More questions than answers

Like most parents with young children, I can be a bit obsessed about their future prospects - especially the quality of education they receive.

My son Ethan's school, St. Patrick's in Harrowsmith, fared decently in the Fraser Institute rankings. Indeed, it was the top ranked rural school - public or separate - in the area covered by the Limestone District and Algonquin and Lakeshore District Boards.

Mind you, there were at least 10-12 elementary schools, mostly Kingston-based, that ranked higher. I took that with a grain of salt. Family income and education levels have an impact, and Kingston is a university and public service town, so incomes and education levels are no doubt higher in the city core.

Then, today, the CD Howe Institute comes up with its own rankings - designed to 'correct' for such issues as family incomes, education, and such.

Clearly, Kingston schools in the less affluent areas moved up in the rankings, and the schools in the wealthy areas held their own.

The good news was that my son's school was the top rural performer once again. The bad news is that it remained roughly int he same position as in the Fraser study.

For the longest time, I have felt that rural schools were getting shortchanged compared to their urban counterparts. The fact that urban schools - rich and poor - can shift so dramatically in the two rankings, while rural schools remain static, does not give me hope of being wrong.

It comes down to separating what is different between urban and rural schools.

We know that teachers' training is standardized in the province, and that the possibility of good and bad teachers runs equally whether it is a rural or urban school, so take that out of the equation.

We also know that the curriculum and the tests are also the same, so remove that as a factor.

We could look at family incomes, and the education level of parents, but the good folks at the CD Howe Institute have removed that difference.

Same teachers, same lesson plans, same standardized tests, and remove the family's economic and education levels as factors - urban schools can move with ease up the rankings while rural schools are glued in place.

The only factor that is not accounted for is how much we spend on rural schools compared to urban ones, or what programs and facilities are available to rural students compared to their city counterparts.

Liberal and conservative think tanks seem to differ on what makes some schools better than others. The only thing they agree on is that rural schools are mired in the middle - and that is cold comfort to any parent in this riding.