In the 1991-92 school year, the Ontario (Canada) Ministry of Education conducted a province-wide writing review of Grade 12 students. The purpose was to provide public accountability at the school board and provincial levels, by gathering information on school program implementation and student achievement in English. Results of this survey, however, should not be interpreted out of context, especially with regard to Toronto's students. The composition of students at Toronto (Ontario) schools should be considered if the test results are to be accurately understood because in that area the proportion of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students is proportionately higher. A breakdown of the overall results by students' response to the ESL enrollment question, which may be a more useful way of presenting the data, indicates that the performance of non-ESL students was somewhat parallel to that of the province. The breakdown does, however, reveal that Toronto's ESL students lagged behind the provincial results for ESL students. One possible reason for the gap is the different background of Toronto's ESL students from those of other jurisdictions. Unfortunately, the 1991-92 Review did not have information on ESL students' background to allow analysis of its relationship to performance. Other performance factors appeared to be gender, time spent working, and the level of difficulty of previous English courses taken. Review data revealed that more time could be spent in writing across the curriculum and using computers in writing. (Includes two tables and nine figures of data.) (TB)