The latest student achievement results, featured in the April 30, 2018 Pan-Canadian Assessment Program (PCAP) 2016 report, prove, once again, how system-critical testing is for K-12 education. Students in every Canadian province except Ontario saw gains in Grade 8 student scores from 2010 to 2016 and we are now much the wiser. That educational reality check simply confirms that it’s no time to be jettisoning Ontario’s Grade 3 provincial tests and chipping away at the reputation of the province’s independent testing agency, the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO).
The plan to end Grade 3 provincial testing arrived with the final report of Ontario: A Learning Province, produced by OISE professor Carol Campbell and her team of six supposedly independent advisors, including well-known change theorists Michael Fullan, Andy Hargreaves and Jean Clinton. Targeting of the EQAO was telegraphed in an earlier discussion paper, but the consultation phase focused ostensibly more on “broadening measures of student success” beyond achievement and into the largely uncharted realm of “social and emotional learning” (SEL).
The final report stunned many close observers in Ontario who expected much more from the review, and, in particular, an SEL framework for assessment and a new set of “student well- being” reports for the 2018-19 school year. Tampering with Grade 3 testing made former Ontario Deputy Minister Charles Pascal uncomfortable because it interfered with diagnosis for early interventions.
It also attracted a stiff rebuke from the world’s leading authority on formative assessment, British assessment specialist Dylan Wiliam. He was not impressed at all with the Campbell review committee report. While it was billed as a student assessment review, Wiliam noted that none of the committee members is known for expertise in assessment, testing or evaluation.
Education insiders were betting that the Kathleen Wynne Liberal-friendly review team would simply unveil the plan for “broader student success” developed by Annie Kidder and her People for Education lobby group since 2012 and known as the “Measuring What Matters” project. It is now clear that something happened to disrupt the delivery of that carefully nurtured policy baby. Perhaps the impending Ontario provincial election was a factor.
Social and emotional learning is now at the very core of Ontario’s Achieving Excellence and Equity agenda and it fully embraces “supporting all students” and enabling them to achieve “a positive sense of well-being – the sense of self, identity, and belonging in the world that will help them to learn, grow and thrive.”
The Ontario model, hatched by the Education Ministry in collaboration with People for Education, is based upon a psycho-social theory that “well-being” has “four interconnected elements” critical to student development, with self/spirit at the centre. The whole formulation reflects the biases of the architects, since grit, growth mindset, respect and responsibility are nowhere to be found in the preferred set of social values inculcated in the system. Whatever the rationale, proceeding to integrate SEL into student reports and province-wide assessments is premature when recognized American experts Angela Duckworth and David Scott Yeager warn that the ‘generic skills’ are ill- defined and possibly unmeasureable.
Evidence-informed researchers such as Daisy Christodoulou, author of Making Good Progress (2017), do not support the proposed change in Ontario student assessment focus. Generic or transferable skills approaches such as Ontario is considering generate generic feedback of limited value to students in the classroom. Relying too heavily on teacher assessments is unwise because, as Christodoulou reminds us, disadvantaged students tend to fare better on larger-scale, objective tests. The proposed prose descriptors will, in all likelihood, be jargon-ridden, unintelligible to students and parents, and prove particularly inaccessible to students struggling in school.
One of the reasons Ontario has been recognized as a leading education system is because of its success over the past 20 years in establishing an independent EQAO with an established and professionally-sound provincial testing program in Grades 3, 6, and 9 and a Grade 10 literacy test that needs improvement. Legitimate teacher concerns about changes that increase marking loads do need to be addressed in any new student assessment plan and so do objections over the fuzzy, labour-intensive SEL student reports.
The proposal to phase out Ontario provincial testing may already be dead in the water. If it is, you can guess that the April 30, 2018 editorial in The Toronto Star was definitely a contributing factor. If the Wynne Liberals go down to defeat in the June 2018 election, the whole plan will likely be shelved or completely revamped by a new government.
Whether you support the EQAO or not, the agency has succeeded in establishing reliable quality standards for student performance in literacy and mathematics. Abandoning Grade 3 testing and gutting the EQAO is not only ill-conceived, but ill advised. Without the PCAP and provincial achievement benchmarks we would be flying blind into the future.
What can possibly be gained from eliminating system-wide Grade 3 provincial assessments? How does that square with research suggesting early assessments are critical in addressing reading and numeracy difficulties? Without Ontario, would it be possible to conduct comprehensive Grade 3 bench-marking across Canada? If staff workload is the problem, then aren’t there other ways to address that matter? And whatever happened to the proposed Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) assessments and reports?
Paul, could you expand a little more on early interventions and the concerns of the Deputy Minister. All I ever saw was some reading intervention in grades 1 and 2 and virtually nothing afterwards, but that is only personal experience.
Paul,I for one am in full agreement with your article.
I found it very encouraging that Charles Pascal dared to disagree with the group.Until then I thought they were railroading it in.
Early intervention is so very important,we need to keep the pressure on.
Sadly Joanne, there are no interventions. Does the Deputy Minister know this?
There most certainly are-Fountas and Pinell has flooded the school system,it`s still not teaching kids to read and spell-the LL idea is a marketed phenomenon and not one implementing research but it`s out there in many many schools.
We need to be doing so much more,it depends on the Superintendents and their priorities.Each board is different.
Technology has been extremely damaging!
A speech path in horror told me that it had quadrupled their problem kids over the years.
Depending on the election, but not just on the election, this issue may be a “non-issue”. Pascal, Wiliam et al have a point which makes me wonder why the “Study” was done.
Joanne. a misunderstanding. I know that there are many very useful interventions and much of what we do makes things worse for students. However. I have never seen gr 3 eqao data used to provide any useful assistance which is I think what Pascal meant. The data comes out several months later and the grade 4 teacher plugs away under the same regime. Real interventions are needed, real extra staff are needed, real remedial help is required; I am in full agreement with you on those topics. I am not sure what Charles Pascal was referring to when he made his comment and my original comment had asked for clarification.
I did see grade 1, 2 and 3 teachers discuss the data in preparation for the subsequent grade 3 test. There is a major push to increase scores no matter what, which can certainly conflict with student education (within the current system.)
I have never said that I am against testing or accountability. Did I have many serious concerns about what I saw? Yes. Very many serious concerns. Teachers raise these concerns repeatedly and it is they who see and must deal wirh these serious and valid concerns on a daily basis. Do I think these concerns are really heard and acted upon. Not at all.
Like Teresa, I have made the point to EQAO people that the tests should happen at the beginning of a year so that teachers can do something with the data. I first made this point as a legal expert in a court case a decade and a half ago brought on by some parents suing over the consequences of the Literacy test.
I do wonder why this recommendation was never considered. I suspect the decision was political going back to the PC government at the time and never by their successors.
I know Teresa,the system is deaf to the needs of children.
If the tests are removed,I fear things getting worse,no accountability or transparency-could be a toxic mix and make things worse.
Having scores in a newspaper means Hamilton or Sudbury are under a parent`s watchful eye-sure they can make excuses but sooner or later people want answers.
The math-absolutely horrendous that the discovery curriculum hasn`t been trashed-what does it take?
There is a vast difference between having an eqao test and an eqao system of education. Eqao is supposed to close the achievement gap and is designed to get low numbers of level 1 and 4. The goal is to get 75 percent achieving level 3, an admirable enough goal.
The devil is in the details. Writing curriculum contains certain topics and many seem fair enough. I will bet my bottom dollar that I know what is emphasized in PD and what gets very short shrift or no mention at all (across grades 1 to 6. )
Closing the achiement gap and getting 75 percent of students gives us a level of standardization, uniformity but high scores and high standards are not the same. When I look at the writing I have seen the words
‘ middling mediocrity’ come to mind. To answer the original question. We have gained, but we have also lost. Depends what people want.
i am open to any correction.
There is no relationship between testing and improvement.
Look at USA. Case closed. No individual action takes place regarding the results.
Every single year the poor do badly because of poverty, not because of anything that happens in school. The affluent do well.
We can easily list the league table results before the test is ever given
Finland very little testing. They dont seem to suffer.
Just help schools where kids are poor and try to end poverty. Not brain surgery
Testing has created and is on the way out, a casualty of the overall failure of corporate education reform.
Crested*
They never shelved Whole Language and Discovery Math and “social contructivism” fiasco..decades of flawed instruction,how can we do better?
Interesting to see how grade 3 EQAO numeracy test has developed over the years.
http://mightymath.weebly.com/grade-3-eqao.html This is 2006-2011. Examine carefully.
These are from 2015. http://www.eqao.com/en/assessments/primary-division/assessment-docs/g3-math-bklt-2015.pdf
All are questions officially released by EQAO
Consider that 8 year olds write this test and that format is very important at that age.
Paul’s original question. What are we gaining or losing?
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