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Grading Quebec’s secondary schools – Montreal Economic Institute and Fraser Institute publish seventh annual Report Card

Montreal, October 26, 2006 – The Montreal Economic Institute and The Fraser Institute today released the Report Card on Quebec’s Secondary Schools: 2006 Edition, the only publicly available, independent measurement of 458 of Quebec’s public and private, French and English, secondary schools.

The Report Card collects a variety of relevant, objective indicators of school performance into one easily accessible, public document so all interested parties – parents, school administrators, teachers, students, and taxpayers – can analyze and compare an individual school’s performance.

“The Report Card provides parents with the information they need to easily compare the academic programs of their local schools and monitor the performance of these schools to see if they improve over time,” said Peter Cowley, The Fraser Institute’s Director of School Performance Studies and co-author of the Report Card. “It gives a detailed picture of each school that is not readily available elsewhere.”

New indicator shows how well schools address the challenges of their students

A new indicator, the Late entry students score, helps show how effective schools are in helping students overcome the challenges presented by their studies. Students who are older than usual when they enter Secondary IV have often had difficulties with their studies in previous years. This new indicator provides evidence of the extent to which each school ensures that these students succeed during the last two years of the secondary program. Using the new indicator, readers can see how schools compare based solely on the academic results of their Late entry students.

New interactive, web-based report card allows easy comparisons

This new interactive web-based tool lets parents, teachers, and school and district administrators review a school’s academic performance based on overall school ratings or detailed, course-by-course exam results. They can then compare their school’s results with those of other schools or the provincial average.

The schools’ results are presented instantly in an easy to read, full-colour chart clearly illustrating how the school is doing. Each chart includes up to 11 years of historical data showing how the school performs over time.

“The interactive tool is a great resource that has been embraced by parents,” said Norma Kozhaya, co-author of the Report Card and economist at the Montreal Economic Institute. “Since the bulletin interactif was introduced in August this year, more than 12,000 Quebec parents and educators have used it to learn more about their schools.”

The complete rankings of the schools and detailed results (in PDF) can be viewed at www.fraserinstitute.ca and at www.iedm.org. The interactive version of the report card is available on-line at www.lactualite.com.

Indicators used in the 2006 Report Card

The foundation of the Report Card is an overall rating of each school’s academic performance, based largely on the students’ results in five core academic subject areas: Secondary V level courses in the language of instruction, Mathematics, and second languages, and Secondary IV level courses in History of Quebec and Canada, Physical Sciences, and Mathematics.

From these results we calculate the following indicators:

(1) Average uniform examination marks;
(2) Percentage of exams failed;
(3) School level grade inflation;
(4) Difference between the examination results of male and female students in Secondary V level language of instruction and in Secondary IV level physical science, and;
(5) A measure of the proportion of each school’s students who stay in school and graduate on time.

These indicator results are then combined to produce the Overall rating out of 10.

The Report Card Series

The Fraser Institute publishes annual report cards on secondary schools in British Columbia, Alberta, and Quebec. It also publishes annual report cards on elementary schools in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario. The Report Card on Quebec’s Secondary Schools was first published in 2000.

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CONTACTS: Peter Cowley, Director of School Performance Studies, The Fraser Institute, Tel. (604) 714-4556, Mobile (604) 789-0475 / Email: peterc@fraserinstitute.ca Patrick Leblanc, Director of Communications, Montreal Economic Institute, Tel. 514-273-0969, Mobile 514-571-6400 / Email: pleblanc@iedm.org

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