Ontario’s Self-Directed Learning High Schools Compared

In my last blog post I promised to report back on how Canadian self-directed schools performed against the rest.  One of the fundamental beliefs in self-directed learning is that students learn best when they are provided with choice.  The idea of student choice in education challenges some of the underlying structures of modern schooling.  In particular, I was interested to see how Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School stacked up against other schools.  I learned about Mary Ward listening to Episode 2 of a podcast series called Teaching Out Loud from the Canadian Education Association that focused on innovation in Canadian schools. 

Admittedly, I’ve taken the easy (but controversial) road by going straight to the Fraser Institute.  I normally don’t use the Fraser Institute’s stats to guide my judgement - but in this case I was curious to see how well these schools “tested” against other Ontario schools.  In other words, if a school turns everything upside down, challenges all assumptions and structures, how do they compare in the “standard” measures of performance?  Here is what I learned:

You can see that Mary Ward performs very well compared to the average Ontario high school.  So does another self-directed high school in Hamilton called Westmount (though it doesn’t score as well as MW).  Their non-traditional approaches seem to serve them well on tradition measures. 

So then - why are so few schools innovating in this regard?  Is our system too rigid for this kind of innovation?  Is it too difficult, energy sapping and political to implement the best practices honed through 15 years of implementation at Mary Ward?  I’d like to know way more - I’m going to reach out to some of the innovative staff at Mary Ward.  I’ll let you know what I learn if I get through.  I’ll also post what I know about Mary Ward and their structures separately in the near future.

Post written by Toby Nangle on 5:29am, July 14, 2011
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