AMDSB lagging behind province in standardized test scores

Recently released standardized test scores show a mixed bag of results for students in the Avon Maitland District school board.

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The Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) tests, which help assess how well Ontario students are doing in reading, writing and math at key points in their education, show some areas of concern for local educators.

While these tests show a high percentages of Avon Maitland District students met or surpassed the provincial standard for reading and writing, the numbers did drop significantly for math, with fewer than half of students in grades 6 (48 per cent) and 9 (43.3 per cent) cent) meeting or surpassing the standard.

The EQAO tests are broken up into four levels, with levels 1 and 2 indicating below the provincial standard. Level 3 is this provincial standard while level 4 means a student is has exceeded that standard. Across the board, the Avon Maitland District had fewer students achieve levels 3 and and 4 than the rest of the province, expect for the Grade 3 reading assessment. In this area, 71.3 per cent of Ontario students were at or above the standard while 77.8 per cent of local students met these marks.

While the school board did not make anyone available for an interview, director of education Graham Shantz said in an emailed statement that the data represents a snapshot of time and “is most useful when examined as long-term trends.”

“Although some of the results for AMDSB showed slight decreases, it is important to note that these results are just one of many assessment tools that schools and boards use to measure and support student achievement,” Shantz said.

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Since the province made changes to the format of the EQAO tests at the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year, the Avon Maitland board has seen slight increases in level 3 and 4 students in Grade 3 math (three per cent) and Grade 6 math (two per cent). However, the board has seen a large drop in reading (eight per cent) for Grade 3 and a four per cent drop in Grade 6 reading. There was also a six per cent decrease in the number of Grade 6 students who met or surpassed the provincial achievement level in writing

For the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test, which measures literacy in all subjects up to the end of Grade 9, 80.2 per cent of local students passed on their first attempt, which lagged slightly behind the provincewide average of 84.5 per cent/

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Education Minister Jill Dunlop said the provincewide results show that student learning is bouncing back after years of disruption to foundational classroom learning resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Ontario is stabilizing as our government’s focus on core learning and practical skills development begins to be felt,” she wrote in a statement.

In his emailed statement, Shantz said the local board’s next step is make decisions about support systems for both educators and students.

“We will also be sharing school-level information with our administrators so that they can incorporate the findings into their school learning plans. This, in the end, enables us to support each student, meet them where they are, and develop strategies to enable their success,” he said.

With files from Heather Rivers

[email protected]

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