The Fraser Report

The 2009-2010 Fraser Report for Secondary Schools was released a week ago. It is a “report card” on Ontario schools. The report collects a variety of data of relevant objective indicators of school performance. Specifically, the Fraser Report isolates the results of each school's Grade 10 Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) and Grade 9 Math EQAO Assessment.

We are now ranked at the top of our board and sixth in all of Halton.

CtK achieved a score of 7.8/10. Overall, in the Province of Ontario, we ranked 79/727 Secondary Schools.

In the area of Grade 9 Academic Math, CtK's average level was 3.0 on a scale of 1-4.  In the area of Grade 9 Applied Math, our average level was 2.6 on a scale of 1-4.

With respect to the OSSLT, we had a 94.1% success rate.

Last but not least is an indicator that speaks volumes in terms of how close the rest of our students achieved on the OSSLT and the Math EQAO.  Specifically, the percentage of students that were not successful on the literacy test and did not achieve the standard of at least a level 3 on the Math Assessment. Our percentage has fallen every year and is now at 15.5%.  This indicates that more and more of our students are meeting the standard in the OSSLT and EQAO Math Assessment.

http://ontario.compareschoolrankings.org/secondary/Christ_the_King_Catholic_Secondary_School/Georgetown/Report_Card.aspx

As a Commerce graduate, the analysis of data and the use of it to drive our school improvement planning is something of which I spend a great deal of time.  Some of my colleagues and staff would concur.  Our board and even the Ministry of Education stresses the importance of "data-driven" decision-making.

I am the first to acknowledge that the Fraser Report doesn't provide the entire picture of what many would deem a successful school.  While it may provide a piece of the very complicated puzzle that defines a school's success, it doesn't measure credit accumulation, graduation, retention and pass rates for example.  These are key data pieces that schools use to monitor success.

However, what about the intangibles?  How do you effectively measure the success of a school in nurturing variables such as compassion, resiliency, creativity, critical thinking, happiness, self-esteem, school spirit, and equity?  I suppose data can help you gleam suppositions of these variables and surveys may provide some insight but there is always a certain probability of error and bias.  In many cases, these pieces can only be ascertained through anecdotal evidence and through relationship building.

How does one truly measure our cultural monolith...Catholic Leadership Conference... held every year during Catholic Education Week?  Our Catholic Learning Community just knows that it is a very important and famously successful initiative because of what we see, hear and feel during this event.

How does one truly measure the success of our inaugural Grade 8 Sleepover this past weekend?  How will we be able to ascertain what impact this will have on these incoming Grade 9 students with respect to their success in our school over the next four or five years?

Maybe the email from a parent the night of this event thanking me for allowing the sleepover to occur and citing what a wonderful impact it had on her son is all we need to measure our success?

Below is an article from the NY Times that addresses the obsession with data.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/your-money/23shortcuts.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=alina%20tugend&st=cse

Thanks for reading.  Looking forward to your comments.