Public, Catholic boards tout results during first 'back-to-normal' EQAO testing

Katie Cada-Johnson has three kids that attend Tecumseh's St. Andr French Immersion and says she's thrilled about Ontario's Education and Quality Accountability Office (EQAO) moving to digital standardized testing.

Also the co-chair of the Catholic elementary school's parent council, Cada-Johnson believes the shift to digital helped her daughter when she wrote the test last school year.

"I do feel that the new digital format is a lot more inclusive and a lot easier for the children," she said.

"I know in previous years writing the tests was sometimes a little bit a little scary for the kids."

Students wrote these tests last May, and this is the second year students have used the new digital assessment format.

Cada-Johnson says the new format is similar to kids' games.

"I think our staff did a really great job of minimizing the level of stress around it and not making it a big deal."

Tecumseh's St. Andr French Immersion saw students exceed provincial averages in every category within reading, writing and math by anywhere from 14 to 33 percentage points.

The Catholic school board touted its results in a press conference Thursday.

Across the board within the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board (WECDSB), scores were above the provincial averagesfor Grade 3 and Grade 6 for reading, writing and math assessments.

The same can be said for Grade 9 math testing and Grade 10 literacy scores all above Ontario's average.

The data is used by board administrators, teachers and support staff to tweak curriculum and programming.

Cada-Johnson says she also thinks the board's strong EQAO scores could have to do with students experiencing a sense of normalcy being back in the class, full-time, for a long stretch of time.

"During COVID, it was kind of stressful and I feel it almost gave a lot of anxiety. I know, for my kids it was because they weren't getting a chance to sit and talk to their teacher one on one face-to-face. They had to say stuff in front of a whole class, right?"

While the math scores for the junior categories within the Catholic board in Windsor-Essex are six points above Ontario's average, they still come in at just 56 per cent overall.

That's something the board's executive superintendent of education, Melissa Farrand, says she doesn't take lightly.

"We know that there's still work to be done in the area of mathematics," said Farrand.

"We will continue to keep a close eye on the achievement in the mathematical areas and really work on solidifying those foundational concepts."

Michelle Evon is the assessment and evaluation consultant with the WECDSB.

She says the move to digital testing was a needed change for students and evaluators.

"I think that they've just realized that in order to keep up with classroom instruction and practice, they need to change the way that they're assessing students," said Evon.

Evon says because there is only two years of data and last year being the baseline with this new digital assessment platform it's tough to gauge performance compared to previous years.

Public board EQAO result improve by several percentage points

Raquel Roberts is the superintendent of education for the Greater Essex County District School Board. She says she's proud to see students improving across the board.

"Results showed a large increase in all three areas, reading, writing and mathematics of both primary and junior tests since last year, based on the expectations defined by the Ontario curriculum," Roberts said.

Students made major jumps in all categories, Roberts said. She attributes part of the improvement to new training on digital assessment tools that was provided to Grade 3, Grade 6 and learning support staff.

Roberts said that training touched on how to navigate the digital assessment, as well as the tools and strategies students can use to help them succeed.

"I think the providing time for our teachers and educators and learning support to have training on the EQAOdigital assessment tool, being new, would help improve in for the educators to be more comfortable with the tool being used for the purpose of assessment."