Yesterday we had an administrators' meeting in Wallaceburg. We only have four of these per year, so they tend to be crammed. The Director and Superintendents present and answer questions on topics within their various portfolios. We heard about safe schools, finance, special education, literacy, and many other things as well. The overwhelming focus, however, was student achievement.
You may wonder exactly what 'student achievement' is. The short answer is that it is what the EQAO (Education Quality and Accountability Office) test results say it is. Holy Rosary's results this year were quite good. And while it is useful to have a number to control the wild imaginings about how a school is doing in educating its students, it is clear that the results of standardized testing are not all, or even a large part, of what student achievement is. It seems to me that we identify student achievement with a number at out peril.
My son's volleyball team played a tournament at St. Michael's College School in Toronto a few weeks ago. It is an amazing school, founded in 1852; it has sent 173 players to the NHL. Frank Mahovlich went there, and so did Jason Spezza. It is a private Catholic boys' school with students from grades 7 to 12. There are 1150 students and each pays over $12 000 as day students for the privilege of attending.
My wife and I ate in the school cafeteria at lunchtime on the Friday. The students were dressed in jackets and ties and were polite and well mannered. They talked quietly as they ate, cleaned up their areas when they finished, and tucked in their chairs for good measure. I spent 7 years teaching in a high school and it was as though I were watching the sun set in the east!
The teacher on duty was a 25 year veteran of the school and its science head. I asked him what the most significant behaviour problem at the school was. He said there were no such problems. Students who got into the school had to meet rigorous academic standards. The school offered no applied courses, no co-op opportunities and no special education. Kids who might need such courses or programs, he informed us, tended to drain the school of resources. All the graduates went to university, he told us, and did very well.
I found myself wondering what would happen if one of the school's students had a special needs child himself. Would he see his own child as a drain on his resources? And if he did think this, would we still call him a high achiever? Would we call him well educated?
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