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Apart from reading the profiles and interviewing all schools, is there a means of determining the degree to which candidate schools emphasize academics, comparing their admission criteria, and seeing their performance in standardized testing?

Expert Answer

Comparing private and independent schools is a difficult task because you must do so against your personal criteria. What is the best school for one child may not be for another. To compare basic school information and programs, simply perform a search using the school search tool you can use the 'COMPARE SCHOOLS' tool on ourkids.net. Simply check off a maximum of three schools and click on the 'compare' button.

Every year, the Fraser Institute releases it's "School Report Cards". In Ontario, the rankings are largely based on the results of Ontario’s Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) of Grade 3 and Grade 6 measurements of reading, writing and math. Many parents like having access to school rankings as it can often reaffirm decisions. If a school has a concerning rating in any report it should make parents ask questions of administrators and teachers. But no research or school rankings can inform parents better than visiting a school, meeting with teachers and speaking to parents at that school; at ourkids.net, we have persistently cautioned against overdetermining the value of private school reviews and rankings.

Here are two interesting articles about private school ratings and rankings:

Can Schools Be Ranked?

Why are rankings an educational taboo?

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