Achievement gap narrowed
Local school boards improve test scores by moving closer to provincial standards
WATERLOO REGION — Local elementary students still test below their Ontario peers. But educators see hope in the latest results, across reading, writing and math.
Local schools moved the needle slightly this year, narrowing the achievement gap between Waterloo Region and the province. The gap has widened since 2006 when local students last matched the province.
The Record benchmarked test results released Wednesday to find that 11,834 students in Grades 3 and 6 now score three percentage points behind Ontario, with 67 per cent achieving provincial standards across reading, writing and math. This compares to 70 per cent of Ontario students achieving standards.
These results are for all students at local public and Catholic schools.
“I am pleased that we have been able to close the gap to the province, but we still have work to do to,” John Bryant, education director for the Waterloo Region District School Board, said in a statement.
The public school board educates most local students. It implemented new targets and strategies last year. Bryant figures they are taking root.
About half of local Grade 6 students failed to meet the provincial math standard, roughly the same as the province. That’s one year into an Ontario math strategy that has yet to reverse years of math decline.
In an intriguing result, local students significantly outperformed Ontario students in Grade 9 applied math, testing 10 percentage points above the province’s numbers.
Kelly Sames, 14, helped make this happen, embracing an applied math class she had expected to dislike at Eastwood Collegiate Institute.
Sames struggled with math in elementary school. She disliked being told she had not chosen the correct way to solve a problem. She was anxious about speaking in a classroom. She disliked being paired with stronger students who seemed to her like show-offs. She had to go to math summer school to keep pace.
She got to high school expecting the worst. But when her Grade 9 teacher Mike Reinhart tried teaching math differently, it clicked. Sames smiles recalling how students crumpled pieces of paper and tossed them into waste bins. They measured distances, calculated success rates and tested their findings. They named it trashketball.
She liked working in groups of three to solve problems. It made her feel more confident about speaking up and more confident that her solution would be accepted. She liked being able to move around the classroom and write on the whiteboard while puzzling out a solution.
“I really started to like it,” she said. “It made me feel more confident and it made me want to go to math every day.”
Now she sees that understanding math and data can help her be a better auto mechanic or a better counsellor.
“Math is really important — because there’s numbers everywhere,” she said.
Reinhart modified his teaching last year in two key ways, getting students to talk to each other more, and returning frequently to the same topic, but making it slightly more complex each time.
“The shift last year was to get kids more focused on solving problems and communicating with each other,” he said. “More than ever, last year I was celebrating all the different ways that we could solve a problem.”
With this new approach, Eastwood students almost doubled their success rate in applied math. Among 1,459 Grade 9 applied math students across the region, 54 per cent met the provincial standard. That’s up from 42 per cent a year earlier, according to results from the Education Quality and Accountability Office.
The achievement gap has alarmed educators and economic developers who see students test below average and graduate at a rate below average in a community whose adults are educated below average. It’s seen as a hurdle in a region striving to compete in a knowledge-based economy, while manufacturing jobs disappear and household incomes stall.
Test results show local Catholic students outperformed local public students and also Ontario students, working from an advantage. Restricted admission gives Catholic elementary schools fewer immigrant children and far fewer students who are learning English or who have a different mother tongue, school profiles show.
Test results for the Catholic board stayed steady overall in 2017. The Catholic board says it’s seeing positive results after deploying a math strategy in certain schools.
“We hope to learn from the efforts in these schools in order to continue improving our results across all schools in the region,” Loretta Notten, education director for the Waterloo Catholic District School Board, said in a statement.
The Catholic board frets about gender gaps that show girls typically test better than boys. The board says it continues to “seek innovative strategies to narrow these gender gaps, which are prevalent across Ontario.”
It made me … more confident and … want to go to math every day.” KELLY SAMES, STUDENT