Protecting Teachers’ Time (From the General Secretary)

Assessing student achievement and reporting that progress to parents is a big part of teachers’ lives today. That’s why, in the last round of collective agreements,  ETFO  worked  hard  to  increase professional  activity days for teachers. These days are meant to give you time to complete report cards. This year, the province has finally seen fit to eliminate one of  the three report cards  elementary  teachers  were  expected  to prepare every year. The first report card will be replaced by a progress report. We welcome this development. It is one teacher federations had been advocating for some time.

As seems always to  be  the  case, however, every step forward can  be  accompanied by unnecessary difficulties. The report card changes are no exception. To be useful to teachers, the  two  professional  activity   days  for  completing report cards should be scheduled two or  three  weeks  before  the  report  cards  are due. If they are provided sooner, teachers will not  have completed their assessments. Some boards have  scheduled the days on the basis of  student transportation issues, not  teacher requirements. This is not appropriate.

In yet other instances, boards have decided that the fall progress report will be followed by teacher-parent  interviews. We take no  exception to  that plan as long as it is the boards’ professional  activity  days  that  are  used  and not the PA days provided in teacher collective agreements. Parents who want to know how their child is doing in school understand that talking to the teacher is the best strategy. They know that teachers  regularly  conduct  their  own  classroom-based assessment of  students.  Teachers record the results and use them to help their students’ progress.

Despite  the  clear  superiority  of  teacher classroom  assessment, our  schools  are  inundated by externally mandated assessments such as EQAO testing,  the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA), etc. These tests are not of teachers’ devising, but  are  mandated  by  the school  board  and/or  the  Ministry  of  Education. They are administered to serve the needs of  the  board  and  the  education  system, not those of teachers and students. They are part of the testing  frenzy currently enveloping our elementary schools.

Because it  is boards or  the  ministry that decide these tests are needed, the administrative  work  that  accompanies them  –  such  as inputting  test  data  –  is  work  that  properly belongs to boards or the ministry. It is not work that  teachers  should  be  expected  to  do.  If boards  expect  teachers  to  input  this  testing data, they should, at a minimum, provide the release time to  do  it. They must  not  expect teachers to  do  this  administrative work as a routine part of their duties.

Elementary teachers are professionals who are themselves best placed to determine how they  should  use  their  time.  Their  collective agreements work to protect and enhance their professional  responsibilities.   Teachers’  time should not be inappropriately infringed upon to serve the need of boards and the education system to conduct ever increasing numbers of tests.