VIBERT: SETTING STANDARDS FOR A MOVING TARGET

Mark Twain attributed the quote to Benjamin Disraeli. “There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

We’re told the evidence for restructuring public schools is found somewhere in the statistics, but even the education department’s own posted numbers tell different stories.

“Nova Scotia Grade 4 students performed well ... just above the estimated average score for Canada ... This score strongly exceeds the International Centrepoint.” That was the department crowing about what it was doing for kids back in 2011, not long before Nova Scotians rolled the dice on Stephen Mcneil’s Liberals.

Here’s Education Minister Zack Churchill just a couple of weeks back. “... our flawed structure ( is) partially responsible for producing consistently average or below average test scores for Nova Scotia students, compared to other Canadian jurisdictions.”

What has changed in the flawed structure of Nova Scotia’s education system in the past half-dozen years?

The biggest difference is who’s in charge. Elementary students were exceeding the national average and leaving the world in their dust pre-mcneil but are, in the minister’s words, consistently average or below average after four-plus years of Liberal government.

The Grade 4 results are conveniently selective, so the point is dulled. But the government’s statistical proof points are equally selective. Indeed, the excuse for tossing a chaos canister into the schools is a measure the government rejects in virtually all other cases — the national average.

Churchill is armed with PISA — that’s the Programme for International Student Assessment, brought to you by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development — numbers that drop Nova Scotian students pretty much dead centre among Canadian provinces, and the Pan Canadian Assessment program, where Nova Scotia is again middle of the pack. But middle of the pack is below the national average.

Canada is a big, rich country, made so by four big, rich provinces. They are Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec, and they lead the country in whatever you choose to measure except maybe poor folk per capita.

If you happen to measure public school performance, Nova Scotia comes behind the big four, is roughly the same or ahead of our fellow Atlantic Canadians, and outperforms Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

More than a few Gritty sorts will leap to their hind legs at this point and, voices quaking with righteous indignation, cry, “Shouldn’t our kids get the best? Aren’t they the equals of kids in B.C.?”

Absolutely. Just as the average Nova Scotian works every bit as hard as the average Ontarian, so let’s have the same average income, please.

And we have a dire shortage of family doctors, which the government can start solving tomorrow simply by paying them what their counterparts in Alberta earn.

When your kid enrols at Dalhousie and the university wants $8,415 in tuition, write them a cheque for $6,571 — the national average undergrad tuition — and tell them the province says education here must meet that standard.

With the education minister saying our kids are lagging, and experts noting they are performing well given the economics of Nova Scotia — the one true indicator of academic success is socioeconomic health — we need an objective third party.

The Conference Board of Canada, an honest numbers cruncher if ever there was one, will tell you that British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta are the top public education performers among provinces, followed by Quebec and Nova Scotia, with the rest trailing the field.

Sure, our students deserve better, but the demise of school boards and non- union school administrators won’t get that done.

The fact is the education department’s bureaucracy had a belly full of school boards long ago and, for years, has wanted to excise the irritant of principals belonging to the Nova Scotia Teachers Union.

But when you’re told radical surgery is required, you want the doctor to have a better reason than “because you’re getting on my nerves.”

As for the statistics, even the education department admits they have anomalies.

Canada, for example, is ranked below Singapore and Macao-China on the PISA chart. That’s because those places simply throw the kids who can’t keep up out of the educational lifeboat, which then floats on high test scores.

Let’s hope that’s not the fallback plan in Nova Scotia, because the province is going to need one if the current changes fail to move the needle on kids’ test scores.

Tuesday: Zack Churchill bridges the leap of logic