CALGARY, Alberta, March 05, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Fraser Institute today published the annual rankings of Alberta secondary schools, the most easily accessible tool for parents to compare the academic performance of the province’s high schools.
The Report Card on Alberta’s High Schools 2023 ranks 197 public, Catholic, independent and charter secondary schools based on eight academic indicators generated from Grade 12 provincewide testing, grade-to-grade transition and graduation rates.
“The report card offers parents information they can’t easily get anywhere else, about how schools perform over time and how they compare to other schools in Alberta,” said Peter Cowley, senior fellow at the Fraser Institute.
Contrary to common misconceptions, the data suggest every school is capable of improvement regardless of type, location and student characteristics.
For example, Fort Saskatchewan High is one of the province’s fastest-improving schools, climbing from a score of 4.5 (out of 10) in 2016 to 6 in 2022, the latest year of available comparable data, despite 16.1 per cent of students having special needs who require additional support.
Over the same period, J. Percy Page school in Edmonton improved from a score of 3.5 to 5.3—despite 25.9 per cent of the school’s students being English Language Learners.
“We often hear that schools can’t improve student performance because of the communities and students they serve, but the findings in our school report card suggests otherwise,” Cowley said.
For the complete results on all ranked schools and to compare the performance of different schools, visit www.compareschoolrankings.org.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Peter Cowley, Senior Fellow
Fraser Institute
Mark Hasiuk
(604) 688-0221 ext. 517
mark.hasiuk@fraserinstitute.org
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The Fraser Institute is an independent Canadian public policy research and educational organization with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal and ties to a global network of think-tanks in 87 countries. Its mission is to improve the quality of life for Canadians, their families and future generations by studying, measuring and broadly communicating the effects of government policies, entrepreneurship and choice on their well-being. To protect the Institute’s independence, it does not accept grants from governments or contracts for research. Visit www.fraserinstitute.org.
