Standardized test not always best indicator of education progress

A public school on Vancouver’s east side regularly scores poorly on standardized tests, but a report released February 11, 2008, by the C.D. Howe Institute says that school serves its students just as well as an elite private west-side school with a pass rate of 90%.

The report, by Professor David Johnson of Ontario’s Wilfrid Laurier University, offers the first comparison of British Columbia elementary schools based not only on scores from standardized tests—being written this month around the province in Grades 4 and 7—but also on the socio-economic characteristics that affect student performance.

Johnson, an economist, says students’ backgrounds are slightly more important than classroom lessons in determining how well they learn. Read more in The Vancouver Sun online.