EQAO Test Results - So What Else is New?

The latest Ontario EQAO test results are out and, surprise surprise, there isn't significant improvement, but you'd never know it from the variety of headlines:

Toronto Star - More Grade 3 Kids Master 3Rs
National Post - Ontario Students Failing to Catch Up
Toronto Sun - More Kids Making the Grade
Globe and Mail - One Third of Pupils Failing Provincial Standards

What is most disturbing is that for the last three years, EQAO has been able to track individual students. There is a wide variation in performance with many students actually falling farther behind. The poor results are most prominent in the math testing.  According to the reporting in the National Post:

"Out of the approximately 36,500 students who took the applied math test, almost half who didn't meet the standard in Grade 6 also didn't meet it in Grade 9.  As well, almost a quarter of students who didn't meet the standard in reading, writing and math in Grade 3 failed to make the grade in Grade 6."

Seems that spending tons of money has not paid off in respective achievement increases.  As noted in a previous post and here,  it is certainly the teaching. Every year, SQE sings from the same hymnal---use proven effective teaching methods! Is anybody listening?

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