Apr 7, 2009
The Canadian Press
TORONTO ? Parents want to know how many students attending a school weren't born in Canada and how many of them come from low-income families, Premier Dalton McGuinty said Tuesday as he launched a spirited defence of a new Education Ministry website.
The opposition parties and the advocacy group People for Education have raised concerns about the demographic information on the School Information Finder website, which was launched last Friday, and even convinced the government to remove a function that compares schools.
However, McGuinty said the information about immigration, income levels and even such things as the number of special-needs students in a school would continue to be posted by the Education Ministry.
"From time to time I think it's important we recognize parents' interests in these things," he said.
"I know we heard from the stakeholders yesterday, but if you were to ask parents whether or not they want this information, I know what their answer is: yes, they want this information."
The New Democrats said the only reason parents would need information on the number of new Canadians or family income levels is to hunt for the best schools instead of going to the nearest one in their neighbourhood.
"That kind of information simply makes it easier for parents to say, `Oh-oh -- I'm not sending my kids here,"' said NDP education critic Rosario Marchese.
"It allows parents to choose the best schools with the best results so their kids will do better. That's the way they look at these things."
McGuinty said he knows some education groups also oppose the use of demographic data on the website, but insisted the government had a duty to provide the information, especially when there are private websites that rank schools based on little data.
"Parents want this information," he said. "We've got a responsibility to make it available in an intelligent, understandable and comprehensive way."
McGuinty made it clear the government was not ranking public schools, which he said was being done on websites by two right-wing think-tanks, the C.D. Howe Institute and the Fraser Institute.
The Education Ministry site does give "apples to apples" comparisons of schools with families with similar income levels, said McGuinty, who noted they aren't necessarily the poorest-performing schools academically.
"There are some really great stories about schools that, given the levels of parental education and household income and the number of new Canadians, that you think those schools shouldn't be performing well," he said.
"In fact, there are a number of those schools that are performing extraordinarily well."
After meeting Monday with various educators and parents who regularly give her advice, Education Minister Kathleen Wynne agreed to temporarily remove a "shopping bag" feature on the website that allowed parents to compare up to three schools at a time.
"There was a strong concern about that particular function ... that there was a desire to rank schools, and that is exactly what we're not doing," Wynne said.
"I listened to them. I'm taking it down while we have that discussion at the working table."
The Progressive Conservatives accused Wynne of "a massive flip-flop" for removing the comparison function from the website.
"For the minister to put a tool on the website and then reverse herself and take the tool away from the website, but not eliminate the information, is nonsense," said Opposition critic Peter Shurman.
"The government doesn't know what it wants to do."
The School Information Finder website can be found at www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/sift/.