Ontario Education Minister says he withheld EQAO test scores, prompting outcry

Ontario’s Education Minister says he is withholding the results of provincewide standardized tests to better understand the data and make changes to the system, as critics push the province to reveal the numbers publicly.

Paul Calandra said he has purposefully held back the Education Quality and Accountability Office results, which are usually released in September or early October, in order to take a “very deep dive” into the numbers.

The revelation has prompted outcry from educators, experts and opposition politicians, who say the government is shirking its responsibilities to be transparent about the school system.

The EQAO, an arm’s-length agency of the Ontario government, tests students in Grade 3 and Grade 6 in reading, math and writing every year. Grade 9 students are tested in math, and those in Grade 10 take a literacy test.

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“I obviously have the results, but I want to make sure that I act on what I’m seeing in the results, as opposed to just handing them out there and saying, ‘These are what they are,’” Mr. Calandra told The Globe and Mail this week.

“What do they mean for students? What do they mean for different boards? Who’s doing something right, where have we fallen off? … The delay is my fault, frankly, because I want to see what it all means as opposed to just releasing.”

He said he’s seeing some results that are good, “some not so good,” alluding to the COVID-19 pandemic that affected students’ progress.

“There has been a significant amount of funding – whether it’s on math, whether it’s on literacy – and quite frankly, some boards are knocking it out of the park. Some are not. But why? I wanted to see why.”

Mr. Calandra said he would be releasing the test scores “very soon.”

The results help school boards understand where students may be struggling and direct resources accordingly. They show the scores provincewide, as well as sorted by both boards and individual schools.

The most recent scores from the 2023-24 school year showed fewer Ontario students in Grades 3 and 6 are meeting the provincial standard in reading and writing compared with the previous year, while math scores improved slightly, but were still low. The math scores for Grade 6 and 9 showed only about half of students meeting the standard.

Kelly Gallagher-Mackay, an education policy researcher at Wilfrid Laurier University, said the EQAO results should be published promptly, and without any appearance of political interference.

“It’s not surprising the ministry gets it first, but it’s surprising they hold on publication for an arm’s-length body,” she said.

Delaying the release of the data is at odds with the reasons the EQAO was established, she said. “It was intended to be an arm’s-length independent body that would be separate from political fretting and control.”

EQAO data represent only one part of a much bigger picture that shows how students in Ontario are performing, including report card data, classroom assessments and teacher observations, Ontario Public School Boards’ Association president Kathleen Woodcock said in an e-mailed statement.

But school staff and others depend on that data to make important decisions, and the sooner they get them, the better, she said.

“A timely release of EQAO results helps school boards, principals and teachers direct resources to the right places, identify successful practices and plan professional learning,” she said.

David Mastin, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, said it should not be in Mr. Calandra’s power to delay the release of the test results.

He accused the Education Minister of planning to use the data to support a push to privatized education.

“I am positive that this is an opportunity for him to use that dataset to justify the next level of cuts and slashes in order to ultimately hand this over to private corporations,” he said.

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Ottawa-area MPP Chandra Pasma, the NDP critic for education, said she’s never seen a minister hold back results before.

“This is not a government that is transparent and wants parents to have access to all the information about our education system. They want to be able to take what’s useful to them and spin it for their own political purposes,” she said.

“It could also be that this is not about curriculum at all, but the minister is looking to make a case to put more school boards under supervision,” Ms. Pasma added.

Premier Doug Ford’s government also this week passed its controversial Bill 33, which enables the government to more easily remove elected trustees and temporarily take over school boards, make new regulations and compel boards to allow police officers into schools. Mr. Calandra has said the new legislation is necessary to address problems in schools.

Liberal MPP John Fraser, the party’s education critic, said the EQAO tests can be anxiety-inducing for teachers and families and that Mr. Calandra’s delay does nothing to help students.

“He’s holding it back for the politics of it,” Mr. Fraser said. “The school year is a third of the way over. It’s a B.S. answer.”