In Class: EQAO needs to serve more than the real estate industry

The Ministry of Education has released its annual EQAO results and the picture it presented was predictable and for the most part consistent with past results.

Each year, the ministry ensures all Grade 3, 6, 9 and 10 students complete an EQAO (Education Quality and Accountability Office) assessment (currently the only large-scale assessment of reading, writing and math in Ontario). The goal of the assessment is to identify strengths and challenges for students in two areas: literacy and math.

The consequences of these results do more than indicate where students, teachers, schools and Boards of Education require attention, however. Unfortunately, results carry weight, sometimes welcomed, most often not so much.

But here is the reality: Boards of education can predict what the outcomes will be far before the assessments are even administered, and so do real estate agents.

The Fraser Institute, a research body, uses EQAO results to rank schools. They publish their findings based on factors that might influence those results. One of these factors is annual income.

Many studies have supported the influence of socio-economic status (SES) on assessment outcomes. It is no coincidence that school location and high EQAO results align extremely well. Study after study indicates affluent areas provide students with many more enhancing experiences that support students before, during and after the school day.

Readers can confirm this relationship by identifying neighbourhoods and individual EQAO school results on EQAO.com.

It is no surprise that EQAO scores hugely influence the real estate market as every parent wants to send their child to a prominent, highly regarded school.

But what does this say about schools doing well in more modest or lower-average-income locations. Typically, schools that do well in these neighbourhoods strive to close gaps that, unfortunately, were generated by a lack of preschool exposure.

Research (John Hattie, “Visible Learning”, pg 62 ) indicates children from wealthier families have spoken, on average, 4.5 million words prior to starting school. Students from less advantaged or lower SES (social economic status) neighbourhoods begin school, on average, having spoken 2.5 million words.

Why does this matter? The language of learning is complex and children require significant and repeated exposure and opportunity to develop foundational literacy skills that are a prerequisite for learning in the school system.

At higher levels of education, the influence of family income continues to have a significant impact. A recent article, “New SAT Data Highlights the Deep Inequality at the Heart of American Education” published in “The New York Times”, reinforces the notion that wealth plays a huge role in the success of children as they progress through the education system.

In large part, the article suggests educational success is heavily influenced by what is coined as “shadow education”.  These are all the factors outside of school that parents or an enriched environment can provide. This includes pre-school programs, extra-curricular activities, night-time reading, visits to museums, science centres and libraries, travel, one on one interaction between parent and child.

So how do you close the gap? JK through Grade 3 is the most challenging. Compensating for the two-million-spoken-word gap is daunting. It is really important that schools employ their best teachers at these grades. Second, programming must be of the highest quality, ensuring children are exposed to as many enriched environments as possible.

Finally, outreach to parents/guardians must be frequent and value added, so parents understand how to support their children to overcome spoken word gaps. Further, it’s imperative that we entice parents to have their children involved in as many positive experiences before and after school. This will help child access the positive attributes a “shadow education” provides.

The latter is so important that every school board, with the financial support of the MInistry of Education, should create opportunities for low-income families/neighbourhoods to overcome shadow education deficiencies. What does this look like? Visit an affluent school/neighbourhood.

I would suggest, with a huge degree of confidence, schools in affluent neighbourhoods offer diverse and many more opportunities to expose children to a variety of experiences that extend beyond the school day, hence reinforcing the value of shadow education. Second, surrounding students with a diverse group of peers, representing all levels of income, learning together, provides exposure to an expanded and more comprehensive/complex language that is required to close gaps.

Knowing and acting on the above is not new; we have known for some time that EQAO results would significantly increase stereotypes for have and have not schools, but what we did not know is how these results would create unintended consequences, such as real estate agents honing in on school rankings as advertised by the Fraser Institute.

As a former director of education, the publication of EQAO results and the subsequent release of school rankings was always met with extreme levels of anxiety. Often both publications played to the stereotypical mindset: School A  consistently scoring or ranking better than School B. (True Confession: When a school is in the top 100, of approximately 3,000 schools provincewide, you are quick to publicly highlight results. When you are ranked in the lowest 100, you become very efficient at communicating positive trends and traces of hope)

Annual EQAO results and school ranking paint a picture, but I would hazard to say an incomplete one, as they do not define nor reflect the entirety of a school. Great teachers, strong leadership and effective collaboration with parents can overcome many of the gaps noted.

However, the real value of EQAO results is truly about identifying inequities and subsequently gleaning information that has the potential to be used to inform the disbursement of dollars to support human resource allocation and the appropriate programming required to close the shadow education and learning language gap that restricts students from lower economic areas from excelling by providing them with before, during and after school programming.

The failure to adequately address these challenges will continue to widen the learning gap, and to some degree, reinforce long held stereotypes — wealth equals success.

For several years, the Ministry of Education has been very focussed on equity and inclusion. If nothing else, EQAO exemplifies the challenges associated with education and it reinforces the notion that equity is a long way off.

So what is the value of large-scale assessment? The Ministry of Education and school boards could publish EQAO provincial results and refrain from publishing school-based results. The latter could be used as a tool that enhances learning and teaching.

Consequently, individual student data/results could be utilized to develop strategies to formulate direct student-based funding, a redesigning of school boundaries, when the opportunity avails itself, needs-based allocation of personnel, and help initiate a culture shift that promotes inclusive neighbourhoods.

Addressing educational shortcomings, illustrated though annual assessments and published in an appropriate way, could be very useful, but their current use only reinforces stereotypical beliefs, creates more challenges than most teachers can overcome, and really only serve the real estate community … anyone looking for a nice neighbourhood to live in should check the latest EQAO results.

Norm Blaseg is a retired former director of education with the Rainbow District School Board.

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