TORONTO, March 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Fraser Institute’s Report Card on Ontario’s Elementary Schools is out today.
This year’s Report Card—the go-to source for measuring academic performance—ranks more than 3,000 anglophone and francophone public and Catholic schools (and a small number of independent schools) based on nine academic indicators from results of annual provincewide reading, writing and math tests.
“The Report Card is a valuable tool for parents both as a source of objective data that they use when they are choosing a school for their children, and also as an annual audit that shows whether their child’s school is improving or falling behind,” said Peter Cowley, a senior fellow with the Fraser Institute’s School Performance Studies.
The annual report card is also a valuable resource for educators because it allows them to easily identify successful schools across the province—serving similar students and communities—that can serve as an example to follow.
For example, North Cavan Public School near Peterborough, where more than 1-in-4 students (28.6 per cent) have special needs, improved its overall rating from 5.9 out of 10 in 2016 to 9.0 out of 10 last year.
Elsewhere in the province, Holy Rosary Catholic School in Belleville (which has 40.7 per cent special needs students) improved its overall rating from 1.2 out of 10 in 2016 to 4.0 last year. In Northern Ontario, Valley Central Public School in Slate River (just outside Thunder Bay) improved from 3.7 in 2016 to 8.0 last year.
And Henderson Avenue Public School in Thornhill improved its rating from 7.3 in 2016 to 9.5 last year, despite more than half of its student body—56.6 per cent—being English Second Language (ESL) students.
“All too often, principals and teachers try to excuse a school’s poor overall performance by blaming the characteristics of its students or the communities they serve, but the Report Card shows that any school, no matter where it’s located or what challenges its students face, can succeed,” Cowley said.
For the complete results on all ranked schools, and to easily compare the performance of different schools, visit www.compareschoolrankings.org.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Peter Cowley, Senior Fellow
Fraser Institute
Cell: (604) 789-0475
E-mail: peter.cowley@fraserinstitute.org
Bryn Weese, Associate Director, Communications
Fraser Institute
Cell: (604) 250-8076
Office: (604) 688-0221 Ext. 589
E-mail: bryn.weese@fraserinstitute.org
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The Fraser Institute is an independent Canadian public policy research and educational organization with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal and ties to a global network of think-tanks in 87 countries. Its mission is to improve the quality of life for Canadians, their families and future generations by studying, measuring and broadly communicating the effects of government policies, entrepreneurship and choice on their well-being. To protect the Institute’s independence, it does not accept grants from governments or contracts for research. Visit www.fraserinstitute.org