Report card: GTA schools scoring
higher
National Post
Fri 09 Jun 2006

Page: A14
Section: Toronto
Byline: Zosia Bielski
Source:
National Post

The Fraser Institute Report Card on Ontario's Elementary
Schools is out and the grades are in: Things are improving academically
throughout the province.

Using standardized tests for Grades 3 and 6 reading, writing and math, gender
gap measures and a tally of tests written below standard, the institute ranks
elementary schools and their rates of improvement or decline.

"The percentage of exams assessed as below standard has come down remarkably
over the last five years,'' said Peter Cowley, the institute's director of
school performance results.

In 2001, 41.5% of tests rated below the provincial standard. This year, it's
down to 35.8.

Except for Grade 3 math scores, which have not shown any drastic change since
2001, "Everything else is improving, including reading and writing in Grade 3,
reading, writing and math in Grade 6,'' Mr. Cowley said.

Gender gap measures have diminished, especially when it comes to Grade 6
math. Girls are catching up to boys, and 20% of the schools rated in the report
card now show equal success rates for the sexes.

Mr. Cowley said teachers were central to the advances: "Over the years,
teachers have become more familiar with the new curriculum, the expected
outcomes and ensuring that their kids have the skills and the knowledge that
they need to at least pass the [provincial Education Quality and Accountability
Office tests].''

Topping the list this year are the GTA's 19 francophone schools, which
surpassed last year's leaders, the public and Catholic boards in York Region.
"They've improved quite remarkably,'' Mr. Cowley said.

Conseil scolaire de district Catholique Centre-Sud leads the pack with an
average overall rating of 7.9 out of 10, jumping from a score of 6.5 in
2001/2002. Conseil scolaire de district du Centre Sud-Ouest followed closely
with 7.8, up from 6.1 five years ago.

All other boards have been fairly constant except the 157-school Toronto
Catholic District School Board. It fell from 6.2 out of 10 in 2001/2002 to 5.8
this year.

The Vancouver-based think-tank published its first report card on Ontario
elementary schools in 2003. Mr. Cowley says the report card becomes a motivator
for teachers through "positive competition.''

Some detractors criticize the institute's use of merit-based results, as
opposed to socio-economic factors, arguing comparing schools in rich and poor
neighbourhoods is like comparing apples and oranges.

Mr. Cowley has always challenged the critics to come up with something
better, encouraging education stakeholders to develop more data. "Some will say
they don't have to, from the point of view that ranking schools is wrong, sort
of like cannibalism.

"I haven't seen a great willingness or enthusiasm for providing more data
rather than less. We are providing one of the very few third-party objective
reports that there is.''

Another third-party evaluator is the Toronto-based C.D. Howe Institute Ontario
School Performance Database, which interprets the province's elementary school
test scores by comparing schools in similar socio-economic environments.

Says C.D.
Howe policy analyst Yvan Guillemette: "A
school that comes in near the top in the Fraser ranking can come near the bottom
in our ranking, because if it's almost entirely driven by the fact that it
operates in a really rich neighbourhood with kids that are easy to deal with,
then it's not really a good school. But still, most students do really well."

Mr. Guillemette conceded parents weighing the two options should probably
look at both reports for absolute and relative success stories.

The provincial average for parents' education is 14.8 years; at the
top-performing schools, many parents have more than 15 years of schooling,
meaning most attended university.

"It is certainly the case that you could imagine that, depending on the life
a child leads outside school, some kids may be better prepared to learn than
others,'' Mr. Cowley said, referring to parents who have more time to educate
their children outside of school, can articulate their way through a school
system or simply have the resources to move to a different school or take up
private education.

Still, the Fraser Institute's report card found that, across the country,
family characteristics such as parents' income, or more often their average
number of years of education, accounted for between 16% and 30% of the variation
in rankings. "That leaves a lot that isn't accounted for. Effective schools make
a difference,'' Mr. Cowley said.

He cited Toronto's Ossington Old Orchard Public School, which won the
Garfield Weston award for academic achievement in excess of expectation last
year and is one of the best overall top-ranked schools in the GTA on the 2006
report card, with an overall ranking of 10, up from 8.9 last year.

"Ossington Old Orchard kids, they're not highly privileged and yet they've
done extraordinarily well in a considerable amount of years," he said, adding
that he believes rankings based on socio-economic factors tend to reward lower
levels of performance.

"We could do that, but we don't want to do that. It builds in a ready-made
excuse for failure to learn. Quite frankly, it's a cop-out."

"Virtually from the beginning, I've been surprised that there hasn't been
more competition in terms of information sources for parents," he said.

Mr. Cowley became a key developer of high school report cards with the Fraser
Institute in 1997, after sending his daughter to a school in British Columbia he
felt he knew too little about.

"There was data available, it's just the Ministry of Education and the school
board here were not keen to give results to parents. We didn't have any
information and we thought we should have.''

Last year, more than 76,000 people downloaded Ontario elementary school
report card data from the institute's Web site.

"God bless 'em, you won't find too many principals who are excited about
telling the bad news about their school, they're usually pretty excited about
telling the good news,'' Mr. Cowley said. "Sometimes it takes a third-party
assessment like this to get out all the news.''

Although the Fraser Institute includes high value-added rankings in its
report, it does not use socio-economic status to rank schools.

TOMORROW: The Post continues comprehensive coverage of The Fraser Institute
Report Card on Ontario's Elementary Schools, which ranks most public and
separate schools in the GTA. How did your child's school do? What are the best
and worst schools in Toronto, York, Peel, Durham and Halton -- and why?
Tomorrow: Peel Region

HOW TO READ THE TABLES

Use this explanation of each item to help you interpret the detailed results
for individual schools.

Families choosing a school for their students should seek to confirm the
Report Card's findings by visiting the school and interviewing teachers, school
administrators and other parents.

The complete data and text of the report card can be downloaded free of
charge from The Fraser Institute's Web site at www.fraserinstitute.ca. More
information regarding test results at individual schools can be found on the
Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) Web site at:
http://www.eqao.com. Other useful information can be found on the Web sites of
local school boards and individual schools.

Of course, a sound academic program should be complemented by effective
programs in areas of school activity not measured by the report card.

Important note: Private schools are not required to administer the EQAO
tests. Since the report card is based on results achieved on these tests, only a
few private schools that chose to administer the EQAO tests could be included.

Column by column, starting from the left-hand column, the information
provided is as follows:

z The school's overall academic rank in the province for 2004/2005. This
ranking shows how the school has done academically compared with the other 2,817
schools included in the report card.

z The school's overall academic rank in the province for the most recent five
years. This ranking shows how the school has done academically over the past
five years compared with the other 2,387 schools for which five years of data
were available.

z The trend in the school's overall rating. An upward-pointing arrow means
the school is probably improving. A downward-pointing arrow means the school is
probably getting worse. The researchers had to be at least 90% sure that the
changes were not just random before indicating a trend. A dash indicates there
is no significant change. Where insufficient data were available, ''n/a''
appears in the column.

z The school's name.

z The affiliation of the school: P[ublic], PR[ivate] or S[eparate].

z Tests not written. This is the percentage of the tests that could have been
completed by the school's students but that were not assigned an overall score.
This indicator takes into account tests not written by students who were exempt
or for whom the EQAO did not receive completed assessment booklets.

Important note: Schools that administer these tests are expected to ensure
that all their students participate. For this reason, you should take note of
the "tests not written" percentage when you consider each school's report card
results. The principal of a school with a high tests not written percentage
should be able to provide good reasons for the students' failure to complete the
tests.

z Parents' average education (years). Higher values of this statistic are
commonly thought to be associated with better student results. Use this
statistic to identify schools at which the students share roughly similar family
backgrounds.

z The average level achieved by the students on the Grade 3 and Grade 6 EQAO
tests. The EQAO assigns a level of achievement to each completed test.
Achievement at levels 1 and 2 suggests the student has not yet met the
provincial standard. Level 3 is considered the provincial standard and level 4
represents achievement well above the expected level. Thus, achievement at level
3 or 4 suggests students are well prepared for work at the next grade.

In order to calculate the average level, a numerical value was given to each
level of achievement. Thus, level 1 was given a value of 1 for purposes of
determining the average; level 2, a value of 2; level 3, a value of 3; and level
4, a value of 4. In cases where a student completed the test but did not
demonstrate sufficient understanding to be assigned achievement level 1, the
test was given a value of 0.

The overall rating out of 10 takes into account all report card indicators
used to measure the school's performance. It answers the question, ''In general,
how is the school doing academically?''

Note: Not all the province's elementary schools are rated and ranked in the
report card. In some school districts that operate middle schools or junior high
schools, the elementary schools may not enroll students in Grade 6. Since the
report card is based on the results of tests given in grades 3 and 6, these
elementary schools cannot be included. In addition, schools at which fewer than
15 students were enrolled in each of these grades are excluded. Private schools
and First Nations-operated, federally funded schools are not required to
administer the EQAO tests. Since the results of these tests form the basis for
this report card, only those schools that administer the EQAO tests can be
included. Finally, also excluded are schools that did not generate a
sufficiently large set of student data to enable the calculation of an overall
rating out of 10.

If you have questions about the report card, contact Peter Cowley, director
of school performance studies at the Fraser Institute, at 604-714-4556.

Illustration:
• Graphic/Diagram: (See hard copy for
graphic/diagram).

Edition: Toronto / Late
Story Type: News;
Statistics
Note: Ran with fact box "How to Read the Tables" which has been
appended to the story.
Length: 1905 words