Math scores falling among Ontario students

TORONTO — Math test scores among public elementary school students in Ontario have not improved —in some cases they have decreased slightly — despite a $60-million “renewed math strategy” the government had hoped would help solve the problem.

The latest results of the province’s standardized tests — conducted by the Education Quality and Accountability Office — show that only half of Grade 6 students met the provincial standard in math, unchanged from the previous year. In 2013, about 57 per cent of Grade 6 students met the standard.

And among Grade 3 students, 62 per cent met the provincial standard in math, a one-percentage-point decrease since last year.

Norah Marsh, the CEO of EQAO, said math scores remain a concern and digging deeper reveals one area the province would like to focus on.

“For the students who met the standard in Grade 3, not as many are meeting it in Grade 6,” she said. “Certainly, that’s an area of focus as far as intervention between Grades 3 and 6 so they can achieve better results.”

By Grade 9 the gap widens between the math haves and have-nots. In the math academic stream ,83 per cent of students met the provincial standard, the same score as last year, but only 44 percent met the standard in the applied math course, a dip of one percentage point.

The EQAO’s report, released Wednesday, said reading has improved slightly for Grade 3 students, with 74 per cent meeting the provincial standard, and remained steady for Grade 6 students, with 81 per cent meeting the provincial standard.