Trevor Winch teaches Grade 6/7 at Waverley Elementary School in Vancouver.JOHN LEHMANN
Suggesting that Ontario's province-wide Grade 3 and 6 literacy and math tests are useless, as the New Democratic Party's education critic Rosario Marchese did this week, is to reveal a party that is not to be taken seriously, at least on education.
This is the party that, when it governed Ontario under Bob Rae, set up a royal commission that recommended these very tests. The Conservative Party later implemented the testing regime, and the Liberal government has added resources that have helped literacy scores improve markedly.
But Mr. Marchese cited the hoariest of myths about the tests – that they "produce only a number," and that teachers simply "teach to the test." "A political tool, rather than a pedagogical tool."
Only a number? Schools learn how they did on each skill or "learning expectation" assessed – drawing inferences, for instance, or developing a topic. They can compare each result with that of the board and province. These numbers spur improvements in teaching practice. Teach to the test? The literacy tests measure higher-order thinking; teaching pupils how to find hidden meanings in a text would be a great accomplishment indeed.
It is Mr. Marchese who has turned the pedagogical tool his party helped create into a political tool.