'Introduction
The Report Card on Ontario’s Secondary Schools 2012
(hereafter, Report Card) collects a variety of relevant,
objective indicators of school performance into one,
easily accessible public document so that anyone can
analyze and compare the performance of individual
schools. By doing so, the Report Card assists parents
when they choose a school for their children and
encourages and assists all those seeking to improve
their schools.
The Report Card helps
parents choose
Where parents can choose among several schools for
their children, the Report Card provides a valuable tool
for making a decision. Because it makes comparisons
easy, it alerts parents to those nearby schools that
appear to have more effective academic programs.
Parents can also determine whether schools of interest
are improving over time. By first studying the Report
Card, parents will be better prepared to ask relevant
questions when they visit schools under consideration
and speak with the staff.
Of course, the choice of a school should not be
made solely on the basis of a single source of information.
Web sites maintained by Ontario’s Education
Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO),1 the provincial
ministry of education, and local school boards
may also provide useful information.2 Parents who
already have a child enrolled at the school provide
another point of view.
Naturally, a sound academic program should
be complemented by effective programs in areas of
school activity not measured by the Report Card.
Nevertheless, the Report Card provides a detailed
picture of each school that is not easily available
elsewhere.
The Report Card facilitates
school improvement
The act of publicly rating and ranking schools attracts
attention and this can provide motivation. Schools
that perform well or show consistent improvement are
applauded. Poorly performing schools generate concern,
as do those whose performance is deteriorating. This
inevitable attention provides an incentive for all those
connected with a school to focus on student results.
However, the Report Card offers more than just
incentive. It includes a variety of indicators, each of
which reports results for an aspect of school performance
that may be improved. School administrators
who are dedicated to their students’ academic success
accept the Report Card as another source of opportunities
for improvement.
Some schools do better than others...'