Annual Secondary School Ranking Report Released
Prince George, BC – When it comes to high schools Prince George, Cedars Christian has top ranking, at least that’s according to the Fraser Institute’s annual BC High School Ranking report.
294 secondary schools in B.C. were assessed based on a number of factors including provincial exams.
Cedars Christian came in at 65 of the 294 schools, up from its 83 position a year ago.
Among public schools, College Heights was 165 on the list, an improvement from its 179th position a year ago.
The other four public secondary schools, all slipped in the rankings with Duchess Park in the 173rd position, down from 144th. D.P.Todd and PGSS were tied for the 191st position, down from their previous positions of 144th (previous tie with Duchess) and 164th respectively.
Kelly Road was 240 on the overall ranking, slipping 7 positions from its previous mark.
Comments
“A school for children in the polygamous commune of Bountiful, B.C. is among the highest ranking on the 2011 Fraser Institute Report Card. Bountiful Elementary-Secondary scored a perfect 10 mark. It tied with 12 other schools, mostly private schools in the Vancouver area that also achieved perfect 10s.”
.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/polygamous-commune-school-perfect-fraser-institute-1.1071849
Yet this ame school was closed the very next year… seems the school was controlled by a polygamist faction that remains connected to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or FLDS, and its jailed leader Warren Jeffs. This school had great Fraser Institute scores when the teachers prepped the students specifically on the contents of the provincial exams, but did not fare so well when it came to the mental and physical well-being of its students, as some thought it promoted an atmosphere that prepped students / kids for polygamist marriage and a life of subservience.
.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/school-in-bountiful-bc-abruptly-closed-in-september/article4903354/
So here we have a right wing think tank like the Fraser Institute coming out with flawed provincial school rankings and the sheeple from the right swallow those rankings, hook, line, and sinker!!!
We are looking at stats from 2015 in today’s article. You have chosen to pick a combined elementary secondary school, a single incident from 2011 for a comparison to indicate the errors which can be made by looking only at stats rather than the on site conditions.
Remember, in order to do that with every single school would be quite expensive.
What method would you propose to have an approximate indication of how the schools across the province are doing.
Or, perhaps, you do not believe in quality control. Or may you would like to see how people have been doing when they are 50 and try to figure out whether it was the schools, the parents, the community, tv, a mentor along the way, or an eye opening trip to a foreign country or two.
Speaking of “cherry picking”;
The Fraser Institute cherry picks data to assert; obesity rates in Canada haven’t been rising, that obesity is not a medical concern worthy of alarm, and that government interventions that target obesity are folly and have already proven themselves to be ineffective.
The Fraser Institute comes out with a report that; “suggests there’s no reason to panic about a looming public health crisis caused by sky-rocketing obesity rates – and little evidence to support government interventions like banning super-sized soft drinks or forcing fast food restaurants to post calorie counts.”
Of course not, why give consumers information about the calories they consume, that kind of information is of no concern to public health, no surprise the Fraser Institute is also against the “long form census”… who needs all that additional useless information on which government would base important public policy?
The Fraser Institute is a quack organization, and jury is still out on the people who would defend them!
The nice thing about living in a country such as ours, one can find other organizations which are quack institutions which will fit the interests of many of the biased people living her.
We have a choice.
Now, I asked you a question. Why are you not responding?
It was: “What method would you propose to have an approximate indication of how the schools across the province are doing.”
You had over 45 minutes to do so. Are you incapable of responding and keeping the topic of evaluations of schools alive?
I’ll check back in a couple of hours.
JGalt is not a responder, he is a left wing ranter.. He blames all the world problems on the Conservatives, and then he goes back to sleep.
What is there to respond to? I presented my assertion and opinion that the Fraser Institution is a “quack organization”. I proceeded to back up my opinion with specific researched and source quoted examples in the following areas; The Fraser Institute’s “quack” School Rankings; The Fraser Institute’s “quack” Report on Obesity in Canada; The Fraser Institute’s “quack” position against the Long Form Census.
Gus (gopg2012) and Palopu, are engaging in a fallacy of logic called “burden of proof reversal”; Their comments are an attempt to challenge me, yet their comments contain no position, and of course on evidence because there is no position… whereas my comment contain my position and evidence that supports my position!
Nice try guys, try putting some effort into your comments, you both know do!
Woo…Hoo YES!!! The “like” “dislike” function on this site has finally been discontinued. :-D
You can say what you want about the Fraser Institute or any other organization that rank’s education based on test scores.When the Teacher’s start passing student’s based on their judgement you will have no idea how to rank student’s.You have Ranking’s now , Shortly you will have none……
Study after study links poor student focus, and academic performance, with poverty, and by extension; schools in poorer neighborhoods under perform compared to schools in wealthy neighborhoods.
.scientificamerican.com/article/poverty-disturbs-children-s-brain-development-and-academic-performance/
There are also multiple studies I can source that show a direct link between hunger and a student’s inability of focus and learn in the classroom. However, a “quack” Institution like the Fraser Institute would never acknowledge, and incorporate, scientific facts like the one I sourced from Scientific America (above) into their school rankings.
“I presented my assertion and opinion that the Fraser Institution is a “quack organization”.”
And I presented my opinion that it does not matter.
I asked you a very simple question which virtually any high school student could understand and you go into a rant nonsensical, Trump-like rant.
Is there anywhere in the Fraser Institute’s ranking where they provide a causative relationship of the rank of a school?
For instance, you seem to support the notion that there is a link between poverty and academic performance as well as hunger and academic performance. So, let me apply that in the case of PGs schools.
The ranking in PG from highest to lowest is: Cedars Christian, College Heights, Duchess Park, D.P.Todd/PGSS, Kelly Road.
That would mean given that ranking is directly related to hunger and poverty that those closest to the top rankings are the least hungry and the children of the richest parents in the City and surrounding area.
Since there is no other relationship you suggest, that is the assumption I have to make.
So, there is a purpose to the rankings after all then. To make sure that the rankings are much closer to each other we simply make sure that all those students are fed relatively well and that they have relatively the same access to the things any wealthy child has and the problem is solved.
Who cares about the home environment, who cares about the community environment and who cares about the school environment for example.
Just feed em and put them into a Ralph Lauren outfit and give em an Ipad and problem solved.
BTW, I just looked up your AS referenced article. I went immediately to the source of the article to read the JAMA Pediatrics article.
It is headlined “Differences in brain structure development MAY explain test score gap for poor children”.
It is published in 2015. The operative word is “may”.
They base their hypothesis (and that is all it is) on the analysis of magnetic resonance imaging scans of 389 typically developing children and adolescents ages 4 to 22 with complete sociodemographic and neuroimaging data.
The authors measured children’s scores on cognitive and academic achievement tests and brain tissue, including gray matter of the total brain, frontal lobe, temporal lobe and hippocampus.
Please note that they forgot to apply the same analysis to the parents of the children, to rule out any hereditary relationship.
It seems that JGalt feel that vitamin supplements to encourage maximal grey matter development is more important than the inherited DNA structure of the ancestors.
Taking over another discussion thread Gus?
.youtube.com/watch?v=ss2hULhXf04
So Kelly Road ranks so poorly because they are hungry ? Surprised they don’t go down the hill and steal the Cedars kids lunches then.
294 secondary schools in B.C. were assessed based on a number of factors including provincial exams. What were the other factors ? Memorizing incantations ? Swimsuit judging ? Subjective licence I’d say .
Read the report. It sometimes helps to go to the source yourself. Then again, not very many people have the inclination to do that any more these days.
Quick fixes and quick rush to judgements is the order of the day in the Facebook era. Then latch onto the theory that you have time to digest, and voila, we have another blind follower.
One of many studies which link heredity to human intelligence. We have to all remember that scientists all over the world are working on what makes our brains tick. We also have to remember that this has been going on for hundreds of years. Look up “phrenology” in case the reader does not know what that is.
anyway, here is an example of another approach at finding the mysteries of life and what shapes human beings.
An abstract from the article linked below
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Genome-wide association studies establish that human intelligence is highly heritable and polygenic
General intelligence is an important human quantitative trait that accounts for much of the variation in diverse cognitive abilities. Individual differences in intelligence are strongly associated with many important life outcomes, including educational and occupational attainments, income, health and lifespan. Data from twin and family studies are consistent with a high heritability of intelligence, but this inference has been controversial.
We conducted a genome-wide analysis of 3511 unrelated adults with data on 549 692 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and detailed phenotypes on cognitive traits.
We estimate that 40% of the variation in crystallized-type intelligence and 51% of the variation in fluid-type intelligence between individuals is accounted for by linkage disequilibrium between genotyped common SNP markers and unknown causal variants.
These estimates provide lower bounds for the narrow-sense heritability of the traits. We partitioned genetic variation on individual chromosomes and found that, on average, longer chromosomes explain more variation. Finally, using just SNP data we predicted ~1% of the variance of crystallized and fluid cognitive phenotypes in an independent sample (P=0.009 and 0.028, respectively).
Our results unequivocally confirm that a substantial proportion of individual differences in human intelligence is due to genetic variation, and are consistent with many genes of small effects underlying the additive genetic influences on intelligence
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fun reading, eh? There are hundreds more where that came from.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-07/tjnj-dib071615.php
We have to remember, groups such as the Fraser Institute present data prepared by others and relate it without indicating what the data actually means. Those of us commenting on here do that and each of us has a different approach.
That is the fun part about it.
oops, I forgot to leave the front part off the linkage, so my post may be delated for a while.
eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-07/tjnj-dib071615.php
People make mistakes …
this is the correct reference …
nature.com/mp/journal/v16/n10/abs/mp201185a.html
I am sure the demographic of cedars play a major role in its ranking. When people have the ability to pay extra for education I am sure it gives the kids a leg up. Does cedars have special needs students to deal with such as the public schools?
Yes, Cedars has special needs students.
“yet some on here see no cause and effect between poverty and reduced learning…”
I do not know who you mean. Why does everything with you have to be either this when it could also include that? Either left when it could also include right? Either poor when it is also genetic?
The fact that “special needs” students not only include those whose cognitive abilities are challenged, but also those whose cognitive abilities are superior to others and are held back in “normal” class environments.
The thing is, every student is a special needs student. Once one learns that, one can move on and work much better at becoming a good teacher.
Yes Cedars has special needs students, I concur with gus. I know of two families who chose Cedars because they have a child with special needs and public schools were failing them, in real and in speculative fashion (future bullying was a factor). They chose to pay monthly to take their children out of that environment more than anything else.
Exactly seamutt, and yet some on here see no cause and effect between poverty and reduced learning. To these people the following school district 57 initiative must seem like a disconnected pie-in-the-sky initiative.
.princegeorgecitizen.com/news/local-news/school-district-wants-provincial-action-on-child-poverty-1.2121334
Hmmm… now why would the School District want the province to undertake a poverty reduction plan???
Good point on the number of special needs students at Cedars Christian verse public schools as well seamutt.
You do like good unsubstantiated points – actually Cedars structured approach makes learning easier for some special needs students which is why my friend chose this environment for his special needs child. The children in the class actually help the teacher deal with disruptions from special needs students and some of the children actually take on mentorship roles for special needs. This is something that does not happen too often in our public system, unfortunately taking selfies and bullying these children is more the norm.
In actual fact, public schools are being underfunded so much, they cannot realistically meet the needs of special needs students. The number of parents enrolling their special needs children in private schools such as Cedars Christian is minuscule compared to the number of parents who are taking their children out of public schools to “home school” their children.
Word!
“why would the School District want the province to undertake a poverty reduction plan”
Easy, they cannot do anything to affect a DNA improvement plan. At least not at this time in our human history.
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