Does your child’s school board set them up for success?
A recent study, written by a Wilfrid Laurier University professor, gives some insight into how the local school boards compare to those across Ontario.
Signposts of Success: Evaluating Ontario’s Elementary Schools is a recent study from the C.D. Howe Institute looking into which Ontario school boards are outperforming the rest.
“People say everything I find is common sense, and they’re right,” said David Johnson, a professor of economics at Laurier and the author of the report. “Everything that you find in this kind of analysis is, to a very large degree, common sense. What you’re doing is you’re documenting the size of the effect, and you’re documenting that it’s real.”
Johnson’s study showed that the performance of school staff played a key role in the success of students from a wide variety of backgrounds, regardless of whether they’re underprivileged or come from a strong family background.
In Waterloo Region, the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB) performed about average according to Johnson’s findings in mathematics and literacy.
Johnson also found that the Waterloo Catholic District School Board (WCDSB) outperformed the public board in most categories at the Grade 3 level, with the results levelling out to nearly even in the Grade 6 categories.
Generally, separate and private school boards outperformed public boards in the metrics measured in the report, and French-speaking schools outperformed all other schools.
The Niagara District School Board and the Windsor Essex Catholic District School Board outperformed all other boards in the metrics measured in the study.
