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Decent scores for Houston schools

Local schools fall in the middle of the pack compared to rest of province
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The 2021 Fraser Institute scores for schools in British Columbia are out, including schools in Houston. The schools are ranked using objective, publicly-available data such as average scores on province-wide tests. Rankings are done for all elementary and high schools in B.C., Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.

Houston Secondary School, the lone high school in town had a 6, which was ranked 122 out of 252 high schools in the province. The score was slightly higher then Lakes District Secondary School in Burns Lake, which had a score of 5.1.

Elementary schools in town fared reasonably well also, as Silverthorne Elementary scored a 5.4 which ranked 574 out of 931 schools, and Twain Sullivan Elementary was slightly worse with a score of 5, ranking 673 out of 931. Both schools ranked well above either elementary school located in Burns Lake.

Despite the relatively decent scores, at least compared to other schools in the local area, the school board says they don’t pay much attention to the Fraser Institute scores.

“The Fraser Institute ranks elementary schools using public FSA [Foundational Skills Assessment] testing results. The FSA is a one time snapshots of a students performance on a literacy and numeracy assessment in grades 4 and 7. It has some use for teachers and administrators when combined with other assessments to help inform and guide teaching and instruction,” said School District 54 Superintendent Mike McDiarmid.

“Using this limited data to rank schools however, is not valid or an accurate measure of how a school is doing. So for those reasons, the district does not really consider their rankings for much at all.”