Think tank targets gaps in school achievement

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The Fraser Institute's release of its first Report Card on Aboriginal Education in British Columbia paints a dismal picture of the level of academic achievement of First Nations students.

Questions that need to be answered: Why was this report prepared? Does it serve any useful purpose or does it just perpetuate negative expectations of Aboriginal learners?

The report, covering 38 elementary schools and 49 secondary schools, both public and private, is based on academic testing of grades 4, 7 and 10 students. To be included, schools had to have at least 10 Aboriginal students in each of the two lower grades tested and have at least 15 Aboriginal students in Grade 12. In addition, they had to have enough data to be evaluated.

The report, released Feb. 5, concludes that in British Columbia in the past four years "Aboriginal students failed more than 40 per cent of the province-wide reading tests they wrote." It also gave Grade 8 students only a one-in-five chance of graduating from that grade in the usual length of time; whereas, the non-Aboriginal success rate is more than three times as high.

It gets worse after Grade 8: 17 per cent of Aboriginal students don't enroll in high school, compared to a drop-out rate of less than five per cent for non-Aboriginal students. At the Grade 12 level, only 46 per cent of Aboriginal students covered by this study graduated, compared to 78 per cent of their non-Aboriginal peers.

However, Aboriginal educators charge the numbers are skewed, as between 18 and 46 per cent of Aboriginal children in the province did not write the Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) tests of reading, writing and numeracy, for a variety of reasons. The higher percentage of non-participants was at the Grade 10 level. The British Columbia Ministry of Education requires that all students write the FSA tests in grades 4, 7 and 10, unless they attend "uncertified, band-operated schools."

As only about 10 out of 100 First Nation-operated schools have opted to have their curricula certified by the ministry, the vast majority of those schools could not be included in the report. It is estimated there are 5,000 students in band-operated schools in British Columbia.

First Nations criticize the report for not factoring in socio-economic factors, culture and linguistic differences in determining the pecking order for non-band-operated schools.

These factors, coupled with the fact that large numbers of Aboriginal children are excluded from FSA testing, means "There is no consistent application of the process," according to Debora Jeffrey, president of the First Nations Education Steering Committee based in Vancouver. She cited poverty, racism, and the rural isolation of many First Nations children as some reasons why they do not as a group perform as well in school as do non-Native children.

David Griffin, in his seventh year as vice-principal at the Nisga'a high school in Gitlakdamix (New Aiyansh) and vice-principal in charge of Nisga'a language and culture for the district, said, "I don't put any credit to the Fraser Institute, because of how they evaluate.

"They look at exam results; they look at graduation rates; they look at numbers of students that write provincial exams. Now for little schools like us, First Nations or not, those become less relevant. It has no relevance for preparing students for life beyond high school.

"When you look at the Fraser Institute's results, the top 10 schools will be private schools in the Lower Mainland or Vancouver Island. ... Because those schools draw on the top students in the province, regardless of their ethnicity, and the schools are big enough that every student in Grade 12 is writing English 12, Algebra 12, Biology 12, things like that. We don't even offer some of those courses because we don't have the students that want to take them. Now everybody writes English 12, but we offer Biology 12 every other year, because we don't have enoug students to offer the course."

Griffin also pointed out that "countless studies have shown a relationship between socioeconomic status and education."

Peter Cowley, director of school performance studies at the Fraser Institute and one of the two report authors, discounts these reasons entirely. He said if children are not succeeding in school, the fault is with the school.

Cowley also said the purpose of his report is to reveal which schools are performing well and which are not, both to give parents knowledge they need to select a school for their children, and to give the community the knowledge to start demanding changes at schools that show poorly.

Debora Jeffrey, who attended the Feb. 5 public release of the report, said there were no surprises in it.

"The Ministry of Education here collects and publishes that data for us for almost the last 10 years, and we have used it actually in our planning processes and our advocacy in terms of improving policy and bringing about change to the public school system."

She pointed out the report's "limitations" from the point of view of the First Nations education steering committee.

"The context in which the data has been offered is extremely limited. It doesn't deal with the socio-economic complexities of our communities, and also it doesn't deal with the notion of cultural and linguistic competencies that are equally important to the academic ones."

Jeffrey stressed the need for both a high level of cultural knowledge and ability to speak Native languages, as well as the high academic marks needed to get students "into any post-secondary institute or training program of their choice.

"This (report) only focuses on whether kids are able to read, write and do math and graduate. The piece that's missing for us is a really important piece of educating the whole child."

Despite what she terms the limited scope of Cowley's report, Jeffrey added, "The positive piece that I can see attached to it s that it increases the focus on First Nations education and furthers the dialogue so that we can improve partnerships between First Nations communities and the public school system, long-term."

Asked whether he knew of any band-operated schools in the province that are doing really well, Cowley said, "No."

He also said most of the band-operated schools, "a big chunk, maybe 50 or 60, only go up to Grade 1 or 2. They're mostly kindergarten." Most of the remaining "55 or 65" schools with higher grades would not have had sufficient enrolment to be included in the report card even if they were ministry certified.

"But in the end, how do you know whether or not a band-operated school is doing a good job? How do you know whether it's doing a better job than it did three years ago?

"I have no objection to them saying 'We know whether we're good or bad-we have the measures.' That's fine. And if the parents are willingly involving themselves in a school that has that set of measures, then that's great, but I also want to be sure that where measures are possible that parents have the ability to look at them and understand them easily. That's why we produce the overall rating out of 10 and the ranking (of schools).

"Hopefully, some Aboriginal parents who send their kids, for instance, to Nisga'a Elementary-Secondary will say, 'Why is it that you in the First Nations authority tell us the school is doing well and great and we're making great strides and all that, and yet, compared to Aboriginal student populations in other schools in the province, we're not doing well at all on some serious issues, including literacy in English, ability to read in English, numeracy'-which goes beyond what language you're in."

On one point Griffin and Cowley agreed. "Even bigger than (socio-economic factors), I think," said Griffin, "is parental engagement. When parents get involved in students' learning, the students realize the value of it and pursue it that much more vigorosly.

"I'm First Nations myself," said Griffin. "I'm a graduate of this high school I work at. And I went on to Queen's University and U Vic and Malaspina (College). And I got a master's at SFU and I'm currently working on a doctorate, but I'm one of the exceptions. My mother didn't go to residential school. There's still lingering echoes of the negative feelings of residential school" that filter down to many Aboriginal students today, he said.

Cowley discounts these "excuses" and said they should not be given weight in assessing a child's school performance.

Cowley said he supports parents' right to decide whether they want to opt in or out of a provincially run school curriculum for their children, so long as it is "the parents talking and not the band authorities."

He also said he doesn't pay any attention to the reputed good quality of some band-run schools. "I don't deal in reputations; I deal in results in the report cards, and Nisga'a (school) is a very consistent bottom-dweller."

Cowley's solution to schools that seemingly can't be brought to the point of graduating a majority of students with decent marks is to bring in an outside expert-someone with boundless energy and determination-and give them the authority to implement changes. Getting parents involved in the process is key, he said, and he cited several tough neighbourhood schools in the United States and elsewhere where disadvantaged children have experienced success.

"We chose British Columbia to begin this series," Cowley stated in the report, "because, at present, only British Columbia makes the effort to identify Aboriginal students within the province's public and independent schools in such a way that their results can be isolated for analysis."

The ministry asks students to voluntarily identify their Aboriginal origins when yearly information is collected at the schools. At the start of the 2002/2003 school year, there were 52,100 identified Aboriginal students out of a