The Director of Education for the Keewatin-Patricia District School Board says he will continue to fight for provincial testing reforms.
Students raised concerns about a lack of regional content when Canada’s Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Carolyn Bennett met with them in Dryden last week.
Sean Monteith says the current system simply doesn’t work.
Monteith notes the mandatory assessments are GTA or urban based and do not fit northwestern Ontario.
He stresses he won’t conform to urban based concepts.
Monteith says “they have to change, we don’t have to change”, noting most local students have never stepped foot in Toronto or the GTA.
He adds to test them at a high stakes level, with graduation on the line, about experiences they have never had, is absurd and ethically wrong.
Monteith says they won’t change and he won’t rest until provincial changes are made, and that includes cultural sensitive type of questions that reflect Indigenous learning and life in northern Ontario.
Representatives with the Education Quality and Accountability Office toured area schools earlier this year to get a first-hand look at what students are experiencing and Monteith believes that was a very important first step.
