Vancouver Sun: 2008 May 6
Irene Lanzinger
Here we go again. The Fraser Institute has once again released its school rankings based on the Foundation Skills Assessment tests — standardized tests given to Grades 4 and 7 each year in British Columbia. It is a misleading exercise.
Let’s be clear why this ill-conceived competition is forced on schools every year.
The Fraser Institute is dedicated to the privatization of public services and is openly hostile to all public institutions. While it portrays itself as a disinterested, objective “research institution,” the truth is that no matter what the public system did it would not be good enough. The Fraser Institute’s goal is to denigrate the public education system.
Not a single independent education expert supports the use of the FSAs for this purpose — even if they support the FSA test itself. The Vancouver Sun publishes the rankings ostensibly because parents want to know the results. Naturally, parents want to know how their child does on a test. The problem is that the FSA gives parents no useful information about how their child is doing or how good their school is.
The FSAs are designed to test the overall system — they are not graded in the same manner as teachers assess their students. Markers are instructed to read only the last paragraphs of the writing samples. In 10 minutes, markers are instructed to assess: Two openended math problems, one open-ended reading response, one short writing sample, and one longer writing sample. No teacher would ever assess their students in this manner.
The implied promise of these tests is that they will result in the application of additional, targeted resources based on identified deficits. But there are no extra resources and there is no targeting.
The FSAs completely ignore the most dynamic, substantive, and creative work of dedicated teachers and their students — the stuff that makes not only good citizens but good employees.
They ignore the challenges that many schools face as well as the obvious privileges and advantages of other schools. This is an exercise that overtly divides our communities along class lines. Class differences are unavoidable in our free market economy. But it is shameful to exploit public education (intended to promote equality) to highlight such divisions.
The rankings hurt students and parents in low-scoring schools who are acutely aware of where they are ranked, even if they know it is unfair.
The Liberal government is the guilty party here. We expect the Fraser Institute to do what it does — promote a society where government is reduced to the absolute minimum and everything else is done for a profit. But we do not expect our government to facilitate this yearly attack on public education. By refusing to prevent the ranking, Education Minister Shirley Bond and Premier Gordon Campbell are coconspirators in a process that undermines public education.
Bond says she agrees with us on this issue but is powerless to do anything. She said in the legislature: “The ranking of schools isn’t something that we encourage. We certainly can’t stop it.”
Nonsense. Health Minister George Abbott moved effectively to stop exactly the same kind of ranking of hospitals by the same Fraser Institute.
What’s the difference? It is difficult to come to any conclusion other than this government has singled out public education for ideological attention. Bond’s protestations notwithstanding, her ideology mirrors the Fraser Institute’s.
This government has a competitive, industrial model of education — not a community model. It’s not just the FSAs and the obsession with standardized testing that treat students like widgets. It’s also the epidemic of school closings based almost exclusively on the business principle of economic efficiency. It is found in the government’s preoccupation with cutting costs, no matter what the consequences and even when it has huge surpluses.
What else explains a rich province like B.C. laying off hundreds of school librarians, and specialist teachers and being so parsimonious with playground grants that they leave out hundreds of needy schools and their kids?
It is as if, in their calculations, the government sees students as a cost to be slashed. So if you have to displace 22,000 kids and disrupt their family life by closing 150 schools, so be it.
The government stands condemned by its failure to act on what it claims are its principles. It clearly supports this offensive ranking exercise, otherwise it would stop it.
