When Information is Dangerous (From the President)
Recently with the Ministry of Education launched, with no prior notice, a new website, the School Information Finder. It’s a site that pulls together information about schools, their EQAO scores, and selective demographic characteristics of students and their families. An original feature on the site called “My School Bag” invited users to compare schools. ETFO and other education stakeholders have voiced strong objections to the site. Here’s why.
The basic premise of the site is that a school’s performance on EQAO province-wide tests is an accurate reflection of how well it educates a child. Nothing could be further from the truth. From the beginning EQAO tests have promoted the idea that student learning, and by extension the worth of a school, can be measured by a single test administered at a single point in time. Many educators have debunked this notion. Experts in the field of assessment reinforce what teachers themselves know to be true: the best student assessment is that done by a classroom teacher. The best source of information for parents is that classroom teacher.
Nevertheless the government, pandering to a public hooked on standardized tests, continues to spend millions every year (some $32 million last year) on EQAO tests. The right- wing think tank, the Fraser Institute, then provides its rankings of Ontario schools based on its interpretation of EQAO scores. The EQAO itself says its test results should not be used to in this way. In the past Education Minister Kathleen Wynne has agreed.
Ignoring the advice of its own agency and of educators, and contradicting the cautions the minister herself has given, the government created The School Information Finder website to allow the public to shop for schools on the basis of EQAO test scores and limited socio-economic data.
The demographic information for each school invites social profiling and contradicts the founding principles of the government’s own new “Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy”. It has the potential to divide communities.
Moreover, providing information in this way devalues all schools and the work of teachers by reducing their importance to mere EQAO scores. It ignores the richness of our programs and the myriad ways teachers engage students.
At a recent meeting of the Minister of Education’s Roundtable, Annie Kidder, executive director of the parent group People for Education, took the lead on behalf of a broad-based coalition that ETFO has been working with and asked the Minister to take down the website. Representatives from the Ontario Home School Association and the Catholic Parents Association supported her request. So too did all the teacher federations, the Council of Deans (representing the faculties of education) Catholic and French trustees associations, even the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association Every organization expressed their revulsion for the website and its implications.
The Minister, faced with unanimous opposition, has offered only to disable the “school bag” icon, remove the information for very small schools, and set up a working group to determine what should be added to the site to make it acceptable.
ETFO and other stakeholders believe that the site cannot be “fixed” this way. Nor will adding additional information be helpful, given that the premise of the site and the information currently there is so prejudicial to public education.
ETFO members should be appalled by the ideology that this government has embraced and the vision it suggests for public education and the future of Ontario.
We have taken further steps to make the government aware of our views and those of the stakeholder groups. We will be calling upon members for their support. The ETFO website will offer the most up-to- date information on the struggle I urge you to visit it.