EQAO falls short of lofty goals
RE: EQAO fosters improvement in schools (June 9)
As an educator for over 30 years who has administered the EQAO assessment both at the Grade 3 and Grade 6 level and a parent who has received EQAO results, I can speak with some understanding about this topic. I do understand the stated rationale Dr. Richard Jones cites in his rebuttal of Mr. Ken Durkacz’s early commentary (June 5) but the reality of what really happens in schools does not match up. The following is how EQAO plays out in the schools I have worked in and some related questions.
Instructions and packages arrive in a school in late May. There is a script to be followed for administration of each section of the assessment. How can the EQAO body insure that the script is followed in every classroom in every school in Ontario and all “support” charts/posters/tools are covered or removed? I respectfully suggest they can not. This makes the validity of any results questionable as assessment results are only as good as the fidelity of the administration.
Sometime around March, perhaps earlier, EQAO begins to play upon the minds of Grade 3 and 6 teachers and school boards. It is supposed to be an assessment of student learning of the Ontario curriculum but it is also, in the minds of many, an assessment of how well teachers are teaching. As a result, previous years’ assessments are located and ‘test prep’ is begun. Some (maybe a great deal) of teachers teach to the test. PD for grade 3 and 6 teachers is provided to ensure students are working on ‘EQAO type’ questions.
Administration takes place over a period of time determined by each individual school. Not every student across the province writes sections of this assessment at the same time, in the same order or even on the same day. Once again, this, in my opinion affects the validity of the results for a multitude of reasons.
Teachers who are administering EQAO are instructed that aside from the prepared script they are not to provide support for students. All year long, as educators, we have instructed students to ask for help if something is not understood and point them in the direction of where they can locate necessary information to ‘figure things out’. Now we must leave them to fend for themselves. I suggest many teachers, myself included, do not do this but instead provide ‘hints’ to help them. Validity of the assessment, once again, is questioned.
EQAO results for the previous school year are released in the fall. School boards and local media publish results which in fact ends up being an unofficial ranking system for schools. I have seen real estate adds promoting new developments that, as part of the ‘sell’, tell parents that the school their child would be attending has received high EQAO results. Schools are judged by their numbers without consideration of a number of mitigating circumstances.
Results are shared with teachers and as Mr. Durkacz states there is no surprise. Teachers know from day to day work with students what they are good at and what they are not. We are directed to dig deeper into the results to inform a school improvement plan or to inform changes in instruction. Does this happen? Superficially it does. Does it make for lasting changes? No, because teachers already know what the students before them need and use that information to inform improvement plans and teaching strategies on an ongoing yearlong basis.
So this is how EQAO goes. Is it valuable to the classroom teacher? No. Is it valuable to the public or parents? No. Save the stated 35 million dollars (not to mention the salaries of nine members of the board of directors) and invest in a completely paperless online assessment, administered on the same days, across the province or do away with this tax dollar waste altogether.