Waterloo Region schools receive their report cards

The annual Fraser Institute rankings have been released, grading 2,975 elementary schools in Ontario.

Fraser uses a number of academic indicators to hand out scores from zero to 10. The criteria includes reading, writing and math levels on EQAO assessments written by students in grade three and grade six, as well as how many test results were below provincial standards and the percentage of students that did not write the test.

Based on these indicators, Waterloo Region has a wide variety of results.

The International School of Cambridge aced their report card. It’s one of only 13 schools in the province to get a perfect score of 10.

Laurelwood Public School and Abraham Erb Public School in Waterloo ranked top 100 in Ontario with grades of 9.2 and 9 respectively.

New Dundee Public School is the only school in the four townships to also rank top 100, with a grade of 9.1.

On the flipside, there were a few low-ranking schools in the region. St. Gregory Catholic Elementary School in Cambridge received a score of 1.4, making it a bottom 50 school in province. Meanwhile, Cedarbrae Public in Waterloo and Queen Elizabeth Public in Kitchener both ranked bottom with scores of 1.7 and 2.1.

The Fraser Institute stated that their rankings allow parents to compare the academic performance of schools across the province.

“Our Report Cards offer parents information they can’t easily get anywhere else, about how their child’s school performs and how it compares to other schools in Ontario,” said Peter Cowley, a Fraser Institute senior fellow.