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.”
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, and on average the GTA dropped above the provincial average of six. St. Michael’s Choir School earned the top spot in the GTA and Ontario.
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.”
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 11.9 per cent in 2006. The estimated percentage of Grade 10 students who will not complete Grade 12 within three years has also declined significantly, falling to 17 per cent in 2010 from 22.0 per cent in 2006. (See complete results and the publication here.)
“This is promising for B.C. and Yukon schools,” said Peter Cowley, Fraser Institute director of school performance studies and co-author of the B.C. and Yukon report card, in a press release. “But there is still room for academic improvement across the region.”
B.C. Private Schools Outperform Public Schools
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.
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.
“(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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