The Fraser Institute’s annual elementary school rankings achieved two things when released Monday: they provided a comparison of B.C. schools’ performances and ruffled school officials’ feathers.

As has become the norm, the Kamloops private school St. Ann’s topped the local institutions with a ranking of 39 out of 853 B.C. schools.

Next in line was Lloyd George at 93. And Juniper Ridge and McGowan Park tied for third, placing at 133^rd in B.C. 

The report card is based entirely on the province’s Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) tests, which are given in grades 4 and 7, said Peter Cowley, the Fraser Institute’s director of school performance.

Nonetheless, the annual rankings are nearly unanimously rejected by teacher unions and school district superintendents as inconsistent with the actual performance of schools.

That’s primarily because it compares private schools to public schools. And decades of studies have shown that socio-economic factors are among the most powerful predictors of school achievements, said Kamloops-Thompson School District Supt. Terry Sullivan.

“We take what we can learn from it, but I think the comparison itself is not helpful,” said Sullivan. “In fact, I think it’s destructive and harmful.

“I don’t think it does anything for the morale of people who are working in poor communities who are committed 100 per cent to the children in their schools and work very, very hard to ensure that children achieve.”

Sullivan said the rankings ignore the fact that the Kamloops district’s schools have, on average, been performing above the provincial average for the last three or four years in every subject on the FSA.

Also ignored is the district’s greatest improvement in B.C. on completion rates for aboriginal children. And that aboriginal children on the FSA are outperforming aboriginal children in the rest of the province.

“I don’t see that reflected in these comparisons.”

Kamloops-Thompson Teachers’ Association president Jason Karpuk agreed that socio-economics is largely ignored by the rankings, which thus renders them moot.

He also reiterated the teachers union’s position on FSAs, which is that they’re unreliable.

“I don’t think the test reflects on the social responsibility side of things that are being taught,” he said. “It simply is a check of what’s happening with numeracy and literacy, and we don’t even know if it’s an adequate assessment because in some (districts) there’s an exclusion of students who don’t perform well and in others there’s not.”

So, Cowley responded, how then should schools be ranked?

“What’s the evidence it’s a good school?”

Cowley said since the Fraser Institute began the ranking in 1998, they’ve asked disgruntled district superintendents, unions, trustees or ministries to provide more measures to more appropriately reflect school success.

“Because we knew that this focused on academics, which is a key part of the objectives of the elementary schools,” he said. “But let’s get some other data so we can get a more fulsome description of how ‘good’ the school is.

“In all those years, not one organization . . . have proposed even one more measure.”

The answer is for parents to get involved, said Karpuk.

“You want to know what a school’s like? Go in and visit the school,” he said. “See what’s happening after school. See what’s happening at lunchtime. Talk to the administrator. Talk to the parents in the community.

“They’ll tell you whether they’re happy with the school or not. That’s really where you find out.”