New West Record - April 2, 2011

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N E W

SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2011

W E S T M I N S T E R

INSIDE: Will Rogers Follies set to dazzle ◗P11

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Hang time:

Joan Miller, left, and Vesna Jakupovic tend to some of the hanging baskets that will soon grace the streets of New Westminster. The coloured flags denote the location in the city where the baskets will go. Some are for sunny areas while others need shade. Larry Wright/

THE RECORD

Good report card doesn’t impress trustees NWSS does well in Fraser Institute’s rankings on aboriginal education BY ALFIE LAU REPORTER alau@royalcityrecord.com

New Westminster Secondary School placed 18th out of 63 high schools ranked in the Fraser Institute’s Report Card on Aboriginal Education in British Columbia 2011 that was released Thursday morning. But even that result doesn’t have Royal City education authorities jumping for joy. “I wasn’t aware of them putting out the

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report,” school board chair Michael Ewen told The Record on Thursday afternoon. “There’s nothing the Fraser Institute has done that warrants me looking at any of their reports. ... I think their methodology is flawed and they’re politically motivated. I don’t know anybody who puts much stock in what their reports have to say.” Ewen said the school district is very proud of its work in the area of aboriginal education, particularly in the Royal City Alternate Program, where aboriginal students are given learning opportunities they wouldn’t get in the normal school system. “We are doing a fairly reasonable job with aboriginal education in New Westminster,”

said Ewen. Those sentiments were echoed by superintendent John Woudzia. “I don’t put a significant amount of weight on these rankings,” said Woudzia. “We do stand out quite well at 18.” Woudzia said the small sample size for New Westminster is something people should bear in mind. The report card only bases its rankings on the 19 Grade 12 aboriginal students in the district, which is only 4.2 per cent of total enrolment. And since the rankings only count schools when they have 15 or more students in a year, the 2005-2009 New Westminster rankings only have data for 2008 and 2009.

While New Westminster had an overall ranking of 8.5 out of 10 in 2008, it fell to a 7.2 ranking in 2009, partially because its graduation rate went from 100 per cent to 91.7 per cent and its percentage of exams failed went from 9.9 per cent to 15.7 per cent. “When you look at such a small sample size,” said Woudzia, “that probably means one less student graduated and probably one additional exam was failed. When you look at numbers of this size, one student represents a huge percentage.” William Lindsay, a member of the CreeStoney Nations, is also a director of SFU’s ◗Fraser Page 8

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