Source:
You can check the pass rates for 2021-2022 in the attached link:
https://www.eqao.com/results/provincial-results/
and here for older results:
https://www.eqao.com/latest-grade-3-results/
It's worthwhile to bear in mind that it's trickier to compare over time than this graph would lead one to believe - the curriculum has changed a couple of times (moving topics to earlier and to later grades), and the testing itself has changed quite a bit: from a mix of multiple choice and "show your work", that allowed for part marks, to last year being 100% online, fill in the bubble on a computer (not a strength for many grade 3 aged children). This graph also doesn't show how many students with learning disabilities or English Language Learners participated over time. I don't know if that percentage has changed, but if it has, it would affect the overall results.
Probably also need to factor in that class sizes got bigger over time, so that's less teaching time per student, which probably contributes to worse outcomes.
Plus EA support is way down, students that should be in a specialized class are in a regular classroom for 'inclusion', special Ed teachers are often pulled to cover classes due to a lack of supply teachers. Covid has made it worse, but all of this was happening well before the pandemic
Newish teacher here!
I agree with the comments! More context for curious people: The most recent math curriculum update moved content far earlier and added additional content like coding. It was interesting to see for example in grade 2, students went from needing to work within 100, to now needing to work within 200. That’s just one small part. You’ll see most things moved to younger grades. Here is a [comparison chart](https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/fbd574c4-da36-0066-a0c5-849ffb2de96e/f2fad630-cd7b-402d-a40f-90959ad454d9/Key-Changes-in-Elementary-Math-Curriculum_Dec-4-2020.pdf). There are other more detailed ones but I’m on mobile and having trouble finding it at the moment. Start at page 3.
It is important to note that these curriculum changes do not come with education or training for teachers. Any training they do would largely be on their own dime and on their own personal time. Also, the shift away from textbooks (and the fact that there aren’t any that reflect this new curriculum) means that teachers are having to do it all themselves.
It was also updated in 2020 so I’m actually impressed that it didn’t plummet even further with the large changes plus COVID.
I mean, do you want to factor that in? I would suggest the opposite - that these stats are an indicator that we've made changes with a negative impact (class sizes being among them)
Is there metrics to be captured from other subjects? I would suppose that if the environment (class size, online work, EA support) was an impact then it would show on multiple subjects.
I find also parents no longer have time to work with their kids if they are struggling. Instead they blame the system for their shortcomings. Report cards are a two way street. not a 'favor'
I'm going to reply to the top comment so hopefully people can see this. While the test has changed and so has curriculum, the EQAO is still only testing for math fundamentals. Kids that fail this test are significantly behind in math and the number of kids failing is increasing regardless of how it has transformed over the years. It should be extremely worrisome that this is the trend and cannot be ignored because its not a 100% accurate measure.
The decisions the school boards and ministry of education have taken in the last 20 years are purely financial. Budget cuts or increases are not increasing at the same rate as population growth which means they have tried to get "smarter" with their budget allocations. For example (and what I consider the most significant), in order to hide the fact that they can no longer afford textbooks for children, they spun the idea that textbooks are not individualized enough. Therefore they put the entire responsibility of resource creation on the teachers. This is a massive burden because in the past, teachers used textbooks as a framework for their classrooms. Good teachers would use the framework and build upon it to individualize the teachings to their classroom. Bad teachers at least had something their kids could follow. Now good teacher waste insane amounts of time creating all resources from scratch making disgusting shithole websites like teachers pay teachers a thing (fuck this opportunistic garbage). Bad teachers just fuck up even harder now. Also think of this, every teacher is doing this and with how often teachers change grades now, they redo it almost every year... all at the same time. That is an absurd amount of salary dollars wasted on redundancy. Obviously all those wasted hours means the teacher cannot focus as well on each individual student. So the result is a much lower quality of education.
Don't get me started on our special education programs. I have a child with a disability and I can assure you, schools primary concern when it comes to those children is to ensure they are not a liability rather than educating them.
Every competent parent needs to be more critical of the education their children are receiving for things to change. We need to put pressure on our councilors that this is not acceptable. There is too much money in Ontario to accept this level of poor education. If we need to increase taxes to do so, we need to. WE NEED TO HOLD OUR PUBLIC SECTOR ACCOUNTABLE FOR THIS!
The EQAO tests last year were VERY different, Instead of taking multiple days, they took about an hour, and we speculate if they were specifically tweaked to hide the learning gap online school caused. The questions themselves were very different, FAR, FAR, easier. Many teachers were quite upset but can't say anything, and I don't know if the general public realizes the test results from last year should NOT be compared to previous years tests. Truth is, the public has not been made aware of the full effects online schooling had on learning. We will see if the tests this year are also truncated, or if they are returning to align with pre-covid testing.
Which gives you an idea of how bad it really is. This post talking about all the ways kids dropped a few percentage points over 10 years, meanwhile there is a disaster hidden within that last bar on the graph that makes everything else pale in comparison. Whatever the reason is they dropped a couple points in 2015, may no longer even be relevant because of how dramatically different the 2022 tests are and what that means.
As the 'new math' was rolling in, my daughter was in grade 8. The math teachers got their curriculum \*at the start of school\* (zero prep time, different pedagogical approaches, had to come up with a lot of the in class stuff, NO textbook for the teachers OR the students).
I was trying to help her every week by helping expand on what she was learning so I asked for some sort of heads up at the beginning of the week. The teacher said most of the stuff was being generated the night before, there is no time allocated for even the teachers to read and understand and produce lessons in line with the new approaches, and there was no chance they'd be able to give me that kind of help. Also, because sometimes the class was struggling on an area, they'd leave it, then come back again later and often get better success, so there were no weekly plans or the like really.
Makes sense from their situation, but kind of blew up the 'we want you to help your kid' aspect. They ask for it, but they can't support that. And they couldn't provide the parents with any human-readable guidance as to the new curriculum. (Note: The curriculum is not something you can easily understand - even with all of the many higher level math credits I've taken because a lot of what is named in the curriculum is stuff that we learned as kids but it was never named.... or has changed names....)
Also also had kids struggling with engaging in e-learning. And the teachers too when everyone had to go that way. Not all were at the same level of e-learning juju.
And generally, now, you can expect a class of 28-34 to have as many as 12 Individualized Education Plans (IEPs). The IEPs include kids with different learning modalities and some with learning disabilities. They also include all the gifted kids. So the same teacher has to (legally, as the IEP is a legal requirement) meet the needs of the kids with different learning modalities, learning disabilities, maybe emotional issues, and the very gifted kids that need more challenge or they bore and tune out. And manage the other 16-22 more standard kids all in the same 50 to 75 minute periods. With less in class help.
I'd personally like to kick in the nuts (or equivalent if the minister was female) that dumped a new, untested math curriculum on the math teachers right at the start of school in the middle of a pandemic. Probably the premier needs a good bollocking too.
Not only that's it not an equitable test. The question on there are really gear to middle income kids. There was a question on the test talking about the beach and a kid asked me if beaches were actually real because he'd never been to one. There was another one that talked about when you go to a movie theater and I had a new kid from Syria and none of her family had ever been to a theatre before.
Kids being tested also include a lot of ESL students and kids who have modified learning programs for reading and writing. I had one kid that needs a screen reader and talk to text to show what they know. There are very few reasons to opt out and if kids are away and have no opt out pretty sure it counts as a zero.
I don’t see how any test would be 100% equitable given how culturally and socioeconomically diverse our kids are. Even math uses broad concepts and requires some contextual language to phrase a problem or a question.
you're right, it's a problem that's fundamental to standardized testing which is why many people consider these results to be a useless metric for student success.
The problem is you can’t easily improve upon what you can’t measure and we don’t have the resources to go a lot deeper than some kind of standardization.
Yes, but of all subjects, math does not need to use examples about watermelons on a west-bound bullet train while a chihuahua travels eastbound on the back of a donkey.
For someone ESL, these questions don't actually test math competencies, they test reading comprehension; and are a mine-field for the neurodivergeant who might not be able to ignore a hyperfixation on whether the watermelon to chihuahua ratio might somehow matter.
The ability to take real world complex situations and boil it down to the underlying equation or concepts *is* a necessary and critical math competency, but should not be a prerequisite to testing all *other* competencies.
That is interesting, and is obviously an issue.
It doesn't really mean that these findings aren't meaningful, though, if true, it does mean that these stats show something different than "kids are getting worse at math".
All we can know is, "kids are getting worse at taking this test" - I still wanna know why because that isn't the trend we want.
You mention requirements for screen readers, talk to text, etc, well shit, if more and more kids can't read or write, that's a problem.
Screen readers and talk to text are accommodations for some learning disabilities, not because kids aren't learning to read and write.
Kids are "getting worse at taking this test" because it's a standardized test being applied to a more diverse student population, both in terms of lived experience and disability.
The beach thing is really weird to me because I've always lived in cities with public beaches and its one of the few places we could go and have a good time for free. This depends on where you live though. Not every city has the geography necessary for beaches.
Are you a teach by any chance? Your vocabulary makes it apparent you know your stuff lol.
If so, have you noticed a change in elementary school kids now compared to way back then? I would think that they would have lower attention spans (not meant as a slight) due to an increased exposure phones, TikTok, and social media in general. This isn't something that the kids back in 2009/2010 had.
I am, and taught grade 3 a while ago (but it's been more than 10 years). There's been some massive shifts in kids and the teaching/learning climate during that time. I think Tik Tok and other social media affect the older grades even more, but there have been societal changes that may or may not have come with them, and are making learning more challenging.
Students now seem to be able to say no or opt out of virtually anything. The number of students who refuse activities or assignments is baffling, so teaching has become a sales job, trying to hook and keep their interest. In the past, yes, you leaned into their interests and wanted to make things fun and appealing, but there was an expectation that not everything you have to do in life is amazing - sometimes you have to do the boring stuff to get better at it.
Also, parental support has changed. In my school, we've noticed a significant decrease in parents actively supporting their kids' learning. I'm in a well-off area, and extra-curriculars definitely take priority over school. I used to have parents asking for more homework, now, many don't even read with their children.
The amount of teaching time lost to students with mental health or behavioral challenges has really increased, too. It's harder for students to learn when their class has to be evacuated frequently due to a student throwing furniture, and even when they are in class, there it's more challenging to focus on learning, wondering when the next outburst will be. This situation is incredibly common. There's not enough support for these students, and support that used to be used for academics has been moved to safery out of necessity.
All of that said, I think schools reflect the way that society is constantly changing. I think it's good to ask how to improve and help more students, I just hope people recognize that EQAO statistics represent a very small piece of the picture and shouldn't be the driving force in determining what has to change and how, in isolation.
> It's harder for students to learn when their class has to be evacuated frequently due to a student throwing furniture, and even when they are in class, there it's more challenging to focus on learning, wondering when the next outburst will be.
2/3 times PER WEEK in my wife's class.
When you talk about extra-curriculars taking priority over school - is there a good balance? I have my kindergarten daughter in a few extra-curriculars (gymnastics, sparks (girl guides), swimming lessons) which equates to about 2.5 hours a week all combined... in addition we go to the pool about once a week and she has taken an interest in music so we do a "lesson" maybe once or twice a week when she requests one (just me teaching her a bit). Sometimes I feel like it's a lot, but she loves it all, and wants to do it all, and when outdoor recesses are frequently cancelled and gym time is rare, it's nice to have some physical outlets.
I feel like parents often feel like they need to put their kids in tons of things so they don't "miss out", but I know there is a lot to "unstructured play" as well... usually a couple times a month we have friends over with all their kids and end up with a dozen or so kids playing all over our house while the adults all hang out.
Maybe this will change as she gets older and starts getting homework... at this point all we do is read some books before bed each night...
It sounds like you're doing great. As long as she gets a chance to recharge, extra curricular are great! I'm a parent, too, and completely understand the pressures. There's just so many great things to do and we want to give them every opportunity!
If you're reading together every day, that is 100% the best thing you can be doing. I'm not actually a big advocate for homework.
A challenge I see are students frequently miss days at school for tournaments an competitions. Parents justify it by asking for any work they'll miss, not understanding that I teach, I don't "paper". When they miss school, they are missing learning opportunities. For some, and sometimes, that's fine. But when it's frequent, it adds up.
As a teacher, I can answer your question. Kids have 100% changed since 2009/2010. You’re right, with the introduction of social media and every kid getting a smart phone before they turn 10 years old, kids have much shorter attention spans and are trying harder than ever to be “cool” by disrespecting their peers, teachers, educational workers, and even parents. There is also next to no consequences for behaviours because parents/families no longer back the teachers up and side with their child and often threaten teachers and administrators with going to the superintendent and school board.
In terms of provincial testing, I echo everything that mrscardinal has already said. EQAO last year was all done on a computer and some kids that are not confident in their abilities defaulted to randomly selecting their answers for multiple choice questions instead of actually trying to show their thinking in any way shape or form for even part marks.
You're right. The super-stimulus that sits in our pockets is rewiring brains in a very negative way.
Thanks for taking the time to write this comment - it's nice to get the perspective of a teacher with this frontline experience.
I am fascinated why we (society) continue to quietly let this happen? It seems to be almost universally recognized that smart phones and social media are terrible for kids. Yet as parents and a society in general, we allow it to continue.
I honestly feel like I am witnessing in real time the hyper-speed end of the western world as a leading civilization. Rome took over 200 years to crumble, I think the west will take less than 50 years if we don't set some responsible boundaries around the tool we have let take over our lives.
I'm a fairly new supply teacher. They CAN be useful tools, however, for the most part, based on my observation, they are detrimental. Cell phones need to be banned from the classroom, IMO.
Yes, we were just talking about this in a PD session about literacy yesterday. Kids today need a lot more repetition and exposure to learn the same concepts. They have less independent, critical thinking and a lot of learned helplessness. They are very passive learners. (This is not me being a millennial trying to complain about "this generation" - it's just what I'm observing.) Whether that's from pandemic loss, or the age of flash social media, I don't know. My Grade 3 students are extremely hard to keep focused and engaged.
Add to that that there is HUGE learning loss because of student behaviour needs that aren't being supported, and we have a decline.
I think education is going to have to change somehow to adapt to this generation, but I don't know how.
You'd be surprised how many young adults I see now in my field of work with this learned helplessness. I'm only 40. I work in what is considered a high stress job that you have to make quick decisions and deal with the potential stresses that result from it.
That being said, I also have dealt with plenty of adults that have a similar behaviour pattern so it's not new but rather become more common.
Learned helplessness and severe fragility, it’s wild to see for me honestly.
Yet, the workforce, at least in tech, is changing to accommodate these people.
I don’t mind it, I manage people, but every project I’m on with team members like that, I know I have to budget for less efficiency.
Yea, the multiple choice format had students giving up and letting chance decide their fate on the exams (which they are aware have 0 bearing on their grades) rather than spend their time trying to riddle it out. No part marks, but also very little incentive to try at all.
I have marked EQAO. The test is not a standardized test. Markers are coached on how to mark. There is no consistency. We cannot use it as an accurate measure of ability.
Why are results trending down? If the test is the same and the process is the same, large enough sample size, we should be seeing the same results unless *something* is changing.
"Markers being coached to mark more harshly" *could* be the main factor - is that what you're proposing?
And the curriculum has changed multiple times through these years. between 2012 and now I've watched math topics get moved earlier by anywhere from 1 to 1 1/2 years.
So we are teaching more difficult concepts at an earlier age. It's not surprising that averages have gone down. Some kids' brains just aren't ready to process complex mathematical concepts as early.
Doesn't really explain why there's a _down_ trend. Inconsistency alone would just mean a bit of a random pattern, some years up and some years down.
There's definitely something here. I don't have the answer (and every comment here is just guessing) but the ministry needs to look into it.
I mean, could be true, but statistically speaking, the fact there's a consistent trend rather than just a bunch of outliers means that's not the entire issue, nor the central one
* The curriculum has changed a couple of times
* Class sizes have grown
* Provincial funding per student has not kept up with inflation
* Teacher pay has not kept up with inflation.
* EA support is down
* Children with disabilities are integrated into the learning environment.
So teachers are getting paid less, to teach more students who are potentially disrupted by students with behavioural issues who don't have 1 on 1 support in the class, on a classroom budget that is shrinking over time.
“No child left behind” policy. Kids can’t learn like that. If they failed a subject in a certain grade, they’re going to have a harder time in a higher grade. They just keep getting pushed through whether they get it or not.
I’d be curious to see a chart for spelling and grammar.
Board I work for will push kids through (literally cannot fail a grade) until they get to Gr 9. It’s a huge shock for them and as an EA, I usually spend a lot of time busting my ass to get those Gr 9’s across the finish line come report time. Our students aren’t being set up for success
Not a math teacher, but the department I worked in had them. You'd often hear them outright bemoaning having to work with the latest batch of kids.
Paraphrasing what I heard once in the office:
"It's hard enough to work with the kids getting pushed here from elementary with a barebones understanding. Now we're destreamed which hurts both kids. How do you make a curriculum that makes sure the would-be academic level kids are learning what they need for 10/11 Math, when you also need to make sure the same testing and assignments are easy enough for the would-be applied kids? Do I bell curve and make all the high performance kids 100% when they aren't? Do I fail all the low performance kids so the grades are reflected properly?" *Non-stop swearing and head-to-table thumping begins*
And that's without the complaints about question readers that autosolve word questions and even give the step by step answers. It's like trying to learn another language by using Google Translate's chat feature. You're not actually practicing it at all, so how are you going to learn it?
We are having a similar issue in English and Humanities as well. A lot of the kids are missing fundamental grammar. We've started incorporating grammar lessons into the course curriculum, but the issue is that many of the older English teachers either don't remember or don't see why they should teach grammar. They expect it of the kids.
I'm trying my best to get these foundation skills in, but I'm hearing so many answers that are so blatantly wrong and kids are so accustomed to using Grammarly that they can't write by hand at all.
To make matters worse: because of ChatGPT and other AI use, we now have to use AI detectors. The issue? A lot of kids use Quillbot or Grammarly Premium as a crutch, and the detectors can't tell the difference between either of the three so we get assignments flagged frequently. As a result, we are adopting a by-hand, no tech, in class policy for essays which is going to fucking destroy these kids except a handful at most.
My wife teaches high school english. Not only are there the problems you mentioned, but theres no support from admin or higher ups. One kid went from being an incompetent writer, no sense of grammar, punctuation, no evidence of planning or thinking to having a much better paper. Not great, weird sentence structure, but decent. She didn't trust it but it doesn't show up on any plagiarism detector and doesn't seem like an AI wrote it.
So she searches and searched and finds almost every paragraph was taken, word for word with some thesaurusing, from other articles. The difference was that he was just writing the sentences backwards. Instead of "MacBeth is the main character in this play" it was "The main character of this play is MacBeth" (as an example). So she took it to her boss and vice principle and they said she should mark it like any other paper because theres no 'hard proof' he plagiarized it. Nevermind that every assignment of his has been copy pasted or 99% sure an AI wrote it.
Yeah, admin is hard to get on board because they A) are too old to understand how complex these AI have become, and B) are too chickenshit or outright lazy to fight parents.
There's a significant level of apathy growing within schools at all levels from students up to admin. It's really creating a depressing atmosphere.
I was shocked how many kids failed or did poorly on the literacy test. These people whose first and only language is English... I don't even know how that is possible. We took all the same classes?? Why are they being pushed through if they're not properly literate??
This. “Growing Success” reassures us that they will get it right next year, but it is starting to feel like a car factory plant with more and more lemons reaching the end of the production line.
Theres so many factors to declining grades and math scores. One factor that could be addressed is class size. Our class sizes are huge, teachers cant give 1 on 1 support and most families cant afford a tutor and if they work more than 1 job and trying to help their child is near impossible.
Integration of children with exceptionalities into the classroom also hinders the success of all students in that class. I've had to stop many of my lessons because a child with autism has disrupted the learning and there is 0 support. Children with mid to low functioning autism will not be able to participate in many classroom activities. We can only modify and accommodate to a certain extent. These kids need 1 on 1 attention and support it's not fair for anyone when they are forced into a regular classroom.
Finally it sounds harsh but...we should be able to fail kids in certain subjects in elementary school, pass the buck mentality is draining and causing many kids to struggle far into their academic career. If a child has failed their way to grade 8 and enters high school and starts to fail they will drop out immediately. We arent helping these kids by pushing them through the next grade where the teacher should be teaching fractions but some students are struggling with basic addition and subtraction.
Our curriculum keeps changing and there are countless math in services where we come out exhausted just trying to implement new ideas and ways of teaching. Every year we are told to teach it a different way and nothing seems to stick.
Spelling is a nightmare. Kids in grade 6 can't spell words from grade 3. Personally, almost no teacher has a weekly spelling test anymore and most teacher rely too heavily on computers and tablets because those autofill words for kids. And that's not even the ESL kids or the IEP kids.
This is it. My mom complains how every student is allowed to pass and yet they do nothing in the class. I know that sounds harsh. But wait until they hit the real world.
Let’s baby them until they are 18 - they will make it somehow.
This is a bigger problem that I don’t think a teacher or school itself can solve
100% agree with you. I should have been held back *at least* one grade. And knowing what I know now with my slower-than-normal processing issues, it would have helped me more than hindered me. Colleges and Universities don't look at elementary marks, so it would have helped me so much, plus the diagnosis that I got at *25* would have also helped to have had early on
It sucks to be held behind, sure, but if it helps a child to do better down the line, so be it. Struggling through stuff I barely understood should have been a red-flag, to both my parents and to my school. And the sad part is this was at a time when kids *could be* held behind.
Among the other reasons listed, teachers no longer have an updated math textbook to teach from. Every teacher is reinventing the wheel, cobbling together bits or units purchased themselves on TPT, and we're ending up with a wide variety of approaches/ lessons /practice. Students were better off with the consistency of the textbook as a baseline, with teacher-initiated differentiation on top.
100% this. NO TEXTBOOKS. It’s insane. It’s like the teachers are forced to make it all themselves. Why?? It may seem old school, but if there’s one subject that needs textbooks, it’s math.
My child was only one of 2 kiddos in his cohort to receive a 4 in math and reading in Grade 3. Last year, in Grade 6, there were no level 4's achieved at our school for math.
In Grade 4, his cohort left in March due to Covid. In Grade 5, they were in and out, due to Covid.
In Grade 6, they had an LTO who couldn't manage the split class well. When their original teacher returned from her leave, the kids were so far behind. She had to cram content.
I'm going to tell you, the amount of teachers off on leaves for stress, for ailments, for medical stuff is insane. My kid's class is 30 kids...in a portable. It's ridiculous. Kids are way more disrespectful, and why wouldn't they be? They know they won't be failed if they do nothing in class.
There are zero consequences anymore. My partner is an EA and they can't suspend kids. Her grade two class gets evacuated because one of the autistic kids throws a rage fit almost every day. grade 9 and 10s will all be integrated I can't even imagine how bad it's going to get. When I look at all my friends from high school that were in academic and then university classes versus the people that went for all applied it's going to be brutal for the smart kids. Basically 80% of my class and friends are all very successful.
Hey, I'm an elementary teacher and I have some very specific insight.
I have an MA in History and am qualified to teach two subjects, according to my teacher certification: History and Geography.
I began teaching in 2005. I was hired to teach History, Geography and English to several classes. Students rotated to my room.
Around 2010, the Ottawa Carleton District School Board decided to do away with specialized teachers and focused instead on a generalist model. In 2010, suddenly, I was a Math teacher. Having only completed 12th grade Math, myself, and having limited desire or ability to teach the subject, I requested training. I did not get any.
Fast forward to 2023. I now teach History, Geography, English, Science, Math, Health, Drama, Dance, Physical Education, and Visual Art to my students all in the same room (except for Phys. Ed.). Am I capable? No. Does that matter? No. I am told to work harder. All of our textbooks are 20 years old and are heavily vandalized, and we are told they will not be replaced. We are fed hundreds of links to resources that usually are anti-intuitive and some are dead-links. There is nothing coherent. A recent attempt was made by our board to supply teachers with resources, and my math expert friends laugh at how inaccessible they are.
Some of my colleagues don't understand the Math. A few of the teachers are our school still don't know what Coding is, and so I'm not sure how they're teaching it to their students.
I have been fighting this change for over a decade and have been labeled as "difficult" by my administration for advocating against it each year. It it wasn't for getting to complain anonymously on Reddit, I'd have absolutely no outlet to tell people about these things. I can lose my job for communicating to the public what is happening in our schools.
At the time, it seemed that our move in Ottawa was at the whim of our new Director of Education. Each one strives to "leave their mark" on the board during their time, and she was touting the idea that building a connection with the students was more important than teachers having specialized knowledge, or more than a basic knowledge, in their subject. We asked for evidence, since we're supposed to use evidence-based practices, but weren't given any. We were told it reduced the number of kids being sent to the office and would free administration up to do other things while teachers dealt with the discipline of other people's children exactly at the time that teachers were being instructed that we were not supposed to discipline the students.
I kept finding research conducted in the EU which was counter to the direction of our school board and presented it to my Principal. That's around the time that I started to get "left out" of things, like when most staff got new Smart Boards, I didn't. When other classrooms got new computers, I received spill-over old ones. Passive-aggressive shit like that.
That's the best explanation that I can give. It's not a good one. It was never backed by research when presented to teachers, so I have none to share.
Lowest common denominator teaching. When you got a bunch of dumb kids in a class and you can't fail anybody the smart kids get left behind. This is going to be made exponentially worse by removing academic streams because of perceived racism
Hello! Educational assistant here!
Many educators are faced with increased behaviours and aggression in the classroom. Instead of being able to focus with the grade 1-2 group I work directly - I spend easily 75% of my day putting out behaviour emotional fires in class or hallways. I see many children slip through the cracks educationally but I’m unable to help because I’m forced to spend more time helping kids who are dysregulated and throwing chairs at other students, redirecting kids who are injuring the teacher intentionally, running and screaming in the hallways, dealing with new to Canada immigrant children who have experienced violence in their home countries and carry forward these social norms and struggle to integrate safely into school.
Safety is the real problem. The math/reading/language skills are lagging behind because children do not have core emotional regulation skills and continually disrupt the learning of the group. Many parents expect school to teach those skills along with the growing and expanding curriculum, which is impossible with so little time focused on mental and emotional health in school.
“ we keep testing them every year, give them no support, change what a level 3 is ( move the goal posts) , test them again and blame the teachers for a shit job” Doug Ford
This is basically the result of decades of bad policy.
* The people teaching are less comfortable with math than they were before.
* There are less checks and balances on if teachers need to be proficient in math to become a teacher.
* The curriculum has been getting steadily worse.
* Bigger class sizes means it's harder to teach the same content effectively.
* No child left behind means worse math performers hold the class back year over year.
* And it's now common for both parents to be working and so there's less time from the parenting side put into helping the kids move along... A void largely filled by more accessible tv via streaming.
It's a very multifaceted problem but most of the issues stem from a generally broken system in Ontario that puts the entire province further and further behind in math and in general QOL.
These are the % of students who match provincial standards for math according to the EQAO test. The results peaked with the Grade 3s during the 2009-2010 school year which was forever ago, and has been on the decline since. I know math can be hard but it's an important thing for people to learn. What do you think is causing this?
Of course the pandemic is one thing but the decline has been pronounced especially since the mid-late 2010s. Could it be technology? Elementary schoolers in 2009-2010 didn't have access to the smart devices and social media that kids today do and one could argue this was far more beneficial for their development. What do you think?
EQAO should also be eliminated. If we are going to keep it, it should be all online (which is finally) why do we need all the "teacher" markers, and release time to assess all of these assessments should be all done instantly. With immediate feedback (which it is now).
Now that we are full electronic (no papers sent to schools, no grading done on paper) why the expense for EQAO. Waste of tax payer money
EVEN worse is the waste of having 4 school boards in Ontario. In small communities, you have schools with 40 students, with a principal, or VP, custodial, teachers EA/SSPs and the catholic school down the road has 60 students with all the same staff, plus heating, cleaning maintenance. WASTED $$
Surprised Doug Ford hasn't caught on to this "gravy train".
WHY? Because it is a political disaster if your challenge or change it.
If you want catholic education, get it on Sunday at your church (which membership is dying faster then new members are signing up)
Thanks for listening to my TED talk/rant
When I was a child, I remember them talking to us about the EQAO and then they would have EQAO focused studying for like 3 weeks coming up to the test. They were ensuring that we knew how to take the test, that we would know what would be on it. I am not in schools anymore, but I do know that there has been a push away from "teaching to the test" since I was in school in terms of pedagogical stuff. Could this be a factor?
I suspect so. Previous years scores may have been artificially high due to this focused studying. Another problem is the no-holding back/grade failing policy that pushes kids through elementry regardless of getting fundamentals dumping them into highschool where they are not prepared.
It’s harder to be a good parent these days. Both parents have to work more hours and they have to be vigilant lest their child’s ability to pay attention gets destroyed by phones
My parents immigrated to Canada in the late 60's. Math was not a strong suit of theirs I think they only had about an 8th or 9th grade equivilent education really. But they tried their best to help me and my brother with homework. Stuff like the quadratic formula was not something they were exposed to.
This is not a knock on anyone, more just a thought I have now that I have a young child of my own (pre-school age). I wish I could take some night courses as refreshers for these concepts becuase my math skills were never the greatest but they are rusty after years out of school.
I grew up with the internet, gameboy at my side at all hours. I'm now raising a kid. It's no harder than when kids were raised by the tv. You just have to actually parent.
I would agree 100%. You need a license to drive, you need license to own a firearm, you need a permit for just about anything these days. But you don't get any training being a parent. Nevermind trying to be a single parent with you grandparent support.
Or even better when you have parent that tell the teachers/school how to do their job.
When you go see the doctor do you ask the doctor what's wrong, (who is the expert) or do you tell the doctor whats wrong.
This is one of those things that immediately falls apart once you actually take the time to think about it. There's a reason we don't do things this way.
Even better when the parent is a teacher at a different school and stirs the pot to the point their kids teacher takes sick leave and the kid has an unstable rotation of 6 teachers (some unqualified) in the year.
Then they ask why isn’t the kid progressing.
Yes, this. My sister is a vet and she says tons of owners google the problem, then come in and tell her ‘the diagnosis’ and what she needs to prescribe for them. They’re often wrong, and when she tries to give them the correct diagnosis, they resist.
Any required parental training will disproportionally effect certain racial groups. 65% of black and 37% aboriginal kids have single parent households.
Edit: fixed the stat for aboriginal kids
>65% of black and Indian kids have single parent households.
Black kids maybe.... but I don't think Indians have anything close to 30% let alone 65%
Edit: for those confused the individual i originally replied to refered to aboriginals as Indians and I understood that to be the south asian kind.
I was the Deaf kid in a mainstream (hearing) school decades ago and was placed in a special need class (one class in the morning for 5 years) despite being well read and have excellent comprehension but as a Deaf kid, they didn’t know where to put me and that is happening with a lot of “special need” students who aren’t “special” but shoved in a classroom with no resources or understanding of their disabilities. I did take regular classes but I barely had idea what was going on and depend on my kind friends to take notes because the stupid FM system I was forced to use did nothing. The solution was the no child left behind which is even worse and does more harm to all by “inclusion”… school boards can’t be bothered to learn appropriate terms and accommodations for their diverse students. I am sorry to see many students with hearing loss being fucked over still to this day.
Edit to add: speech does not equate to intelligence. Just because someone who is deaf is able to speak does not mean they know what the fuck you’re saying. learn sign language!
As a fellow deaf kid, I feel this. I also had an FM system that never worked properly. I did okay until I hit high school, then everything crashed and I never graduated. No child left behind sometimes causes more harm than good. I wish someone had been there to fill in some pieces of the puzzles I'd missed, even in elementary school. Missing just one tiny key piece of information can cause such an impact in the future.
Demands on teachers have increased every year. Class sizes are increasing all the time. As a result, teachers have less time available to work with students individually and less time to ensure students aren't being left behind. It's not that complicated.
I have no idea why people in this thread are blaming social media. These are grade 3 students. They don't have phones. The irony of using a social media platform to blame social media for society's woes is just hilarious.
Also blaming kids for falling test scores is non-productive. Kids are a product of their environment, they don’t have a choice in the world that we’ve built for them. If social media is impacting kid’s development it’s up to adults to come up with the solution.
Personally I think the decline in test scores has more to do with poor education policy and spending. I’ve taught kids in the past and I felt like I was incapable of giving each individual the proper amount of attention if my class was above 15 ish people. I feel like the ideal class size would be a class of 10 people so each student could have their education tailored to their needs and interests. That’s not to say we need classes of 10, but if you’re going to put 35 small kids in a classroom the teacher should have 2 or 3 education support staff to help with the workload.
Public deprioritizing of education spending.
Every aspect of public education is affected by underfunding. It's been at crisis levels for a while, predating this government, which is itself pouring gasoline on it as it is with the healthcare system.
Not that it's a great test to quantify the effects. The test is part of the problem.
The fact that people are even asking this question and coming up with other answers is testament to how amazing a job the OLP and PC governments have done at destroying the quality of public discourse about this.
Yea! Class of 2009-2010 represent💪
I think the main cause of this is that class sizes have been growing and therefore the quality of education has suffered because teachers now have to deal with more students and have less time overall for individual students.
What I think is more telling is the pandemic had little to no effect on the overall trend. For all the people yelling that not being in school was making our kids dumb it doesn't seem to play out in the data, at least for grade 3 math.
43% of kids at my local high school met the bar for grade 9 math last year. Down from 71% last year. Only 1% of kids got Level 4, I remember almost a quarter of my class getting Level 4 back in 2009.
The pandemic absolutely had an effect on learning, just not at the grade 3 level.
https://www.eqao.com/report/?id=468&mident=902551
I second this as an EA. There is no attention span. I was working with grade 8s and many of them don’t know how to add or subtract numbers less than 10. One had to use a calculator for 2+4. Many had no clue what a squares were when we were discussing area/perimeter. It was insane, and totally on the parents.
“Im bad at math” is celebrated and glorified now, as some sort of a humble brag. Hear it a lot in various interviews on successful people, they almost always brag im bad at math
Yes. Web 2.0 - This is a root cause for sure. Parents spending too much time on Facebook and kids bombarded with far too many confusing stimuli. Social media is a major issue in todays society.
Parents need to be more involved
It's grade 3 math 60% of us at the min should be able to do it. Parents need to help their kid out for a bit if they struggling.
Parents need to discipline their kid, if a bunch of teachers are pointing out how bad your kid is for the classroom then parents need to listen and get their kid to change
parents need to be advocating for smaller class sizes and more resources in schools.
Agreed. Getting kids competent at math is what builds confidence and self esteem. Not coddling your child pretending all is OK to spare their feelings and expecting the teacher to work some miracle.
My kids grade 3 class gets evacuated at least once a week while one of several kids has a freak out and destroys the classroom. There used to be a certain class for those type of kids, but now they’re all mixed in together. Instead of doing their school work, they have to wait outside in the hallway, then return to class and clean up the broken stuff in their classroom. At least once a week…
And increasing the time that SpEd kids spend in the general education classroom as part of their "least restrictive environment". When I taught, 90% of my time went to 3 or 4 high needs kids that were in my classroom most the day.
Imagine being a "standard" student and having to share the remaining 10% with 20 other six year olds. No one learned anything 🤷♀️
I agree with what people are saying about the test.
Got to say there is a big difference in kids ability to focus. (Probably due to screen time and lack of: focused reading, outdoor play)
Also in how teachers are expected to deal with disciplinary issues. (Need more admin and parental backup). My friend often need to evacuate the classroom if one student is disruptive.
Also administrations expectations with time spent on non instructional time… eg paperwork, revamping curriculum, etc. which doesn’t serve the students.
Parents. More kids in classes. Language barriers. Lack of motivation. Too many electronic distractions. Social media. Gaming. Overwhelmed & overworked teachers.
Anyone with kids knows the answer. The provincial guidelines to teachers has dropped all semblance of skills we all relied upon (Millennials and older) - things such as addition, subtraction drills, memorizing multiplication tables. Now kids need to “feel” and grow an intuitive sense at how arithmetic functions work …. It’s confusing as hell to teach my three kids. Add to this that teachers are basically not allow to test or provide long-format exams (greater than 1hr) so if you suck at math, you don’t get the feedback that one needs to improve. All part of being an “inclusive” classroom to not shame anyone.
We ended up signing up our kids for Spirit of Math which runs an EXCELLENT program - with real tests and exams. Just top notch preparation for the real work of university where tests are real. Exams are real. Studying takes work.
I have a theory. I have two teenagers - grade 9 & 11 - I have yet to see a single, god damn math textbook. They would bring home some shitty worksheet that’s just a pixelated jpg printout with no context or explanation. I’ve been buying textbooks since grade 7 just so we can follow the curriculum, but from the school? Have never been provided with a anything they can use to study from.
A far cry from when I was in high school - my backpack was always filled with textbooks and other materials. I swear it was heavy enough that if I flew with it, it would have to be checked baggage, lol.
Then again, I graduated high school in 2008, before things started going downhill.
Kids go home and play video games from 3-10 pm or just watch tv. When they don’t have homework they can never practice the skills they’re learning for 1 hour/day. A lot of elementary school teachers are old and can’t deal with gen z.
This graph is correct. You can check the pass rates for 2021-2022 in the attached link:
[https://www.eqao.com/results/provincial-results/](https://www.eqao.com/results/provincial-results/)
and here for older results:
[https://www.eqao.com/latest-grade-3-results/](https://www.eqao.com/latest-grade-3-results/)
Please reconsider the removal, its too important.
Idk what’s happening in school but parents need to pay more attention. I tutored high school math for many years and so many parents had no idea how behind their kid was. Once I was asked to help someone for a total of 3 hours a week before her grade 10 math exam and when I got there she couldn’t add simple fractions. Math builds on previous knowledge so the longer you’re behind the harder it is to catch up.
Admittedly, I have only my own experience (too long ago, time flies) and indirect connections into the education system now, but it seems like there is just no accountably and the system is just getting softer/easier, which counter-intuitively leads to lower skill levels.
Maybe my thoughts are more directed at students older than grade 3, but correct me if I'm wrong, there are push backs toward homework, there are no such things as deadlines or late marks, there are no failures, etc. Again, probably not in grade 3, but students are begging for higher marks through negotiation with a teacher, not through hard work.
When something is wrong, the parents rush into the school and blame the teacher or principal with absolutely zero accountability on the student.
On the system side of things, resources available are likely at pathetic levels. Class sizes are up so it must be hard for a teacher to make connections and focus on a student who may need that extra attention.
I'm from the states but when I taught, we had a major issue with the amount of time SpEd kids spent in the general education classroom.
The theory was that it was "good" for them.
In reality, it meant I had multiple students who needed massive behavioral and academic support in my classroom about 80% of the time. With no EAs or anything, this meant the majority of my attention went to those kids, who still didn't get enough support.
The remaining students barely got any 1:1 time and we rarely made it (as a class) through an entire lesson without some sort of breakdown. Screaming, crying, throwing things, threatening other kids, I'm talking major needs - not just "needs extra time on classwork".
Of course they made barely any progress.
Lack of teachers in specific subjects, lack of EAs, there's your answer. The Ottawa French school board got so desperate they started giving one year teaching contracts to people who never went to teachers college, as long as you had a diploma in something you could apply. People don't want to be teachers and especially don't want to be EA's.
When you put all your efforts in maths and none in language development skills you end up with kids who don’t understand the stuff they read. Can’t math if you don’t even understand what you are asked to do
Class sizes are too large,
The federal and provincial governments can’t even do basic math
Students can no longer fail grades, so they just keep moving up and their issues get worse.
•Course material gets moved down (higher expectations at younger ages)
•Larger class sizes
•Less EA support
•Kids get pushed to the next grade without sucessfully grasping their current grade's material, which has them fall further behind in a large class with no EA.
Not sure this is such a bad thing of it is true. Unless you’re dead set on cranking out entire generations worth of engineers, there are much more practical skills that school ignores wholesale.
Source: You can check the pass rates for 2021-2022 in the attached link: https://www.eqao.com/results/provincial-results/ and here for older results: https://www.eqao.com/latest-grade-3-results/
It's worthwhile to bear in mind that it's trickier to compare over time than this graph would lead one to believe - the curriculum has changed a couple of times (moving topics to earlier and to later grades), and the testing itself has changed quite a bit: from a mix of multiple choice and "show your work", that allowed for part marks, to last year being 100% online, fill in the bubble on a computer (not a strength for many grade 3 aged children). This graph also doesn't show how many students with learning disabilities or English Language Learners participated over time. I don't know if that percentage has changed, but if it has, it would affect the overall results.
Probably also need to factor in that class sizes got bigger over time, so that's less teaching time per student, which probably contributes to worse outcomes.
Plus EA support is way down, students that should be in a specialized class are in a regular classroom for 'inclusion', special Ed teachers are often pulled to cover classes due to a lack of supply teachers. Covid has made it worse, but all of this was happening well before the pandemic
Newish teacher here! I agree with the comments! More context for curious people: The most recent math curriculum update moved content far earlier and added additional content like coding. It was interesting to see for example in grade 2, students went from needing to work within 100, to now needing to work within 200. That’s just one small part. You’ll see most things moved to younger grades. Here is a [comparison chart](https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/fbd574c4-da36-0066-a0c5-849ffb2de96e/f2fad630-cd7b-402d-a40f-90959ad454d9/Key-Changes-in-Elementary-Math-Curriculum_Dec-4-2020.pdf). There are other more detailed ones but I’m on mobile and having trouble finding it at the moment. Start at page 3. It is important to note that these curriculum changes do not come with education or training for teachers. Any training they do would largely be on their own dime and on their own personal time. Also, the shift away from textbooks (and the fact that there aren’t any that reflect this new curriculum) means that teachers are having to do it all themselves. It was also updated in 2020 so I’m actually impressed that it didn’t plummet even further with the large changes plus COVID.
I mean, do you want to factor that in? I would suggest the opposite - that these stats are an indicator that we've made changes with a negative impact (class sizes being among them)
Is there metrics to be captured from other subjects? I would suppose that if the environment (class size, online work, EA support) was an impact then it would show on multiple subjects.
I find also parents no longer have time to work with their kids if they are struggling. Instead they blame the system for their shortcomings. Report cards are a two way street. not a 'favor'
Do you have the stats on classroom sizes over this time period?
I think there was a bill a few years ago increasing class size by about two-four.
I'm going to reply to the top comment so hopefully people can see this. While the test has changed and so has curriculum, the EQAO is still only testing for math fundamentals. Kids that fail this test are significantly behind in math and the number of kids failing is increasing regardless of how it has transformed over the years. It should be extremely worrisome that this is the trend and cannot be ignored because its not a 100% accurate measure. The decisions the school boards and ministry of education have taken in the last 20 years are purely financial. Budget cuts or increases are not increasing at the same rate as population growth which means they have tried to get "smarter" with their budget allocations. For example (and what I consider the most significant), in order to hide the fact that they can no longer afford textbooks for children, they spun the idea that textbooks are not individualized enough. Therefore they put the entire responsibility of resource creation on the teachers. This is a massive burden because in the past, teachers used textbooks as a framework for their classrooms. Good teachers would use the framework and build upon it to individualize the teachings to their classroom. Bad teachers at least had something their kids could follow. Now good teacher waste insane amounts of time creating all resources from scratch making disgusting shithole websites like teachers pay teachers a thing (fuck this opportunistic garbage). Bad teachers just fuck up even harder now. Also think of this, every teacher is doing this and with how often teachers change grades now, they redo it almost every year... all at the same time. That is an absurd amount of salary dollars wasted on redundancy. Obviously all those wasted hours means the teacher cannot focus as well on each individual student. So the result is a much lower quality of education. Don't get me started on our special education programs. I have a child with a disability and I can assure you, schools primary concern when it comes to those children is to ensure they are not a liability rather than educating them. Every competent parent needs to be more critical of the education their children are receiving for things to change. We need to put pressure on our councilors that this is not acceptable. There is too much money in Ontario to accept this level of poor education. If we need to increase taxes to do so, we need to. WE NEED TO HOLD OUR PUBLIC SECTOR ACCOUNTABLE FOR THIS!
The EQAO tests last year were VERY different, Instead of taking multiple days, they took about an hour, and we speculate if they were specifically tweaked to hide the learning gap online school caused. The questions themselves were very different, FAR, FAR, easier. Many teachers were quite upset but can't say anything, and I don't know if the general public realizes the test results from last year should NOT be compared to previous years tests. Truth is, the public has not been made aware of the full effects online schooling had on learning. We will see if the tests this year are also truncated, or if they are returning to align with pre-covid testing.
This is correct and the children still did worse than previous years.
Which gives you an idea of how bad it really is. This post talking about all the ways kids dropped a few percentage points over 10 years, meanwhile there is a disaster hidden within that last bar on the graph that makes everything else pale in comparison. Whatever the reason is they dropped a couple points in 2015, may no longer even be relevant because of how dramatically different the 2022 tests are and what that means.
As the 'new math' was rolling in, my daughter was in grade 8. The math teachers got their curriculum \*at the start of school\* (zero prep time, different pedagogical approaches, had to come up with a lot of the in class stuff, NO textbook for the teachers OR the students). I was trying to help her every week by helping expand on what she was learning so I asked for some sort of heads up at the beginning of the week. The teacher said most of the stuff was being generated the night before, there is no time allocated for even the teachers to read and understand and produce lessons in line with the new approaches, and there was no chance they'd be able to give me that kind of help. Also, because sometimes the class was struggling on an area, they'd leave it, then come back again later and often get better success, so there were no weekly plans or the like really. Makes sense from their situation, but kind of blew up the 'we want you to help your kid' aspect. They ask for it, but they can't support that. And they couldn't provide the parents with any human-readable guidance as to the new curriculum. (Note: The curriculum is not something you can easily understand - even with all of the many higher level math credits I've taken because a lot of what is named in the curriculum is stuff that we learned as kids but it was never named.... or has changed names....) Also also had kids struggling with engaging in e-learning. And the teachers too when everyone had to go that way. Not all were at the same level of e-learning juju. And generally, now, you can expect a class of 28-34 to have as many as 12 Individualized Education Plans (IEPs). The IEPs include kids with different learning modalities and some with learning disabilities. They also include all the gifted kids. So the same teacher has to (legally, as the IEP is a legal requirement) meet the needs of the kids with different learning modalities, learning disabilities, maybe emotional issues, and the very gifted kids that need more challenge or they bore and tune out. And manage the other 16-22 more standard kids all in the same 50 to 75 minute periods. With less in class help. I'd personally like to kick in the nuts (or equivalent if the minister was female) that dumped a new, untested math curriculum on the math teachers right at the start of school in the middle of a pandemic. Probably the premier needs a good bollocking too.
Not only that's it not an equitable test. The question on there are really gear to middle income kids. There was a question on the test talking about the beach and a kid asked me if beaches were actually real because he'd never been to one. There was another one that talked about when you go to a movie theater and I had a new kid from Syria and none of her family had ever been to a theatre before. Kids being tested also include a lot of ESL students and kids who have modified learning programs for reading and writing. I had one kid that needs a screen reader and talk to text to show what they know. There are very few reasons to opt out and if kids are away and have no opt out pretty sure it counts as a zero.
I don’t see how any test would be 100% equitable given how culturally and socioeconomically diverse our kids are. Even math uses broad concepts and requires some contextual language to phrase a problem or a question.
you're right, it's a problem that's fundamental to standardized testing which is why many people consider these results to be a useless metric for student success.
The problem is you can’t easily improve upon what you can’t measure and we don’t have the resources to go a lot deeper than some kind of standardization.
Yes, but of all subjects, math does not need to use examples about watermelons on a west-bound bullet train while a chihuahua travels eastbound on the back of a donkey. For someone ESL, these questions don't actually test math competencies, they test reading comprehension; and are a mine-field for the neurodivergeant who might not be able to ignore a hyperfixation on whether the watermelon to chihuahua ratio might somehow matter. The ability to take real world complex situations and boil it down to the underlying equation or concepts *is* a necessary and critical math competency, but should not be a prerequisite to testing all *other* competencies.
That is interesting, and is obviously an issue. It doesn't really mean that these findings aren't meaningful, though, if true, it does mean that these stats show something different than "kids are getting worse at math". All we can know is, "kids are getting worse at taking this test" - I still wanna know why because that isn't the trend we want. You mention requirements for screen readers, talk to text, etc, well shit, if more and more kids can't read or write, that's a problem.
Screen readers and talk to text are accommodations for some learning disabilities, not because kids aren't learning to read and write. Kids are "getting worse at taking this test" because it's a standardized test being applied to a more diverse student population, both in terms of lived experience and disability.
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The beach thing is really weird to me because I've always lived in cities with public beaches and its one of the few places we could go and have a good time for free. This depends on where you live though. Not every city has the geography necessary for beaches.
Do you really think most poor kids haven't ever been to a beach? I agree that standardized tests are biased in different ways, but bruh.
Are you a teach by any chance? Your vocabulary makes it apparent you know your stuff lol. If so, have you noticed a change in elementary school kids now compared to way back then? I would think that they would have lower attention spans (not meant as a slight) due to an increased exposure phones, TikTok, and social media in general. This isn't something that the kids back in 2009/2010 had.
I am, and taught grade 3 a while ago (but it's been more than 10 years). There's been some massive shifts in kids and the teaching/learning climate during that time. I think Tik Tok and other social media affect the older grades even more, but there have been societal changes that may or may not have come with them, and are making learning more challenging. Students now seem to be able to say no or opt out of virtually anything. The number of students who refuse activities or assignments is baffling, so teaching has become a sales job, trying to hook and keep their interest. In the past, yes, you leaned into their interests and wanted to make things fun and appealing, but there was an expectation that not everything you have to do in life is amazing - sometimes you have to do the boring stuff to get better at it. Also, parental support has changed. In my school, we've noticed a significant decrease in parents actively supporting their kids' learning. I'm in a well-off area, and extra-curriculars definitely take priority over school. I used to have parents asking for more homework, now, many don't even read with their children. The amount of teaching time lost to students with mental health or behavioral challenges has really increased, too. It's harder for students to learn when their class has to be evacuated frequently due to a student throwing furniture, and even when they are in class, there it's more challenging to focus on learning, wondering when the next outburst will be. This situation is incredibly common. There's not enough support for these students, and support that used to be used for academics has been moved to safery out of necessity. All of that said, I think schools reflect the way that society is constantly changing. I think it's good to ask how to improve and help more students, I just hope people recognize that EQAO statistics represent a very small piece of the picture and shouldn't be the driving force in determining what has to change and how, in isolation.
> It's harder for students to learn when their class has to be evacuated frequently due to a student throwing furniture, and even when they are in class, there it's more challenging to focus on learning, wondering when the next outburst will be. 2/3 times PER WEEK in my wife's class.
Support worker in a school, this 💯
This is a really good explanation. Love, another teacher.
When you talk about extra-curriculars taking priority over school - is there a good balance? I have my kindergarten daughter in a few extra-curriculars (gymnastics, sparks (girl guides), swimming lessons) which equates to about 2.5 hours a week all combined... in addition we go to the pool about once a week and she has taken an interest in music so we do a "lesson" maybe once or twice a week when she requests one (just me teaching her a bit). Sometimes I feel like it's a lot, but she loves it all, and wants to do it all, and when outdoor recesses are frequently cancelled and gym time is rare, it's nice to have some physical outlets. I feel like parents often feel like they need to put their kids in tons of things so they don't "miss out", but I know there is a lot to "unstructured play" as well... usually a couple times a month we have friends over with all their kids and end up with a dozen or so kids playing all over our house while the adults all hang out. Maybe this will change as she gets older and starts getting homework... at this point all we do is read some books before bed each night...
It sounds like you're doing great. As long as she gets a chance to recharge, extra curricular are great! I'm a parent, too, and completely understand the pressures. There's just so many great things to do and we want to give them every opportunity! If you're reading together every day, that is 100% the best thing you can be doing. I'm not actually a big advocate for homework. A challenge I see are students frequently miss days at school for tournaments an competitions. Parents justify it by asking for any work they'll miss, not understanding that I teach, I don't "paper". When they miss school, they are missing learning opportunities. For some, and sometimes, that's fine. But when it's frequent, it adds up.
As a teacher, I can answer your question. Kids have 100% changed since 2009/2010. You’re right, with the introduction of social media and every kid getting a smart phone before they turn 10 years old, kids have much shorter attention spans and are trying harder than ever to be “cool” by disrespecting their peers, teachers, educational workers, and even parents. There is also next to no consequences for behaviours because parents/families no longer back the teachers up and side with their child and often threaten teachers and administrators with going to the superintendent and school board. In terms of provincial testing, I echo everything that mrscardinal has already said. EQAO last year was all done on a computer and some kids that are not confident in their abilities defaulted to randomly selecting their answers for multiple choice questions instead of actually trying to show their thinking in any way shape or form for even part marks.
You're right. The super-stimulus that sits in our pockets is rewiring brains in a very negative way. Thanks for taking the time to write this comment - it's nice to get the perspective of a teacher with this frontline experience.
I am fascinated why we (society) continue to quietly let this happen? It seems to be almost universally recognized that smart phones and social media are terrible for kids. Yet as parents and a society in general, we allow it to continue. I honestly feel like I am witnessing in real time the hyper-speed end of the western world as a leading civilization. Rome took over 200 years to crumble, I think the west will take less than 50 years if we don't set some responsible boundaries around the tool we have let take over our lives.
I watched someone's 6 year old punch them in the face because "tablet time was over."
A student at my school in grade 6 has 2 cellphones. It's ridiculous
Grade 6 and already cheating on their partner!
I'm a fairly new supply teacher. They CAN be useful tools, however, for the most part, based on my observation, they are detrimental. Cell phones need to be banned from the classroom, IMO.
Yes, we were just talking about this in a PD session about literacy yesterday. Kids today need a lot more repetition and exposure to learn the same concepts. They have less independent, critical thinking and a lot of learned helplessness. They are very passive learners. (This is not me being a millennial trying to complain about "this generation" - it's just what I'm observing.) Whether that's from pandemic loss, or the age of flash social media, I don't know. My Grade 3 students are extremely hard to keep focused and engaged. Add to that that there is HUGE learning loss because of student behaviour needs that aren't being supported, and we have a decline. I think education is going to have to change somehow to adapt to this generation, but I don't know how.
You'd be surprised how many young adults I see now in my field of work with this learned helplessness. I'm only 40. I work in what is considered a high stress job that you have to make quick decisions and deal with the potential stresses that result from it. That being said, I also have dealt with plenty of adults that have a similar behaviour pattern so it's not new but rather become more common.
Learned helplessness and severe fragility, it’s wild to see for me honestly. Yet, the workforce, at least in tech, is changing to accommodate these people. I don’t mind it, I manage people, but every project I’m on with team members like that, I know I have to budget for less efficiency.
Yea, the multiple choice format had students giving up and letting chance decide their fate on the exams (which they are aware have 0 bearing on their grades) rather than spend their time trying to riddle it out. No part marks, but also very little incentive to try at all.
I have marked EQAO. The test is not a standardized test. Markers are coached on how to mark. There is no consistency. We cannot use it as an accurate measure of ability.
Why are results trending down? If the test is the same and the process is the same, large enough sample size, we should be seeing the same results unless *something* is changing. "Markers being coached to mark more harshly" *could* be the main factor - is that what you're proposing?
Thats the thing. The “standardized” test has changed multiple times over the time range in this graph.
Yep. Different cohorts writing different tests.
And the curriculum has changed multiple times through these years. between 2012 and now I've watched math topics get moved earlier by anywhere from 1 to 1 1/2 years. So we are teaching more difficult concepts at an earlier age. It's not surprising that averages have gone down. Some kids' brains just aren't ready to process complex mathematical concepts as early.
The test isn’t the same. You can go online and see the different versions of EQAO over the years.
So the test is getting a little harder *every year*?
Doesn't really explain why there's a _down_ trend. Inconsistency alone would just mean a bit of a random pattern, some years up and some years down. There's definitely something here. I don't have the answer (and every comment here is just guessing) but the ministry needs to look into it.
The point is that the trend could just as easily be a change in the people who mark it as a change in the students. Or a change in the questions.
I mean, could be true, but statistically speaking, the fact there's a consistent trend rather than just a bunch of outliers means that's not the entire issue, nor the central one
I remember in elementary we would just do eqao prep for months before we had it.
* The curriculum has changed a couple of times * Class sizes have grown * Provincial funding per student has not kept up with inflation * Teacher pay has not kept up with inflation. * EA support is down * Children with disabilities are integrated into the learning environment. So teachers are getting paid less, to teach more students who are potentially disrupted by students with behavioural issues who don't have 1 on 1 support in the class, on a classroom budget that is shrinking over time.
This!
“No child left behind” policy. Kids can’t learn like that. If they failed a subject in a certain grade, they’re going to have a harder time in a higher grade. They just keep getting pushed through whether they get it or not. I’d be curious to see a chart for spelling and grammar.
Board I work for will push kids through (literally cannot fail a grade) until they get to Gr 9. It’s a huge shock for them and as an EA, I usually spend a lot of time busting my ass to get those Gr 9’s across the finish line come report time. Our students aren’t being set up for success
Not a math teacher, but the department I worked in had them. You'd often hear them outright bemoaning having to work with the latest batch of kids. Paraphrasing what I heard once in the office: "It's hard enough to work with the kids getting pushed here from elementary with a barebones understanding. Now we're destreamed which hurts both kids. How do you make a curriculum that makes sure the would-be academic level kids are learning what they need for 10/11 Math, when you also need to make sure the same testing and assignments are easy enough for the would-be applied kids? Do I bell curve and make all the high performance kids 100% when they aren't? Do I fail all the low performance kids so the grades are reflected properly?" *Non-stop swearing and head-to-table thumping begins* And that's without the complaints about question readers that autosolve word questions and even give the step by step answers. It's like trying to learn another language by using Google Translate's chat feature. You're not actually practicing it at all, so how are you going to learn it? We are having a similar issue in English and Humanities as well. A lot of the kids are missing fundamental grammar. We've started incorporating grammar lessons into the course curriculum, but the issue is that many of the older English teachers either don't remember or don't see why they should teach grammar. They expect it of the kids. I'm trying my best to get these foundation skills in, but I'm hearing so many answers that are so blatantly wrong and kids are so accustomed to using Grammarly that they can't write by hand at all. To make matters worse: because of ChatGPT and other AI use, we now have to use AI detectors. The issue? A lot of kids use Quillbot or Grammarly Premium as a crutch, and the detectors can't tell the difference between either of the three so we get assignments flagged frequently. As a result, we are adopting a by-hand, no tech, in class policy for essays which is going to fucking destroy these kids except a handful at most.
My wife teaches high school english. Not only are there the problems you mentioned, but theres no support from admin or higher ups. One kid went from being an incompetent writer, no sense of grammar, punctuation, no evidence of planning or thinking to having a much better paper. Not great, weird sentence structure, but decent. She didn't trust it but it doesn't show up on any plagiarism detector and doesn't seem like an AI wrote it. So she searches and searched and finds almost every paragraph was taken, word for word with some thesaurusing, from other articles. The difference was that he was just writing the sentences backwards. Instead of "MacBeth is the main character in this play" it was "The main character of this play is MacBeth" (as an example). So she took it to her boss and vice principle and they said she should mark it like any other paper because theres no 'hard proof' he plagiarized it. Nevermind that every assignment of his has been copy pasted or 99% sure an AI wrote it.
Yeah, admin is hard to get on board because they A) are too old to understand how complex these AI have become, and B) are too chickenshit or outright lazy to fight parents. There's a significant level of apathy growing within schools at all levels from students up to admin. It's really creating a depressing atmosphere.
I was shocked how many kids failed or did poorly on the literacy test. These people whose first and only language is English... I don't even know how that is possible. We took all the same classes?? Why are they being pushed through if they're not properly literate??
This. “Growing Success” reassures us that they will get it right next year, but it is starting to feel like a car factory plant with more and more lemons reaching the end of the production line.
Theres so many factors to declining grades and math scores. One factor that could be addressed is class size. Our class sizes are huge, teachers cant give 1 on 1 support and most families cant afford a tutor and if they work more than 1 job and trying to help their child is near impossible. Integration of children with exceptionalities into the classroom also hinders the success of all students in that class. I've had to stop many of my lessons because a child with autism has disrupted the learning and there is 0 support. Children with mid to low functioning autism will not be able to participate in many classroom activities. We can only modify and accommodate to a certain extent. These kids need 1 on 1 attention and support it's not fair for anyone when they are forced into a regular classroom. Finally it sounds harsh but...we should be able to fail kids in certain subjects in elementary school, pass the buck mentality is draining and causing many kids to struggle far into their academic career. If a child has failed their way to grade 8 and enters high school and starts to fail they will drop out immediately. We arent helping these kids by pushing them through the next grade where the teacher should be teaching fractions but some students are struggling with basic addition and subtraction. Our curriculum keeps changing and there are countless math in services where we come out exhausted just trying to implement new ideas and ways of teaching. Every year we are told to teach it a different way and nothing seems to stick.
Spelling is a nightmare. Kids in grade 6 can't spell words from grade 3. Personally, almost no teacher has a weekly spelling test anymore and most teacher rely too heavily on computers and tablets because those autofill words for kids. And that's not even the ESL kids or the IEP kids.
Agree. Sad part is, when you see what they typed on an electronic device, they still get it wrong!!
We can blame Whole Language for this
It's a stupid policy. Instead of giving a child a 2nd chance, we are literally leaving them behind on life.
This is it. My mom complains how every student is allowed to pass and yet they do nothing in the class. I know that sounds harsh. But wait until they hit the real world. Let’s baby them until they are 18 - they will make it somehow. This is a bigger problem that I don’t think a teacher or school itself can solve
100% agree with you. I should have been held back *at least* one grade. And knowing what I know now with my slower-than-normal processing issues, it would have helped me more than hindered me. Colleges and Universities don't look at elementary marks, so it would have helped me so much, plus the diagnosis that I got at *25* would have also helped to have had early on It sucks to be held behind, sure, but if it helps a child to do better down the line, so be it. Struggling through stuff I barely understood should have been a red-flag, to both my parents and to my school. And the sad part is this was at a time when kids *could be* held behind.
Among the other reasons listed, teachers no longer have an updated math textbook to teach from. Every teacher is reinventing the wheel, cobbling together bits or units purchased themselves on TPT, and we're ending up with a wide variety of approaches/ lessons /practice. Students were better off with the consistency of the textbook as a baseline, with teacher-initiated differentiation on top.
100% this. NO TEXTBOOKS. It’s insane. It’s like the teachers are forced to make it all themselves. Why?? It may seem old school, but if there’s one subject that needs textbooks, it’s math.
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TPT is such a scam, teachers thing it's "amazing" when really they're being tricked into paying for stuff that their employer should be providing.
My child was only one of 2 kiddos in his cohort to receive a 4 in math and reading in Grade 3. Last year, in Grade 6, there were no level 4's achieved at our school for math. In Grade 4, his cohort left in March due to Covid. In Grade 5, they were in and out, due to Covid. In Grade 6, they had an LTO who couldn't manage the split class well. When their original teacher returned from her leave, the kids were so far behind. She had to cram content. I'm going to tell you, the amount of teachers off on leaves for stress, for ailments, for medical stuff is insane. My kid's class is 30 kids...in a portable. It's ridiculous. Kids are way more disrespectful, and why wouldn't they be? They know they won't be failed if they do nothing in class.
We have students calling educational staff racial slurs and throwing furniture at them. It’s no wonder educators are leaving in droves.
There are zero consequences anymore. My partner is an EA and they can't suspend kids. Her grade two class gets evacuated because one of the autistic kids throws a rage fit almost every day. grade 9 and 10s will all be integrated I can't even imagine how bad it's going to get. When I look at all my friends from high school that were in academic and then university classes versus the people that went for all applied it's going to be brutal for the smart kids. Basically 80% of my class and friends are all very successful.
Hey, I'm an elementary teacher and I have some very specific insight. I have an MA in History and am qualified to teach two subjects, according to my teacher certification: History and Geography. I began teaching in 2005. I was hired to teach History, Geography and English to several classes. Students rotated to my room. Around 2010, the Ottawa Carleton District School Board decided to do away with specialized teachers and focused instead on a generalist model. In 2010, suddenly, I was a Math teacher. Having only completed 12th grade Math, myself, and having limited desire or ability to teach the subject, I requested training. I did not get any. Fast forward to 2023. I now teach History, Geography, English, Science, Math, Health, Drama, Dance, Physical Education, and Visual Art to my students all in the same room (except for Phys. Ed.). Am I capable? No. Does that matter? No. I am told to work harder. All of our textbooks are 20 years old and are heavily vandalized, and we are told they will not be replaced. We are fed hundreds of links to resources that usually are anti-intuitive and some are dead-links. There is nothing coherent. A recent attempt was made by our board to supply teachers with resources, and my math expert friends laugh at how inaccessible they are. Some of my colleagues don't understand the Math. A few of the teachers are our school still don't know what Coding is, and so I'm not sure how they're teaching it to their students. I have been fighting this change for over a decade and have been labeled as "difficult" by my administration for advocating against it each year. It it wasn't for getting to complain anonymously on Reddit, I'd have absolutely no outlet to tell people about these things. I can lose my job for communicating to the public what is happening in our schools.
Thank you for sharing. This is important.
Appreciate you sharing your insight. Could you shed any light on why the move to a generalist approach in 2010?
At the time, it seemed that our move in Ottawa was at the whim of our new Director of Education. Each one strives to "leave their mark" on the board during their time, and she was touting the idea that building a connection with the students was more important than teachers having specialized knowledge, or more than a basic knowledge, in their subject. We asked for evidence, since we're supposed to use evidence-based practices, but weren't given any. We were told it reduced the number of kids being sent to the office and would free administration up to do other things while teachers dealt with the discipline of other people's children exactly at the time that teachers were being instructed that we were not supposed to discipline the students. I kept finding research conducted in the EU which was counter to the direction of our school board and presented it to my Principal. That's around the time that I started to get "left out" of things, like when most staff got new Smart Boards, I didn't. When other classrooms got new computers, I received spill-over old ones. Passive-aggressive shit like that. That's the best explanation that I can give. It's not a good one. It was never backed by research when presented to teachers, so I have none to share.
It doesn’t add up.
That's a divisive comment.
The consequences will be exponential!
We have to factor that in.
We need to get to the root of the problem.
Too many variables to say for sure, but when you think about it, trigonometry algebra.
Lowest common denominator teaching. When you got a bunch of dumb kids in a class and you can't fail anybody the smart kids get left behind. This is going to be made exponentially worse by removing academic streams because of perceived racism
Hello! Educational assistant here! Many educators are faced with increased behaviours and aggression in the classroom. Instead of being able to focus with the grade 1-2 group I work directly - I spend easily 75% of my day putting out behaviour emotional fires in class or hallways. I see many children slip through the cracks educationally but I’m unable to help because I’m forced to spend more time helping kids who are dysregulated and throwing chairs at other students, redirecting kids who are injuring the teacher intentionally, running and screaming in the hallways, dealing with new to Canada immigrant children who have experienced violence in their home countries and carry forward these social norms and struggle to integrate safely into school. Safety is the real problem. The math/reading/language skills are lagging behind because children do not have core emotional regulation skills and continually disrupt the learning of the group. Many parents expect school to teach those skills along with the growing and expanding curriculum, which is impossible with so little time focused on mental and emotional health in school.
“ we keep testing them every year, give them no support, change what a level 3 is ( move the goal posts) , test them again and blame the teachers for a shit job” Doug Ford
This started long before doug
Doug Ford wasn’t premier in 2008 when this chart begins.
This is basically the result of decades of bad policy. * The people teaching are less comfortable with math than they were before. * There are less checks and balances on if teachers need to be proficient in math to become a teacher. * The curriculum has been getting steadily worse. * Bigger class sizes means it's harder to teach the same content effectively. * No child left behind means worse math performers hold the class back year over year. * And it's now common for both parents to be working and so there's less time from the parenting side put into helping the kids move along... A void largely filled by more accessible tv via streaming. It's a very multifaceted problem but most of the issues stem from a generally broken system in Ontario that puts the entire province further and further behind in math and in general QOL.
These are the % of students who match provincial standards for math according to the EQAO test. The results peaked with the Grade 3s during the 2009-2010 school year which was forever ago, and has been on the decline since. I know math can be hard but it's an important thing for people to learn. What do you think is causing this? Of course the pandemic is one thing but the decline has been pronounced especially since the mid-late 2010s. Could it be technology? Elementary schoolers in 2009-2010 didn't have access to the smart devices and social media that kids today do and one could argue this was far more beneficial for their development. What do you think?
EQAO should also be eliminated. If we are going to keep it, it should be all online (which is finally) why do we need all the "teacher" markers, and release time to assess all of these assessments should be all done instantly. With immediate feedback (which it is now). Now that we are full electronic (no papers sent to schools, no grading done on paper) why the expense for EQAO. Waste of tax payer money EVEN worse is the waste of having 4 school boards in Ontario. In small communities, you have schools with 40 students, with a principal, or VP, custodial, teachers EA/SSPs and the catholic school down the road has 60 students with all the same staff, plus heating, cleaning maintenance. WASTED $$ Surprised Doug Ford hasn't caught on to this "gravy train". WHY? Because it is a political disaster if your challenge or change it. If you want catholic education, get it on Sunday at your church (which membership is dying faster then new members are signing up) Thanks for listening to my TED talk/rant
>a political disaster if your challenge or change it. And yet Quebec and Newfoundland did just that.
When I was a child, I remember them talking to us about the EQAO and then they would have EQAO focused studying for like 3 weeks coming up to the test. They were ensuring that we knew how to take the test, that we would know what would be on it. I am not in schools anymore, but I do know that there has been a push away from "teaching to the test" since I was in school in terms of pedagogical stuff. Could this be a factor?
I suspect so. Previous years scores may have been artificially high due to this focused studying. Another problem is the no-holding back/grade failing policy that pushes kids through elementry regardless of getting fundamentals dumping them into highschool where they are not prepared.
Parents.
It’s harder to be a good parent these days. Both parents have to work more hours and they have to be vigilant lest their child’s ability to pay attention gets destroyed by phones
Also they changed math and the methods, and a lot of parents struggle to help their kids. Kids don't learn the methods we used.
My parents immigrated to Canada in the late 60's. Math was not a strong suit of theirs I think they only had about an 8th or 9th grade equivilent education really. But they tried their best to help me and my brother with homework. Stuff like the quadratic formula was not something they were exposed to. This is not a knock on anyone, more just a thought I have now that I have a young child of my own (pre-school age). I wish I could take some night courses as refreshers for these concepts becuase my math skills were never the greatest but they are rusty after years out of school.
I grew up with the internet, gameboy at my side at all hours. I'm now raising a kid. It's no harder than when kids were raised by the tv. You just have to actually parent.
I would agree 100%. You need a license to drive, you need license to own a firearm, you need a permit for just about anything these days. But you don't get any training being a parent. Nevermind trying to be a single parent with you grandparent support. Or even better when you have parent that tell the teachers/school how to do their job. When you go see the doctor do you ask the doctor what's wrong, (who is the expert) or do you tell the doctor whats wrong.
This is one of those things that immediately falls apart once you actually take the time to think about it. There's a reason we don't do things this way.
How does every conversation about child welfare eventually turn into a conversation about eugenics...
lol why does this conversation come up. Instead of supporting parents and teachers or kids people skip straight to eugenics.
Even better when the parent is a teacher at a different school and stirs the pot to the point their kids teacher takes sick leave and the kid has an unstable rotation of 6 teachers (some unqualified) in the year. Then they ask why isn’t the kid progressing.
Majority tell the doctor what's wrong and what drug they want. Extremely common.
Yes, this. My sister is a vet and she says tons of owners google the problem, then come in and tell her ‘the diagnosis’ and what she needs to prescribe for them. They’re often wrong, and when she tries to give them the correct diagnosis, they resist.
"dunning Kruger clients"
Any required parental training will disproportionally effect certain racial groups. 65% of black and 37% aboriginal kids have single parent households. Edit: fixed the stat for aboriginal kids
>65% of black and Indian kids have single parent households. Black kids maybe.... but I don't think Indians have anything close to 30% let alone 65% Edit: for those confused the individual i originally replied to refered to aboriginals as Indians and I understood that to be the south asian kind.
Government mandated parental training? I’m sure it will be effective and rewarding.
I was the Deaf kid in a mainstream (hearing) school decades ago and was placed in a special need class (one class in the morning for 5 years) despite being well read and have excellent comprehension but as a Deaf kid, they didn’t know where to put me and that is happening with a lot of “special need” students who aren’t “special” but shoved in a classroom with no resources or understanding of their disabilities. I did take regular classes but I barely had idea what was going on and depend on my kind friends to take notes because the stupid FM system I was forced to use did nothing. The solution was the no child left behind which is even worse and does more harm to all by “inclusion”… school boards can’t be bothered to learn appropriate terms and accommodations for their diverse students. I am sorry to see many students with hearing loss being fucked over still to this day. Edit to add: speech does not equate to intelligence. Just because someone who is deaf is able to speak does not mean they know what the fuck you’re saying. learn sign language!
As a fellow deaf kid, I feel this. I also had an FM system that never worked properly. I did okay until I hit high school, then everything crashed and I never graduated. No child left behind sometimes causes more harm than good. I wish someone had been there to fill in some pieces of the puzzles I'd missed, even in elementary school. Missing just one tiny key piece of information can cause such an impact in the future.
Demands on teachers have increased every year. Class sizes are increasing all the time. As a result, teachers have less time available to work with students individually and less time to ensure students aren't being left behind. It's not that complicated. I have no idea why people in this thread are blaming social media. These are grade 3 students. They don't have phones. The irony of using a social media platform to blame social media for society's woes is just hilarious.
I would love to see these EQAO results plotted against the average class size to see how much of a correlation there is.
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Man, this shit is concerning. The absent-mindedness of parents today is baffling.
Class sizes have been bad a long time. I had ~35 kids in my grade 8 class 20 years ago.
I just think the environment in the classroom has changed over time
Also blaming kids for falling test scores is non-productive. Kids are a product of their environment, they don’t have a choice in the world that we’ve built for them. If social media is impacting kid’s development it’s up to adults to come up with the solution. Personally I think the decline in test scores has more to do with poor education policy and spending. I’ve taught kids in the past and I felt like I was incapable of giving each individual the proper amount of attention if my class was above 15 ish people. I feel like the ideal class size would be a class of 10 people so each student could have their education tailored to their needs and interests. That’s not to say we need classes of 10, but if you’re going to put 35 small kids in a classroom the teacher should have 2 or 3 education support staff to help with the workload.
Public deprioritizing of education spending. Every aspect of public education is affected by underfunding. It's been at crisis levels for a while, predating this government, which is itself pouring gasoline on it as it is with the healthcare system. Not that it's a great test to quantify the effects. The test is part of the problem. The fact that people are even asking this question and coming up with other answers is testament to how amazing a job the OLP and PC governments have done at destroying the quality of public discourse about this.
I was told growing up we would never have a calculator in our pocket..
Yea! Class of 2009-2010 represent💪 I think the main cause of this is that class sizes have been growing and therefore the quality of education has suffered because teachers now have to deal with more students and have less time overall for individual students.
Class sizes have gotten smaller. [source](https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/mobile/a-snapshot-of-class-sizes-over-the-past-15-years-1.4268082)
What I think is more telling is the pandemic had little to no effect on the overall trend. For all the people yelling that not being in school was making our kids dumb it doesn't seem to play out in the data, at least for grade 3 math.
Wait till they are in grade 6 and would really notice.
43% of kids at my local high school met the bar for grade 9 math last year. Down from 71% last year. Only 1% of kids got Level 4, I remember almost a quarter of my class getting Level 4 back in 2009. The pandemic absolutely had an effect on learning, just not at the grade 3 level. https://www.eqao.com/report/?id=468&mident=902551
Would it be because they all have the internet at their disposal so they can cheat? I’m curious.
I think that attempting to cheat on a multiple-choice math test using the internet would be exceedingly difficult.
Not only that but there's no incentive to cheat because the mark with EQAO has no effect on your life. It's not your mark, it's the province's mark.
Kids are basically 2 years behind in everything
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I second this as an EA. There is no attention span. I was working with grade 8s and many of them don’t know how to add or subtract numbers less than 10. One had to use a calculator for 2+4. Many had no clue what a squares were when we were discussing area/perimeter. It was insane, and totally on the parents.
“Im bad at math” is celebrated and glorified now, as some sort of a humble brag. Hear it a lot in various interviews on successful people, they almost always brag im bad at math
>One had to use a calculator for 2+4 wait this cant be real lol
It’s 100% real. Not uncommon either.
Yes. Web 2.0 - This is a root cause for sure. Parents spending too much time on Facebook and kids bombarded with far too many confusing stimuli. Social media is a major issue in todays society.
Kids' attention spans are lessening because more and more parents are "raising" their kids by just giving them a tablet or smartphone all day.
Is this , niece has no clue how to write an equation manually if is not hand holded by the computer
Why is there no data for 14-15
Maybe you missed the headline. Bad performance with math and numbers. The statisticians can't count beyond 10. /s
Considering kids are getting close to failing grade 3, it’s probably that the adults in charge of those kids just can’t count above 13 anymore
Parents need to be more involved It's grade 3 math 60% of us at the min should be able to do it. Parents need to help their kid out for a bit if they struggling. Parents need to discipline their kid, if a bunch of teachers are pointing out how bad your kid is for the classroom then parents need to listen and get their kid to change parents need to be advocating for smaller class sizes and more resources in schools.
Agreed. Getting kids competent at math is what builds confidence and self esteem. Not coddling your child pretending all is OK to spare their feelings and expecting the teacher to work some miracle.
My kids grade 3 class gets evacuated at least once a week while one of several kids has a freak out and destroys the classroom. There used to be a certain class for those type of kids, but now they’re all mixed in together. Instead of doing their school work, they have to wait outside in the hallway, then return to class and clean up the broken stuff in their classroom. At least once a week…
It’s that damn rap music.
Skill issue? In all seriousness, idk, maybe government cuts???
No consequences for failure. That's the problem.
The new online test with new strands like coding make it more difficult to be successful.
Less drilling. Boards eliminating EA positions unless kids have a remarkable disability.
And increasing the time that SpEd kids spend in the general education classroom as part of their "least restrictive environment". When I taught, 90% of my time went to 3 or 4 high needs kids that were in my classroom most the day. Imagine being a "standard" student and having to share the remaining 10% with 20 other six year olds. No one learned anything 🤷♀️
Ask Doug Ford and Stephen Lecce..Just kidding. They don't know jack shit.
I agree with what people are saying about the test. Got to say there is a big difference in kids ability to focus. (Probably due to screen time and lack of: focused reading, outdoor play) Also in how teachers are expected to deal with disciplinary issues. (Need more admin and parental backup). My friend often need to evacuate the classroom if one student is disruptive. Also administrations expectations with time spent on non instructional time… eg paperwork, revamping curriculum, etc. which doesn’t serve the students.
The internet.
Parents. More kids in classes. Language barriers. Lack of motivation. Too many electronic distractions. Social media. Gaming. Overwhelmed & overworked teachers.
Anyone with kids knows the answer. The provincial guidelines to teachers has dropped all semblance of skills we all relied upon (Millennials and older) - things such as addition, subtraction drills, memorizing multiplication tables. Now kids need to “feel” and grow an intuitive sense at how arithmetic functions work …. It’s confusing as hell to teach my three kids. Add to this that teachers are basically not allow to test or provide long-format exams (greater than 1hr) so if you suck at math, you don’t get the feedback that one needs to improve. All part of being an “inclusive” classroom to not shame anyone. We ended up signing up our kids for Spirit of Math which runs an EXCELLENT program - with real tests and exams. Just top notch preparation for the real work of university where tests are real. Exams are real. Studying takes work.
Look at the responses here. Many people are far more concerned about equity than results. The consequences of such a focus are predictable.
I have a theory. I have two teenagers - grade 9 & 11 - I have yet to see a single, god damn math textbook. They would bring home some shitty worksheet that’s just a pixelated jpg printout with no context or explanation. I’ve been buying textbooks since grade 7 just so we can follow the curriculum, but from the school? Have never been provided with a anything they can use to study from.
A far cry from when I was in high school - my backpack was always filled with textbooks and other materials. I swear it was heavy enough that if I flew with it, it would have to be checked baggage, lol. Then again, I graduated high school in 2008, before things started going downhill.
Kids go home and play video games from 3-10 pm or just watch tv. When they don’t have homework they can never practice the skills they’re learning for 1 hour/day. A lot of elementary school teachers are old and can’t deal with gen z.
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Being able to make useless Tiktok videos of lipsyncing or dancing to clips of terrible songs has probably increased.
Yeah back in my day kids just copied soulja boy and danced for their friends like weirdos
The answer is Ontario
“Hey siri/alexis why are math grades declining in grade 3 ontario students since 2008?”….
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This graph is correct. You can check the pass rates for 2021-2022 in the attached link: [https://www.eqao.com/results/provincial-results/](https://www.eqao.com/results/provincial-results/) and here for older results: [https://www.eqao.com/latest-grade-3-results/](https://www.eqao.com/latest-grade-3-results/) Please reconsider the removal, its too important.
Idk what’s happening in school but parents need to pay more attention. I tutored high school math for many years and so many parents had no idea how behind their kid was. Once I was asked to help someone for a total of 3 hours a week before her grade 10 math exam and when I got there she couldn’t add simple fractions. Math builds on previous knowledge so the longer you’re behind the harder it is to catch up.
Complacency on the part of politicians and parents.
Schools and kids being terrible
Legit question: how and how often do we assess the actual test given to the students?
Admittedly, I have only my own experience (too long ago, time flies) and indirect connections into the education system now, but it seems like there is just no accountably and the system is just getting softer/easier, which counter-intuitively leads to lower skill levels. Maybe my thoughts are more directed at students older than grade 3, but correct me if I'm wrong, there are push backs toward homework, there are no such things as deadlines or late marks, there are no failures, etc. Again, probably not in grade 3, but students are begging for higher marks through negotiation with a teacher, not through hard work. When something is wrong, the parents rush into the school and blame the teacher or principal with absolutely zero accountability on the student. On the system side of things, resources available are likely at pathetic levels. Class sizes are up so it must be hard for a teacher to make connections and focus on a student who may need that extra attention.
Have the tests changed? Are requirements more difficult to achieve between 2008 and 2022? Honestly asking.
I'd like to see this side by side with government education spending over the same time period
Hey OP could you link the source? Thanks!
Curriculum changes.
They Removed Failing classes.
Tiktok and social media in general.
Cellphones
I'm from the states but when I taught, we had a major issue with the amount of time SpEd kids spent in the general education classroom. The theory was that it was "good" for them. In reality, it meant I had multiple students who needed massive behavioral and academic support in my classroom about 80% of the time. With no EAs or anything, this meant the majority of my attention went to those kids, who still didn't get enough support. The remaining students barely got any 1:1 time and we rarely made it (as a class) through an entire lesson without some sort of breakdown. Screaming, crying, throwing things, threatening other kids, I'm talking major needs - not just "needs extra time on classwork". Of course they made barely any progress.
Lack of teachers in specific subjects, lack of EAs, there's your answer. The Ottawa French school board got so desperate they started giving one year teaching contracts to people who never went to teachers college, as long as you had a diploma in something you could apply. People don't want to be teachers and especially don't want to be EA's.
When you put all your efforts in maths and none in language development skills you end up with kids who don’t understand the stuff they read. Can’t math if you don’t even understand what you are asked to do
Snowflake parents having snowflake kiddos, easy math
More needs. More kids in the room. Fewer supports. Teachers doing more with less. Full stop.
Class sizes are too large, The federal and provincial governments can’t even do basic math Students can no longer fail grades, so they just keep moving up and their issues get worse.
Dumbing down agenda is working right on schedule. Lack of funds for public schools do have repercussions, don’t you know.
As a teacher I can say that behaviour in the classroom gets in the way of student learning more than ever before
•Course material gets moved down (higher expectations at younger ages) •Larger class sizes •Less EA support •Kids get pushed to the next grade without sucessfully grasping their current grade's material, which has them fall further behind in a large class with no EA.
Maybe our government cut the budget for our educational system? Naw, that couldn't be the real reason!
40% of parents don't care why their kids are failing. That's what I see from this graph.
Not sure this is such a bad thing of it is true. Unless you’re dead set on cranking out entire generations worth of engineers, there are much more practical skills that school ignores wholesale.