Child Literacy Rates: Is Over-Reliance on Assistive Technology Handicapping Struggling Readers?

Rising children’s reading scores in Ontario may well be an illusion.  Early literacy rates as measured on Ontario standardized test have, we now know, been inflated by the use of Assistive Technology (AT).  That was the biggest revelation contained in a ground-breaking September 2021 report, Lifting the Curtain on EQAO Scores, produced by the Ontario branch of the International Dyslexia Association (IDA/Ontario).

“There are so many students struggling to read whose experiences are being hidden right now,” says Alicia Smith, president of IDA Ontario. “Our goal in producing this report is to bring attention to the depth of the real issues. These are being swept under the carpet.”

Ontario’s provincial student assessment agency, the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO), has produced some problematic data. Between 2005 and 2019, the EQAO reported a steady increase in reading scores for students in grades 3 and 6.  On the Grade 3 test, the proportion of students meeting the provincial standard reportedly jumped from 59 to 74 per cent, a 15-point gain in the prime indicator of literacy.

What the EQAO did not publicly disclose was that increasing numbers of students were being provided with ‘accommodations’ such as AT when writing the test, which most likely inflated the numbers. Nearly one in five students (18 per cent) utilized AT to complete the EQAO assessment in 2019, up from 3 per cent back in 2005.

Assistive technology is now commonplace in Canadian schools, widely used to diagnose reading difficulties and to provide computer-assisted help with reading. During provincial tests, students with diagnosed reading difficulties are now routinely allowed to either listen to an audio version of the text and comprehension questions.  In many cases, they are accommodated by having adults, either a teacher or a volunteer, who is permitted to write down the student’s verbal response.

Gains in Ontario early reading scores shriveled up almost entirely when the use of assistive technology was factored into presenting the actual results. Whereas 56 per cent of students met the standard without the use of assistive technology in 2005, the figure was only marginally higher at 62 per cent in 2019.

Reported pass rates for the Grade 10 Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) have also been flagged as a cause for concern. While the EQAO reports that the percent of successful ‘first time eligible’ students has hovered between 80 and 82 per cent, the non-participation rate has more than doubled, rising from 8.4 per cent in 2005 to 19 per cent in 2019. Little is known about students who do not write the OSSLT, but Toronto District School Board data reveals that two-thirds (65 per cent) of students who do not participate in the OSSLT do not end up applying for post-secondary education.

When provided with appropriate early instruction, an estimated 95 per cent of all students are cognitively capable of learning to read. In, Ontario and every other Canadian province, the IDA and many reading experts see a large gap between childrens’ human potential and current reading outcomes.

Experienced literacy experts and tutors have seen it all over the years.  “It’s a complete joke,” says Jo-Anne Gross, founder of Toronto-based Remediation Plus. “Most of the kids diagnosed and coded don’t have learning disabilities. They just don’t know how to read.”  Gross applauds IDA Ontario for exposing the hidden problem. “The authenticity of the reading scores is sadly lacking,” she claims, “and the public has a right to full disclosure.”

Ontario parent David Logan, a Kingston father of a Grade 5 son struggling with reading, told CBC News in October 2021 that assistive technology was little help to his son in mastering reading skills and his local public school had no plan to help him progress beyond needing the device. He’s fairly typical of many concerned parents who have come forward to testify at hearings of the ongoing Ontario Right to Read inquiry into human rights issues affecting students with reading disabilities.

While assistive technology can be very useful in helping educators to diagnose particular reading skills deficits, it is problematic when utilized to ‘read’ to students and produce scripts on standardized literacy tests. There are some unintended consequences.  It’s not just the technology, notes University of Toronto clinical psychologist Todd Cunningham, it’s more about the “accommodations” made in completing the test.  He explains what actually happens: “When there are teachers in the room, it’s natural for them to help out struggling kids.“

The recent Ontario revelations inflated EQAO literacy scores do give us some indication of what to expect when the much-anticipated Right to Read public inquiry report finally lands in the spring of 2022.

Why are so many younger students still struggling with reading?  Is there any substitute for effective instruction in early reading?  Should school systems implement end of grade 1 phonics checks as a matter of policy? What is an appropriate role for the use of Assistive Technology? Should AT be used by students completing provincial assessments? If so, does the public have a right to know the extent of its use and literacy rates unassisted by such technology?

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Education Technology Visionaries: What Makes Canadian Ed-Tech Evangelist “Super Mario” Tick?*

Mario is the most iconic fictional character in the global video game industry. At the height of his fame in the 1980s, he was the star of the Nintendo Super Mario series of games, capable of ‘powering-up’ to acquire greater abilities and surmount any obstacle in his path.  

            Today, the Canadian education world has, by strange coincidence, its own version of a video game super hero – Dr. Mario Chiasson, a super-charged technology evangelist with a title to match, Director of Research, Innovations and Change Management in New Brunswick’s Francophone South school district, based in Moncton.

            At last week’s virtual Canadian EdTech Summit 2021, sponsored by Toronto-based Mind Share Learning, Chiasson dazzled the audience of educational leaders and ed-techies with his usual high energy presentation. “We are living in COVID times,’ he declared, “and it’s the era of VUCA.” Succeeding in it, he added, means “embracing the three A’s – agility, adjusting, and adapting.”  “Everything is fast and deep and we need to be responsive to shifts in time, space, and technology.” 

            If you missed all that, you are not alone. Chiasson talks fast and speaks in fluent but nearly impenetrable ed-tech jargon. What is VUCA?  It’s short for today’s “volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous” world driven by “the speed of technology” where the educational system is under pressure from a “digital environment” which is “collaborative and malleable” rather than ordered and set in its ways.

            Putting innovation at the centre of education is his mission and that of his latest visionary ed-tech project, Intrappreueur, aimed at transforming schools with digital technology, artificial intelligence, interconnected robotics, and new forms of management. “Shifting the education culture from an Ego-System to an Eco-Community,” is how Chiasson describes it with his usual vivid metaphoric language.  

            While it sounds like a pipe dream, the project is already underway in six pilot high schools in Francophone South. “We’re out to implify rather than implement innovation,” he told me in a recent interview. Some four out of ten students, he claims, are disengaged and to reconnect with them will require “inclusive, personalized learning.” In his vision, “the class will be transformed into the ‘learning lab’ and the school becomes an innovative community learning centre.”

            School leadership is a preoccupation of Chiasson and that may explain why he spends so much of his time ‘managing upwards’ in the K-12 system.  Since the inception of C21 Canada, the high-tech advocacy group of education executives, he has emerged as a darling of Canada’s CEOs and is closely aligned with the leading ed-tech vendors, including Apple Education, CISCO, InkSmith, and Steelcase Education. To no one’s surprise, Mario was honoured as Innovator of the Year in 2020 by the country’s leading ed-tech promoter, Mind Share Learning.

            Chiasson speaks a lot about what students need to thrive in the digital workplace and, more specifically, how to avoid being casualties of technological acceleration and automation. Today’s schools, he believes, need to set aside the old curricula and embrace the ‘recertification’ of students. “The labour force,” he contends, “needs to be recertified” because of workplace dislocations demanding a new set of skills. “Instead of developing workers, we need to develop young entrepreneurs or intrappreneurs.   

            Now entering his fifties, and after teaching for over 25 years, Chiasson has lost none of his zip and vitality. Born and raised near Tracadie-Sheila, N.B., he mastered coding at age 12 while wiling away the hours in the back of his father’s electrical supply store.  He honed his competitive instincts in provincial-level tennis and earned his first degree in Physical Education at Universite de Moncton (2002) before teaching French Immersion and going on to secure a Masters’ degree in School Administration with a specialty in technology (2004).  That Dr. honourific came in 2020 when Chiasson completed his Ed.D. at U de M under the guidance of Faculty of Education ICT professor Viktor Freiman.    

            Like most ed-tech champions, Chiasson strives to be cutting edge and exudes business savvy.  His own consulting firm, My Device, My Space, My Learning Inc., has a website overflowing with the latest high-tech buzz words.  “Personalized learning,” “project based-learning,” and “experiential learning” are among the most popular.  “It’s all about personalized learning,” he told me. “School is part of the journey and it’s important to introduce teachers to digital language, tools and ways of personalizing their teaching.”

            The New Brunswick intrappreneur high school redesign project now being piloted in Francophone South is explicitly designed to disrupt prevailing school culture. With the support of Superintendent Monique Boudreau and a business-education alliance, Chiasson is out to transform high schools with technology-driven ‘21st century learning’ philosophy, constructivist, student-centred pedagogy and the latest digital tools.

            “Digital IT is the new sandbox of innovation,” he says with a flush of exhilaration. Five years ago, his research revealed a “mismatch of leadership” because senior administrators simply could not understand, or see the value of. digital tools.  That is why changing school leadership outlook and attitudes is deemed to be critical. “We call it ‘Operation Leapfrog’,” he told me, because we’re moving from Leadership 2.0 to Leadership 4.0 embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution.” When it is fully realized, learning spaces will be totally revolutionized. Instead of learning in a six-pack of regular classrooms, high school students may find themselves in large ‘open concept’ spaces looking more like an experimental learning lab with break-out rooms.  

            Chiasson’s futuristic vision pushes at the boundaries with some radical mutations. His Atlantic Institute of Education Summer Institute program July 26 to August 6, 2021, featured a keynote address British high-tech management guru Richard Kelly, the world’s leading proponent of “swarm leadership.”  The core concept was initially conceived by Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health researcher Leonard J. Marcus to explain the massive manhunt following the Boston Marathon bombings. Applying it to educational leadership, Kelly promotes “swarm leadership” inspired by “the ways ants, bees, and termites engage in collective work and decision making.”

            Educational visionaries project a certainty that comes from knowing the answers. Change is the only real constant in the world of the ed-tech evangelist. While leading regional IT initiatives from 2000 to 2004, he saw, first hand, the rise and fall of over-hyped projects such as 1:1 laptops and BYOD (Bring Your Own Devices). “Every two years,” he says now, “there’s a new phase of innovation.”  They didn’t work because “students were not performing” and there was “a gap between the vision and the actual adoption of technology.”

            One of Chiasson’s close allies, Karen Yamada, Chief Learning Officer of C21 Canada and the CEO Academy, cut through the tech-ed bafflegab at last week’s Canadian EdTech Summit. “We were rolling the rock uphill, then COVID-19 hit. It presented us with an opportunity to shake it up,” she said. “People, at all levels, focused on technology for the first time. It breathed new life into moving forward with the OECD Compass for 2030, embracing technology enhanced global competencies.” 

            New Brunswick’s “Super Mario” of digital innovation is an eternal optimist. Like most true believers, Chiasson remains undeterred by old fossils, skeptics, or the wreckage of jettisoned initiatives. “I’m a positivist and aspirational by nature,” he confessed. Confronted by skeptics or nay-sayers, he powers-up and remains steadfast. “I take the time to explain it, so they can understand it better.”  There is, after all, no turning back.

* Adapted from The Telegraph Journal, Brunswick News, November 5, 2021. 

What motivates ed-tech evangelists like New Brunswick’s Dr. Mario Chiasson?  What role does C21 Canada and the C21 CEO Academy play in seeding “21st century learning” in provincial school systems? How much faith should we place in technology as a source of innovative thinking and the route to educational transformation?  To what extent does the ed-tech industry blur the distinctions between private interests and the public good?  Do education technology designers promote innovations based upon forecasts of the “next big thing” or sound educational practice? 

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