Revelstoke school board ties for first in B.C. in controversial ranking

The Revelstoke Board of Education has been ranked first in B.C. alongside their West Vancouver counterpart in a report by the Fraser Institute. The neo-liberal think tank’s report is usually accompanied by an asterisk denoting criticism of their school ranking reports. Critics say the ranking focuses on unhelpful selection of criteria that favours private schools and produces a snapshot that doesn’t factor in important socio-economic differences between districts.

In their 2015 offering released May 14, the Fraser Institute also highlighted the top-10 school boards in B.C., and found the Revelstoke Board of Education was tied for first alongside West Vancouver. The number was derived by averaging the results of schools the district operates. The May 14 report on B.C. secondary schools ranked Revelstoke 61st out of 289 B.C. secondary schools.

Alan Chell is the long-serving chairperson of the Revelstoke Board of Education. In the interview with the Revelstoke Mountaineer embedded below, Chell said the Revelstoke School District is data-focused and utilizes their own data sets to improve education here.

“That’s all useful information that helps us locally, but when you compile all the data and then turn it into rankings, I think you overlook a lot of important criteria,” Chell said.

He said factors such as socio-economic issues or rates of ESL students can impact a school district’s results in the side-by-side comparison.

“[The school districts] may be performing extremely well in terms of the school and the school district, but that may not translate into the results that would result in a high ranking,” Chell said.
He said the Revelstoke district prefers to explore what they can do with a broad data available to them: “We always take that data and say, ‘Hmm, what do we need to do differently?’”

In our interview below, Chell said the district’s analysis of data has contributed to efforts to improve students’ feeling of safety and belonging in schools, including new breakfast programs, mentoring programs and anti-bullying work.

“We always have to work at trying to create as positive environment as we can,” Chell said. “Those are the things that aren’t talked about in the Fraser Institute report, but are very, very critical in terms of the success of the school district.”

To listen to the full interview with Alan Chell, click the play button on the SoundCloud app below.