Province boasts education numbers

Mark Carcasole (CFRB News) - The province has posted progress reports for Ontario's school boards online, allowing parents to lookover various numbers, statistics for individual boards around the province. They say it's one way they're trying to make the school system more transparent.  They're also boasting about many of the numbers in those results.

Ontario's Education Minister, Sandra Pupatello says putting the reports online is "really important in this next step of transparency and openness so that...parents and the public can say 'how is our money doing?'".

They've also setup a website that tracks the reductions in class sizes, published suspension and expulsion numbers for each board, and established a couple commissions to help unify teachers, school boards, and the government.

Pupatello says the reports show 63 percent of Ontario's English-language grade six students are meeting provincial reading standards; about 60% of high school students have earned all their necessary credits by their second year; and 84% of English-language students passed the grade 10 literacy test.  Pupatello calls it "good news for Ontario parents...Their tax payer investment is paying massive dividends."

The Toronto District School Board's numbers aren't looking too bad either: 80% passed the grade 10 literacy test.  However, only 49% have all their required credits by second year.

NDP Education Critic Rosario Marchese says the Liberals are using the positive numbers to change the topic away from the issue of potential funding cuts to the TDSB.  An area he says requires more spending not cutting! "It has a lot to do with spending more...The question is is (the current spending enough) to meet the kinds of issues (plaguing Toronto's schools) or isn't it?  Therefore, we should be spending a little more to get the ebst that we can for our teachers and for our students."

Marchese also accuses the province of making changes to their tests to make them easier, improve the numbers, and make themselves look better.

You can check up on the progress of your kids' schoolboard by logging onto www.ontario.ca/schoolboardprogress .

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