The Ministry of Education plans to proceed with online literacy test pilots

BY PAUL JUNOR

There have been many adjustments made to the school year in Ontario’s public school system during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to the elimination of summative evaluations by many school boards, there have been the cancelations of the Grade 10 Reading and Writing tests and the elimination of the Grade 3, 6 and 9 tests administered by the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO).

With the closure of schools after March Break, 2020 and the transition to online learning, EQAO tests have been in abeyance. Now that most school boards across Ontario have in-person and hybrid learning in place, the Ministry of Education plans to proceed with online literacy test pilots. This has drawn the fire of many education stakeholders who have called for its immediate suspension.

In a letter dated Friday, March 12^th, 2021, which was endorsed by the Ontario Teachers’ Federation(OTF), which represents 160,000 teachers from full-time, part-time to occasional and its affiliates issued a call made to have this pilot suspended.

The affiliates include; l’Associations des enseignantes et des enseignants, franco- ontariens (AEFO), the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO), the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA) and the Ontario Secondary Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF).

The letter states, “Ontario’s publicly funded education system should not be subjected to a poorly timed experiment in large-scale, online assessment, especially during a pandemic. Yet, the EQAO is forging ahead with plans to administer the Grade 10 Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT). EQAO has indicated that a field test version of the online OSSLT will be administered between March and June 2021 to students in face-to-face, in-school settings.”

There have not been many details released by the ministry. The purpose of the online literacy test pilot is to provide EQAO with data that it can use to evaluate the effectiveness of its digital platform. Parker Robinson, President of Ontario Teachers’

Federation states, “We can think of no compelling reason why staff and students should be subjected to a brand new, digital, large-scale assessment platform while they are still trying to cope with far more pressing life and learning challenges stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

There is a sense that this testing could distract students’ from focusing on their current academic situation. The letter notes, “Teachers and educators continue to be

mindful of the mental health and wellbeing of their students and remain committed to trying to mitigate learning loss and closing gaps in learning, among other consequences with the ongoing pandemic. To that end, OTF and its affiliates have consistently and persistently underscored the fact that EQAO’s online OSSLT a field test is an unnecessary distraction and burden for students who are required to take the assessments, and for staff who are tasked with administering it.”

The letter is calling on the Minister of Education, Stephen Leece to: +

• Announce the immediate suspension of the administration of the 2021 Grade 10 OSSLT
• Order the cessation of any other initiatives designed to measure the performance of Ontario’s publicly funded education system while it is operating in a state of duress without adequate support from the provincial government

The Ministry of Education has not responded as yet to this call from the unions.