Recently, Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced $55 million in funding for math programs. His apparent hope is that this money will improve flagging EQAO math test scores. He is, as seems to be a trend for Ford government education ministers, dead wrong.

According to his own EQAO office, analysis of test results has shown that for most students, "their basic math skills are stronger than their ability to apply those skills." An EQAO white paper from March 2019 confirms that "the challenge with mathematics in Ontario may be less about students 'knowing' math and more about their ability to apply math knowledge and to engage in related critical thinking."

Wilfully ignorant of his own data, Minister Lecce announced a new "back to basics" math program.

Most astonishingly, Lecce went so far as to blame "declining math scores on the former Liberal government's curriculum, which focuses on problem-solving that grounds math in its application."

To recap: our government's own data shows that students' grasp of math fundamentals is sound, but problem-solving is weak. Our education minister's response is to earmark money for more fundamentals, and to tear down the previous Liberal government's focus on problem-solving. Lecce has misidentified the problem revealed in his own data and then chosen a solution that actually exacerbates the problem.

In the spirit of standardized testing, I offer you a multiple choice question. Lecce's announcement is either (you may select more than one answer):

a) unvarnished incompetence;

b) part of the Ford government's ongoing campaign to demonize and destroy perfectly good Liberal initiatives for no good reason other than that they were put forward by Liberals;

c) another attempt to degrade public education in an effort to open it up to private enterprise; or

d) pandering to a reactionary base that fears "new" educational strategies because it doesn't understand them.

Further to that, Lecce had the temerity to tell the public, with a straight face, that correlation equals causation. (Pro tip: it doesn't. It never does.)

Without a hint of evidence, Lecce tried to draw a clear link between the Liberal curriculum and the decline in math scores. "Concurrent to the introduction of that (Liberal, problem-solving) approach, we saw math numbers decline," he said. "So one would have to accept the premise that there is a relationship between the two. What else is the reason ostensibly for such a decline?"

Let us focus on his question. What else, he asks, might be causing a decline in math skills? What else, he wonders, has changed in society since 2005 that could possibly have such an impact?

Well, we could talk about our wired culture (Facebook went public in 2006; the iPhone was first released in 2007) and its effects on learning. We could talk about the scourge of child poverty in Ontario (13.8 per cent of our children still live in poverty). We could talk about the rise of precarious labour that keeps parents tense, unstable and unavailable to their children.

The province that does best on math scores is Quebec. Experts' best guess is that is partly because of their curriculum (it teaches fewer concepts per year than Ontario's, but in greater depth), partly because of more extensive pedagogical training for teacher candidates, partly because they still have a mandatory graduation exam to measure mastery of mathematics, but most significantly because of a preparedness philosophy that is distinctly different than that of other provinces.

The B.C. and Ontario systems, for example, prioritize functional skills — if you know enough to get by in the workplace, you're basically OK. In Quebec, the focus is on mastery, not just functionality. That's a significant difference.

Equally importantly, the Quebec system is not yet as willing as Ontario's to push unprepared kids along to raise credit accumulation and graduation rates. Simply put, in Quebec, you demonstrate mastery or you repeat the course.

However, this is a shift that comes from outside of the school system. It is a basic cultural expectation that cannot be changed by a tweak of teaching style, a test administered to potential teacher candidates, or $55 million in funding for back-to-basics math education, whatever that might look like.

Minister Lecce, in short, is barking up the wrong tree.

The teachers are fine. The curriculum is fine. The kids, as the old song says, are all right. What needs changing is the way we as a province conceive of education and educators.

We now live in a province that all-too-often values the appearance of success over actual mastery. As long as we pay lip service to learning, test scores will not improve.

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As long as the government trash talks teachers and their unions, slashes staffing and physical plant budgets, and generally sabotages the educational system, there will be no buy-in to the cultural shift that would begin meaningful change in our province's math scores.

The math, Minister Lecce, is simple: until we revalue our public system and the idea of education in general, and until we re-engage children to love learning instead of dreading standardized tests, progress will elude us.