Prince George and District Teachers Association vice president Matt Pearce dismissed the latest Fraser Institute rankings as the "product" of someone without any experience in education.
"The gentleman who puts those reports out is a furniture maker with a marketing degree and he's basically just selling a product," Pearce said Tuesday in response to the right-wing think tan's ranking of B.C. and Yukon secondary schools, issued Sunday.
"That is his background," Pearce continued. "He is not an educator and he's hired to produce certain products and that's one of them."
A biography of Peter Cowley, one of the report's two authors, as posted on the Fraser Institute website supports Pearce's claim.
Cowley graduated from the University of British Columbia in 1974 with a bachelor degree in commerce and accepted a a marketing post with Proctor and Gamble in Toronto and later
to begin a long career in marketing and general management in the furniture-manufacturing sector.
"During his assignments in general management, process improvement was a special focus and interest," the posting says.
In 1994, Cowley wrote and published The Parent's Guide, a handbook for parents of British Columbia's secondary-school students and in 1995, the handbook was replaced with a website. In 1998, Cowley was co-author of the Fraser Institute's A Secondary Schools Report Card for British Columbia and has continued to author similar reports for the right-wing think tank.
Co-author Stephen T. Easton is an economics professor at Simon Fraser University
The report ranks the school primarily on the performance of students in the foundation skills assessments while also taking into account rates of graduation and exam failure.
School board chair Lyn Hall could not be reached for comment Tuesday but school trustees, superintendents, principals and teachers have long maintained a school's performance is influenced by socio-economic factors that are not adequately taken into account in the annual report card.
Cedar's Christian School was the top-ranked school in the city - coming in 85th out of 256 schools ranked. D.P. Todd secondary school was the top-ranked public school at 120th of 256.
Prince George secondary school was the lowest-ranked school in the city, at 225th out 256.
College Heights secondary, Kelly Road secondary, Duchess Park secondary and Mackenzie secondary ranked in the lower end of the pack -from 154 to 191 of 256.
