Changes to enrollment priorities within SD 61.

Image Source: https://www.sd61.bc.ca/

A while back now, early June 2017, the Greater Victoria School District (SD 61) released a press release on the results of a survey they had sent out, as well as the resulting policy changes, a change in enrollment priorities within SD 61.

At the time I had a few parents bring this report to my attention, asking me to look into the survey results, as they felt that the released results were misleading, or rather that the proposed policy changes did not appear to line up with the opinions of most parents (in their view).

Initially, my first thought was "Everything is probably legitimate and it's great to see some evidence based decision making on the part of the school board" ... but within minutes of reading the press release, I began to wonder if this press release was the result of a rushed ad hoc job on the part of the school district, or if they were purposely trying to twist the evidence to support a pre-determined policy. Let's hope that it was the former and nothing sinister is at work here.

The full press release can be found here for those interested.

Early in the results, SD 61 claims that their survey had a 70% response rate. (starting page 12 of this document)

• 3450 to the parent survey
• 418 to the student survey

Yielding a total of 3868 respondents. 70% response rate, pretty good! (mind you no back ground as to the methodology as to how these surveys were distributed). 

The next bit is the geographical distribution of the respondents to the parent survey, I have created a little table (below) to demonstrate the breakdown including the relative frequencies as well as comparing these relative frequencies to the relative frequency of the population in each municipality and school aged children. Keep in mind, given limited access to data (and time on my part ... this is only a blog!) we are looking at different years for each of these points -- but we should expect the relative frequencies to stay relatively constant over this short time period:

The first thing we should notice is that despite the earlier claim of having 3450 parent respondents, we only have a geographical break down of 3168 surveys, meaning 282 (8.2%) of the respondents were not included or dropped for what ever reason.

The second thing we should notice is the large discrepancy between the relative frequencies of the municipalities - specifically, Saanich is grossly under represented while Oak Bay is grossly over represented. (The two yellow rows are identified as such as there are no true relative frequencies to compare these too).

Here is a bar chart of the above table -- because pictures are nice too.

So, page one (truthfully page 13 if you're following along) of the report so far - some questions raised, but perhaps nothing too misleading so far -- Let's explore the reported results of the survey.

The first thing to note is that these reported results are only from the parent survey, the details of the student survey are not presented. Again pay attention to the numbers here.

The first question is along the lines of enrollment priorities. specifically, should siblings have priority (in order to keep siblings together at same school) or should catchment students have priority? meaning siblings may be split between schools.

The results (as presented in the report) are as follows:

Based off of this - it seems as if a strong majority of respondents (almost 61%) support catchment school enrollment over keeping siblings together. But pay attention to the total respondents ... only 2971. Turns out 469 respondents "skipped" this question for one reason or another.

The big question then - is it important that 469 respondents skipped this question? should these 469 respondents be dropped from the results? or should we include these 469 as perhaps a "no opinion" category? Let's include these skipped responses and see how our relative frequencies change.

If we include these skipped responses -- now only 52.65% of respondents support catchment over siblings ... not such a loud statement anymore! Additionally, with the 469 skipped included, we only have 3450 respondents. What happened to the other 10 respondents?

Sadly as we move through the other responses we see a similar trend. we have 469 respondents who decided to skip a question, and were just completely omitted as a result.

We see the same situation here - The question being, who should have class priority each year, non-catchment returning students or new catchment students -- the reported results (omitting the skipped) say that almost 58% support returning non-catchment students. If we include the 469 who skipped the question, less than 50% support returning non-catchment students having priority, a sudden change in results if we are interested in majority support.

Again, total responses are only 3440, not the 3450 stated as total respondents. 10 are still missing.

The final reported question is asking about what should happen when students finish at their current school and are set to transfer to their middle or high school. Specifically, should out of catchment students simply follow the school path (certain elementary schools feed into specific middle schools etc.) or should these students be required to go to their catchment school, and have to apply to follow the school path. 

The interesting part of this question is that we only have 2914 responses, with no information about skipped responses or any hint about the other 536 omitted respondents. Do we assume that 536 (15.5%) of respondents skipped this question? Or did these 536 spoil their response, circling both answers? unfortunately, we have no insight, only that 2914 answered this question as opposed to 2971 which answered the prior two.

Sadly, it is reports and lazy statistics like this which are supporting government policy. The school board has already met and revised enrollment priorities based off of these results.

The biggest question I have is this. If there are so many errors in this 'polished' press release, can we trust any of the methodology or process used in determining any of these results? remember, all that is being presented in the above is summary statistics - we have to trust that the individuals who put this report together properly sorted, compiled and calculated these statistics properly. Given the issues, I have just raised - I have my doubts.

What are your thoughts on this? feel free to comment below.

Climate Change and the macro economy.

IPCC Scenarios, Source: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/page5.php

Recently here in BC, we have had a change in the legislature, a return of the NDP (kind of) after 16 years. 

I say kind of because for those not familiar, the NDP have only obtained power by brokering a deal with the BC Green Party to obtain a slim majority through their working relationship and by slim I mean one seat. Truthfully much still needs to be determined - a Speaker for the House will still need to be elected. If this speaker comes from the NDP/Green, it will result in an equivalent number of seats between the BC Liberals and the NDP/Greens, meaning any legislation will need to be carefully crafted if they hope to pass it through the house. 

political background aside -  the whole point to get at is that the NDP and Greens have committed to increasing the carbon tax here in BC. You can read my thoughts about the carbon tax in a previous post about Alberta's here. To summarize that post, Carbons taxes are desperately needed -- however I don't think anyone will actually be happy with one being put into place -- essentially because we are now forced to pay for something which we previously were getting for free (pollution).

Now there are serious economic implications of implementing a higher carbon tax - which will often be presented in the news - how higher taxes will hurt the already fragile economy. How if BC increases a carbon tax while other provinces do not, we will lose businesses to other provinces, etc. 

While all these arguments hold an element of truth - the problem is they are all short-term arguments. that we shouldn't implement a carbon tax today because it will hurt today. The problem with this argument is that it will hurt a lot more tomorrow if we don't do it today.

On this topic I have recently come across a report released by the European Systemic Risk Board which was published in February of 2016 titled Too Late, Too Sudden: Transition to a low-carbon economy and systemic risk, the full article can be found here.

Where other papers I have read focus on the devastating climate effects on the economy due to inaction on climate policies, this report takes a different approach. Acting under the assumption that humanity will eventually be forced to deal with the climate problem - either today, allowing a gradual change towards a new low-carbon society, a "soft landing". Or in the future when the situation is so dire that the costs are very real, apparent and demanding immediate action, a "hard landing". 

In the latter, as we will be forced to rapidly adjust to low-carbon production processes the effect on the economy will be severe and systemic. To look at one side of this, the report suggests that massive amounts of capital will be rendered worthless in a short amount of time due to their reliance on carbon fuels. 

A short snippet on this from the report:

Avoiding substantial climate change implies that assets dependent on fossil-fuel energy will become obsolete. Carbon-intensive sectors such as transportation, manufacturing, agriculture and real estate rely on a large stock of long-lived physical capital whose efficient use requires a continued supply of cheap energy and, in many cases, energy specifically derived from fossil fuels. In a “hard landing” transition to a low-carbon economy, carbon-intensive physical capital (such as conventional vehicles, electricity supply infrastructure, machinery used in manufacturing processes) would quickly become obsolete.

It often seems rather removed to look at the effects of rapidly transitioning to a low-carbon society when talking about generic capital and manufacturing processes which often appear as a world removed to most Canadians.

When we talk about the fact that during a rapid adjustment to a low-carbon society that your house or automobile will quickly become obsolete and worthless due to its dependency on fossil fuels - now, suddenly, this becomes a reality and a situation which we would hope to avoid given how much of our individual net worth is held in these assets.

The report itself is a very light easy read which I would recommend. Hopefully showing that we need to start acting today in response to this (as painful as it is) rather than wait until the 11th hour.

Unfortunately - given human behavior - I will be pleasantly surprised if humanity can unite to deal with this problem before we are forced to. But maybe I am a bit of a pessimist.

What are your thoughts? Feel free to comment below.