Why we should be wary of Ontario’s high-school graduation rate
TheStar.com – Opinion/Commentary – While we want as many students to succeed as possible, if we make the bar too low, we run the risk of devaluing the diploma.
Jul 22 2015. By: Sachin Maharaj, Freelance Opinion writer
For some time, Ontario has been recognized as having one of the best school systems in the world. And a key component of this claim has been its ever-increasing high-school graduation rate. Indeed, the increase has appeared quite impressive, as over the last decade the province’s graduation rate has increased from 68 to 84 per cent. But while there has been much to celebrate about Ontario’s approach to education reform, a closer inspection of its official graduation rate also reveals reason to be concerned.
So how has Ontario managed to increase its graduation rate so substantially in such a short period of time? One way is that it changed its approach to education — and for the better. In many parts of the world, schools still serve primarily a sorting function. And by that I mean they exist largely to sort the “smart” children from those that are less so.
The thinking behind this is that there are natural variations in children’s abilities and therefore it makes sense to group them accordingly. The problem with this line of thinking is that students that are not doing well in school often suffer from a lack of motivation rather than a lack of innate intelligence. And school systems that sort children (especially at an early age) tend to simply relegate these low-achieving students to low-quality schools and programs where they end up doing even worse.
By contrast, Ontario decided to adopt the philosophy that it is the job of teachers and schools to unlock the potential of all students, especially those that are not doing well. To do this, the province provided more resources to schools so that they could focus more intently on low-achieving students, under the correct belief that if you intervene early, you can actually increase their motivation and achievement. And this approach is undoubtedly one of the reasons that more students now graduate.
However this does not tell the whole story. Part of the reason the graduation rate is increasing is that standards for graduation have been lowered. For example we now have credit recovery programs, whereby instead of a student having to retake a class they failed, they may be able to complete a few additional assignments in order to achieve the credit. While this may help some students, it can come at the expense of academic rigour and may not prepare them well for either post-secondary education or the working world. In addition, pressure is often placed on teachers simply to artificially increase the grades of students from a failing mark to a passing one, especially if they are close to graduating.
But perhaps a bigger issue is simply the way the rate is calculated. Ontario’s ministry of education includes in its official graduation rate those students who take five years to complete high school, even though it is meant to be completed in four. This makes no sense given that the four-year high school program was introduced back in 2003, and that in order to save money the ministry is now trying to clamp down on students who come back for a fifth year by limiting the number of courses they can take.
Part of the reason that this practice continues is that Ontario’s four-year graduation rate, at only 75 per cent, is decidedly less impressive. This is especially true given that the U.S. Department of Education recently reported that America’s four-year graduation rate has increased to 81 per cent. Thus if Ontario trumpeted its four-year rate, it would be claiming that it is performing about as well as states like Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida. But of course, there are also issues with the official U.S. graduation rate — an investigation by NPR recently called into question the legitimacy of America’s recent increase.
So perhaps it is simply best to take any official graduation rate with a grain of salt. In any case, rather than simply blindly pursuing higher graduation rates, we should also be pausing and reflecting on what exactly we want a high-school diploma to mean. After all, while we want as many students to succeed as possible, if we make the bar too low, we run the risk that achieving a high-school diploma will lose all meaning.
Sachin Maharaj is a PhD student in educational policy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto and is a teacher in the Toronto District School Board
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Tags: ideology, standard of living, youth
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