High schools score low by Jonathan Crowe
The Equity, Nov. 19, 2003

Pontiac’s high schools have not fared well in the latest annual report on Quebec high school performance.

The report, titled Report Card on Quebec’s Secondary Schools: 2003 Edition, was jointly produced by the Montreal Economic Institute and the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute. This is the fourth year that the institutes have produced this report.

École secondaire Sieur de Coulonge finished 219th, St. Alphonsus High School (now Dr. Wilbert Keon School) finished 309th, John Paul II High School finished 416th and Pontiac High School finished 435th.

The study graded 455 schools across the province on a number of factors, such as examination marks and the percentage of students who graduate on time.

The report was based on publicly available data for the 2001-2002 school year. The report’s researchers performed a statistical analysis and assigned a score from one to 10 to each school.

But the report is not without its critics.

Officials from Pontiac’s two school boards argue that the report focuses too much on performance in tests.

“The report leaves out some important elements of what a school is about,” said Kevin Drysdale, director of education for the Western Quebec School Board.

Drysdale pointed to socialization as a key — though difficult to measure — role played by schools.

For Marlène Thonnard, director general of the Commission scolaire des Hauts-Bois-de-l’Outaouais, success is more than how well a student performs on a provincial exam.

Success, she argued, could be measured by whether a student stays in school.

“The more students we keep in the school, maybe we won’t have as high results, but they’re still in school,” said Thonnard.

In addition, Drysdale said that because the report counts a student who moves to another province as a dropout rather than a transfer, an English-language school near the Ontario border would be penalized more than, say, a French-language school in the middle of the province.

“There is movement (across the border) that is not taken into account,” said Drysdale. “We believe it would be significantly higher than in the French population.”

Another issue is “school choice” and whether private and public schools can be compared.

The Fraser Institute, a conservative think-tank, is a long-time advocate of school choice — which, in a nutshell, means giving parents the ability to send their children to private school with financial support from the government.

The report groups public and private schools together; of the top 50 schools, only six are public schools.

Both Thonnard and Drysdale said that it’s unfair to group private and public schools in the same category.

“(Private schools) select their students. We don’t select. We take everybody,” said Thonnard.

In particular, public schools must take care of special-needs children.

For example, 14.4 per cent of Pontiac High’s students are special needs students, while private schools generally have few to none, Drysdale said.

“This really is apples and oranges, and that’s unfair,” said Drysdale.

“We have to look after those students,” said Thonnard.

And, Thonnard pointed out, school choice is a moot point in rural areas, where there is only one school for miles around.

Drysdale concurred. “It’s a non starter for someone living in Noranda,” he said.

Finally, there is some debate as to how much impact a school really makes on a student’s performance.

Thonnard pointed to a study by Jean-Guy Blais, a professor of education at the Université de Montréal, which concluded that the school is a factor in only 17 per cent of the results; the students themselves determine the remaining 83 per cent.

Blais wrote the study in direct response to the Report Card.

“I don’t think (the Report Card) helps the cause,” said Thonnard.

For his part, however, Drysdale said that indicators are still useful.

“It’s not the whole picture. But it’s an important part of one picture,” he said.

Drysdale points out that the 2001-2002 data upon which the report is based is already 18 months old, and that their internal numbers show an improvement in student performance.

“Any of your governing boards of your schools will see (the results),” he said.

For example, Drysdale promised that Pontiac High School will show an improvement in the 2004 report.

“They surpassed the average mark in their (Secondary V) examinations,” he said.

Drysdale predicted higher scores for all of the WQSB’s schools, which he credits to the implementation of school success plans by the board in 2001.

As for the school choice argument, Drysdale said he was much more interested in improving existing schools.

“We’re not interested in a competition of schools against one another,” he said. “What I’m interested in is growth in each of our schools.”

Note: This article has not been updated since its first publication. As a result, some of the facts referred to in the text may now be out of date.