Education
VP of Holy Family School recognized with Excellence in Catholic Education Award
News release from Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools
RDCRS vice-principal receives Excellence in Catholic Education Award
Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools is pleased to recognize Stacey Martz, Vice-Principal at Holy Family School in Red Deer who received the 2022 Excellence in Catholic Education Award.
As a teacher, vice-principal, faith coach, and faith mentor, Martz shares her love for God and her commitment to the Catholic Faith in all that she says and does. She integrates staff and students in all of Holy Family School’s celebrations, liturgies and Masses by including pre-celebration and whole-class activities to support the school community as active participants in the faith life of their school.
Martz also initiated a ‘Believe in God’ (B.i.G) project at Holy Family School that was highly-successful and brought faith alive for the entire school community with engaging and fun activities.
“Stacey Martz efforts have been instrumental in creating Christ-centered communities, nurturing the spiritual development of students and staff within our Division, making her very deserving of the Excellence in Catholic Education Award,” said Board Chair, Kim Pasula at Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools.
Her work with RDCRS’ Division Formation Program for new teachers and the Division input for permeating the new provincial curriculum, reflects the impact she has had on the entire school division.
Presented annually by the Council of Catholic School Superintendents of Alberta (CCSSA), the Excellence in Catholic Education Award recognizes Catholic ‘teachers’ in Alberta who have done an exemplary job in preparing youth to grow into outstanding Catholic citizens.
For more information about the Excellence in Catholic Education Award, please visit
https://www.ccssa.ca/
Red Deer
Judge upholds sanctions against Red Deer Catholic school trustee who opposed LGBT agenda
From LifeSiteNews
Monique LaGrange was ousted last December from the Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools’ board for comparing the LGBT agenda targeting children to brainwashing.
A Canadian judge ruled that a school board was justified to place harsh sanctions on a Catholic school trustee forced out of her position because she opposed extreme gender ideology and refused to undergo LGBT “sensitivity” training.
Justice Cheryl Arcand-Kootenay of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta ruled Thursday that the Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools (RDCRS) Board’s sanctions placed against former trustee Monique LaGrange will stand.
LaGrange had vowed to fight the school board in court, and it remains to be seen if she can take any further actions after the decision by Judge Arcand-Kootenay.
The judge ruled that the RDCRS’s policies in place for all trustees, which the board contended were breached, were “logical, thorough, and grounded in the facts that were before the Board at the time of their deliberations.”
As reported by LifeSiteNews, the RDCRS board voted 3-1 last December to disqualify LaGrange after she compared the LGBT agenda targeting kids with that of “brainwashing” Nazi propaganda. As a result of being voted out, LaGrange later resigned from her position.
The former school board trustee initially came under fire in September 2023 when she posted an image showing kids in Nazi Germany waving swastika flags during a parade to social media, with the bottom of the post showing an image of kids waving LGBT “Pride” flags along with the text: “Brainwashing is brainwashing.”
After her post went viral, calls for her to step down grew from leftist Alberta politicians and others. This culminated in her removal as director of the Alberta Catholic School Trustees’ Association (ACSTA).
In September 2023, the RDCRS passed a motion to mandate that LaGrange undergo “LGBTQ+” and holocaust “sensitivity” training for her social media post.
LaGrange, however, refused to apologize for the meme or undergo “sensitivity” training.
She had argued that the RDCRS had no right to issue sanctions against her because they were not based on the Education Act or code of conduct. Arcand-Kootenay did not agree with her, saying code of conduct violations allow for multiple sanctions to be placed against those who violate them.
Education
‘Grade inflation’ gives students false sense of their academic abilities
From the Fraser Institute
The average entrance grade at the University of British Columbia is now 87 per cent, up from 70 per cent only 20 years ago. While this is partly because the supply of available university spots has not kept pace with growing demand, it’s also likely that some B.C. high schools are inflating their students’ grades.
Suppose you’re scheduled for major heart surgery. Shortly before your surgery begins, you check into your surgeon’s background and are pleased to discover your surgeon had a 100 per cent average throughout medical school. But then you learn that every student at the same medical school received 100 per cent in their courses, too. Now you probably don’t feel quite as confident in your surgeon.
This is the ugly reality of “grade inflation” where the achievements of everyone, including the most outstanding students, are thrown into question. Fortunately, grade inflation is (currently) rare in medical schools. But in high schools, it’s a growing problem.
In fact, grade inflation is so prevalent in Ontario high schools that the University of Waterloo’s undergraduate engineering program uses an adjustment factor when evaluating student applications—for example, Waterloo might consider a 95 per cent average from one school the equivalent of an 85 per cent average from another school.
Grade inflation is a problem in other provinces as well. The average entrance grade at the University of British Columbia is now 87 per cent, up from 70 per cent only 20 years ago. While this is partly because the supply of available university spots has not kept pace with growing demand, it’s also likely that some B.C. high schools are inflating their students’ grades.
Sadly, grade inflation is so rampant these days that some school administrators don’t even try to hide it. For example, earlier this year all students at St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic High School in Aurora, Ontario, received perfect marks on their midterm exams in two biology courses and one business course—not because these students had mastered these subjects but because the York Catholic District School Board had been unable to find a permanent teacher at this school.
The fact that a school board would use grade inflation to compensate for inadequate instruction in high school tells us everything we need to know about the abysmal academic standards in many schools across Canada.
And make no mistake, student academic performance is declining. According to results from the Programme for International Assessment (PISA), math scores across Canada declined from 532 points in 2003 to 497 points in 2022 (PISA equates 20 points to one grade level). In other words, Canadian students are nearly two years behind on their math skills then they were 20 years ago. While their high school marks are going up, their actual performance is going down.
And that’s the rub—far from correcting a problem, grade inflation makes the problem much worse. Students with inflated grades get a false sense of their academic abilities—then experience a rude shock when they discover they aren’t prepared for post-secondary education. (According to research by economists Ross Finnie and Felice Martinello, students with the highest high school averages usually experience the largest drop in grades in university). Consequently, many end up dropping out.
Grade inflation even hurts students who go on to be academically successful because they suffer the indignity of having their legitimate achievements thrown into doubt by the inflated grades of other students. If we want marks to have meaning, we must end the practise of grade inflation. We do our students no favours when we give them marks they don’t really deserve.
Just as our confidence in a surgeon would go down if we found out that every student from the same medical school had a 100 per cent average, so we should also question the value of diplomas from high schools where grade inflation is rampant.
Author:
-
Business1 day ago
Carbon tax bureaucracy costs taxpayers $800 million
-
Brownstone Institute1 day ago
The Most Devastating Report So Far
-
ESG21 hours ago
Can’t afford Rent? Groceries for your kids? Trudeau says suck it up and pay the tax!
-
Daily Caller20 hours ago
Los Angeles Passes ‘Sanctuary City’ Ordinance In Wake Of Trump’s Deportation Plan
-
COVID-191 day ago
Dr. McCullough praises RFK Jr., urges him to pull COVID shots from the market
-
John Stossel19 hours ago
Green Energy Needs Minerals, Yet America Blocks New Mines
-
Business2 days ago
Ottawa’s avalanche of spending hasn’t helped First Nations
-
MAiD1 day ago
Over 40% of people euthanized in Ontario lived in poorest parts of the province: government data