Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Srar

Re: Peel wants province to cancel EQAO tests, October 12, 2017.

The request by the Peel District School Board to cancel the EQAO testing is highly ironic to those who worked in education during the “accountability” heydays of the 1990s when standardized testing was touted as the panacea for improve educational outcomes and those opposed to it (teachers and principals) were labelled obstructionist or worse and their professional concerns dismissed. Standardized testing was eagerly rammed down the throats of educators by then Premier Mike Harris as a political tool to drive votes by attacking teachers.  Parents, the media and others like the right-wing think tank The Fraser Institute were given an elegant weapon with which to bash educators using information that had no proven direct research link to student performance or teacher quality and inflicted enormous collateral damage in achieving its noble aims. Essentially teachers were being held accountable over issues which they often had little control. Ignored were cultural and socio-economic factors, social mobility, ESL issues and parenting factors in the obsession with ‘results.’ Student performance was initially low and so rather than add funding to education to improve outcomes the province decided to manipulate the testing by making it shorter and less rigorous until results began to climb to meet political targets. The entire exercise was a shell game intended to create the illusion of public accountability when the reality was that finding the cure for ignorance is as difficult as finding a cure for cancer.

Province-wide testing was yet another in a long list of educational bandwagons that various governments of all stripes have leaped on to further their political aspirations. Unlike other professions like law and medicine that are allowed to independently determine what will be done in particular cases and charge hefty fees for doing so, education has always been controlled by political forces and that is its Achilles heel. This leads to endless failed reforms and ongoing hostility between the consuming public and educators who are often required to implement strategies that they know don’t work.  After twenty years of wasted tax-payers money proving nothing the province is once again ready to toss in the towel on standardized testing and move on to the next panacea in waiting not because standardized testing doesn’t work but because it has outlived its usefulness to politicians.

In hindsight it seems that the minority critics of the 1990s have been proven roght. Until we allow educators and not politicians to independently and professionally make educational decisions after consultation we will never have an effective education system.