The Fraser Institute, famous for its school reports, has released the 2009 Ontario edition. The popular – and controversial – assessment of school performance strives to answer the difficult question, “In general, how is the school doing academically?”
I wrote about the benefits and limitations of the Fraser Institute reports a few weeks ago with the release of the BC schools edition. For the Ontario version, the Toronto Sun published a special section on elementary schools featuring the Fraser report but that also included at least 9 separate articles looking at different aspects of elementary education.
Over at Crux-of-the-Matter Sandy, a retired schoolteacher, writes that she likes the Fraser Reports. She feels that they help schools push and assess themselves and that over time you can see progress. But she also published Cathy Cove’s analysis of the pros and cons of the Ontario report.
As I’ve said before, these reports have their uses, but should only be used and considered in a broader context of information about schools. After all, every student, parent and school has unique traits and qualities that no report can normalize or overcome. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t something useful to glean from it all.
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We write quite often about the issues raised by the report cards. It’s something that garners a lot of attention but they are not supported by many people in private education. You can read a number of reactions from the schools in the essay on “private school rankings.”