Life as a VP... How About Assistant Principal? Sure, why not.

One Month Down: First Thoughts, Leadership Styles, and International Students

My Principal recently mentioned to me that to be a good administrator a switch has to be hit in the mind that allows someone to not think simply as a teacher but instead to think in terms of the bigger picture. This sounds easy at first, but it requires some adjustment of key understandings. It is these understandings that I now feel are helping me to feel successful in my job this first month.

First, let me explain the change of name from VP to AP that you might have noticed in the title of this post (and yes, this is important): the rational for the change is due to the fact that the Principal that I am working with right now is temporary and not permanent. In fact, I am on my own for most of the month of October. This forces me to take on the full Principal role when he is not around (thus, being an Assistant seemed a better name to suit the position).

I have enjoyed it so far, to be honest. Let me thus share two things I have learned:

1. Organizational Skills are Key - Thank the Lord for technology and Google Calendars (and Docs, and Tasks Lists etc.). My first word of advice to anyone doing this job is to share calendars and documents with people who need them, write down tasks in an area that you can always see them (I have placed a large whiteboard in my office that I write tasks down on, brainstorm on, write myself notes on, etc.), and finally answer emails immediately and take care of them without putting them off for any period of time; I find that if I wait on answering them, they disappear off my radar and I can very easily forget them and the topic they pertained to (this is a great recipe for disaster and missed important decisions and will also reflect badly on the corporation and your own professionalism).
2. Be Flexible and Open - This might seem a bit simple in its initial view, but there is much more to it than simply changing your day to accommodate things as they come up; this is not what I am talking about. I am talking about leadership style. I have realized that I am most at home if I am a Transformational Leader (Liethwood, 1990) and not an Instructional or even Transactional leader. However, I realize that each one has its benefits and purposes and that to be a good leader I must figure out which one I need to be at which time. Thus, I will take some time to focus on this next.

Leadership Styles

A quick recap of the leadership styles is as follows: Instructional Leadership deals with managing curriculum and instruction. This is in my mind more of the classic Principal role with the following characteristics: top down approach, strong minded leadership, and charisma. Transactional Leadership is based more on dealing with the success of the company as an entity unto itself. The characteristics of this style of leadership is supervision, organization, and group performance with a rewards or punishment component. Transformational Leadership is based on vision and change. The characteristics of this style of leadership is inspiration, worker self motivation, and long term vision setting.

Yes, there are probably more sub-styles of the above three (and the Laissez-Faire style in my eyes is not an actual leadership style) but I feel that these three do cover the majority of leadership styles. I have learned that each style has its place and time, and that a good leader needs to know which one to use when. I also feel that most leaders will probably have a dominant style; mine tends to sit at the Transformational level.

On a day to day basis, I have also found that it is important for me to look at problems as nothing more than that: problems that can be solved if a correct solution is found. I tend to have a bit of a thin skin at times (something that is not necessarily good for a leader I am told); to counteract this, I wear a jacket. My jacket is simply a work jacket: it is tough and reflects debris. The jacket is a mindset: problems occur and so I work at finding the solution to best fix the problem. After work, I take the jacket off and go home. My background as a computer technician and network administrator helps me in this situation: I feel there is a logical solution to any problem and that all that needs to be done is to listen to the problem and all of the facets connected to it, then to brainstorm solutions that might fit, and then cooperatively create a plan to fix the problem. As well, once a solution is put in place, one must go back to make sure that the problem is actually solved and did not create other problems. In leadership, this looks as follows: be open to allowing people to talk, vent, and give their opinions; go to all parties involved and get the information needed; keep the communication lines open between them and share ideas; get feedback for those ideas from the parties involved; choose a plan that best fits and that everyone involved in has had input into; and finally allow for reassessing of the solution from all parties involved.

This has worked so far. Have all problems been resolved so far? Not necessarily, but the problems are not being put on the back-burners and I feel confident solutions will be found.

Specifics

Connected to what I have shared above, I also want to share a few specific things, day to day, that I am finding in my job. For this month's post, I want to focus on international students and how best to fit them into a school body. The answer is that I don't know yet (in case you thought I was going to post some fix-all silver bullet here). However, here is what I feel is needed and what I am planning to do.

I believe that having an international student body in a K-12 school is not only important but vital in our day and age. We live in a world that might not geographically have gotten smaller, but is communication-ally smaller. A majority of jobs deal with oversee transactions, Canada itself has numerous ethnic groupings and influences, language barriers are much easier to deal with than before (thank you Google Translate), and we can Skype or Hangout with people from almost anywhere in the world we like. Our students need to learn how this is changing the world and how best to deal with it. Therefore, it is imperative in my eyes that we have international students in our schools.

But the best integration of that is the question. For now, I have discovered that a screening process is vital: we must know these students before they come to our schools. That probably means having a liaison who is familiar with their culture (and maybe even fluent in their language) who goes and meet the families in their own communities, having entrance guidelines and performance levels in place that those students must meet (language aptitude tests, for example) before they are accepted into our schools, and having specific support in place once they arrive to meet their needs. Right now, we have skeletons of these in place in my school, but nothing extensive enough to see overall success. I have therefore decided to go on the hunt to find a place where this is being done well; my choice right now is our local University. I am planning to meet with the international students coordinator next week hopefully at our University, tell them what we have, ask for some ideas and support, and make some useful connections. 

I have learned this year that if this is not done right our teachers suffer; a slapped-together international student body that is added to our schools simply adds another component to our classrooms that is similar to adding a group of special needs students (but without the aids); the teachers attention is pulled in the direction of the internationals and therefore takes away from teaching the rest of the students. Yes, teaching is different than it was before and teachers must be flexible and adjust styles to their classrooms, but perhaps there is only so far a teacher will be able to bend and change before a breaking point occurs. This is a specific point that I think needs to be addressed: if students are here to graduate, do teachers simply view them as equal to other students and assess them at the same level? How much do we need to adjust? I have not found many international students who can communicate at a level high enough for the teacher to not notice that they are international (for example, are these students asked to write an English 12 essay with the same criteria as other English 12 students: same amount, same grammar, same word usage, etc.?). Thus, do we adapt our curriculum for them? How much is enough? Or, do we keep the standard high and give aid to them to help them to reach that level? Is it possible to do that and how could this be done effectively and not become a large financial burden on our school? 

This has been September. I look forward to the next month and the challenges and solutions to come. 

Life of a VP: Part 1

Full Time Assistant Principal - What's It Like and Where Are We Going?

The Purpose

What's it like to be the Vice Principal of a K-12 school? Well, as I have recently taken on this position, here is where I am going to post what it's like. 

First Thing I Did
I have been at this school for 18 years now but always in the role of a teacher (or computer network administrator). I kept my nose out of the administrative going-ons for two reasons: first, I was not a fan of the politics that I thought must go on in these positions and, secondly, I didn't want to deal with the apparent "garbage" that administration tended to get from staff, parents, and students. Yes, I had a very bleak view of this job. One thing that should be noted is that I am a big proponent of "truth" - hard facts. The biggest issue I have had with people over my 40-ish years on this earth is that people sometimes tend to speak and act on what they perceive as truth but they have not personally checked on the credibility of their beliefs. This, I believe, was where much of the politics and garbage I spoke of earlier was based on.

Thus I wanted to first look at the truth about our school in general. Many Principals have come and gone form our school and I wanted to see their impact. Thus, I went back to the beginnings of the school's inception and made a chart of the total number of students from each grade. I then totalled the numbers up and charted it. Here is what I found:

As you can see, our school enrolment is on the decline. Interestingly, the school started with a very large number of students at it's inception (over 500 at one point), but we have steadily shrunk. Another interesting point is that each of the up-swings in the chart correspond to the 2 and 3 years of new Principal at our school. 

I propose this: our school was started by many families who brought their families together. There was "Hype" to the school at the beginning (a new independent school). This trend follows the Hype cycle well (http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hype-cycle.jsp). As well, for each principal, there seems to be a small upswing, something that could be attributed to a new leader's Halo effect http://psychology.about.com/od/socialpsychology/f/halo-effect.htm). However, as you will also notice, that effect does not last.

A side note here is that I still need to overlay this with standard demographic information of the public schools in our area: are we simply seeing a larger demographic trend? I think there is some of this, but I don't believe it is as closely related as I would hope it to be. Therefore, I will assume that there will be some correlation, but that the larger school demographics will not be the determining factor in our own school's numbers.

Conclusion?

What can we conclude from all this? I believe the following is what's playing out:

1. The school's vision from 25 -30 years ago is not strong enough to create growth. The school needs to change focus dramatically. We need to create Hype again, and to do this means changing focus.
2. Changing Principals is not the answer - though it might bring some change to the short term, it will not bring lasting effect.

So what is the focus of the school? What makes us different than other schools? Being simply a private school with spiritual focus is seemingly not enough to garner growth. This is the question to answer next.

On a more concrete note, I have been keeping busy with scheduling (which teachers are where and making sure that schedules match up for our teachers who teach both high school and elementary (PE and Art specialists, for example), looking at FTE's (who is at 1.0 and who is not), and creating a Personal Growth Plan for myself (this I think is key to my success). To that end, I want to personally thank those Principals and schools who are part of my group of advisors and who are allowing me to come to their schools and shadow their VP's and Principals. I am looking forward to it!

Self Assessing Grades: A Small Experiment with Large Implications

Today was standard Science 8 class which was to start with a quiz. However, I read something recently that got me thinking; John Hattie, in his book Visible Learning for Teachers, mentioned that self reporting grades was "the top-ranked effect relating to student expectations." I though I would test that hypothesis.

Before I handed the quiz out, I asked the students, on a sticky note, to predict their score. I told them exactly how many questions were on each topic, but without telling them the exact question itself. The chart below shows how they did.

Interestingly, out of the 13 students, 8 predicted their actual score to within one point, while the rest were only off by only two. The accuracy is uncanny! What does this mean with respect to education? I wonder if perhaps, as Hattie suggests, our goal with tests such as these are not to "assess" their knowledge - the student already knows that and, perhaps, the teacher could even predict how well each one would do. Instead, perhaps a change in focus needs to happen. Perhaps we as teachers need to change our role from helping them to meet their potential (which they already know) to exceeding their potential! What happens if each student could be pushed beyond their view of what they know?

Let me say it this way: if the students already know how they will do and what they know, then our instruction and assessment is simply giving us, the teacher, a quantitative number to that knowledge. However, where is the pushing and stretching? Is the knowledge at too safe a level? Yes, I am proud all of these students did well on the quiz, but if they already knew how well they would do, why do the quiz at all?

I would encourage us all to push the limits when it comes to what students can do. This doesn't mean simply more knowledge, but I think a deeper understanding of concepts (higher order thinking). The quiz above were all one word surface answers with only one question that needed a sentence response. It was a "quiz" and there was nothing wrong with administering it. However, if our assessment is based solely on these types of summative evaluations (with perhaps longer questions and even an essay here or there on pros and cons or similarities and differences) then it might just be easier to ask them what mark they will get and move on from there.

What if the student was pushed beyond their comfort zone and into the actual place where they will "learn" something they would not have known previously? Isn't that what we want teaching to do?

FLEX Room Usage

A few posts back, I talked about creating a room that can be used by all classrooms for various purposes. In fact, I believe all classrooms for all subjects should be mutable in some way; but we had to start somewhere, so low and behold, the KCS FLEX Room!  So what does this FLEX room look like and how is it working?  First, it seems to be working very well! The room is used by various classes and grades, with the booking of the room done with a simple whiteboard outside the room (with a few added sticky-notes for good measure and future booking it seems :).

FLEX Room Sign Up

For the most part, the grades span from Kindergarten to Grade 12 and the subjects also vary. In fact, there are even groups using the room outside of the standard classrooms (more on this later).

So, it is being used, but how is it being used? First, let us consider the philosophy of the room: I wanted a room that could be used by a classroom for independent or group work or lecturing or whatever else is needed. Some of these things can even be done at the same time in this room, while others would simply be too loud to do at the same time in the same space.

So, is this happening? Can this room be used by numerous groups for numerous reasons?

Below is a recent picture of the Grade 2 class using the room. As you can see, students are able to sit where they want and work on whatever the assignment requires of them to work on. Visually, what you see is that some students are reading, while others are working on projects of some sort.

Other students are sitting on chairs, while some have chosen to sit on the "poofs" (which are simply big bean bag kind of things). In fact, in the directly below, you will notice that a few of them are lined up along the window bench working independently.

The teacher for this class mentioned that the Elementary department has been working on trying to implement a strategy whereby students are asked to be more "independent learners", being given more freedom to choose topics that they would like to study or work on that are not mandated by the teacher. The thought is that this would help students to become more independent learners. For this teacher, the FLEX room makes it easy to implement such a strategy since the students can be working in different areas of the room on different topics at the same time. In fact, the classroom teacher commented that she "was not sure how I was going to do this" before the addition of the FLEX room.

With the addition of a computer, webcam (for teleconferencing), a Smartboard, and four movable whiteboards, this room becomes a great place to use for any grade and topic to work on whatever assignment(s) they would like to! In the picture to the left, for example, a high school student is able to use the whiteboards to present the information he needed to show to a group of his classmates.

In my opinion, however, this is not the best part of the room. For me, the best part of using this style of room is how it naturally changes the role of the teacher from lecturer to co-worker, mentor, and coach of either independent or group(s) of students. This, I believe, is because the room does not have a static front or back, but is completely mutable in every way (movable chairs, tables, and boards).

The usage does not seem to stop with classrooms either. Other groups within our school's extended family also use the room for various reasons (ex: PAC meetings, Graduation committee meetings, staff meetings, etc.).

Though there are still things to add and update in the room, I feel that the room itself is a success. Yes, it is a simple room and some might make comments like "How could you use this for a science class" or "Math wouldn't work here", but I think it can, and perhaps even should be. The subtle change that goes along with setting up a room like this is the philosophy that knowledge is easy for students to get now from various sources (the teacher is not the wellspring of knowledge anymore),  thus classrooms should change from a lecturer / listener style to group / independent work with a teacher / mentor style: this is the style this room is set up as.

Let me know if you have any thoughts about it!

BCTF Strike: Need Money in the Public School System? Send Students To Independent Schools. But what about the cost?

STRIKE!

The BCTF and the BC Government are at it again. I do wish the teachers the best, of course. However, I do also agree with Christy Gordon when she mentioned that the BCTF and the BC Government will have to come up with a strategy to not have such a disruption to schooling every time they work towards a new bargaining agreement. But what is that strategy, and is it even doable in BC? Sadly, I don't think it is, but let's travel down the rabbit hole together. 

Here's a thought: I recently talked to a new Grade One teacher who mentioned that she had 24 Grade One students, two of which had Ministry numbers; she found it very hard to effectively teach that class (though I am sure she did a great job). Yes, she was a new teacher, but having to spend so much of your time with a few students can take away from being the best teacher you can be for the entire group. If teacher salaries begin to take money away from other areas that impact education, or even force schools to close down, then smaller class sizes, better working conditions ,etc., could become bigger issues again - there is only so much money to go around.

So how do we fix this? As I recently heard on CBC Radio (Kamloops CBC station, May 28th at 12:30 pm), one might think that shutting down private/independent schools would help, as those schools receive a grant worth 50% of the funding a public school would receive per student; so if we shut them down, the public schools would then receive that money as well. However, as Dr. Peter Froese from the Federation of Independent Schools mentioned during the same talk, moving all the students from the Independent school  (12% of the student population I believe is what he mentioned are enrolled in Independent schools in BC) to the public system will actually cost the school district more money (that 12% of the student population is funded by only 5% of the populace). As well, many of the independent school teachers would then be moved to the public schools and their salaries would then have to be funded by the ministry. The long and short of it is that the public system would need more money to cover the influx of newer students and staff which the government grant itself would not cover. Where this money would come from is clear: tax dollars.  Let's look at it this from the flip side: one way to save money in the public educational system would be to move more students into the private sector. This seems to be happening on its own anyway as more and more parents are sending their students to private schools (http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/857131/private-schools-in-b-c-bucking-trend-of-declining-enrollment/).

Now of course, you can't simply "move" students to an independent school: this needs to be a family choice. Also, you cannot increase government funding for independent schools as that will increase the needed money, thus increasing taxes again. Perhaps the issue itself is with the taxes: how much of our tax dollars actually goes towards the education system per family in BC?  Trying to figure out the taxes paid by each person in BC is almost impossible, as many have stated (http://retirehappy.ca/does-half-your-money-go-to-taxes/). Let me use myself as an example: I have five children, and each child gets a school grant of $8,603 per student this year. That means that my five children can bring a school $43,015 in funding from the Government. I know I don't pay this much in taxes on my income, but with all the other taxes I pay (as well as all the other income the Government gets), I guess in some way this money must be there (and more to cover the other publicly funded jobs, such as health care).

So, does the money add up? Is Dr. Froese right? Well, here's a little background and some number crunching to test this all out: according to the Ministry of Education (http://www.newsroom.gov.bc.ca/2013/03/operating-grants-maintained-per-pupil-funding-highest-ever.html) there are a total of 541,618 FTE (full time equivalent) students in 2013-14. Total grants given for all of these students in BC would then be $4,659,539,645 (this is a very close number to what the 2012/13 Ministry PDF shows at https://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/independentschools/is_resources/funding_rates_march2012.pdf; I will use the 2012 numbers from this point on as they are quite close). As well, according to the above mentioned documents, there were 68,127 students in private schools in 2012 (http://www.brentgranby.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/2011EdFacts.pdf), which is around 8% of the populace (I think the 12% mentioned by Dr. Froese must include all privately held schooling (not simply Tier 1 and 2 schools who are partly funded by the Ministry).  How much did independent schools actually get per student in 2012? Per student, according to the 2012 model, in the area I live in independent schools received $3999 for this current year, so let's use $4000 per student as an average for BC (this is not completely accurate, but it will make my point well). This would mean that in total (68,127 * $4000) the Ministry would have paid $272,508,000 to independent schools in BC. This sounds like a lot, but it is only around 6% of the total money paid out to schools. as you can see, the 8% of the populace only transfers 6% of the money from the Ministry funding to independent schools. That leaves a 2% profit to the Public school system (money they save and do not have to spend on students who are being educated). Adding the other students who are not at all being funded by the Ministry but are at schools (not supported at all by the Ministry) could increase this to the 12% mark, as Dr. Froese suggests, and this would save even more expenditure for the Ministry. 

The long and the short of it is this: yes, independent schools actually save the public school system money. I would suggest that increasing funding to the private system (which would lower tuition for some schools) and thus allowing more students to enter the private school system (allowing choice) could actually save the public education system even more money (there would have to be a bit of a balancing act, but of even a 1% more increase per student of funding to private schools attracts even 3% more of the students to the private school system, that would again give another 2% increase to the public education system budget).

But, and here's the caveat: independent schools all have an agenda, and as many of them are religious in nature, this plan would now fall flat on its face. Percentage wise, there are still about 50% of the population in BC that have religious affiliation according to current BC Census, so there may be an appetite for this. However, the tuition cost for independent schooling would be a large deterrent, thus shrinking that 50% pool into a smaller number. In fact, if we were to consider that the upper middle class in BC (those families making more than around $50,000 annually) is only around https://moneygenius.ca/blog/middle-class-income-canada of the population, it may well be that only 12% of the population could actually afford Independent schooling in BC. 

So, I guess we simply travelled down the rabbit hole and looked through the glass at an alternative world that will most likely never be. 

Empty Room = Educational Opportunity: How Do You Furnish An Empty Classroom Correctly?

I have an empty room. It used to be a computer lab. This year we decided to move the lab into another room (conglomerated two labs into one actually). The reason is simple: I don't believe that computer labs are as needed as they used to be. Almost all students have their own computers, be it phones, pads, laptops, etc. The issue now is connectivity - do they have access to cloud based systems? If they do, then they can make a lab wherever they are and use their own devices to do so. Many school have begun to use IPADS (which we have done as well) or other portable tablet devices and have consequently allowed those students who do not have portable computers of their own to use these. Does this mean we should get rid of all our computer labs? No it does not, since the younger students will most likely not have their own devices, or are not allowed to bring them to school. Also, some courses use specialized software that students will not normally have on their machines or which would not easily run or be used on tablet devices.

So we have one lab. What about the empty room? This empty room is earmarked to become a multi-purpose room.

Empty Room

The concept is this: we want the room (45' by 22' or so) to be usable for all classes, all grades, and for anything they want it to be. Tall task. But if we keep in mind 21st Century Learning tasks and contemplate what you want students to be able to do in the classroom, then I feel that this room can be furnished and set up to accommodate this.

Thinking from the younger grades up, here is a list of what we want the room to be able to accommodate:

1. Open space for students to move and find their own area to work in
2. Inviting, not over stimulating (for those ADD students), but not so bland that it does not inspire
3. Modular: no set style to the entire room - students can move objects around
4. Areas where you can lecture to an entire classroom
5. Areas where you can do mini-lectures with small groups of students - where many of these can happen at the same time (for collaboration)
6. Areas where students could work independently
7. Multimedia area (screen - projector - computer) for presentations
8. Areas to draw or brainstorm on (whiteboards)
9. Access to the Internet (WIFI)

So what will this look like and what will we put in? The process is still in the brainstorming stage, but we have a few ideas. Here is a quick list of some of the things we have thought about:

1. All desks and chairs should be movable
2. Chairs should be adjustable in height to accommodate bigger or smaller users
3. Tables should be trapezoidal in shape so they can be made into small or larger groups of desks if need be
4. Whiteboards should be movable: this allows us to make walls and work areas wherever we are
5. A large mural on one wall
6. Three tier stairs against the mural wall (22' wide) to accommodate for all students to sit on if you need to lecture
7. An area with a sofa and a desk, computer, etc., for multimedia presentations or for teleconferencing options
8. Single seating areas along the window
9. WIFI node in the room for clear internet access (along with a few plug ins for laptop power and network access)
10. Some foam blocks or bean bags for younger students to sit on and move around as well.

As we progress through this, I will post updates on the project. 

Fraser Institute: A Look at the Standings from the Numerically Changeable Top

 Saying the name of this organization to teachers or administrators of schools in BC will prompt responses: some will be positive and some will be words that I talked about in my last post. The school I work at happens to be at the top of the pile of high schools in our city this past year (1st for high schools [1 of 12] and 6th for Elementary schools [6 of 30]) and, yes, we are happy (we'll take it). However, what strikes me about our standing is how easy it could have been different. Also, it brings to question how accurate it is.

Our school is small: the n of the students used by the Fraser Institute was 19 for the high school. Our mark was a 7.4 (out of 10). Again, this doesn't speak well for all schools in our area as we, the highest ranked high school this year, only received a mark of 74%. For the Grade 4 (Elementary), the n was even smaller (13) and we received a 6.9 ranking (6th out of 30 elementary schools in our area, which is good).

Interestingly, of the top 10 ranked high schools, only 3 of them had over 100 grad students. Does this suggest that smaller schools do better? Let's go one step further: do better at what exactly? 

My initial thought on the issue of working in a small school and the Fraser Institute ranking system is this: numerically, when you have only 16 students as we did, having a few students who did not for whatever reason do well on their exams will bring the institute's score down, perhaps by quite a large amount. In fact, the Fraser Institutes' own "How To Read The Ratings" help file has this to say: "Indicator results for small schools tend to be more variable than do those for larger schools and caution should be used in interpreting the results for smaller schools." And yet, overall, it is the smaller private schools in BC that seem to consistently do better in this form of rating than the larger public schools.

The Fraser Institute uses many measuring points to come up with a total for a school:"The Overall rating out of 10 takes into account the indicators a) average exam mark, b) percentage of exams failed, c) school vs exam mark difference, d) gender gaps, e) graduation rate and f) delayed advancement rate." According to Sridhar Mutyala, in his posting entitled The Real Problem With The Fraser High School Rankings – Part 1, the percentages of each indicator is as follows: 

• average exam mark—20%
• percentage of exams failed—20%
• school vs exam mark—10%
• English gender gap—5%
• Math gender gap—5% 
• courses taken per student—20% - This seems to have been taken out this year, so the rest of the weighting has changed a bit for the 2013 year.
• diploma completion rate—10%
• and delayed advancement rate—10%. 

I would encourage anyone to look at Mr. Mutyala's post as he does a great job of looking at the statistical issues with the ranking and indicators used by the Fraser Institute. However, to speed things up a bit, here is a synopsis: the issue that Mr. Mutyala has with some of these indicators, and I tend to agree with him, is that many of them have very little to do with how a school does in educating their students (and here I will not even go into whether these indicators have anything to do with how a student is "educated"). So why were these indicators chosen? According to the Fraser Institute, the indicators cover the following areas: three indicators deal with effective teaching, there are indicators showing consistency in marking (and gender gaps), and there are indicators showing practical well informed counselling. 

However, I go back to the notion that small changes in one or many indicators can make large differences in the overall mark. For example, if I use our school as an example, when one student out of 16 fails an exam, the overall mark of the school will drop dramatically.  As well, if a grade 12 student drops out of school (and there can be various reasons for this that are not controllable in any way by the school itself) it can also heavily affect a school's overall rating. 

Notice, however, that small schools seem to do better on the Fraser Institute report. In fact, if all your grads graduate and do well on their exams, they will rank high on the report; even higher than larger schools with the same scenario. According to Mr. Mutyalah, the mix of variables and "ad hoc weighting" of the indicators by the Fraser Institute (how did they come up with those percentages?) will actually favors small schools over larger schools. This trend is easily seen when you look at the Fraser Institute's ranking in comparison to raw test scores. 

The question that this raises is this: are exam scores an acceptable way of measuring a school's ranking? I suggest "no", and arguments could be made here about the pros and cons of standardized testing as sole indicators of education - this topic is much too large to broach here.

With all of this in mind, I conclude the following: the ranking by the Fraser Institute is not the sole factor that families should base their decision on school choice for their child. Instead, parents need to look at many factors, including school demographics, ethics, beliefs, etc. (what is important, what is not) and begin there: how do you want your child to be educated (what is an "educated" student in your eyes?). granted, parents should keep an eye on academics and, yes, this is important. Yet, the schools themselves (teachers and administrators), should always look at achievement scores of their students and respond accordingly; but there are many factors that will need to be addressed on a per student basis to help each student reach their academic potential.

As well, let me add this comment: perhaps students themselves should become more involved in their own education, and schools themselves should instead only be the place where they go to work through their educational goals and not a place that is responsible for how they did.