Still no dream house on the horizon, but we've narrowed down our neighbourhood and now just need a house to pop up. Another criteria has been added to our list, again reminding me just how much times have changed - school district.
As we look at schools, I've consulted some of my close friends who are teachers to determine how we should view EQAO testing. Sure, we want to know that our local school has good academic standing, but how much should these scores factor in?
A couple friends have noted that socio-economic situations also can affect scores. Often times in certain neighbourhoods, you have a majority of parents that have been university educated, who work standard work hours, or can afford tutors, and can spend additional time helping their kids with homework. In many Toronto neighbourhoods, English isn't the first language spoken at home, parents work shift work (or maybe even two jobs) therefore may not be able to provide as much help. These types of situations do not show themselves in test scores. I understand how important it is to ensure that kids are learning at a certain rate etc. but with our multicultural society, are we also setting up some schools/neighbourhoods to fail, when they really are doing the best they can?
This is just broad strokes folks. I have not done a lot of reading or research on the topic and I'm not trying to take a political stance on whether standardized testing is good or bad - really, I'm more working through the thought process as I come to understand it from a parent's point of view.
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I found that I used the EQAO as a starting point, then started asking around on mom forums, etc about their feelings toward individual schools. In our situation, the school with the MUCH higher EQAO was where we went, but the opinions of parent's held A LOT of weight in our decision....
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