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How does Linden evaluate its students?
How do they perform on standardized tests? How successful
are its graduates?
The school evaluates students four times
a year and sends home one interim and three end-of-term reports.
It participates in the Ontario Ministry of Education's Grade
10 literacy test as well as the University of Waterloo math
contests.
Linden has chosen to opt out of the Ontario
government's standardized Grades 3 and 6 tests because the
Principals believe that while Linden students would perform
well above the provincial requirements, it would not be worth
the time taken away from Linden's more valuable curriculum.
It might even prove expensive if this time had to be made
up during the school year.
In Grade 11 and 12, Linden students write
PSATs and SATs, which are used for university admission. Such
scores are not made public, but are used privately to measure
Linden's accomplishments against those of other independent
girls' schools. Test scores are consistently high, and have
led the Co-Principals to conclude that Linden's curriculum
and pedagogy are meeting their goals.
Proof of Linden's academic success lies
in the fact that each of its graduates have been accepted
into the programme and university of her choice. Members of
Linden's 2002 and 2003 graduating classes were each accepted
in four or more top Canadian universities, and each was offered
one or more scholarships. Even more telling is the number
of Linden students now being offered early university acceptance
-- a recent trend that reflects the fierce competition among
Ontario post-secondary schools for top students. This year,
Linden graduates started receiving university acceptance offers
in February.
Linden students have attended Queens, McGill,
University of Toronto, Western, York, Ryerson, University
of British Columbia, Windsor, Guelph and Trent, as well as
U.S. and European universities, including Wesleyan and Yale.
Of the young women who have completed their undergraduate
degrees, some have gone on to graduate school while others
have opted to travel or apply for internships. Two of Linden's
graduates have been accepted as interns at the United Nations,
where one is now employed at an agency that lobbies the Security
Council on behalf of women around the world. Two students
from the original 1993-1994 class are currently doing graduate
work on full scholarships, one a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford
and the other at New York University (NYU).
The best measurement, however, is found
in what former students and graduates say, and the Principals
receive a lot of mail from former students. One former student
told us about how she discovered that the values and skills
she had been taught at Linden turned out to be the best preparation
she'd received for dealing with the challenges of the 'real
world'.
Another young woman wrote that after attending
Linden, she had no fear or hesitation when participating in
university classes containing hundreds of people. She said
that in her first week at university, even though she was
in lecture halls with students from much larger schools, she
was one of the few people (and in one case, the only person)
confident enough to sail right in and ask questions.
Another former student, then in her second
year at the University of Toronto, wrote to thank the Linden
teachers for all they'd taught her. "When I look back
at all my school years…my time at Linden was the best,
both personally and academically," she wrote. "Since
I left, I feel that I have lost an academic standard unique
to Linden, and I really regret that. It is an accomplishment
for you to enforce such a high standard and honestly improve
the intellectual capacities of your girls, and I am very honoured
to have had a chance to experience that in my life."
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