Once again, another set of international benchmark tests have shown that Alberta is on top of the world.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 results showed that Alberta is second in the world in reading and science and seventh in the world in mathematics. Alberta was alone, or tied, as the top province in the country on all three domains.
Shockingly, despite this significant achievement, a few people, including perennial education commentator and Edmonton Journal columnist David Staples, are using this as yet another opportunity to undermine confidence in public education.
Staples’s argument, which he has trotted out every three years on cue for the past three rounds of PISA, is to cite the rising proportion of students who fall into the bottom level of mathematics achievement and blame this on so-called discovery math. Inevitably, he will quote one of a small handful of academics who will support his argument. What started out as the quintessential definition of cherry-picking data is now simply repetitive, lazy, agenda-driven journalism.
Math scores in Alberta have been declining since the tests began in 2000, but so have the scores elsewhere in Canada and on average across the OECD.
“In the 35 countries and economies that participated in both PISA 2003 and PISA 2022 with valid results, mathematic performance improved on a statistically significant basis in three countries, while it decreased in 22 countries, with the other countries maintaining their scores,” says the report on PISA from the Council of Ministers of Education in Canada. “At the provincial level, mathematics scores decreased in all provinces between 2003 and 2022.”
We should also note that while Alberta’s scores took a drop in 2012, they have largely plateaued since. The report explicitly states that, “mathematics scores declined in Canada and in all provinces except Prince Edward Island and Alberta between 2012 and 2022.”
“The same decline was apparent across the OECD.”
While Staples chooses to then extract these results in an unscientific way to beat his hobby horse, he ignores other important key information from the report. Staples believes the difference between high and low achieving students has something to do with discovery learning; the report does not mention anything about that. However, the report does refer at length to equity.
Alberta has the highest level of achievement gap in the country. In Alberta, the difference in math scores between the top and bottom 10 per cent of students is 257 points. The Canadian average gap is 244 points and every other province is below that. In other words, Alberta’s equity gap is so large it pulls the Canadian average past every other province.
Let’s be clear, teachers are not to blame for this problem, which should be concerning. Let’s look at some of the other data.
Alberta is also far ahead of the country for the gap between richer and poorer students. In Alberta, the average difference in scores between socioeconomically advantaged (top 25 per cent) and disadvantaged (bottom 25 per cent) students is 92 points, compared to a Canadian average difference of 76 points. Socioeconomic factors can explain 12.8 per cent of the variance in scores in Alberta.
Coincidentally, Statistics Canada reports that Alberta also has the second highest rates of income inequality in the country. Know what else is linked to income inequality? The damaging effects of large class sizes. Research on class size reductions consistently shows that the payoff is greatest for children from low-income, minority and vulnerable populations. And, of course, we already know that Alberta has the highest student-to-educator ratio in the country.
Let’s put this all together.
Large class sizes disadvantage poorer students. Alberta has the largest class sizes in the country and the second highest levels of income disparity. Our achievement results show that our gap between rich and poor students is the highest in the country. So it’s no surprise, then, that we have the highest level of disparity between our top-achieving and bottom-achieving students.
Let’s not be distracted by a lazy ideological trope that says our problems are caused by an instructional issue when the data doesn’t support this. The data does point to a serious issue with class size and the impacts that has on economically disadvantaged students.
Given the state of things, it is actually pretty surprising that our average overall results continue to be as strong as they are, but I know who deserves the credit for that. Take a bow, teachers.❚
I welcome your comments. Contact me at jonathan.teghtmeyer@ata.ab.ca
Editor-in-Chief, ATA News
