Just as the Ford government is penning its curriculum for mathematics, the Education Quality and Accountability Office has released results of standardized tests last spring.
Last month, new Education Minister Lisa Thompson called the results "unacceptable", and condemned the province's "Discovery Math" curriculum.
The Ford government has promised it will rejig the curriculum to focus more on memorization techniques and refocus $55 million to improve results.
Wednesday, parents had the opportunity to see the results for themselves.
While the Greater Essex District Public School Board is celebrating what it calls "positive trends" in reading and writing, math scores continue to lag behind the provincial average.
It says 72 per cent of grade three students scored met or exceeded the provincial standard in reading, up seven per cent over the past five years. Math scores did not change. The board says 57 per cent met or exceeded the standard, continuing a five-year slide from the 2013-2014 school year.
Only 47 per cent of grade six students scored at least the provincial standard in math, five per cent lower than five years ago. They did continue to improve in reading and writing. The results say 80 per cent met or exceeded the provincial standard in reading, 77 per cent in writing.
Of grade nine students in applied math, 57 per cent met or exceeded provincial standards; 86 per cent in academic math. Those marks were actually above the cross-provincial score which was 45 per cent and 84 per cent respectively.
As for the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test, 77 per cent of grade ten students passed on the first attempt, down two per cent from last year.
The Windsor Essex Catholic District School Board showed higher than provincial average scores in grade three and grade six reading, writing, and math. In grade three math, 63 per cent met the standard compared to 61 per cent provincially, and in grade six math, five per cent more local students met the standard.
89 per cent of grade nine academic math students in the Catholic board and 59 per cent of academic math students scored at or above the provincial standard.
The results were encouraging in literacy test results too. Locally, 85 per cent of grade ten students passed compared to the provincial average of 79 per cent.