Halton School Board Rated 5th Worse in Ontario

A group of 13 school boards in Ontario lead the way in terms of student achievement at their schools, according to a report released today by the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Heads of the Class: A Comparison of Ontario School Boards by Student Achievement,” Professor David Johnson identifies the school boards in Ontario that are clearly better than average compared with other boards. He also identifies 10 school boards that are clearly worse than average.

While Professor Johnson’s previous work provided a method to evaluate and compare individual school performance based on student achievement, this study focuses on evaluating the performance of entire school boards. As a starting point, it employs data provided by Ontario’s standardized test results in reading, writing and mathematics in grades 3 and 6. Professor Johnson’s method adjusts these test scores to remove the influence of a school’s socio-economic characteristics to more accurately capture the role of teachers and administrators in student achievement at a school.

“Thirteen boards are clearly better than average in terms of operating schools where student achievement is more likely to be higher” remarked Professor Johnson, a Professor of Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University and Education Policy Scholar at the C.D. Howe Institute. “On the other hand there were 10 boards with below-average student achievement. These boards should be examined further to identify what they are doing right or wrong.”

The 10 worst boards (rated by average probability below and performance gap) according to the report are:

1. Durham
2. Dufferin-Peel Catholic
3. Grand Erie
4. Simcoe County
5. Halton
6. Ottawa-Carleton Catholic
7. Near North
8. Ottawa-Carleton
9. York Region
10. l’Est de l’Ontario (French)

The full report is available at the C.D. Howe Institute website

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