The Fraser Institute’s latest report cards have found that Ontario, B.C. and Yukon high school students performed better in exams.
The Ontario report card reveals a decrease in the percentage of secondary school exams scoring below the provincial standard over the past five years, dropping to 26.9 per cent in 2009-2010 from 29.3 per cent in 2005-2006.
“This is a promising trend for Ontario schools,” said Michael Thomas, Fraser Institute associate director of school performance studies and co-author of the report card, in a press release. “But with more than a quarter of exams still falling below the provincial standard, there is room for academic improvement across the province.”
The two main areas students improved were Grade 9 math and Grade 10 literacy tests, Thomas said.
St. Michael's Choir School in Toronto was the top-performing high school in Ontario based on the Fraser Institute's 2011 rankings.
The Ontario rankings show Toronto schools are last in the GTA, CityNews.ca reported. The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) scored 5.2 out of 10 on the report card. The GTA’s average is 6.1 out of 10, slightly above the provincial average of 6.
Out of 727 schools, only one private school — Whitefield Academy, which scored a 7.5 – was included in the province’s report card. To be included, schools required at least 15 students who wrote the Grade 9 EQAO math test and at least 15 writers of the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test. Private schools, including federally funded schools operated by the First Nations, are not required to write the Grade 9 EQAO tests.
The rankings include 495 public schools with an average rating of 5.9, 229 Catholic schools with an average rating of 6.4, and two federally funded First Nations schools that scored a 0.0, Thomas says. The provincial average is 6.0.
St. Michael’s Choir School, considered a semi-private or publicly-funded boys Catholic school with tuition for its music program, earned the top spot in the GTA and Ontario. The school scored 9.8 out of 10 this year, up from 7.4 last year. . However, Thomas notes 19 students from the school were eligible to write the literacy test this year compared to a provincial average of 275 students for each school.
“It will be interesting to see if they can continue building on that,” Thomas says in an interview with Our Kids Media. “The school appears to be small and has only been included in the report card the last two years. For schools like this, parents should take these factors into account when evaluating and interpreting school results. For us to determine a trend, we require a full five years of data for a school.”
A collaboration between teachers, parents, students and the school community and a solid arts and academic program were behind the school’s strong results, says Barry White, principal of St. Michael’s Choir School. ”If you have motivated, talented boys with supportive parents, the sky’s the limit,” he says.
Despite its students coming from lower-income families on average compared to TDSB students, the Toronto Catholic school board has outperformed the TDSB, The Toronto Sun reported. Research actually shows income level accounts for less than 25 per cent of student achievement, Thomas said.
“What happens in the school really does make a difference as well,” said Thomas, a former TDSB trustee, in an interview with The Toronto Sun. “These characteristics shouldn’t be used as an excuse why a school or groups of schools can’t perform better . . . in Scarborough there are some schools in very low-income areas that have scored quite a bit above the provincial average.”
TOP 10 SCHOOLS IN ONTARIO
SCHOOL - CITY – OVERALL RATING ’09/10 – LAST 5 YEARS
St. Michael’s Choir (Sr), Toronto, 9.8, n/a
St. Michael, Kemptville, 9.6, 9.7
Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Markham, 9.2, 9.2
London Central, London, 9.1, 9.6
Colonel By, Gloucester, 9.1, 8.9
Oakville Trafalgar, Oakville, 9.1, 8.8
West Carleton, Dunrobin, 9.1, 8.8
Chesley, Chesley, 9.1, 8.5
Père-René-de-Galinée, Cambridge, 9.0, 8.0
Bayview, Richmond Hill, 8.9, 9.2
TOP 10 IMPROVING SCHOOLS IN ONTARIO
SCHOOL – CITY – TYPE – ’09/10 RATING – 5-YEAR AVERAGE
Monarch Park, Toronto, Public, 5.4, 3.0
Sir Sandford Fleming, Toronto, Public, 4.1, 1.5
Cathedral, Hamilton, Catholic, 6.4, 4.6
James Cardinal McGuigan, Toronto, Catholic, 4.8, 3.3
Louis-Riel, Gloucester, Public, 8.1, 7.0
Bawating, Sault Ste. Marie, Public, 5.8, 4.1
Riverdale, Toronto, Public, 7.4, 6.1
Thistletown, Toronto, Public, 4.6, 3.0
Ascension of Our Lord, Mississauga, Catholic, 5.2, 3.8
Jean Vanier, Toronto, Catholic, 7.5, 6.5
TOP 10 DECLINING SCHOOLS IN ONTARIO
SCHOOL – CITY – TYPE – ’09/10 RATING – 5-YEAR AVERAGE
Kapuskasing, Kapuskasing, Public, 1.4, 3.9
Monseigneur-Bruyère, London, Catholic, 4.7, 5.5
Centre Hastings, Madoc, Public, 4.0, 5.8
Smiths Falls District, Smiths Falls, Public, 4.2, 5.8
L’Horizon, Val Caron, Catholic, 3.7, 5.6
John L Forster, Windsor, Public, 2.1, 4.5
Embrun, Embrun, Catholic, 6.9, 7.9
Chelmsford Valley District, Chelmsford, Public, 1.5, 3.3
Marathon, Marathon, Public, 5.3, 7.5
Trenton, Trenton, Public, 4.2, 5.4
B.C. Private Schools Outperform Public Schools
In B.C. and the Yukon, the report card reveals a reduction in the percentage of secondary school exams failed over the past five years, dropping to 8.1 per cent in 2010 from 11.8 per cent in 2007. The estimated percentage of Grade 10 students who will not complete Grade 12 within three years has also declined, falling to 17 per cent in 2010 from 20.8 per cent in 2007. (See complete results and the publication here.)
“There’s some good news — tentatively that’s a good sign,” said Peter Cowley, Fraser Institute director of school performance studies and co-author of the B.C. and Yukon report card. “But there is still room for academic improvement across the region.”
Since only three years of comparable data were available, Cowley says no statistical significance could be attributed to the improved results.
Private schools did better than public schools in B.C., scoring an average of 7.6, while the public average was 5.7 out of 10, Cowley told The Province. That’s in part because of pressure from parents, Cowley said in an interview with News1130.
“If the school is not showing evidence it is doing well in academics, they’re going to lose their clientele,” Cowley told News1130. “It’s not exactly the case with public schools, (which are) not as sensitive to the market because they’re there by government fiat.”
The annual report card gives a mark out of a maximum 10 points to each of B.C.’s 271 public and private secondary schools and three Yukon schools.
Despite the strong showing of private schools, Century High School, an independent school in Vancouver, was among those at the bottom of the rankings, The Vancouver Sun blog reported. Significant discrepancies were found in 2007 between the English Grade 12 marks awarded by the school and the results from provincial exams. As a result, Century and four other independent schools were ordered to clean up their acts or risk losing their licences. Century High School’s website noted a “transformation” at the school since then, the blog reported.
TOP 10 B.C. AND YUKON HIGH SCHOOLS
SCHOOL – CITY – TYPE – ’09/10 RATING – 5-YEAR AVERAGE
York House, Vancouver (B.C.), Private, 10.0, 10.0
West Point Grey, Vancouver, Private, 9.8, 9.8
Little Flower, Vancouver, Private, 9.7, 9.8
Southridge, Surrey (B.C.), Private, 9.6, 9.9
Crofton House, Vancouver, Private, 9.6, 9.8
St. George’s, Vancouver, Private, 9.5, 9.9
Brentwood College, Mill Bay (B.C.), Private, 9.5, 9.3
Meadowridge, Maple Ridge (B.C.), Private, 9.0, 9.5
Southpointe, Delta (B.C.), Private, 8.9, n/a
Collingwood, West Vancouver (B.C.), Private, 8.8, 9.2
An Attack on the Public School System?
The Fraser Institute report cards are criticized for being an attack on the B.C. public school system, which critics say is highly regarded around the world, The Province reported. Cowley said efforts were taken to eliminate socioeconomic factors in the data. From 22 to 25 per cent of the differences in various schools’ performance rates can be attributed to family income, The Province reported, which is listed for each school.
“The Fraser Institute is fairly open about its goal being the privatization of public education,” said Vancouver School Board chair Patti Bacchus in an interview with News1130.
Bacchus doesn’t think it’s fair to compare schools. “To rank one against the other is saying ‘Which is better? Vancouver or Montreal?’ They’re all different,” she told News1130. “Looking at this ranking is not going to give anyone a good indication of what’s actually happening in a school.”
She said schools are more than just provincial exam results. “Fewer and fewer kids are writing some of the exams, and the universities are putting far less emphasis (on the exams), realizing they’re not that meaningful a measure of how students are doing,” Bacchus told News1130. To know more about their children’s education, she advised parents to visit the school in person to meet the staff.
As for examples of the rankings’ effectiveness, the Fraser Institute’s Thomas says he’s not aware of what schools have done after the report card’s release, except for an internal review of elementary public schools in Fort McMurray, Alta. following the report card on Alberta’s elementary schools.
“The best use of the report cards is for parents and the school community to find out how schools are doing academically compared to others,” he says in an interview with Our Kids Media.
He says it’s up to the schools and community to take the next steps and the report card’s purpose is not to explain why a school is doing well or poorly, but to make info easily available to parents so that they can encourage improvement.
“(The report should) generate this discussion among schools, board officials and parents, looking at ways that schools that aren’t doing as well can learn from the schools that are achieving quite strong results,” the Fraser Institute’s Thomas told 680 News. ”Our report card is the number one source for objective, reliable information about how Ontario secondary schools stack up in terms of academics.”
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About Christl Dabu
