EQAO test results disappoint
More than half of Grade 6 students in Ontario didn’t meet the provincial standard in math, according to the latest scores released Wednesday by the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO). An EQAO highlights package of results shows 51 per cent of the 132,766 Grade 6 students assessed in 2018 did not meet the provincial standard.
Individual board and school results will be released Sept. 19. Of the Grade 6 students assessed in 2018, only 49 per cent met the standard, compared to the 54 per cent who achieved it in 2014. “It’s difficult to know why because of the regional differences that exist from board to board,” said Emelda Byrne, the executive superintendent of student achievement with the Windsor Essex Catholic District School Board. Just Tuesday, the provincial Ministry of Education released a teachers’ guide on math fundamentals for Grades 1 through 8. Byrne said the guide has no new content but emphasizes different strategies for learning fundamental math.
“It’s an excellent resource,” Byrne said. “It kind of puts the emphasis on the numbers strand and working with numbers.”
The teachers’ guide mentioned declining math performance and outlining plans “to provide resources to move away from Discovery Math and back to traditional formulas and memorization techniques.”
The guide emphasizes proficiency in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and it states the importance of developing mental math skills with little or no use of a paper or calculator. There is also a parents’ guide encouraging the development of math skills at home.
The EQAO results show a downward trend in math success at the elementary-school level. The percentage of Grade 3 and Grade 6 students meeting the provincial math standard has decreased over the last five years.
Of the 132,656 Grade 3 students assessed in 2018, 61 per cent met the standard, down from the 67 per cent who achieved it in 2014. The highlights showed improvement in elementary reading for both Grade 3 and Grade 6 students but a decline regarding the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test. Of the 122,721 students who wrote the OSSLT for the first time in 2018, 79 per cent were successful compared to 83 per cent in 2014. The EQAO website included comments from its chairman, Dave Cooke.
“Math and literacy are the foundation for the knowledge and skills that students will use in their careers and in society and EQAO’s assessments in these areas helped to identify several trends,” Cooke is quoted as saying.
“In particular, the continued decline in elementary-level math scores suggests that Ontario’s Renewed Math Strategy is not having the intended impact. Parents, educators and policy-makers across Ontario will be looking at EQAO data, alongside other information, to understand what changes need to be made to support our students.”
EQAO’s chief executive officer, Norah Marsh, acknowledged that math achievement in Grade 6 “continues to be a challenge.” Attempts to reach Clara Howitt, who oversees EQAO for the Greater Essex County District School Board, were unsuccessful.
Kim McKinley, chair of the GECDSB, was stumped by the sagging results.
“It’s not like this hasn’t been a major focus,” McKinley said. “We have the math task force, and we’ve been looking at this. Teachers have taken additional professional development. I don’t know the answer to that one.”