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EQAO provides a survey every year and one of the questions for the elementary schools is:

I like to read most of the time - yes/no.  I've graphed the results for the last four years (the question does not appear to be asked before then) and these are the results.  Grade 3 results look to be fairly consistent - the scale makes 2013/2014 look like a bigger dip than it is - I'm not sure if a decrease of 2.5% would be statistically significant.  I am concerned with the drop by grade 6 - 7% decrease is fairly large and more importantly the trend is decreasing.  

The trend concerns me because it matches the decrease in teacher-librarians over that same period.  There are a number of research studies showing the impact that school teacher-librarians have on student achievement (you can access some of them here).  The fact that less students like to read is reflected in our reading results - for 2015-2016 17 schools had 75% or more of their students performing at level 4 or above.  2013-2014 it was 23 schools.  

It would be simplistic to stop here.  I will be revisiting this topic and looking at different data.  At the end of the day there are no easy answers but as a teacher-librarian I feel it is my duty to start a conversation on this issue.  What are we doing to ensure our students love to read?  Talk to me - @ianmct