from 3.0)
