The Politics of Standardized Testing

By Kate McNaughton
I packed my grade three kid off to school last Monday with a healthy lunch, a healthy snack and a healthy dose of ambivalence. Her grade wrote the EQAO test for four days just like all grade threes and sixes in Ontario this month. There was sleep lost, a nervous tear shed and she was dreading that Monday morning for days.

EQAO stands for Education Quality and Accountability Office. Created two decades ago when the province was focused on institutional accountability, it is purportedly a measure of educational efficacy. If you go to EQAO.com and read about, it all seems reasonable—what have kids picked up and can we do better? It’s not quite that simple though.

At my daughter’s school—an excellent school with committed teachers—they skew the results by offering test prep for weeks prior to the test. Kids need it too. They have never seen multiple choice tests before. That said, I suspect the goal is not just to familiarize them and it’s definitely not to give them a leg-up if they’re struggling, but rather to enhance the school’s numbers. Indeed, many schools “teach to the test” year round to the same end, equating a good result as a reflection of quality. And there are dangers if they don’t focus on the test.

The rare excellent schools that resist this road take a risk. Lower scores can harm a school over time because parents in our community and others across Ontario—a province in which low enrollment is the kiss of death—use those published scores for the off-label purpose of selecting a school for their family.

I’m always a fan of professional oversight but there is relative consensus amongst educational theorists that standardized tests are blunt tools at best with limited value that sometimes produce negative effects. Teachers’ unions don’t want it. They cite more concerns than I can list in 500 words. The biggest seems to be that too often, there are unintended consequences when classes focus on test prep instead of “readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmatic” for its own sake, not to mention, creative skills or critical thought. Students just tune out when their day lacks relevance.

In 2016, the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario went so far as to suggest their members keep their own kids home that week. That said, there is no actual recourse to opt out. None. I’ve heard of the odd family who strategically planned the trip to Disney. I am envious. My daughter went to school. Hated every minute but was relieved the test was boring. It’s not the end of the world but, in my reckoning, any day that my kid takes solace in boredom, is a failure.

I’m left with the question, why did I send her when she could have had a coveted week-long visit at Granny’s house. I certainly don’t send her to school so that a 21 year old mandatory standardized test can sit her in a desk for three and a half days solid and bore her silly so that it can get a blurry snapshot of her amazing brain. For the grade six EQAO, maybe we’ll go to Disney.