Experts weigh in on pros and cons of EQAO tests as students resume assessments

Many elementary and high school students in Ontario are entering the final weeks of schoolwriting theirEQAO tests after a two-year hiatus.

The provincewide standardized tests were paused due toCOVID-19 lockdowns, but returnedthis year in a new online format, despite calls from teacher unions and school boards to pause it for another year. The testswere alsobriefly halted last month due to technical issues with the website, but have since resumed.

It's all added up to stress for students and educators saysJeff Pelich, president of the Waterloo region branch of theElementary Teacher's Federation of Ontario.

"At a time when we're coming out of a pandemic and well being and the mental health of students is front and centre, this only made the situation worse," Pelich said.

"It made no sense to us that the government pushed forward with the EQAO tests this year when they could have put it on hold for another year, address some of these concerns, or take this as an opportunity to stop doingthe EQAOtests as a whole."

Math and literacy skills tested

TheEducation Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) is an arm's length governmentagency overseeingthe standardized math and literacytestswritten in Grades 3, 6, 9 and 10 since 1996.

The agency offers "independent databased on the learning expectations of the Ontario curriculum."

EQAOprovidesresults to students who write the test. Schools and school boards receive reports about how students did on the test, "as well as contextual, attitudinal and behavioural information from questionnaires in an interactive online reporting tool."

The province's standardized testing model, has gained criticism over the years because of how muchitcosts $50 per student tested, the EQAO office says and the vagueness of the information provided to schools and students.

Ardavan Eizadirad, an assistant professor in the faculty of education at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., says the testing shows whether students hitspecific criteria and at what level.

"You don't really get descriptive feedback about what you did wrong and how to improve it and we know that when it comes to learning, timely and descriptivefeed back is so important,"Eizadirad said.

Calls to cancel tests

There havealso been calls to scrap thetests,something the provincialLiberals campaignedon during the election earlier this month.

Agovernment-commissioned report in 2018, under the previous Liberal government, also recommendedphasing out the EQAOtests forGrade 3and Grade 9 students.

It also recommended an overhaul ofthe standardized Grade 6 testand replace the literacy tests with one that would not be a requirement to graduate.

Eizadiradbelieves there are better, more equitableways to collect information to gauge where students are at.

"When I say we should get rid of EQAO, I'm not arguing that we shouldn't collect information provincially to map out the big picture, but we have to look at how we're collecting data," he said.

He suggestsschool staff could instead report their own data over the school year.

"EQAO's job could be to compile that data and be a facilitator," he said.

Keep the EQAO

David Johnson, an economics professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, arguesthere is value in keeping standardized testingin schools.

Johnson, who has has been researchingstandardized testing for the past17 years,saidEQAO providesinformation in a timely manner that wouldn't otherwise be known if the tests weren't implemented.

"It tells us over time of the assessments, literacy outcomes have improved in Ontario and that math outcomes initially improved and then fell," he said.

"If we don't do any kind of external assessment of students on an annual basis, then we will have very little information that is useful on a student level, on school leveland on a provincial level to tell us these things."

He saidthe results alsodemonstrate that schools in low income neighbourhoods, who are often predicted to have lower outcomes,can overcome that stigma.

"You are not pre-determined as a teacher to have the outcome most closely predicted by the [neighbourhood's] demographics," he said.

Johnson said the province will also be able to measure and know the scope of the learning shortfall as schools come out of the pandemic, evidence he will keep an eye on as testresults come out in the fall.