Can’t say I’m surprised at the spin. I have to wonder how many of these students will end up graduating with “highest distinction” as they get pampered along their educational careers and convinced that they’re better than they actually are at the basics.

That Annie Kidder’s full of it. I wonder if she felt the same way about her own children’s educations? 

Looks like we’re upholding the path to mediocrity and the bit players are only too happy to act as handy puppets when called upon.

There was a brief report in the National Post today that pointed out:

“Of the 16% who failed it, 84% had failed the version of the test in Grade 6, suggesting the education system is doing a poor job of helping kids who have trouble reading.”

The Post also reproduced some sample questions from the test.

I read the link and the sample questions—oh dear.

http://www.yorkregion.com/news/article/831137—eqao-success-rate-slides

Here’s Kidder quoted in the York Region newspaper:

“But Annie Kidder, of the advocacy group People for Education, disputed the relevance of the tests.

‘Just noticing those students are still struggling is not necessarily doing what needs to be done,’ she said.

‘Everyone’s working hard to get the scores higher, while in fact they’re very high already ... and they’re relatively unchanged.’

‘When you focus on that, you end up skewing the system ... putting less emphasis on things like the arts and social sciences.’”

Huh? Say that again?

Same scores every year. 84-85% success, the 14-15% who fail every year have either been in special ed for many years or they are very poor but usually both.

You can just move the same headline year to year.

Star says glass is 85% full, Post says the glass is 15% empty, PISA says Canada second best readers in the world.

Of the three reading selections shown, two were at an early elementary reading level—Grade 2 and Grade 4.  Even students with developmental disabilities should be able to read at this level by Grade 10, so this is hardly a “high stakes” test.

But, without the anchor papers and scoring rubrics, we can’t assess what the final score means. You have to go to the sample responses and annotations to get an idea. It appears the standard is somewhat higher than that for the grade 3 and 6 EQAO tests, as I have seen students who wrote only comments on the task or off-topic remarks on the Grade 3 and 6 test get a Level 2 on EQAO reading and writing. Glad to see the OSSLT standard is higher.

Students spend a great deal of time doing writing tasks of the same type as the examples given, however (expressing opinions using details from the text and their own experience) starting in Grade 1 so there is nothing tricky about this assessment.

What would be a reasonable expectation for a pass rate? Not 100% but possibly 90%.Most LD students should be able to do it, and many students with mild cognitive disabilities could also be expected to succeed, possibly with a modified rubric (leaving out a requirement for abstract thinking or analysis).

People for Education = union puppets so not surprising that Kidder goes negative on the testing. Same old, same old Kidder…nothing new to offer.

Correct me if I’m wrong but having looked at the questions on this test they appear to be at almost a grade 7 level.

Why the cheerleading Doug on the GR. 10 able to read at a grade 7 level. Nothing to cheer about. That’s just pathetic.

TDSBNW - sorry. I see you answered the grade level question in your post. It’s even worse than I thought.

Ontario is being sold a bill of goods and the students cheated.

O/T - but now that Canada is going to be getting its own Fox channel with David Akin as its first reporter it would be another great outreach for SQE’s expertise on education reform. You should seriously try for a regular spot on this show.

On the York article: “Students who did not do well on provincial literacy tests in Grade 6 tend to continue to struggle at the high school level.

That’s the conclusion reached by testers in the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQA0) after releasing the provincial student achievement results on the 2009–2010 Ontario Secondary Student Literacy Test today.

Eighty-four per cent of Ontario’s Grade 10 students passed the tests, down slightly from last year’s 85 per cent.

For the more than 22,000 students who did not succeed, struggling with reading and writing is nothing new, said Marie Parsons, EQAO’s chief assessment officer.

Ms Parsons said 84 per cent of the unsuccessful students had been flagged as needing help four years earlier, when they wrote — and did not pass — the Grade 6 test.”

“These results reinforce the need for parents and educators to track and support a student’s literacy development throughout his or her schooling, particularly when he or she has not achieved the provincial standard on the early assessments,” EQAO chief executive officer Marguerite Jackson said.”
http://www.yorkregion.com/news/article/831137—eqao-success-rate-slides

The last paragraph is running around the elephant. How can parents or the school support the students, without having a hard copy of the test. How can one make plans, without finding where is the trouble. The students that are failing, will have different strengths and weaknesses, that would indicate an individual plan, rather than one-size-fits all approach.

Writing this type of literacy test, or for that matter other standard testing, or criterion-reference testing, kids with weak reading and writing skills, are already being handicapped by the format of the test. The test is written, based on students who have met the provincial standard. Improvements are made to raise the achievement rates of students who are passing. The students who are failing, are not getting the correct help for their problems. An example is the dyslexia students or the LD student, who for the most part fail the literacy tests. There is a number of reasons based on the science, why they have a greater failure rate than other groups of student populations.

Here is a link, describing why, If teachers and the school have this type of information, it would be helpful to the teacher in understanding the why, before formulating a plan to remediate the problems. This can also be applied to the general student population as a whole, as well as to the individual.
http://www.dyslexicadvantage.com/home/57-dyslexia-accommodations-college-sat

Don’t let the title fool you.

1.Word Skips and Reading Mistakes on Test Questions A major source of difficulty for dyslexic students occurs with misreading of test questions.
2, Visual Fatigue and Visual Crowding Errors
3. Reading Speed
4. Difficulty with Multiple choice Questions
5. Writing Problems

These problems can be overcome at the school level, at no cost to a very small cost. It would not be necessary to downgrade the grade 10 literacy test.

That said, my child would actually do quite well on the Ontario literacy test. One of the reasons is that she has workbooks for home, working to improve her grammar, syntax, etc. and writing skills. The grade 10 literacy test reminds me of the grade 7 workbooks I have here at home, In fact, some of the work would be considered harder than what is on the literacy test.

Have I ever mentioned that Canada produces the 2nd best readers, at age 15, in the world?

The TDSB already knows far in advance who will fail the Grade 10 Literacy Test. Schools have to have “data walls,” and the superintendent, visiting our school, looked at our primary data wall and said, “The Grade 1 students who are below DRA Level 18 at the end of the year are the ones who will fail the Grade 10 Literacy Test in 9 years.” Since the introduction of the OEN (Ontario Education Number) they can track individual data—including a lot of private and personal data—and make detailed correlations.

By Grade 6 it is usually too late to fix the problem. Students who aren’t fluent readers by the end of Grade 2 are unlikely to be fluent readers in their lifetime—their odds of winning the lottery are better.

Kids can be remediated in many cases, but it’s an extremely labour-intensive, expensive and time-consuming process, not to mention emotionally exhausting for all concerned. And it’s too time-consuming to happen in school: there’s simply not enough instructional time (or staff) available.

Better to get it right the first time.

I simply don’t believe that children can’t learn to read if they haven’t by grade 6.  It’s only phonics for heaven’s sake!  I learned Japanese hirangana and katakana when I was in my mid-30’s!
What’s lacking are special ed teachers with the skills to teach properly.

TDSBNW is not saying that kids can’t learn to read if they haven’t by grade 6 - only that it is extremely labour-intensive, expensive, time-consuming, and emotionally exhausting. As a reading tutor, I agree. I even know some tutors who won’t accept kids after grade 3. Grade 6 struggling readers are so far behind that it’s almost impossible for them to catch up to their peers who, after all, are continuing to progress - meaning that the struggling kids have to learn FASTER than their more successful peers. Talk about mission impossible. Add to that their defeatist attitudes and deeply-fossilized bad habits, and your’re looking at a mountain to climb. 

The thing is - it’s totally unnecessary. Virtually all kids can be fluent readers by the end of grade 1 - if taught properly. There is no mystery how to achieve this. The only mystery is why educators continue to resist known effective methods - and year after year continue to consign their innocent, vulnerable six-year-old students to the rubbish heap.

There is very effective reading programs for older children, who are not very good readers. The trouble is most schools only have one, and not several. There is a school about 45 km from my community, that takes in children as old as 13, who have been told they will never be able to read well. With in a year, they are reading, and in another year, they are at grade level. Two teachers have spend their own money, to be trained on the reading programs.

As for the majority of poor readers, with or without the learning problems, there is targeted help and useful strategies, that are really effective. At the present time, unless the teacher is aware of this knowledge, doing lots of writing and reading is the solution for most schools. There is useful strategies for home, but I have yet seen this type of literature being sent home. Poor readers do not like to read, but they will read material of high interest to them. The trouble is schools discourage reading that is not part of the curriculum, or the goals of the school.

In order for a reading program to be successful, the parents must work in concert with the school. They must work for the same goals. Reading homework should be a priority, over the other homework.

What is needed at the schools are teachers who are trained in reading, and reading specialists. There is thousands of LD parents, who have spent a great deal of money on tutors or special schools to get their kids reading. There is hundreds of parents throughout Canada, that have spent their own money to be trained in the Orton-Gillingham method, or another method, just to teach their LD child to read.

And yes, this is what is needed, if the education system persists in keeping whole language as their approach to reading. If the education system persists not to teach on grammar and the mechanics of writing. And yes if the education persists to leave the science out of reading and writing.

Here is a link to an article that is in Education Week, titled “What No Child Left Behind Really Means”.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/06/08/35katz.h29.html?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mrss

Testing and how many children are left behind. The key to turn it around has been stated in the article, and for all students.

“Contrary to what the public might think, improving success for these students does not mean relaxing standards. The same standards must apply to all students, and this includes those with learning disabilities. The No Child Left Behind Act, the current version of the ESEA, allowed states, districts, and schools to hide hundreds of thousands of students’ scores.

We need to end test accommodations and alternate-assessment policies for students with disabilities by creating tests that present the material based on the concept of universal design. This is not “dumbing down” the material; it is a scientifically proven method that allows several types of learners to understand the material and demonstrate their knowledge. This would benefit not only students with learning disabilities, but also many male students, minority students, and students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds, whom research has shown learn differently.”

The ending paragraph is what I believe is happening in Canadian schools.

“But NCLB essentially crippled good teachers, forcing them to teach to the tests, rather than addressing individual students’ needs. We cannot make that same mistake again.

“We need national benchmarks for all students. High school graduation with a standard diploma and college readiness should be goals for all, not just for those who are easy to teach.”

We tend to replicate the stupidities and failures of USA schooling up here with unseemly haste, but “national standards”  and “college readiness for all” is another bandwagon we would do well to avoid. The “national standards” being adopted south of the border are significantly dumbed-down from the standards already in place in states like Massachusetts, Minnesota and California The “Race to the Top” will soon be the “Race to the Bottom” - the lowest common denominator that can achievably be passed into law.

College readiness for all and a standard diploma? Surely we know by now that students are individuals and do not fit into a cookie-cutter. “Universal Design for Learning” and “Differentiated Instruction” are new panaceas which have some merits in some applications, but which do not have empirical evidence of effectiveness and which will certainly not enable all students to reach high levels of academic proficiency. Who realistically thinks that a non-verbal student with autism whose ability is in the moderate cognitive disability range and who struggles with social interaction, adaptation to change and so forth, is going to master a “nationally standardized” curriculum and go to college?  Read Ian Brown’s award winning and poignantly written The Boy in the Moon and try to make a case for that student going to the University of Toronto!  Some people let their idealism make them spout a farrago of nonsense

Students with disabilities deserve an excellent education—and so do students who are disadvantaged by circumstance, not nature. In both cases, they usually require a different kind of education than what is provided for the “average” student.  Equity doesn’t mean offering every student the same thing, it means offering every student an excellent education geared to what s/he and his or her family need.

The test preparation mania is not affecting “Canadian schools.” For one thing, few provinces have provincial tests.  Teachers can’t spend a lot of time on EQAO preparation, because the test changes every year, the rubrics and marking scheme change every year, the content changes every year, and the rules change every year. All teachers can do is provide kids with plenty of opportunities to practice the skills they need to write the EQAO tests—and these skills are the ones they are supposed to teach anyway! Of course this means they are not teaching other skills that many of us think are important, but that is because of the curriculum, not because of EQAO. The USA situation is not analogous to Ontario, or other parts of Canada as far as I know. Thank goodness for that.

There is a really growing anger among English SS teachers that they are being pressured to “teach to the test” with every waking moment. They are resisting believing that they should teach great literature and let the scores go where they go. The alienation is becoming palpable.

Nothing at all wrong with teaching to the test if the test is based on the curriculum.  The excuses for measuring skill level baseless.

Doug, you are missing the point every time. 

TDSBW is an experienced and highly specialized elementary school teacher who probably knows more than 99 per cent the people at OISE about teaching reading.

The growing anger among secondary school teachers, who should be respecting & listening to teachers like TDSBW, should be about pressuring everyone from the MInister on down to make sure kids are learning to read with effective explicit instruction in the primary grades.  It would make their teaching lives and jobs a lot easier and more interesting. 

Doug, what’s the point of trying to teach great literature if the kids CAN"T READ IT.  Oh, but then you can always show them the movie version.

My non-verbal LD son just “wrote” the EQAO test and achieved a better than pass score. He utilized Dragon Speak and Kurzweil to “write” the test. What choice did he have to achieve this kind of success? Lack of remediation and modified programming throughout elementary school left him entering Grade 9 with, at best, Grade 4-5 written language abilities. So am I happy? I am not! I think every student should have to write this test in Grade 7 and if they don’t pass they are streamed into a year of intensive language remediation study to prepare them for high school. At the very least it should be an option. Oops… there’s that dirty word again…options. It’s no wonder that university professors alike are astonished with the writing skills of the students coming their way. My son will always rely on the use of Dragon for his writing. What I hear everyone saying is it doesn’t count if a kid uses the technology…

I wanted the same thing for my daughter, an intensive language remediation program, for one year. I even pointed out 20 other children that could benefit from it. The school even added 10 more children. It was turned down by the board, and not the school.

This year, I wanted my daughter to take an extra course in grade 10, called basic English. I was even willing it to be counted as a non-credit, but again it was turned down. It was also turned down, going through the long distance education route. Yet she is permitted to take two more science courses by the long distance route,  in grade 10 if she wishes to,

But I cannot seem to get her language difficulties remediated. Yet the class of 95, there is half of the class with various problems in language.

As for the use of technology, I know the sneers of others, saying it does not count. My dyslexia LD child, who is mild to moderate, has experienced this too. Sometimes, she will insist to do without the technology, so the kids cannot discount her grades. By doing so, it sometimes becomes a very difficult task.

All the way back to my days as a trustee, (1980-85)we consistently received reports that everyone was doing fine except a nagging 15% that were already in Special Ed, including SE Secondary and that they were not progressing as much as they might be. I agree with TDSBNW, help that late is very labour intensive, very expensive and often frustrating. That 15% was identified to us as both LD, often slow learner by the old out of date labels meaning mildly retarded in the vernacular of the time. 90% but not all of them came from very poor families. They suffered poor nutrition, low birth weight as babies, some had FAS, etc.

We have reached the point where we are teaching all of the “low hanging fruit” the kids who learn with no problems, to read. The hard core 15% will require massive intervention as early as possible, ECE, very small primary classes, withdrawl with reading specialists etc. It costs far less than failing remediation later on or the consequences of being an illiterate adult.

Fullan is very frustrated that all his prescriptions have lead to this plateau but there you have it.

Doug, you keep harping about low-income being the biggest problem. Yet in the Canada stats, it states:In 2007, the most recent data year available, 11% of the population aged 5 to 24 in Canada lived in low-income circumstances, compared to 15% in 2003. Historically, children living in single-parent families (also referred to as lone-parent families) have been more likely to live in low-income situations. Although the proportion of children from single-parent families who live in low-income situations has decreased substantially since 2003, in 2007, these children were still almost three times as likely (17%) to live in low-income circumstances as children living in two-parent families (6%).”
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/81-599-x/81-599-x2009004-eng.htm

So that is 15 % for Canada, and for Ontario who is in the middle of the pack at about 16 %. Now LD, and other disorders, run across all income levels. There is just as many LD students in the middle to high income groups as there is in the low-income groups.

What you have stated, “We have reached the point where we are teaching all of the “low hanging fruit” the kids who learn with no problems, to read. The hard core 15% will require massive intervention as early as possible, ECE, very small primary classes, withdrawl with reading specialists etc. It costs far less than failing remediation later on or the consequences of being an illiterate adult. “

The low hanging fruit, the kids who learn with no problems, are what type of kids, Doug?  My kid, or the ADHD kid, or the high functioning autism kid?  These kids do struggle with reading too, and success in reading for these children, are dependent on the knowledge of the teacher in reading problems and their parents. Few if any become good readers, without have intensive interventions being put in place. Balance literacy, does not cut it, nor will it provide the necessary interventions for reading.

Even with the best ELP in place, reading specialists, one needs teachers to be well-skilled on reading and the problems. Teachers need to be well-versed on learning disabilities, and the problems associated with it. Even with that put in place, there needs to be major changes in the administration. Schools asked for information, that does little to determine or even predict there is going to be a problem with reading or writing.issues.

Often the child with mild problems of pronouncing words or sounds, or even a child who had a speech delay are children that are often ignored in the primary grades, and are often the children who are of middle-class students. There is even types of assessments developed by the medical community to determined not only children who have a developmental dyslexia, but also other children who will have problems in reading and writing. If schools start to use some of the screening tools, like the medical professionals are using, probably over half of the class will be sited for reading intervention, no matter what the income level is!

There is much more cost-effective method, and that is provide systematic-phonics reading for all children, combined with Direct Instruction, and 95 % of children will become good readers and writers. The teachers in this case, be well skilled in reading and SE teachers should be well advance in reading problems for the few students who will need the extra help. Oh yes, keep up with the science of reading, because a child like mine, is being identified now at the age of 3, and would have a medical diagnosed dyslexia in the child’s hand, once commencement of school started.

Here is a site, where pediatricians are discussing the paths that are cross when educators and medical professionals meet head on. “Educators and pediatricians recognize the importance of discovering a learning disability at an early age. Similar to most developmental conditions, early recognition leads to early intervention, which usually has the potential for best outcome. A pediatrician who routinely asks specific screening questions for learning disabilities during health-supervision visits is likely to detect these neurologically based disorders in his or her patients.”
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/114/5/S2/1432

Yet even today, many children are being left out, because the schools, are not asking the right questions. Until that happens, what you have described, will result in the same poor results.

It is sad to me that they are able to skew the results so much.  Literacy is such an important part of life.  In order to measure true results on how well the education system is performing they need to make every student eligible and require them to take the test.  I am thinking about going back to get my mpa degree, and I know that I would not be set with the literacy skills that I have today if it hadn’t have been for the educations system that I grew up in.  It sounds like to me that they are setting false expectations and allowing students to fail.