Harrowsmith PS recognised for high standardized test scores

Jeff Green | Nov 17, 2011

Photo: Principal Jim Horan (retired), Chantal Lafrance, Virginia Mayhew, Principal Val Arsenault, Janice Miles and Jim Boyce.

The Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) the body that administers standardised student testing in Ontario, has granted a Dr. Bette Stephenson Recognition of Achievement honour to Harrowmsith Public School in recognition of the high level of grade 3 and 6 test scores achieved by the students at the school.

The honour was bestowed at a ceremony on November 7 at the school.

Harrowsmith PS was also singled out as a case study on the journey of learning in an article publicized on the EQAO website. The article talked about some of the measures taken at Harrowsmith “to set very high goals and make them public” in the words of now retired principal, Jim Horan. An outline of some of the early literacy initiatives is reprinted below:

“Five years ago, in response to a review of in-school and EQAO data, Harrowsmith launched a well-publicized community literacy campaign for pre-kindergarten and primary students, which spilled out into the community. The Limestone Learning Foundation, for example, funded a Book-in-a-Bag home reading program for primary students and supplied an abundance of reading materials and “Blast Off ” boxes, allowing Harrowsmith to reach out to parents before their children even entered school … In addition, primary staff and the school council co-hosted literacy evenings during which teachers modelled shared reading strategies to be used at home. Again parental response was overwhelming.”

These initiatives have been coupled with a “focussed, logical progression of school improvement strategies based on systematic longitudinal tracking of individual data through multiple assessment instruments” according to the EQAO article.

The result has been scores that are well above the average for the Limestone Board and the province as a whole