Cornwall Ontario – When you put politics ahead of kids you get the results that are this years report from the Fraser Institute ranking of 3,037 Ontario Primary schools. Bishop Mac finished 2.997 out of 3,664 which is kinda scary. Clearly our teachers and school boards get a failing mark for this year’s ratings overall.
From the Fraser Institute:
“The Report Card is a valuable tool for parents and educators, who can use it to find schools serving similar students elsewhere in the province that consistently perform better. By doing so, they can access success demonstrated by other similar schools so to improve their own school’s performance,” said Peter Cowley, director of School Performance Studies at the Fraser Institute.
Province-wide test results and the report card help spotlight successful schools across the province that can serve as an example for others to follow. This year, for example, several schools achieved high ratings despite serving higher-than-average percentages of special needs students.
“All too often, principals and teachers try to excuse a school’s poor overall performance by blaming the characteristics of the students or their families, but the results presented in the Report Card show that any school, no matter what challenges its students face, can succeed.”
But this is a resource limited town that just saw a kids charity refuse one year of sponsored advertising in this newspaper, refused in a most unprofessional manner after a second local businessman made a substantial donation. No real reason was given, but then when we looked at its board it was chaired by our own police chief, Dan Parkinson.
But that’s for another story.
Right now what’s even scarier is as bad as our community ratings go, both UCDSB schools and the Catholic board (with the exception of Rose des Vents) our school rankings have plunged since 2014! Only four of our schools were under the 2,000 rankings compared to six in 2014. Both school boards boycott this newspaper btw with Cogeco and City worker Todd Lalonde chairing the CDSEBO board by acclamation. With leadership like that is it any surprise where our school rankings are?
While Rose des Vents improved from 872 yo 455, some of the other drops were huge!
The brand new spanking Bridgewood finished at 2,715. East Front had been at 796. So much for that investment of public cash. Pretty building turning out zombies instead of future leaders.
Immaculate Conception fell from 796 to 1,206.
St. Anne’s from 1,469 to 1,962
Eamer’s Corners plunged from 1,469 to 2,434, nearly 1000 rankings!
Central 2,375 to 2,843
Nearby Brockville had 5 of its 9 schools rank under 2,000.
Rothwell Osnabruck in Ingleside was a disaster at 2,877
St. Andrews West finished 2,478
Surely we need some answers in this part of Ontario because poorly taught elementary students don’t have much hope for secondary or higher education.
What do you think dear CFN viewers? Are your children going to some of these underperforming schools and what do you think the answers are to improve? You can post your comments below.
My daughter goes to Bishop MacDonell and she is doing fine.
The Fraser Institute is a far-right group that has no use for public education, or publically funded anything. Every year it puts out these so called school ratings just to stir up poop.
Go figure, when teachers receive merit based raises instead of unions negotiating increases regardless of demonstrated achievement the students fair better. I.e. Massachusetts private schools. Teachers need to be held accountable for their charges results. They need to be professional and take ownership of failure. IMO
Furtz, education is one of the institutes areas of focus and that they are a registered charity that is publicly funded. So pray tell what makes them far right? Or what makes the far left (liberalism, socialists, communists etc.) more palatable?
I’m with Furtz in not liking the Fraser Institute, but for different reasons. Here’s info on them. It’s their controversies that they’ve been involved in and their holier than thou attitude that I don’t like.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraser_Institute