April 7, 2009

Dear Premier McGuinty and Minister Wynne,

We are writing to express our grave concern about the new School Information Finder on the Ministry of Education website.

The site includes a very limited set of data about schools: EQAO test results, class sizes, the percentage of university-educated parents, percentage of students from low income families, percentage of ESL students and students from non-English- or French-speaking countries, percentage of special education students and, surprisingly, the percentage of gifted students (though “Gifted” as an exceptionality is a component of special education).

While the Ministry has now removed the “school bag” component of the site, the narrow data remains. Users just need pen and paper to compare schools scores and the socio-economic status of the students. What is implied is that the information will help parents “choose” the best school. It also seems to imply that the data provided are the most relevant data people should use to judge school performance.

Though the site does not allow the ranking of schools on a scale from 1 to 4,900; it allows parents and users to create their own rankings in a very similar way to the rankings of the Fraser and C.D. Howe Institutes.

We are concerned that this site will encourage further social polarization. It may encourage parents to judge schools based on the demographics of the students – choosing schools with fewer low-income students, fewer ESL students and more families with university educations.

The site also encourages a kind of shopping mentality that may be counter to the province’s stated goal of building public confidence in public education. We assume that it is confidence in all our schools that the government is aiming for, but this site, by implication and using a very narrow set of measures, says that some schools are better than others.

We hope the province will withdraw this site and instead focus on developing a broader set of measures by which we can assess school effectiveness and system success and with which we can instil greater public confidence in public education.

Yours truly,

The Undersigned