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“Could the problem be the standardized testing model? Do these tests provide a fair assessment of true student achievement?” Never mind that the tests had not become more difficult, they must be to blame for deteriorating results. If we just do away with tests, we won’t get depressing results from them and there will be no more of this unjust criticism of teachers, just because their students learn less, other than by immeasurable “problem-solving and discovery methods.”

If we just do away with tests, we will not get depressing results! Nor criticism of teachers!

The reader then learns that “A modern educator does not base a student’s final course mark on just one test. Ongoing assessment and evaluation, based on professional judgment and knowledge of students’ needs, are integral aspects of the work that teachers and education workers undertake every day.” What imbeciles we parents and grandparents have been! We don’t need tests that merely muddy the waters and produce irritating competitiveness, and other stressful complexities for young sensibilities. We must simply have continuing assessments, many of which can be lifted from the over-burdened shoulders of teachers and entrusted to “education workers.” (The identity of these people to whom the tasks of teaching are to be downloaded evades my imagination, but I am prepared to fear the worst.)

It is time to face up to the full gravity of the shortcomings society has inflicted on our martyr-teachers and the “education workers” whom they have deputized to assist them in the crushing task of doing what for several thousand years in all cultures had been mistakenly thought to be the jobs of teachers. “The extraordinary significance that is assigned to standardized test results runs counter to how we educate and evaluate students in the 21st century. Nevertheless, we have real estate companies and conservative think tanks ranking schools and exacerbating socio-economic disparities in communities based solely on EQAO results. Politicians make sweeping pronouncements and call for actions to improve math scores. But none of them talk about actual student achievement. It’s all about the test scores.” Of course, most students do survive to the normal age of matriculation, which is far more important than learning anything or learning how to learn anything. The students are tenacious of life and pursue “discovery methods” that enable them to navigate the treacherous waters of physical survival from the age of 13 to 18, in the fraught ambiance of education workers gently supervised by unionized teachers in Ontario during the McGuinty-Wynne negative economic miracle.