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Education leaders reject market group�s flawed education report The entire Newfoundland and Labrador education community spoke with a single voice today, rejecting a deeply flawed report on schools published by the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS). Gerry Reid, Minister of Education; Winston Carter, President of the Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers� Association (NLTA); Denise Pike, President of the School Council Federation; Myrle Vokey, Executive Director of the Schools Boards Association; Bruce Sheppard, President of the Association of Directors of Education, and Alice Collins, Dean of Memorial University�s Faculty of Education, acted quickly today to collectively criticize AIMS for publishing a report card which grades and ranks Newfoundland and Labrador high schools. AIMS is a Halifax-based think-tank that advocates charter (independent) schools in Atlantic Canada. The Making the Grade report also ranks high schools in two other Atlantic provinces where there is provincial testing. "School rankings serve no educational purpose," said Minister Reid, who stated that the AIMS report is statistically and methodologically weak, and based on a narrow range of outdated measures. "The researchers predicted the achievement scores that students would be expected to get after three years of high school based on Grade 9 results and other input measures. They then used scores from the Canadian Tests of Basic Skills (CTBS) that were administered to Grade 10 students in October 1999, only one month after they first entered high school, to measure how well high schools served these students. How can this be a valid assessment of the learning that occurs over three years of high school? "One of the main problems with ranking schools even with valid methodology, is that you get a completely different set of rankings depending on what is included in the formula for the rankings. If you decide, for example, that math and language are included and social studies, music, and French are not, that gives one picture. If you say we value music, athletics, science and extracurricular activities and you include these in the mix you get a different picture. There is no way to adequately rank schools, as different students and different communities have unique needs and strengths. "I also have serious concerns about the statistical validity of ranking schools. Many of the rankings are based on very small differentials and in fact, for many schools there are no differences at all, yet this report leads the public to believe it is statistically possible to differentiate and rank schools. This is clearly not the case, especially given the fundamental flaws of this research methodology. "I fully support accountability, especially to students and parents, and the record of the Department of Education speaks for itself. We have been publishing accountability reports on the province�s education system since 1990, and we maintain a school profile system that contains test results and a range of other indicators. All of this information is on our Web site for anyone to view. Rankings, however, are always problematic. If parents are concerned about school achievement, I urge them to disregard the AIMS report, and look at valid information such as the annual reports from their schools, and then compare their achievement with past performance. This is how we can be most effective in our school improvement efforts." NLTA president Winston Carter agreed with the minister: "The rankings for these schools tell you nothing about their performance or the quality of education that goes on there. The ranking system is invalid, overly restrictive and unreliable. It is based on a shoddy, ill-conceived methodology and flawed data analysis. The rankings depend entirely on what data the researcher found most easily accessible; data the researcher himself has recognized as inappropriate. This approach ignores the many attributes which we all know help to create good schools." Newfoundland and Labrador School Council Federation President, Denise Pike also echoed Minister Reid�s comments. Ms. Pike said: "We are asking parents and school councils to dismiss this fundamentally flawed assessment. By the researchers own admission the AIMS report card does not provide a complete picture of the quality of education provided in our schools. To rank our students and measure our high schools on how they scored on a test at the beginning of grade 10 and then compare to a test at the end of grade 9 is ludicrous." Dr. Alice Collins, Dean of Education, Memorial University stated that: "Research is very important in providing feedback on how schools are performing and providing valuable information for school improvement. The AIMS report does not provide this because it lacks a sound research methodology." Dr. Bruce Sheppard, President of the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Directors of Education commented: "While my colleagues and I support accountability based on student performance, we are unable to give any credence to a study that ranks schools on the basis of changes in scores that occurred during summer vacation prior to students entering high school. The school rankings, in this case, have little more validity than if they were created by chance as a result of a random draw." Dr. Myrle Vokey, Executive Director of the Newfoundland and Labrador School Board�s Association stated that: "Where a school falls in the rankings depends on what the analyst who is doing the rankings decides is valuable. In this case the researcher used the Grade 10 assessment because it happened to be readily available within his time line. Unfortunately, this choice was completely inappropriate. The only thing he succeeded in measuring was whatever students picked up during their summer vacation." In the meantime, Minister Reid noted that staff in his department have been working on a school level report for all of the province�s schools in collaboration with school districts. "School boards and the Department of Education have already identified this project as part of our overall commitment to accountability in education," said the minister. "Our goal is to release a school level report this spring. The difference between the AIMS report and what the province and school boards are doing, is that we will report on a broad range of learning outcomes and we will not be ranking schools. We are proud of our education system, and the AIMS report is unfair to both our schools and our students." Media contact: Elizabeth Matthews, Communications, (709) 729-0048 or (709) 727-3438. 2003 03 06 10:30 a.m. |
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