Grade 10 literacy is on the rise in Ontario.
Both local school boards are applauding the latest provincial Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) provincewide test scores showing an 84 per cent of Grade 10 students met provincial literacy standards.I'm sorry, but I can't get excited about the news that "merely" one in six Grade Ten students are illiterate. I certainly wouldn't be singing how this is a massive improvement over more recent scores.
Released yesterday, the results are in line with testing levels in 2006 and 2007 and represent an increase of seven percentage points over the past five years.
One in six. Grade ten. You have to be joking.
The article tries to weasel it from being the fault of incompetent public school teachers in the abysmal failure which is government education, onto... minorities!
Among students learning English as a second language, the success rate reached 59 per cent this year, up from 42 per cent in 2003.
Still not worth a pat on the back, sorry. It reminds me of this cartoon I saw a few weeks back (apparently from a line of girls' handbags) which has a blonde girl telling an asian "you speak English so well" and the asian replying "I was born here dumbass". It seemed to make such a poignant sociological point that you almost missed the key ingredient: its not even remotely true. I can't find a website link for you, but back in the 90s Alberta Report had a story how some 40% or so of ESL students in the Greater Vancouver Area were born in Canada. Being "born here" apparently means nothing when it comes to the ability to speak English.
