The Fraser Institute has released its rankings for high schools in B.C. and both local schools have seen slight improvements.
The report is put together using results from the Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) test that was administered in March.
While the Ministry of Education mandates the test, support for the ranking portion is in short supply.
School District 51 Superintendant Michael Strukoff said that results aren’t closely followed for the region’s two high schools, which are Grand Forks Secondary School and Boundary Central Secondary School.
“Our school district does acknowledge that they come out, but we do not use them in any fashion,” Strukoff said.
“They do have a new piece in there that talks about socio-economic status of the different communities.”
The local schools are doing a good job relative to that item, he said.
“There’s a lot of research showing that the higher the socio-economic status of a community, the better the kids might do and you would see that for our situation, both of our schools are exceeding our expectations,” he added.
Norm Sabourin, president of the Boundary District Teachers’ Association, regards the test as unnecessary, and says the ranking is wrong.
“If the FSA tests are going to be done, then they should be done in a random sample and then the Ministry of Education can then take those findings to direct curriculum. By ranking schools, you’re putting school against school and it’s absolutely wrong,” Sabourin said.
Boundary Central Secondary received a ranking of 54 out of the 274 schools, going up from a rank of 105/256 in the last five years. Meanwhile, Grand Forks
Secondary ranked 164/274, increasing its rank from 199/256 based on the last five year arc of data used to measure the results.