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Ontario Court Declares the Ontario Math Proficiency Test Unconstitutional
- MrPatan 5y agoIs this about education standards or about equal access to cushy jobs?
- fknorangesite 5y agoDid you just describe teaching as "cushy"?
- roter 5y agoCanadian teachers are kind-of, sort-of well-paid including pretty good benefits [0]. Their salaries and their union's power are a large source of political "discourse" in Ontario. [0] From 2014/2015: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/81-604-x/2017001/t/tbld2.1-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/81-604-x/2017001/t/tbld2...
- sanxiyn 5y agoThe world is crazy.
- Bigpet 5y agoI'm too lazy to read the court document. Did non-math teachers have to pass the proficiency test? If not, did the math proficiency test contain material irrelevant to material the math teachers were expected to teach?
- bildung 5y agoThe linked document states: "There were reasonably available alternatives to the MPT that on their face appear to be less impairing and at least as effective in achieving the goal of improving student achievement in math. These include requiring a minimum number of hours of math instruction or a math course in B.Ed. programs, requiring an undergraduate math course as an admissions requirement for B.Ed. programs or waiting to see the effectsof the other parts of the Respondent’s four-year math strategy."
- jononomo 5y agoWe're talking about the level of math that you need to calculate a percentage, or to average a handful of numbers.
- Bigpet 5y agoI don't know, looking at the example questions the usefulness of some of them still seems limited. Calculating fractional number division without a calculator for non STEM teachers is not a very relevant skill in my opinion.
- maxk42 5y agoThere is no test to be a math teacher. This is one of the tests you have to pass to be a teacher. When you begin as a teacher it's not typically up to you which subjects you will teach.
- retrac 5y agoLeonid Sirota a Canadian law professor at the University of Auckland, has a good dissection of the decision: https://doubleaspect.blog/2021/12/20/the-law-of-bonkerstown/ https://doubleaspect.blog/2021/12/20/the-law-of-bonkerstown/ From a Canadian legal perspective, the notion that a test could be discriminatory and so unconstitutional is not note-worthy in itself. It all follows standard case law there. The legally interesting bit, is the card seemingly dropped in the shuffling, where the court recommends a less intrusive alternative policy that was also considered by the government: > There is a plethora of evidence in the record highlighting the disproportionate impacts of standardized testing based on race … In contrast, there is no evidence to suggest that these negative diversity impacts would exist in the context of a mandatory math course … Of course, no evidence exists because no one has looked for it yet. This reliance on single-example small studies to suggest possible less intrusive remedies is probably a path to much legal madness. This will likely be appealed. Politically this is a bit heated as both Quebec and Ontario's governments have recently rubbed up against the limits of the Charter in different areas.
- jaspax 5y ago> In contrast, there is no evidence to suggest that these negative diversity impacts would exist in the context of a mandatory math course (i.e. that racialized teacher candidates might disproportionately fail these math courses), and we do not think such an inference can be made on the basis of logic or common sense. Uh... what? Performance outcomes differ between racial groups in mandatory classes all the time. If the argument really is that "disproportionate impact" in classroom outcomes is enough to render a policy unconstitutional, then your only option is not to measure outcomes at all, because every educational measure shows differences between races. I edited the quote above to contain the court's entire statement from the finding, because it's even more damning and removes the possibility of a less absurd reading. Apparently the justices know absolutely nothing about education and race because they don't know that "racialized teacher candidates might disproportionately fail these math courses" is exactly what we should expect, because that's exactly what we find in every other educational context.
- Kranar 5y ago
- bhouston 5y agoThis is for teachers. I think it isn't a huge deal if an English or French or Social Studies teacher isn't great in math, but is otherwise a good candidate. But should someone who fails the math proficiency test be a math teacher? Probably not. Society should try to match everyone with jobs which they are capable of doing, teaching is a good job. We shouldn't unnecessarily exclude people from doing A just because they lack the skills for doing B. Here is examples of what is on the test: https://cpl.oise.utoronto.ca/course/mathematics-proficiency-test/ https://cpl.oise.utoronto.ca/course/mathematics-proficiency-... Video discussion of the test questions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-7fnPD_c7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-7fnPD_c7w
- jhgb 5y ago> I think it isn't a huge deal if an English or French or Social Studies teacher isn't great in math I think it is a big deal if any teacher isn't great in math, aside from perhaps PE instructors. Considering how much our whole society is supported by math nowadays and how much the average person sucks at math, perhaps teachers who suck at math are not very good role models for children?
- watwut 5y agoIt really does not matter. It does matter, whether math instruction is good.
- matbilodeau 5y agoPE instructors were the worst discriminators. They gave out grades based on physical performance. Looking at old class pictures, the lowest percentile could be easily identified (also corresponding to the last picked when building teams). I hope this has changed.
- UnFleshedOne 5y agoI thought you were joking at first, but looks like you are not? What else would PE grades be based on if not on physical performance?
- treeface9000 5y ago
- darepublic 5y agotime for saturday morning math school
- the-dude 5y agoFrom the document : https://www.otffeo.on.ca/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/12/2021-12-16-OTCC-v-Ontario-FINAL-signed-by-all.pdf https://www.otffeo.on.ca/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/... From [33] : Candidates who indicated they had a cognitive disability failed the Field Test at over twice the rate of candidates without a disability.
- retrac 5y agoFrench-speaking teachers did relatively quite poorly as well. (The test is available in both English and French.)
- monkeybutton 5y agoIts quite possible the french version of the exam was a badly translated version of the English. I have no idea if this one was, but I've heard that is the case for some professional orders' license exams in Ontario and Québec. Translation to the alternate language is done because its mandatory but it is not done well.
- finite_jest 5y agoInteresting observation. I have not read the whole document, but based on Table 6.2 (page 34 of the PDF) it looks like almost all of the difference between ethnic groups comes from the people who took the test in French: | % Successful (EN) | % Successful (FR) White | 86% | 84% Non-White | 82% | 55% This seems quite strange to me. I am curious to know whether the French version is merely a translation of the English version, or there are other differences? ------------------- PS. I just realized these so I'm gonna add them here. There is a little bit of ambiguity about Table 6.2. Does the it French column refer to people who wrote the French version of the test (as the paragraph [33] of the ruling suggests), or does it refer to the languages the candidate spoke (as the existence of a "English+French" column suggests)? Also, the vast majority of the candidates are Anglophones, so the overall difference is not as large as the above numbers may suggest. Overall, it's more like 80% (Non-White) vs 86% (White). (https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28526%2B33%29%2F%28526%2B33%2B116%2B27%29%2C+%281410%2B65%29%2F%281410%2B65%2B234%2B12%29 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28526%2B33%29%2F%2852...) Table 7 of the ruling has a more detailed ethnic breakdown.
- clavicat 5y agoSo, are societies allowed to maintain any standards at all if it can be argued that the maintenance of standards has disparate impacts on racialized bodies?
- inglor_cz 5y agoSocieties that embrace this in full will be outcompeted by the ones that avoid this trap.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mnd999 5y agoIt’s a strange way of looking at things. Probably what they should be doing is using the data to identify groups that may need extra support to meet the standard and make that support available to them. Eliminating the standard completely is rather odd.
- mk81 5y ago
- danuker 5y agoGood point. I hope the legal tradeoffs will eventually lead towards a better life for all, rather than a uniformly bad life for all. For this, at least some discrimination is needed.
- hnthrowaway0315 5y agoI have the unpopular idea that Math, and in a broad sense, STEM, is mandatory for EVERYONE, especially teachers, regardless what they teach. Can a teacher teach well if his language skill is poor? Probably not, same for STEM. Of course how much mandatory Math needed and IF a previous test has been passed is good enough is up to debate.
- zozbot234 5y ago> regardless what they teach. Huh? Why should we care about the math skills of someone who only teaches English or French? Proficiency assessments should absolutely be subject-specific.
- whitexn--g28h 5y agoA teacher should be able to understand the grade distribution on tests and throughout the year to identify if their assessments are too easy or too difficult, and if they may be racially biased. The argument that the tests unfairly bias certain groups is only known because the people administering the test understand math.
- watwut 5y agoYou don't need to know anything about geometry for that. And even teachers who know math won't use statistical methods too if their test for 22 students ended up badly this year.
- whitexn--g28h 5y agoIt’s just interesting that we are using statistical methods to argue that teachers don’t need to understand basic math. Ontario doesn’t have dedicated math teachers until high school, many of these teachers will need to teach math in grades 3-8.
- zozbot234 5y ago
- bjt2n3904 5y ago> The Divisional Court found that the Math Proficiency Test had an adverse impact on entry to the teaching profession for racialized teacher candidates and other reasonable alternatives should have been implemented. What is a "racialized" teacher? From the sample test questions: There is a bag of 25 marbles. 5 are yellow. What percentage of marbles are not yellow? If I were "racialized", I would be insulted to hear it suggested that the requirement was being removed, because it made it unfairly difficult for my "race" to become a teacher.
- bloak 5y ago> What is a "racialized" teacher? The meaning seems to be "belonging to a racial minority", and that sense of the word seems to be specific to Canadian English because when I search for "racialized X", for various values of X, I keep finding Canadian web sites. Ils sont fous, ces canadiens.
- bjt2n3904 5y agoThis is a bit tongue in cheek. We all know what it means in common parlance, but it's a very slushy term. The word implies that it is a status, or a process, which makes conversation even more confusing. But ultimately, there's only one race -- the human race. Talking about a minority as if they are a separate race is extremely unproductive. I think what we really intend to discuss ethnicity.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rubyist5eva 5y agoLowering the standards in the name of racial equity. What could possibly go wrong. I'm lucky that I am privileged enough to be able to afford private school because I will not have any of this race to the bottom identity politics bullshit (I live in Ontario). Canadian public education and the judiciary is a joke.
- drpgq 5y agoWhat I find hilarious is it was suggested instead of the test, a mathematics course in undergrad. Which I'm sure way more future teachers couldn't complete if they couldn't pass this basic test.
- inglor_cz 5y agoThat can be remedied by sinking the passing requirements to "just sit there and sign your name on the attendance list". Hey, no disparate impact, fully constitutional.
- treesknees 5y agoDuring my engineering undergrad I had to take various general education courses related to reading/writing, PE, those sorts of things. It doesn't seem unreasonable for teachers to also take even a pre-calculus course as a part of their studies. I would assume that taking a course where you're taught by a professor, you can ask questions, practice with homework, work with friends and classmates, etc sounds much more reasonable and similar to real-world scenarios than sitting someone down and having them bubble in answers. As an anecdote, I was able to get through my Calc I and II courses, received an engineering degree, but today I probably couldn't sit down and complete an exam on some of the content learned in high school math. It's about what you use every day and what you're exposed to through your work. If a fine arts teacher went through 6 years of college without having to do any math courses, I'd expect them to fail a math exam, too. Doesn't make them a poor teacher.
- zozbot234 5y ago> What I find hilarious is it was suggested instead of the test, a mathematics course in undergrad. A math course in undergrad should of course be required if you're going to teach, y'know, math. In fact, all teachers should have the equivalent of a full undergrad education wrt. the subject they're expected to teach. The fact that we don't require this explains much about the failings of our K12 education system.
- analog31 5y agoIn the US, an accredited undergrad degree requires a math course. Many years ago I taught that course at my friendly neighborhood Big Ten university. The topics were those that were required for accreditation, and were in my opinion disjoint and archaic. The course didn't even touch on the use of computers. However, the legislature in my state introduced a bill, believed to be written by ALEC, that would have eliminated the college degree requirement for K-12 teachers altogether. So count your blessings.
- jrm4 5y agoI appreciate the intent of those who wish to maintain high standards and keep the kids well educated, but there is no point in having this argument without the bigger context of the failures of how education is administered. We've well proven that in just about anything, it's extremely rare that you get improvement in large bureaucratic systems by making things harder on the people on the bottom, without also providing means and resources to make things better. I've seen no good reason to think that standardized testing is something that improves this situation, especially as opposed to more localism and autonomy, better funding, etc.
- sam0x17 5y agoThat said, standardized testing _would_ make sense if it determined where funding is allocated, i.e. lowest scoring areas get the most funding and the highest paid teachers.
- josephcsible 5y agoThis is a test for teachers, not for their students. Are you suggesting that teachers who are worse at math should be paid more?
- klyrs 5y agoI'd suggest that those teachers need more resources -- in terms of education, and additional helpers in the classroom.
- fallingknife 5y agoWhy would you waste your best teachers on your worst students?
- feurio 5y agoBecause they are the ones who will see the biggest benefit from a good teacher. And concomitantly your country will benefit from a higher level of preficiency in maths of the population.
- hourislate 5y agoThe Teachers Union runs the province. They do whatever they want.
- drpgq 5y agoYou shouldn't be downvoted. Ontario teacher unions are much more powerful than the US equivalents. Even their pension plan is powerful.
- hourislate 5y agoNo one wants to hear the truth, especially all the folks who benefit from a corrupt system.
- dukeofdoom 5y agoMath is not racist. Lowering standards is racist. This will affect the working poor the most, who can't afford private school for their kids. If there's a racial discrepancy between teachers how about you spend money to train the affected teachers, who generally have above average IQ and you know could learn the required skills. The general decline and lowering of standards in this country is why immigration from Europe has basically stopped and people are actually moving back.
- pseudolus 5y agoPractice test: https://mathproficiencytest.ca/#/en/sample-questions-pre https://mathproficiencytest.ca/#/en/sample-questions-pre
- 542458 5y agoIt’s worth noting that this practice test was not available at the time the requirement was put in place (P18 of the judgement). While teachers that were raised in Ontario would be somewhat familiar with the grades 1-9 math curriculum, teachers not from the region would be more or less going in blind in terms of what content to expect. This is one factor that affected the judgement.
- sanxiyn 5y agoThat's bad (tests definitely should publish practice tests), but for god's sake, it's grade math curriculum. It should be passable without any practice.
- koolba 5y agoHaving taken a look at those sample questions, would you really want a teacher who cannot complete them without explicitly preparing for them to be teaching your children? They're not particularly complicated and I'd expect not only every teacher to able to complete them, but every student as well. This continuous dumbing down standards in the interests of equality of outcome does not end well for anybody.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoThe only thing that makes sense about lowering standards rather than increasing efforts to help people meet those standards is this is a consequence of increasing labor prices, and an attempt to keep expenses lower by not having to compete for well qualified teaching candidates. End result will be further stratification of society via price segmentation where well resourced members of society can afford to purchase better quality education. This already happens, but these measures will help it become even more stratified across more of the population.
- new_guy 5y agoHonestly if someone is too stupid to pass a basic math exam they have absolutely no business trying to teach children.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dfilppi 5y ago
- mbg721 5y ago
- savant_penguin 5y ago"The Divisional Court found that the Math Proficiency Test had an adverse impact on entry to the teaching profession for racialized teacher candidates and other reasonable alternatives should have been implemented." Ontario. Also Ontario: "Haha teachers of color too dumb to pass a simple math test" The real question here is: who's going to suffer from subpar teachers? Rich people who can run away from bad schools (through private schools or private mentoring or any other means) or poor students?
- vmception 5y agoIt is a real question and not a factor for the government’s involvement. Yes, the parallel private system will attract the people that can access it. If that is money based then the private system can attract better teaching talent and screen them however they want. Not sure what answer you wanted to read. Its not a factor for the state.
- AdrianB1 5y agoThe state is the number one influencer of the quality of the schooling systems; one of the measures is to hire qualified teachers, for example by testing them as part of the selection process. But any testing that makes someone fail is unconstitutional, it seems, so they should hire anyone with no criteria.
- vmception 5y agoGood luck to them.
- fallingknife 5y agoThis is exactly the point of the ruling. If education and good jobs are distributed based on class, then rich people can ensure that their kids get them. A meritocracy is risky to the people at the top (like the judges on the Divisional Court) because they could lose their slot to smart poor people. Of course they will say they are doing it to help poor and disadvantaged people to give themselves moral cover.
- sebow 5y agoOf course, being Canada, it couldn't have passed the opportunity to mention "race". But seriously speaking, it's a good decision for the wrong reasons.I personally would LIKE to see logic[as a precursor to anything, because even math is based on it ultimately] being taught and picked up everywhere, but that's not the case and will never be the case.People don't like being forced/told what to do, that's why ironically we need artists and people who know how to make things interesting for kids,adults,etc.This is not even going into the cultural and societal problems some countries have who banked on "training smart people" yet nobody is there to maintain basic utilities.You cannot and generally it's not a good idea to rely on foreign workforce, for a number of obvious reasons. A teacher's performance should be analyzed mainly by the results.
- curiousllama 5y agoPulling up a thread from lower down - this didn't seem to get struck because it's a math test. It seem to have gotten struck down because it's actually an english test. (1) the only difference is for non-white people who took the test in french. | % Successful (EN) | % Successful (FR) White | 86% | 84% Non-White | 82% | 55% (2) white french speakers (e.g., Quebecois) in Canada are much more likely to also speak english than non-white french speakers (e.g., immigrants from former colonies). (3) english-to-french translations in Canada often suck, requiring french readers to back-translate to english to understand wtf something is saying. Admittedly, 2 and 3 are anecdotal, but suffice to say it's more complicated than at first blush.
- ahupp 5y agoNote that this is due to both the racial disparity in test results, and the weak relationship between teacher test results and student results. From my reading of the decision it would be allowed if the tests actually served an important purpose. NYC recently settled a similar case: https://gothamist.com/news/city-pay-largest-ever-settlement-nyc-teachers-affected-discriminatory-certification-tests https://gothamist.com/news/city-pay-largest-ever-settlement-...
- bell-cot 5y agoCynical (imaginary) counter-move - drop the literacy and verbal reasoning requirements for admission to law school to ~1st-grade levels. Ditto for the bar exam. Justify that with wording which imitates the offending court rulings. After their own elite social group's standards & status are threatened by dumbing down, the judges will suddenly start pretending that they actually care about their nation's future. And maybe start work on an amendment to the Canadian Constitution, requiring that judges pass a statistical proficiency test every year.
- ab111111111 5y agoTo code well, you need to be able to write well too. If your code isn't clearly written it can't be understood and it can't be maintained. Writing well isn't a "nice to have" for doing software development, it's a requirement. Yet despite this fact most coders are terrible, terrible writers. Even within the very limited literary realm of variable naming. And this lack of skills results in billions of dollars of thrown away and abandoned projects every year. For a lot of teaching jobs, mathematical skills really aren't necessary. You don't need to be able to do long division to teach Shakespeare. You don't need to know algebra to teach French. For those professions, mathematical skills are indeed a "nice to have". I think the individuals taking time out from their highly paid days of not bothering to add doc-strings to functions, skipping adding READMEs to new projects and not bothering to name their variables anything more informative than "data" should take consideration of these facts before posting here to say that overworked and underpaid teachers are lazy and stupid and should be required to jump through a bureaucratic hoop to confirm that they have a skill they don't need.
- wly_cdgr 5y agoWhat business does anyone have being a teacher if they can't be bothered to log onto Coursera and teach themselves? Less than none. RIP Canada
- silexia 5y agoThis decision makes the assumption that there are zero differences between races right? Therefore the reasoning follows that any differences in scoring on a test means the test must be racist?
- bitshiftfaced 5y ago> There is no research to suggest that a standardized test would improve student outcomes or enhance teacher pedagogy. From https://www.nber.org/papers/w14021 https://www.nber.org/papers/w14021 , > By estimating the effect of teacher attributes using a value-added model, the analyses in this paper predict that observable qualifications of teachers resulted in average improved achievement for students in the poorest decile of schools of .03 standard deviations, about half the difference between being taught by a first year teacher and a more experienced teacher. If limited to teachers who are in the first or second year of teaching, where changes in qualifications are greatest, the gain equals two-thirds of the first-year experience effect. > our results suggest that recruiting teachers with stronger observed qualifications, e.g., math SAT scores or certification status, could substantially improve student achievement.
- Overtonwindow 5y agoDoes this open the door to private educational certification?