Report Card on Ontario's Secondary Schools : 2001 Edition

Is the school improving academically?
The Trends indicator

The Report Card provides six years of data for most schools. Unlike a simple snapshot of one year's results, this historical record provides evidence of change (or lack thereof) over time.

In order to detect trends in the performance indicators, we developed the Trends indicator. This indicator uses statistical analysis to identify those dimensions of school performance in which there has been real change rather than a fluctuation in results caused by random occurrences. To calculate the trends, the standardized scores rather than raw data are used. Standardizing makes historical data more comparable and the trend measurement more reliable. Because trend calculation is uncertain when only a small number of data points is available, a trend is indicated only in those circumstances where six years of data are available and where it is determined to be statistically significant. For this indicator we have defined the term "statistically significant" to mean that, nine times out of 10, the trend that is noted is real, that is, it did not happened just by chance.

To what extent do socio-economic factors affect the school's overall rating out of 10?

1 The socio-economic indicator

Educators can and should take into account the abilities, interests, and backgrounds of their students when they design their lesson plans and deliver the curriculum. By doing so, they can overcome disadvantages that their students may have. The socio-economic indicator enables us to identify schools that are successful in spite of adverse conditions faced by their students at home. Similarly, it identifies schools where students with a relatively positive home situation appear not to be reaching the level of achievement one would expect.

The socio-economic indicator was derived as follows. First, using enrollment data from the Ministry sorted by the students' residential postal code and census data provided by Statistics Canada, we established a profile of the student body's home characteristics for each of the schools in the Report Card. Then, using multiple regression analysis, we identified several characteristics that were associated with the Overall rating. Results of the regression analysis are reported in Appendix 2. We have adopted one of these characteristics—the average number of years of education of the most educated parent in a two-parent family (or of the lone parent in a single-parent family)—noted in the tables as Parents' average education (yrs.)—as the socio-economic indicator for this edition of the Report Card. We chose this statistic because its association with the Overall rating out of 10 has also been demonstrated in all of the previous Report Cards. When a school has more highly educated parents, the Overall rating at the school is likely to be higher.

2 Does the school meet expectations?

As a measure of the success with which each school took into account the socio-economic characteristics of the student body, we used the formula derived from the regression analysis to predict the Overall rating for each school. We then reported the difference between the actual Overall rating and this predicted value in each school's results table (noted in the tables as Actual rating vs. predicted (given parent's education).

For example, during the 1998/1999 school year, Martingrove Collegiate Institute in Etobicoke achieved an Overall rating of 8.6 and yet, when the family characteristics of the student body are taken into account, the school was expected to achieve a rating of only about 6.7. On the other hand, at South Lincoln High School, in Smithville, while its actual Overall rating was just 4.6, its predicted rating was 6.1. This measurement suggests that Martingrove is more successful than South Lincoln in encouraging and enabling all of its students to reach their potential.

This measure of the effect of the socio-economic background of a school's student body is presented with two important notes of caution. First, only about one-third of the variation among schools in the Overall rating is associated with socio-economic factors. Clearly, many other factors--including good teaching, counselling, and school administration--contribute to the effectiveness of schools. Second, the statistical measures used describe past relationships between a socio-economic characteristic and a measure of school effectiveness. It should not be inferred that these relationships will, or should, remain static. The more effectively the school enables all of its students to succeed, the weaker will be the relationship between the home characteristics of its students and their academic success.

Further, it is interesting that the extent to which students' family characteristics are associated with student results varies from province to province. In contrast to Ontario (and British Columbia) where parental education accounted for about one-third of the variation among schools in the Overall rating out of 10, in Alberta similar analysis showed that parental education accounted for only about 11% of the variation among schools in the Overall rating.²⁰ While further analysis is required, this difference indicates that, on average, schools in Alberta may be more effective in ensuring that all students succeed regardless of their family background. Thus, this socio-economic indicator should not be used as an excuse or rationale for poor school performance. Rather, it should be used simply as one estimate of the extent to which the school has reduced the influence of family characteristics on student success. The effective school will produce good results, regardless of the family background of its students.

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