Apparently if you want a good education in Cornwall you need to attend a francophone Catholic school according to the report from the Fraser Institute.
What appears when you peruse the numbers is that Cornwall has a higher percentage of special needs students and a higher number of students who scored below average on tests.
Congrats to Ste Anne’s School as they ranked the highest of area schools at 740th out of 3,046 elementary schools in Ontario.
Rose des Vents had the highest math score for Grade 6 students at 3.6.
It begs the question of where is Cornwall failing? It seems that we have a higher level of special needs students per capita. Is this skewing the numbers? Should these students be integrated with the overall population or are they simply not getting enough support across the board?
Nearby Laggan in Dalkeith scored #1 in the entire Province! What are they doing right?
Less than 2% of tests scored below standards. Laggan only has 16.7% of students with special needs. The numbers do show that they must be doing something right as they elevate from Grade 3 benchmarks to Grade 6.
And the worst school in Elementary Cornwall for this year? St. Columbans ranked 2,944th! They report 56.3% of their students as special needs. As low as their Grade 6 math score of 2.3 is, at least they’re trying as they’ve raised it from below 2!
Clearly there seem to be factors in why Cornwall is scoring as low as it consistently does. 4 out of 14 elementary schools in the top 50% is not a remedy for success, especially when you look at the language demographic?
Is there a problem with the non francophone, non Catholic community that isn’t being addressed? Do the Catholic School boards have better teachers? Are their student families more supportive?
Or is it simply the bully culture of our area which only gets lip service? After all how do you tell children not to be bullies when their parents and grand parents are?
For example when we exposed the defamation by Upper Canada District School Board veteran school teacher (UCDSB) Tracy Champagne, several social media users identifying as her students essentially tried to bully yours truly typing in a similar manner to her post above.
Is this our teachers teaching a culture that leads to such behavior? And if supported and approved by parents long term is it any wonder of our regional results?
After all this is still a community that embraces the students that bullied Ryan Gosling and defends crooks like Gilles Latour, and even more oddly in higher social circles accepts convicted pedophiles, including one former area school teacher recently pictured at the Art Centre Fundraiser.
There are solutions, but until more resources and real decisions to improve are made sadly we will probably see more rankings like this one.
To check out the Fraser Institute report click HERE.
I always take any “report” with a few grains of sand. And Fraser reports always have me question them due to their political leanings. The numbers of any report can be skewed to fit any purpose, something you learn in Grade 8 math. And they won’t rank any school without a Grade 6 class.
Hugger the Fraser reports their methodology and have been consistently putting out these reports which are a valuable tool and credit to them. I think there are too many people that comment without doing their research or looking at what they do.
Glad the Fraser puts this out and if you read enough of these reports you’ll see some interesting trends.
Clearly we’re seeing that where you live and your economic region impact the results. That begs the question of whether it’s the school system or a community issue for places like Cornwall?
If Dalkeith/Laggan can consistently rank at the top what are they doing right with their kids? Again, this is a great resource and I have a hunch that if we finished near the top some of the complainers (including yourself) wouldn’t be complaining as much just like when Moneysense justifiably puts us in the toilet for its entrepreneurial rankings.
CFN is about to celebrate our 10th Anniversary. That’s a freaking miracle in this town, especially in the environment we work in.
I have seen Mark A. MacDonald so often that he is part of Cornhole. To be retired isn’t easy and one has to keep busy. Well I am always busy and always in trouble around here. My family has plenty of good laughs about me forgetting one day from the other. Alzheimers must be setting in. LOL LOL. Mark if you are reading my post keep busy. I almost lost my husband last year at this time.
Perhaps. But I’ve never liked the Fraser Institute from day one. My dislike of them and other think tanks goes way back. The reports do serve a purpose.
If Dalkeith/Laggan can rank high it’s not the school board, but the schools. Research needs to be done to see what causes schools to be constantly near the top.
What is lacking are not the schools themselves but the teachers. You can live in a luxury neighborhood and have bad teachers and live in a crappy neighborhood and have good teachers. Teachers are being turned out from everywhere and not everyone is capable of being a good teacher. The school itself does not represent on how good the teachers are for the students.
Thyroid disease is serious and my daughter is on meds for the rest of her life. A lot of things prevents a child from learning and the list can be long. After the diagnosis my daughter went to a private college here in Ottawa and graduated with a 96.6% and she had this illness for a long time and my husband wondered why she was sleeping all the time and became upset with her.
The schools is very low because there’s so many snow days but even when the buses miss school too they are doing excellent because they are tested and examined regularly to standards, and there is programs to fix problems before they get bad, but any way if it was a test, then 2944 out of 3046 is almost 97%, so… Go St Columban’s Go!!
Low results for some schools are due to “safety days?” WOW, that’s a new one and quite a stretch!!