Commentary
Ontario is in the middle of an election campaign. This means that political party leaders are making all sorts of promises to attract voters.
Unsurprisingly, the Liberals and NDP are promising to scrap the standardized tests from the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) and replace them with a different assessment strategy. The current EQAO tests are administered in grades three, six, and nine and are used to assess basic literacy and numeracy skills.
Opponents of the EQAO tests have long claimed that these tests are too stressful for students. They argue that since teachers regularly conduct in-class assessments for their students, there is no need for the data provided by the EQAO tests. In other words, they believe that the EQAO tests are unnecessary….