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THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 2010 $1.25 (INCLUDING GST)Alaska Highway News
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Child on bike hasleg run over
Fort St. John RCMP, the firedepartment and ambulance servicesresponded to a report that a child hadbeen hit by a car at about 5:30 p.m.yesterday.
The seven-year-old male was rid-ing his bike on the sidewalk of 89AStreet when a vehicle turned into adriveway in front of him. The boyran into the side of the vehicle, whichknocked him over and caused thevehicle’s rear tire to run over his leg.He was taken to the Fort St. John andDistrict Hospital and Health Centreand was released shortly after withminor injuries. The boy was wearinga proper bike helmet at the time.
Police observed numerous vehiclesparked on the side of the roadwhere the accident occurred, whichobstructed the view of the sidewalk tomotorists. Because of this, no chargeswere laid against the driver.
The RCMP reminds the public towatch for cyclists and to check theirblind spots with every turn. Parentsare encouraged to teach their kidsproper bike safety. It is a cyclist’sresponsibility to obey all traffic lawsand to be visible and predictable tothe motoring public.
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French sailor bares itall in Victoria
VICTORIA — What do you dowith a drunken sailor when he stripsnaked in downtown Victoria – twice?
While Victoria police reported fewproblems as 5,000 visiting sailorspartied it up in the city last weekendduring celebrations to mark the centen-nial of the Canadian navy, one officerrevealed that an intoxicated Frenchsailor stripped in public twice, once infront of the captain of his ship.
Officers were called when the mar-iner slipped out of his uniform in thelobby of a local hotel, according todeputy police chief John Ducker in ablog post about the incident.
Ducker said shore patrol and mil-itary police helped get the sailor’suniform back on and brought him back to his ship.
Evidently, the sailor’s aversion tohis uniform won out – or as Duckerput it, “as a testament to the beautifulweather we enjoyed over the weekendof this International Fleet Review” –because he stripped again in the queueto return to his ship.
Unfortunately for the sailor, the cap-tain of his ship was behind him in line.
“The punishment a sailor wouldget from his commanding officer ismuch worse than anything we cando,” said police spokesman Sgt. GrantHamilton, speaking about the depart-ment’s approach to rowdy sailors.
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David Bell PhotoSONGS ON THE BUS
Henry See and Lee Taylor married mass transit and local music Wednesday evening at the first of three Music That Moves You events this summer. Thenext planned dates are July 21 and Aug. 18.
David BellSTAFF WRITER
The Fraser Institute, a right wingpublic policy group, has released
another report card on schools in theprovince reviewing academic indi-cators and North Peace SecondarySchool is not looking good.
The school attracted an overallgrade of 3.4 out of 10. The reportcard ranked NPSS at 274 out of the288 schools covered in B.C. and theYukon.
This is the 10th year the institutehas released report cards and over thelast five, NPSS has dropped in mostareas.
“Certainly the school, academically,has a lot of room for improvement,”said the institute’s Michael Thomas,who co-authored the 2010 report cardreleased this week.
“We believe that comparison is theheart of the improvement process.We want to show how each school is
doing as a whole, academically,” hesaid.
“It tells them if they are making thegrade.”
The report takes provincial exammarks, percentages of failed exams,gender gaps, graduation rates andother factors, assigns them a weight-ing and arrives at an overall grade outof 10.
Examination marks and failedexams are each weighted at 25 percent of the grade. Five other criteriamake up the remaining 50 per cent.
The report fails to include factors
such as the socio-economic make upof the community, attendance rates,social responsibility and elementsthat collectively form the culture of a school, said NPSS principal DanielVecchio.
“All of that soft stuff, I think, isfundamentally the heart and soul of aschool experience.”
He points to numerous student driv-en initiatives and fundraisers this year,as evidence.
Vecchio took the top job at NPSS inthe fall of 2006, following 26 years as
an educator.He said he encountered an environ-
ment that valued academic standing inprovincially examinable courses at theexpense of other important criteria.
“I found the culture to be one inneed of some work, in my opinion.Students seemed to be lacking inrespect for each other and tolerance,those sorts of things,” he said.
“Skills that cannot be assigned anumerical grade.”
By the Fraser Institute’s calcula-tions, NPSS students achieved an
average exam mark of 61.9 per cent,compared to the provincial average of 68.6 per cent.
“The percentage of exams failed atthe school was 16.3 per cent, up quitea bit over the average of 8.7 per cent,”Thomas said.
When a student fails to progressthrough the system at the normal pace,it is called a delayed advancementrate. At NPSS that rate was 46.2 percent, more than twice the provincialaverage of 19 per cent, he added.
See REPORT on A3•
David Bell Photo
North Peace Secondary School principal Daniel Vecchio takes issue with his most recent report card. The FraserInstitute slammed the school, assigning an overall academic grade of 3.4 out of 10, compared to a provincial averageof 6. Vecchio says the report fails to factor in other, equally important elements to a well-rounded education.
Fraser Institute slams NPSSSchool
and critichit back
8/9/2019 Fraser Institute slams NPSS | Alaska Highway News
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Cont. from A1•
While the 3.4 overall gradeat NPSS compares to a provincialaverage of 6 out of 10, the school’sgraduation rate of 93.4 per cent isonly slightly less than the provincialaverage of 95.8 per cent, which ledone media analyst to question thereport card’s conclusions.
“The indicators that they use mag-nify those small differences. If they
just took the test scores themselvesand did averages then NPSS wouldprobably be way higher than it is,”said Donald Gutstein.
Gutstein is an adjunct professor atSimon Fraser University’s school of communication. He teaches cours-es in news media and propaganda
analysis, has authored a book on thesubject and has written articles on theFraser Institute.
“All they are interested in are theprovincially examinable subjects andother indicators that make the dif-ferences way bigger than they reallyare,” he said.
“It is an extremely narrow meas-urement of student achievement.”
He said the institute receives large-scale coverage by the mainstreamnews media, but at times, their pointof view is not always identified.
“It is not made clear at all thatthe Fraser Institute has an agenda.It is trying to change public opinionabout the value of public education,which is why they do the rankings,”Gutstein said.
“They could care less about educa-
tion.”Thomas said the report card is to
hold schools responsible for the qual-
ity of education they are delivering.“This helps parents if they are
selecting a school for their children,or if they are already at the school, tobring questions forward to the princi-pal, administrators and teachers. Webelieve that folks at the school shoulddefinitely be responsible for provid-ing an answer as to why the schoolisn’t doing as well as it should,” hesaid.
“At the very least they owe theparents that.”
Vecchio said that while he has seenthe institute’s report card, no parenthas brought it to his attention.
“We do a school improvement planevery year which becomes part of the district accountability contract
that goes down to the ministry,” headded.“We are addressing strategies
and ways to engage digital learnersbecause, let’s face it, what a lot of us are doing is not cutting it any-more for kids. One of our goals is tomotivate and engage kids to reallywant to be here and click into it.”
Vecchio agreed that academicmeasurements are an important partof assessing outcomes, but not theonly ingredient.
“It has meaning, but it is missingso much of what makes a school aschool. It is singularly focused at theexpense of other equally importantqualities we want to instil in our kidsto create the citizens we want in theworld, our future leaders.”
The Fraser Institute has developed
a website that allows school-to-school comparisons. It’s available atwww.compareschoolrankings.org.
Report card anarrow measurementof student success,
says critic
Mark HumeTHE C ANADIAN PRESS
V A N C O U V E R — P r e m i e rGordon Campbell’s chief of staff got a shock in the Supreme Court of British Columbia when he learnedWednesday of a cabinet resignation.
During cross-examination of Martyn Brown in the B.C. Rail pol-itical corruption trial, defence lawyerMichael Bolton made a passing refer-ence to former Liberal MLA BlairLekstrom.
“I believe he’s left caucus,” saidBolton, referring to Lekstrom’s recentresignation in protest over the gov-ernment’s adoption of the harmon-ized sales tax.
When Lekstrom quit last week itmade front page headlines in B.C.and was the lead item on many news-casts.
But Brown, who has been on thewitness stand for the past two weeks,said he’d missed it all.
“That is a revelation to me – and
a disappointment,” said Brown,appearing startled.
“That very much surprises me. Ihave not been following the news. Ihave not been doing anything to taintmy evidence,” he said.
Brown – who in his job wasexpected to be on top of any issuethat affected cabinet – said he hasmaintained his self-imposed infor-mation blackout by ignoring news-papers delivered to his hotel room,by not watching TV and by avoidingconversations with anyone from hisoffice.
As chief of staff since the Liberalswere first elected in 2001, Brown hashad a reputation of being an intensenews watcher.
Facing charges of fraud and breachof trust are Dave Basi, and BobbyVirk, former government employ-ees accused of trading in confidentialgovernment documents related to the$1 billion sale of B.C. Rail in 2003.Aneal Basi, Dave Basi’s cousin, ischarged with money laundering.
Premier’s chief of staff at raid trial shocked Liberal MLA quit over HST
>>PROVINCE
Philip LingC ANWEST NEWS SERVICE
The RCMP had a highly detailedand carefully scripted communi-cations plan in place prior to theJanuary arrest of convicted oilpatchbomber Wiebo Ludwig in connectionwith a series of pipeline bombings innortheastern British Columbia.
The strategy – prepared a monthbefore taking him into custody –
was designed with the aim to pleasedisgruntled local residents whowere angry over what some calledRCMP’s “heavy-handed” techniquesin the case.
Six bombs have targeted remoteEnCana pipelines and wellheadssince October 2008. The attacksbegan after an anonymous letter wassent to local newspapers warning theenergy giant to cease its operationsin the area south of Dawson Creek,B.C., about 600 kilometres north-west of Edmonton. No one has beenhurt in the attacks.
In January, it appeared police mayhave cracked the case, as about 100RCMP officers swarmed Ludwig’sfarm near Hythe in northwesternAlberta, arrested the notorious oil-patch activist in connection with the
attacks and searched his property fordays.
But, a short time later, Ludwigwas released without charge, despiteRCMP insisting they had arrestedthe right man.
In the nearly 60 pages of docu-
ments revealed Wednesday underthe Access to Information Act, theRCMP’s hope was to make sureLudwig’s arrest would addresswhat the force called “concerns andoutstanding grievances” betweenDawson Creek residents and inves-tigators.
“Some conflicts occurred betweenlocal residents and investigators thathave resulted in friction and in somecases, a strain on the relationship
between the RCMP and the localcommunity,” Insp. Tim Shields, theofficer in charge of RCMP’s mediarelations program in B.C., wrotein note titled “CommunicationsStrategy” on Ludwig’s arrest.
“Accusations have been circulatedthrough the media that investigatorshave been overly aggressive withlocal residents in their attempt toobtain voluntary DNA and hand-writing samples as well as finger-prints and alibis from persons of interests.”
Shields acknowledged: “Thereare bridges that need to be re-builtbetween the RCMP and the com-munity. . . . All communications forthis case should be developed withthe concerns of the local communityin mind.”
The note emphasized that “itwould be prudent” to invite the may-ors of Dawson Creek and nearbyPouce Coupe to the formal mediaconference because “both are theground level of community involve-ment.”
Shields’ strategy included keymessaging and a heavily scripted listof answers to potential media ques-tions.
The recommended answer to thequestion on how the RCMP handledthe investigation read like a well-pre-pared speech: “To those Tomslakeresidents who feel that our effortswere overly assertive, we are sorry.
“We have a job to do and that jobis to stop this series of six bombings
before someone in the communityis killed,” the response continued.“We can’t do that without talking topeople, because as police we haveto ask the tough and uncomfortablequestions because our job is to inves-tigate and establish the truth.”
In anticipation of the question of whether the B.C. pipeline bombingswere the work of the RCMP, Shieldssuggested the stern reply: “No, abso-lutely not.”
The RCMP has yet to lay any char-ges connected to the bombings.
Ludwig is a longtime activist whoclaimed sour gas wells adverselyaffected human health, including thatof his family members.
Ludwig was released from prisonin 2001 after serving two-thirds of a 28- month sentence for five char-ges related to oilpatch bombing andvandalism.
Eager to see the attacks on itsproperty end, EnCana offered a $1million prize, a reward that equalledthe amount offered after the infam-ous Air India bombing.
Ludwig arrest partof RCMP plan
to assuage localresidents
