Two Spokane schools earn report’s high marks

The Libby Center and Wilson Elementary School in Spokane were given perfect scores in a report Wednesday by the conservative Evergreen Freedom Foundation.

Evergreen ranked 1,130 of Washington’s public elementary schools based on academic performance derived from the Washington Assessment of Student Learning over the past five years.

“We decided to do this in order to equip parents, educators, school administrators and policymakers with the very best, most clear information available on how schools are currently doing,” said Diana Cieslak, a spokeswoman for the private, nonprofit, public policy research organization..

The research was done by the Fraser Institute, a nonpartisan research and educational organization in Canada. Fraser has been doing such research for 11 years, Cieslak said. “This is a great tool for parents.”

Rich Wood, a Washington Education Association spokesman, said he wasn’t impressed by the report.

“I don’t know what Washington wants with a British Columbia think tank’s research,” Wood said. “And neither one of these organizations has anything to do with our schools.”

The state’s education system is about making sure all students meet the same high academic standards, not ranking them, he said.

The Evergreen report is available online at http://washington.compareschool rankings.org.

A state “report card” measuring schools’ performance, also based on the WASL, can be found on the state school superintendent’s Web site: http://reportcard.opi.k12. wa.us.