Don't put much stock in Porter Creek Secondary School's failing grade in a recent Fraser Institute report card for high schools in B.C. and Yukon, says Christie Whitley, the assistant deputy minister of public schools.

"What's more important for us and more authentic, are those assessments done with teachers in classroom,” Whitley told the Star today of ongoing testing by teachers looking to improve students' individual performances.

"What we look at for being more reliable is monitoring individual student growth ... there are many things that make a good school that are not assessed in by Fraser Institute.”

Out of 274 secondary schools in British Columbia and the Yukon, based on 2009/2010 statistics including academic performance, exams results, gender gaps in English and math results and graduation rates, Vanier Catholic ranked 96th, F.H. Collins 135th, and Porter Creek, a dismal 209th.

And for the second year in a row, Porter Creek's high school received an overall rating of less than five out of 10 – based on average exam marks, percentage of mandatory provincial exams failed, gender learning gaps and graduation rates.

Nearly 20 per cent of all exams taken by Porter Creek students result in failure, compared to 10.5 per cent at F.H. Collins and just four per cent at Vanier.

Porter Creek also lags behind in test successes, posting an average exam mark earned by students of 62 per cent. F.H. Collins is slightly better at 68.3 per cent, and Vanier is tops again at 70.4 per cent.

Asked how each of the three high schools stacked up, based on the Education department's assessment methodology, Whitley said she didn't have those numbers at her fingertips.

But Judy Arnold, the department's student achievement watchdog, "could provide them next week,” Whitley offered.

On CBC radio's Whitehorse morning show A New Day on Tuesday, Arnold was blasted by Peter Cowley, one of the authors of the Fraser Institute's report.

During a brief interview over the institute's findings, Arnold said every effort is being made to improve education results at Porter Creek and "move forward”, but that the school faced unique challenges.

An interview with Cowley followed in which the institute's director of school performances said it sounded as if the Education department is giving up on Porter Creek students.

Yesterday, Cowley expanded on his remarks made on CBC.

"Year after year after year, (Porter Creek) has shown no particular improvement and is a low-performing high school and officials say, ‘you don't understand the demographics,'” said Cowley

"I would say, ‘what do you mean? Are you talking about the fact most of your students are First Nations? If that's what it is, you've got to start saying it.'”

Cowley said chalking up a school's failure to "unique challenges” or its remoteness are poor excuses.

"Surely there's a school out there facing similar challenges, but with a positive success rate – these officials should be looking at what works there and applying it (at schools like Porter Creek),” Cowley continued.

Part of a solution might be to improve the way families relate to the education of their kids, Cowley said.

"I'm certain of this, that there are some kids whose parents are more nurturing than others and those kids have the opportunities to come to school more learning ready ... and other parents may not be so supportive.”

"The frustrating part is the education establishment, the people will not stand up and say that in public.”

When the Yukon Teachers Association and the government were at loggerheads over a new contract more than a year ago, association president Katherine Mackwood was reticent to discuss challenges facing teachers, except to claim that negotiations included teachers' desire to improve their students' lot.

Asked last September about specific difficulties faced within a typical classroom, Mackwood declined to elaborate beyond the fact teachers are tasked to do too much.

"If you only have a certain amount of support in that class, i.e., one teacher, the individuals who need the support aren't getting it and neither are the other students,” she told the Star then. "It's paramount for our students to receive the education that they deserve.”

Mackwood did concede the status quo is contributing to the dismal graduation rates Auditor General Sheila Fraser outlined in a damning report on the territory's education system.

Fraser's report, released in January 2009, found only 40 per cent of First Nations students graduate from Grade 12 and just 58 per cent of all Yukon students reach that milestone.

What made the report even more problematic is that the Department of Education was inflating its graduation rates, factoring only students entering Grade 12, rather than the number of students going into Kindergarten who would eventually graduate in any given year. Fraser called this "misleading.”

Contacted this morning to talk about the Fraser Institute's report, Mackwood said she didn't have time to do so.