To view the article, click here!
(2010, September 21). Ont. Schools Accused of Cheating on Standardized Tests. CBC News. Retrieved November 6, 2011 from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/story/2010/09/21/ontario-schools-standardized-testing-eqao.html.
Summary: "Ont. Schools Accused of Cheating on Standardized Tests"
This year, EQAO discovered instances of cheating among ten schools in Ontario; some of these schools blatantly cheated, while others may have cheated unintentionally. Margeurite Jackson, the CEO of EQAO, notes that some teachers may have looked at the tests early, while others might have given students the test questions prior to the EQAO test day. As a rule, teachers are not to open the EQAO packages before administering the test. Nine schools were ousted, including Bernard-Grandmaitre Elementary, Sanford Avenue School, Notre Dame Catholic Separate School, St. Peter’s Secondary School, Graham Bell-Victoria Public School, Waterford Public School, Ecole Catholique St-Louis, Ontario Street Public School, and Quaker Village Public School. The unlisted school is still undergoing investigation and its name has not yet been released.
Ever since 2001, the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) requires Ontario schools to administer tests in reading, writing and math. Since the program was introduced, some schools have struggled to adhere to EQAO’s rules; in fact, in past years, some school employees, including one superintendent, have lost their jobs as a result of cheating on these tests. EQAO can often tell when schools are cheating because irregularities exist in the scoring. For example, all of the students from Notre Dame Catholic Separate School achieved higher-than-normal results, which is a cause for concern because there usually exists a normal distribution of scores in which some students score exceptionally high, some score exceptionally low, but most students score in the average range.
The superintendent of education for Notre Dame notes that some teachers do have a difficult time administering the EQAO because their usual teaching and testing methods conflict with EQAO rules. For example, teachers often clarify unclear test questions. While it may be tempting for teachers to use their usual test procedures, it is extremely important that teachers do not break the testing rules because any allegations of cheating are published on their profiles on the Ontario College of Teachers website which “has ramifications on their professional careers” (CBC News). Teachers receive intense pressure from higher levels of authority for their students to perform well on the EQAO test, so it can sometimes seem understandable why a teacher may cheat. With that being said, one must consider the perspective that teachers who cheat send messages to their students, intentionally or not, that cheating is acceptable.
Critical Perspective
While I can understand that the EQAO has good intentions of reporting province-wide scores of student achievement, I strongly disagree with their methods. Because Canada is a multicultural country, some schools (especially in the Greater Toronto Area) have a minority of Caucasian students who were born in Canada, rather than a majority. Because we know that learning strategies are culturally based, we must recognize that students from foreign countries or different cultures within Canada (e.g. Aboriginal students) may not learn as per Canadian standards. These students are marginalized because they will likely not perform as well as other students who have spent their entire lives in the Ontario education system. Immigrant students’ education prior to arriving in Canada may have consisted of other subjects than English studies and mathematics, or perhaps they learned to represent their language/math learning in different ways than Canadian-born students. If this is the case, they will likely perform much more poorly than their Canadian-born peers who have studied these subjects extensively and who have learned a uniform way for answering literacy and mathematics questions. Their test results may inaccurately represent their skill level, simply because their methods of answering the test questions, though accurate, may be unorthodox by Canadian standards. Furthermore, students with Individual Education Plans due of learning disabilities may also suffer. Not all IEP students can receive accommodations on EQAO tests, so students who must participate in the regular test but experience learning difficulties may perform poorly which may misrepresent their actual academic achievement.
The fact that teachers feel the need to cheat on these tests is alarming and it suggests to me that they believe their students may not meet provincial standards. Perhaps they are concerned about their multicultural classroom and its differentiated learning skills. While I do believe that teachers should be disciplined for cheating, I think that the education system needs to re-evaluate their achievement reporting methods; standardized testing does not appear to work extremely well in a multicultural country.
Bringing Balance
I believe that provincial standardized testing should be discarded; instead, students’ grades on their reports cards should be considered for provincial reporting of academic achievement. This will accurately reflect student progress, while allowing for any ESL or IEP accommodations. While teachers’ lesson plans are not uniform throughout the province, the curriculum is; teachers must teach according to the curriculum, so students’ grades should reflect their academic success in curriculum requirements. Perhaps teachers’ methods should be evaluated more often than once a year to ensure that students are learning the required material. This way, schools can ensure that student grades accurately represent their level of learning, and that teachers are effectively educating their students. Teachers will not feel the need to resort to cheating this way because students from foreign countries or those who have Individual Education Plans for learning exceptionalities will be accommodated as they are in class.