EQAO testing provides little to no real value
With the season of EQAO testing soon to be upon us, it seems like a good time to examine the tests and the office itself.
What value do they provide for the money spent on testing and administration?
I would argue that EQAO provides little to no value, as nothing new is learned from test results.
The EQAO website tells us the costs to run the tests and the organization itself are around $35 million a year. In a letter defending the existence of EQAO, we are told this is not really that much money, and would only amount to a savings of $22 per student if the organization was abolished and the money put into the classroom.
While that may be true, I’m sure teachers could suggest many ways in which $35 million to $40 million could be used.
For example, it could be used to hire an additional 920 educational assistants across the province. Or it could be used to more adequately fund libraries across the province. Both would provide much better value than the tests, and make for better schools.
The main problem with EQAO is that the test results don’t tell us anything that classroom teachers don’t already know.
There are a lot of students who are struggling, in every grade, and especially in math. One could look at results across the board and see that there are significant percentages of students who are not performing to provincial expectations.
Does this mean we should be holding almost 50 per cent of students back until they achieve the provincial average? Ministry and EQAO officials would say absolutely not. So what do the results mean?
The test scores have no meaning when it comes to evaluating students for their report card grades. More importantly, the nature of the test has virtually no relation to the assessment of student work set by the Ministry of Education.
EQAO tests are highly structured, timerestricted, one-time activities. No chance to rewrite. No advice from teachers. It is a completely artificial and stressful environment, especially for elementary students.
On the other hand, classroom assessment policies are designed for maximum success of students. Students are given numerous opportunities to show some level of mastery: language in assessment documents reflects this very clearly.
The goal is for a wider range of success for all students, and for high graduation rates in secondary school.
Messaging from the ministry, boards and administration is clear — they want to see better results on student report cards, and the burden for better results seems to fall to teachers rather than students.
Classroom teachers are also encouraged to be as positive as possible in their reporting comments — nothing as blunt as “You are not meeting provincial expectations,” which is all the feedback EQAO provides.
Another concern is the lack of transparency and accountability when it comes to evaluating the tests. If EQAO testing is a legitimate practice, one wonders why the office requires evaluators to sign a confidentiality agreement. Should this not be public information? Perhaps it has something to do with the stories that say there is an oft-shifting set of evaluation standards that occur not only from one day to the next, but sometimes within the same day. If true, this renders the results meaningless.
The average person seems to believe that these standardized tests are meaningful because they provide some kind of deeper scrutiny of student achievement. Take a peek behind the curtain and you’ll see that is simply not true.
If you want to know how students are really doing, allow teachers to be more forthright in their comments. Meanwhile, the $30 million to $40 million spent on EQAO could be put to much better use in classrooms across the province.