When you know where the strengths and weaknesses are then educators are better able to expend resources in the classroom where education is happening.
That’s one of the “big picture” goals when creating a High School Report card for Western Canada.
Right now that report card is considered “interim”. It was a partnership between AIMS – the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies which has been creating report cards for Atlantic Canada for 8 years, and the Frontier Centre.
What they have found is that BC and Alberta are open with their data, making large volumes of information available on websites. Saskatchewan collects the information and will provide it if requested while Manitoba will not make school level information available to the public.
Bobby O’Keefe with AIMS says they hope to develop a ranking system for Western Canadian provinces which will allow them to release a formal report card, perhaps, by this fall.
And O’Keefe says stakeholders, like parents and teachers, can still visit the AIMS website to get detailed information on any school in Saskatchewan. www.aims.ca (vmf Feb 1/10)