Omer-Deslauriers, a French-language public school in Nepean, has improved the most quickly of all the Ontario secondary schools rated in a Fraser Institute report.
That's one of the more intriguing findings in the annual ranking of schools. École secondaire publique Omer-Deslauriers shot from a rating of 3.1 out of 10 in 2011 to 6.6 out of 10 in 2014-15, said the report, released Sunday. That's the fastest rate of improvement among schools included in the report.
It's hard to pinpoint one reason, said Christian-Charle Bouchard, a superintendent at the Conseil des écoles publiques de l'Est de l'Ontario, who was principal at Omer-Deslauriers during that time. But it's a "wonderful, positive school," where staff work together as a team and students have many program choices to indulge their passions, he said.
The Fraser Institute think tank developed its school ranking system using data from provincewide math and literacy tests in Grades 9 and 10 overseen by the Education Quality and Accountability Office.
The annual rankings are a popular source of information -- there were about two million hits to the website ontario.compareschoolrankings.org last year.
Colonel By Secondary School was the top rated among Ottawa high schools for the fifth straight year. It had a score of 9.2 in 2014-15, followed by Earl of March, which had the same rating but came second because its five-year average was lower. The two schools tied for fourth-place ranking among Ontario schools that were included in the report.
Colonel By's rating is perhaps not surprising given that more than half the students at the school are enrolled in the International Baccalaureate, an intellectually rigorous program that attracts top students from across the city.
The lowest rated of the 42 Ottawa secondary schools in the report was Sir Guy Carleton, which caters to students with special needs. It received a rating of 1.1.
The average rating across the province was 6.
The rankings were truncated this year because labour disruptions cancelled some of EQAO testing. No report on elementary schools was produced, and only 676 secondary schools were ranked, compared to 750 last year. Ten high schools from the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board were not ranked.
The highest-ranked school in Ontario was St. Michael's Choir Catholic in Toronto.
Report author Peter Cowley says a variety of factors account for differences in test scores. Family background plays a role, since children whose parents have a high income tend to do better academically. That alone could account for about 20 to 30 per cent of the difference in scores, says Cowley.
And some schools have a higher percentage of students with special needs or who don't speak English or French.
But even after taking such factors into consideration, it's possible that some schools simply do a better job, says Cowley. He's accustomed to critics saying the ratings provide an incomplete snapshot of schools and don't reflect the efforts of students who may not excel on tests but are working to their potential.
Cowley says he agrees there are other components that make up a good school, such as whether students are encouraged to develop an active, healthy lifestyle.
But the rankings provide useful information about academic achievement and help parents and educators determine trends, he says. School boards, for instance, might want to investigate why some schools do better than might be expected, or improve over time, while for others the reverse is true.
Jennifer Adams, director of education for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, says the best thing about rankings is that they "get communities talking about education. It's a starting point for a conversation."
Schools are difficult to rank because they are so complex, cater to the needs of different students, and offer a range of programs, she says.
"When parents are making decisions about the value of their school, what we want them to look at is something much broader than what is typically looked at in the rankings. ... Because really great schools are about kids, about the staff, and about the community partners."
