TORONTO—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 compareschoolrankings.org.
Media Contact:
Peter Cowley, Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
peter.cowley@fraserinstitute.orgTo arrange media interviews or for more information, please contact:
Bryn Weese, Fraser Institute
bryn.weese@fraserinstitute.org
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 86 think-tanks. Its mission is to measure, study, and communicate the impact of competitive markets and government intervention on the welfare of individuals. To protect the Institute’s independence, it does not accept grants from governments or contracts for research. Visit fraserinstitute.org.
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