Changing assessment in Ontario – key recommendations for transformation

In September 2017, Premier Kathleen Wynne established an Independent Review of Assessment and Reporting in Ontario. The Premier's education advisors engaged in consultations, outreach, and research in order to provide advice on assessment in Ontario's education system. The results of that review have been released, and include a number of recommendations to transform how students are assessed. People for Education's analysis of the report has identified many benefits, but also includes some cautions to be aware of as these changes are implemented. Click through the sidebar headings below to explore the recommendations and our response to them. To read the full report, click here.

Provincial tests for grades 6 and 10 only
One all-encompassing annual report from EQAO
Keep census-based tests
First Nations, Métis, and Inuit students and assessments
Diversifying focus for provincial assessment
New report cards required
Provide more resources and supports for teachers

Provincial tests for grades 6 and 10 only
Recommendations	Benefits	Cautions
Eliminate grade 3 EQAO assessment.	Political targets for results can result in narrowing of policy, funding and classroom focus. The tests are ineffective for assessing vital competencies. Testing in grade 3 can create stress for students, and pressure to increase scores on tests, skews policy and classroom focus.	By eliminating grade 3 testing and reducing the number of performance indicators in the system, more pressure may be placed on fewer numbers of assessments – further increasing the perceived importance of test results in grades 6 and 10 in relation to school and system accountability. Simply eliminating some tests while leaving others in place may continue to result in policy, funding and accountability that narrows pedagogic approaches, and constrains experimentation and risk-taking.
In tandem with renewed curriculum, develop a more effective provincial EQAO test for grade 6 that will assess literacy, numeracy, and “transferable skills.” Explore ways to use adaptive technology and testing.	A broader grade 6 test can provide more information at a provincial level about as yet undefined transferable skills such as creativity and problem-solving, along with literacy and numeracy. Adding assessments in transferable skills can validate their importance for schools and the school system, and help to ensure they get appropriate attention, resources, and professional development.	Before an assessment tool for transferable skills can be developed, these skills and competencies need to have concrete definitions. Otherwise they will be difficult to embed in curriculum, and difficult to assess both in classrooms and on large scale provincial tests. Large-scale tests, designed to measure system-wide performance, are often inappropriately used to assess individual students. A well-designed provincial test could provide information about some competencies or transferable skills, but many can only be assessed at the classroom level, and require a range of assessment strategies. Testing broader skills can provide information that can be misinterpreted. For example, it may be possible to measure one or two competencies in creativity, but it cannot be assumed that this information represents system performance in creativity overall. By including transferable skills in provincial assessments, there is a risk that the tests will be used as a prescriptive instrument. “Teaching to the test” might limit the diverse array of school and classroom approaches needed to support students in building these vital skills.
Eliminate the grade 9 math test. Change the grade 10 Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) to a test of literacy, numeracy and “transferable skills.”	One overall test in secondary school will provide a more comprehensive understanding of provincial progress.	This could put even more pressure on the system, and provoke policy-makers, school boards, administrators and teachers to focus narrowly on strategies to improve scores.
Remove the requirement that students pass the grade 10 test in order to graduate.	This change is supported by evidence that high stakes tests of this nature are ineffective, and that the tests should not be used for evaluating individual students.

One all-encompassing annual report from EQAO
Recommendations	Benefits	Cautions
Eliminate multiple reports on test results throughout the year.	One annual report will provide a more holistic view of education quality in the province.	In order to provide a true picture of education quality in the province, an annual report must have viable indicators in a number of areas including not just outcomes, but also measures of learning opportunities and conditions. Otherwise, the two provincial assessments will be over-privileged as the only indicators of overall system health.
Provide a comprehensive annual report on Ontario schools, including: Results from surveys of students, teachers, and principals Data from Grade 4 and Grade 10 tests Reports on progress on equity, including results broken down by demographics Research from experts Data from the Ministry of Education, e.g. things like absenteeism, post-secondary destinations, or suspension rates.	A single report will help to ensure that one form of information (standardized test results) is not privileged over another (self-report surveys from students, teachers, principals). By including accessible research, the annual report will promote overall public support for changes in education policy direction, because there will be clear evidence to support those changes. Sharing data will encourage integrated thinking and planning, and could lead to data-sharing with other ministries. For example, the Ministry of Children and Youth Services could include relevant data from its Middle Years and Stepping Up reports)

Keep census-based tests
Recommendations	Benefits	Cautions
Keep census-based tests (testing every student in the province in grades 6 and 10).	Testing every student will allow the province to analyze provincial progress in all populations across Ontario’s publicly funded education system.	Census-based test results allow organizations to rank Ontario’s schools – creating a false perception of “winners and losers” based on scores in only two tests, measured at a single point in time. Ranking schools by performance on census-based tests encourages competition rather than collaboration between boards, schools, and teachers.
Use census-based tests to measure system equity.	Once every school board has a method for collecting demographic data, there will be a large enough sample to allow results to be broken down based on demographic indicators (e.g., race, ethnicity, immigration status, first language, Indigenous status, parental income and education, etc.).	Ontario has been measuring equity based on performance on literacy and numeracy tests for 20 years. Focusing on these results, and using them as a measure of equity, has had little impact. The equity gap among students has remained relatively static. Equity is a combination of both opportunity and outcome. Moving the “equity needle,” may require recognizing goals for education beyond literacy and numeracy; expanding success criteria; and measuring opportunities not just outcomes.

First Nations, Métis, and Inuit students and assessments
Recommendations	Benefits	Cautions
Partner with the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit organizations to develop classroom assessments that are more culturally and linguistically grounded.	Contrary to the advice of Indigenous stakeholders, until now the province has measured success for Indigenous students based solely on literacy and numeracy test performance, credit accumulation, and graduation rates. These Assessment Working Groups provide an opportunity to develop a new set of relevant indicators of student success, as we have recommended in the past.	This recommendation does not address the narrow measures in provincial EQAO tests. As a result, the province would continue to use EQAO test scores and graduation rates to report on gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students.

Diversifying focus for provincial assessment
Recommendations	Benefits	Cautions
Integrate results from the Early Development Instrument (EDI) into overall provincial reporting. (The EDI is a questionnaire completed by kindergarten educators that measures children’s ability to meet age appropriate developmental expectations in areas like physical well-being, language and cognitive skills, and social-emotional development.)	Early years assessments are done by teachers, provide a broader picture of children’s overall development and their readiness to learn, and can identify students who may have special education needs. The EDI assesses more than “school readiness”. It can be seen as one of the first tools to assess transferable skills, and has the potential to build coherence and alignment between these early years indicators and the transferable skills that are being proposed from kindergarten through grade 12.	This strategy will not be effective unless currently vaguely defined “transferable skills” are embedded in curriculum and assessment throughout the K to 12 system.
Consider the potential of administering one-off provincial assessments focused on a range of emerging provincial priorities.	This could provide a method for “dipping into” the system to understand progress in broad areas such as creativity or citizenship and could be administered in a number of ways – through sampling, self-report surveys, or a combination of methods.	Again, it is vital to define terms like transferable skills before developing provincial methods of assessment.

New report cards required

Recommendations

Benefits

Cautions

Changing Ontario’s assessment and reporting landscape will require new report cards, but curriculum renewal should come first.

Report cards are an important communication tool that tell parents what the school system views as important. The inclusion of “transferable skills” on the report card will highlight their importance for students’ growth and development.

The language used in the curriculum and on report cards should be the same, so that teachers, students, parents, and others can communicate clearly and easily about learning goals and progress.

Policy/programs, curriculum, and report cards need to be revised together, and in a coherent sequence, to reduce policy overload and to ensure overall curriculum goals drive each step.

Without concrete, specific, and commonly held definitions of “transferable skills”, curriculum and report card renewal may be subject to a shallow treatment that does not properly reinforce importance of these core capacities for students.

Provide more resources and supports for teachers

Recommendations

Benefits

Cautions

Provide more resources and supports for teachers to support a range of forms of assessment.

Effective assessments developed by teachers for their own classrooms are the most influential, diverse, robust, and supportive assessment tools for student learning in schools. Building professional capacity in classroom assessment is vital.

Increased resources can support more time for teachers to collaborate; to develop more authentic forms of assessment; and to support learning across the curriculum, including vital competencies beyond the 3 R’s.

Standardized assessment tools are less responsive to student needs and classroom contexts than tools developed by teachers.

Assessment of complex areas of learning like social-emotional learning requires not just an infusion of resources, but policy/system support for teachers to develop and apply professional judgment when assessing learning in their classroom context.