Peter Cowley

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

Peter Cowley is a Senior Fellow and former Director of School Performance Studies at the Fraser Institute. He has a B.Comm. from the University of British Columbia (1974). In 1994, Mr Cowley independently wrote and published The Parent's Guide, a popular handbook for parents of British Columbia's secondary-school students. The Parent's Guide web site replaced the handbook in 1995. In 1998, Mr Cowley was co-author of the Fraser Institute's A Secondary Schools Report Card for British Columbia, the first of the Institute's continuing series of annual reports on school performance. This was followed in by The 1999 Report Card on British Columbia's Secondary Schools, Boys, Girls, and Grades: Academic Gender Balance in British Columbia's Secondary Schools, and The 1999 Report Card on Alberta's High Schools. Since then, Mr Cowley has co-authored all of the Institute's annual Report Cards. Annual editions now include Report Cards on elementary and secondary schools in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario and on secondary schools in Quebec.

Recent Research by Peter Cowley

— Mar 7, 2023
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Report Card on British Columbia’s Elementary Schools 2022

The Report Card on British Columbia’s Elementary Schools 2022 ranks 870 public and independent elementary schools based on 10 academic indicators derived from the provincewide Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) results.

— Sep 27, 2022
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Report Card on British Columbia's Elementary Schools 2021

The Report Card on British Columbia’s Elementary Schools 2021, which ranks 927 public and independent elementary schools based on 10 academic indicators derived from the provincewide Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA), suggests that every school is capable of improvement regardless of type, location and student characteristics.

— May 10, 2022
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Testing Canadian K-12 Students—Regional Variability, Room for Improvement

Testing of Canadian K-12 Students: Regional Variability and Room for Improvement finds that governments across Canada could improve provincewide student testing programs by offering regular uniform testing at multiple grade levels and making school and district performance results available to the public, which would incentivize educational improvements.