Failed Progressive Conservative candidate Cameron Montgomery has landed a $140,000-a-year job chairing the agency that administers province-wide standardized testing for students — a post for which his predecessor earned less than $4,000 last year.

Montgomery’s appointment as chair of the board of directors at the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) marks the first time the position is a full-time job — a move that has drawn criticism.

“It’s not a full-time job, and I don’t know how you make it into a full-time job,” said former NDP education minister Dave Cooke, who was a board member for 10 years, the last three as chair, before retiring in October. “If he’s there every day I don’t know what (Montgomery) is going to do.”

Montgomery’s appointment by the Doug Ford government follows lengthy public consultations on how to improve education and comes at a time when the independent provincial agency says it’s in the process of modernizing to better meet the needs of students, parents and educators.

As chair, Cooke earned a per diem of $225, which in 2018 amounted to $3,600. During one unusually busy year, with lots of meetings, he recalls earning more, but still less than $20,000. Cooke, who was one of the architects of the EQAO, established in 1996, wonders what Montgomery will do to warrant an annual salary of $140,000.

The agency administers tests in Grades 3, 6, 9 and 10 to assess reading, writing and math skills to help identify curriculum areas that need attention. Its responsibilities include coming up with strategies to improve accountability and making recommendations to bolster the quality of public education. The agency’s daily operations are led by professional staff headed by a CEO, who reports to the board, which meets at least four times a year. The board is accountable, through its chair, to the minister of education and must maintain an arm’s-length relationship with the province.

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“EQAO is on a path to modernization that will touch every aspect of the agency — from assessments and reporting to research, engagement activities and business operations,” said Montgomery, a former assistant professor of education at University of Ottawa. “In the months ahead, I’ll be working with the government and EQAO’s board of directors to ensure the agency can better meet the needs of the province,” he said in a statement. The agency said Montgomery was unavailable for an interview Tuesday.

Ministry of Education spokesperson Sandra Zeni described Montgomery as an “experienced educator” with “first-hand experience of best practices and challenges in Ontario’s English and French-language school systems.”

“EQAO requires strategic leadership and significant governance expertise as it works to modernize its processes throughout a multi-year transformation period,” said Zeni, noting a full-time chair will “better protect the public interest and parent needs” and “bring higher levels of accountability and transparency” for taxpayers.

“The full-time chair will act as a chief spokesperson for EQAO,” wrote Zeni in an email. “The ministry will work with the chair with a view to promoting high levels of student achievement, particularly in foundational math skills.”

EQAO communications officer Sarah Beech said in an email that modernizing the agency will be complex. Beech said Montgomery “will work with the board of directors to create an ambitious strategic plan and he will work with the CEO to ensure its successful implementation.” In a news release about the announcement, the agency said it “welcomes feedback on its modernization and listened closely as perspectives were shared through the government’s consultation on education reform in the fall.” That’s when the province received 72,000 submissions from the public on various education issues.

Cooke, a veteran politician who was an MPP from 1977 to 1997 and served as education minister in the Bob Rae government, said he’s “very concerned” the appointment of a full-time chair could lead to the perception of “political interference.” Being a full-time position “puts a whole different spin on it,” he said, adding “I haven’t been able to get my head around it because I don’t know what (Montgomery) is going to do.”

“We’ve got a defeated Conservative candidate who is now going to chair EQAO and that, to me, is a concern (because) of what the perception of that might be,” said Cooke. “The only way the agency maintains its credibility is if it maintains the reality of being arm’s length from government and completely non-partisan.”

In the last provincial election, Montgomery ran in the battleground riding of Ottawa-Orléans, which was the first stop Ford made during a pre-campaign trip to Ottawa. Liberal incumbent Marie-France Lalonde won the race by a slim margin.

Montgomery had previously intended to run in a 2016 byelection in Ottawa-Vanier, but stepped aside to allow former Ontario ombudsman André Marin to run.

On Jan. 31, the province appointed Montgomery as EQAO chair for three years, but it was only publicized last week.

Charles Pascal, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, said “creating a totally unnecessary high-salaried job to reward a failed PC crony is the worst kind of patronage.”

“In the context of a government that has shown active disregard for public education, I worry that the appointee will earn his gravy by turning a non-partisan agency into a vehicle to further denigrate Ontario education,” said Pascal, a former deputy education minister and former chair of the EQAO board.

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In a media statement, NDP education critic Marit Stiles criticized the creation of the full-time $140,000 job.

“Parents want to see every education dollar spent right in the classroom,” said Stiles. “Instead, Doug Ford is siphoning off cash to give to someone he trades favours with. That money is for children — not Ford’s insiders.”

On Twitter, Chris Cowley, an executive member of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association, described Montgomery’s salary as “enough to buy 2,500 text books for Ontario students.”

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