Accountability has definitely become the new buzz word in education. Whether you are attending a staff meeting or a professional development day or simply listening to the news on television, accountability is what is predominantly mentioned when discussing current trends or issues in education. It is necessary to recognize the derivation of this word. Vibert (2005) describes accountability as “…a term that comes from count or counting, and probably more recently from accounting, the set of financial management practices by which the fiscal integrity of private businesses and corporations are audited.” (118) It is interesting that a term such as accountability, which has more to do with economics and business, surfaces so readily in educational discourse. Education is being driven so forcefully by a neoliberal mentality that schools and the education system have become more like businesses than domains of learning for our students.
The onset of a standardized curriculum in 1997 brought about much change to the mentality of schools and learning. No longer were outcomes just stated to be interpreted and delivered by each school and school board, but expectations were clearly laid out to be explicitly followed. When the new curriculum policy documents were introduced in 1997, educators and parents were able to see what each child in Ontario was expected to know and be able to do in each discipline by the end of each grade. The introduction in the documents clearly states: “They (students) require knowledge and skills that will help them compete in a global economy and allow them to lead lives of integrity and satisfaction, both as citizens and individuals.” (MOE 3) It is clearly evident that this policy document was created to allow students to participate in a global and market based world. The ministry’s vision of success is in essence one where students will be prepared for the work force and the competitive world.
With a clearer analysis of the standardized curriculum and the whole notion of accountability, it will be evident that our educational system is in crisis. It is not only important to look at the explicit curriculum, but the unwritten curriculum that is pervasive in our classrooms as a result of these curriculum documents. Also, a careful analysis needs to be done with the effects or unintended consequences of this curriculum such as the widespread use of assessment, especially large scale province wide assessments. The whole notion of standardization has created a need to measure students’ learning to gauge if “success” has been attained. But, learning is a construct and it truly cannot be measured. How do we measure something we cannot see? What is believed is since we cannot measure “learning” by opening up someone’s mind to see how much is in there, standardized tests have been created to do just that. We are living in a world where educational policies such as the standardized curriculum and EQAO testing have invaded authentic teaching and learning. Students are passive recipients of information and teachers are simply transmitters. I will argue that these policies and their consequences have undermined the autonomy of teachers, to the point where teachers have become deprofessionalized and students less creative and less involved in their learning. There is a need for change and a rethinking of policy initiatives such as the inclusivity of student centered learning and more purposeful and authentic assessment.
A Closer Look at the Standardized Curriculum
The new curriculum documents in 1997, replaced The Common Curriculum issued by the NDP government in 1995. The Common Curriculum provided teachers and school boards “ten essential outcomes”, but left the “how” to attain them for schools and boards to decide. It did however assume that all students were able to achieve the outcomes set out by the curriculum by stating “students will” and did not accept the reality that not all students may be able to achieve all the outcomes described in The Common Curriculum. As Wien and Dudley-Marling comment: “Such time schedules ignore the reality teachers face in the classrooms – children who could learn much more than the stated outcomes as well as those who cannot learn it on the government’s schedule, whether for developmental reasons or for other reasons…” (101) Although the Curriculum changed in 1997, some things remained the same. This whole idea of the student as a machine that “will” achieve certain outcomes still exists. If anything, the Curriculum Documents of 1997 went further to create overall and specific expectations that could now be observed and measured.
The new curriculum documents were so widely circulated, that parents and the public could access them as easily as teachers and schools could. This promoted an increased dialogue about education, but also the space for more critique. With expectations that could be measured, teachers were now accountable to its “stakeholders” and “clients” whether it be the parents, students, the government or the media. Achievement charts clearly illustrated what a student needed to demonstrate in order to meet the provincial standard. “The standards-based curriculum represented a clear policy shift to criterion-referenced assessment, as distinct from norm-referenced assessment … Students were no longer compared with other students in evaluation. Instead, their knowledge and skills were compared to the provincial standard.” (Rankin 2003) Out of this standardized curriculum came also the “standard provincial report card” where less anecdotal information about the student was reported, but more factual and measurable outcomes were listed. The student was no longer seen as a person, but a robot who did or did not achieve the required expectations set out by the Ministry of Education’s curriculum document.
Wien and Dudley-Marling (2005) talk about the vision of the learner that emerges out of the Ontario Curriculum as a “machine” giving no responsibility to the student since they are “dehumanized”. Although the Ontario Curriculum document of 1997 presents students as active learners or participants in their education, Wien and Dudley-Marling insist that specifying the expectations in a “students will” format, allows the vision of the learner to shift from “…active participant to passive recipient”, where the learner is simply a storehouse of information. “To see the learner as a storehouse of information is an instrumental view in which power is one-sided, removed from the learner.” (102) If the learner is simply a receptacle, they are not contributing to their learning nor are they active through inquiry and exploration. They cannot take ownership of their own learning. These lists of expectations really negate all the consequences or outcomes of schooling.
Although we are familiar with the explicit curriculum, that which is found in policy documents, we need to recognize that other curriculum exists. The explicit curriculum is the policy that surrounds it. If we look at the definition of policy as stated in the Oxford English Dictionary, we note that policy is “…a course of action adopted or proposed by a government, party, business, or individual.” (2006) Often policy is equated with taking a course of action that is advantageous to its public. Of course, the question remains which public does a particular policy serve? When looking at the outcomes based model of the standardized Ontario curriculum, it is interesting to think of this question. The explicit curriculum, outlined in the policy document, attempts to provide a consistent and reliable model of education where students’ achievement can be measured against a provincial standard. Myers (2003) explains that “This Curriculum represents the hopes of the public through its elected representatives. It is a compromise among many people. It is never perfect and subject to change.” (1) In order for the explicit curriculum to be successful, we must acknowledge that other facets of the curriculum exist. The taught curriculum recognizes that sometimes teachers teach more than is required because the students need a challenge and sometimes the teacher is unable to complete the required expectations because the students are struggling and take longer than expected to explore the explicit curriculum. There is also the unintended or hidden curriculum which Myers describes as often overlooked by policy makers. They “…ignore what actually happens in school communities when they introduce policies.” (2) Wien and Dudley-Marling would agree with Myers when speaking of this hidden curriculum. Often times it is not that students are not capable of understanding the explicit curriculum, but they are simply not motivated to do so. What do you do with the students that are withdrawn and hate school so they rarely attend? The Ontario Curriculum Document does not account for these scenarios. “Students will” do what is expected of them without any questions asked. How can we help both students and teachers who lose the motivation to learn but have the cognitive capacity to do well? There is also the learned curriculum which acknowledges that even though a principle is taught in class, it is not necessarily learned. Teachers can sometimes “transmit” information and teach material as well as they think, but that doesn’t mean that all students are grasping the material taught. The Ontario Curriculum doesn’t account for this scenario either. The expectations are rigid, as are the timelines for teachers to teach the required goals for each subject. This allows less time for students to explore and take part in their learning, thus becoming more disengaged in the particular subject altogether.
The Tested Curriculum
Another curriculum often talked about is the Tested Curriculum. Since the Ontario Curriculum has created such outcomes based learning, the public feels that we need to measure success through continuous assessment and standardized testing. The need for accountability has consumed the education system. Many people believe that if a student has done well on a particular assessment, than they have learned and therefore they will be successful. This couldn’t be any more incorrect. The increased testing has brought about so much pressure on school boards, individual schools, teachers and students to do their best, by any means possible. Everyone is striving to meet the provincial standard that they are forgetting about meeting their own individual standard.
The ministry of education and school boards are pushing a new method of tracking data from assessment on Data Walls. Data Walls are a three panel display similar to a science board, where all students results from standardized testing and other assessment is posted. It is placed in an area where
…administrators gather to discuss their ideas for improving student achievement. The Data Walls provide a rich source of information about the strategies employed in the schools…this technique will ensure the analysis of student data becomes a continuous part of faculty and administrative decision-making throughout the school year. (Reeves 1)

Personally, I feel Data Walls are an ineffective way of tracking student progress. We are simply looking at their “learning” in reference to one or two pieces of paper and pencil assessments. We are not recognizing these students as individuals, but as little post it notes on a science board. What happened to holistic teaching? What happened to varied forms of assessment? Although the standardized curriculum pushes for different forms of assessment from portfolio work, to conferencing, to anecdotal information, its outcomes based learning pushes in another direction. Everyone is more concerned with seeing the “results” immediately, that they ignore that students learn in a variety of different ways. Their “success” should not be measured on the basis of a couple of tests. This calls into question the notion of “success”. This view of success resonates from a neo-liberal perception where we must prepare students for higher education and the workforce. They must strive to achieve the best results in order to be successful in life.
The testing and accountability policies that have come into play in Ontario have completely changed the culture of schools and the education system. The overemphasis on testing takes much time and energy away from other areas of the curriculum resulting in a very narrow approach to delivering the curriculum. (McAdie and Dawson 2006) The demand for accountability is so intense, that the curriculum begins to change into one that focuses solely on “teaching to the test”. Resource Personnel and school boards are pushing teachers to recognize tests as another genre to teach. Fountas and Pinnell (2000) include a chapter in their guided reading and writing book entitled “Understanding the ‘Testing Genre’: Preparing Students for High Quality Performance”. In this chapter they describe many ways we can help students write tests and reach their full potential. They offer many hints for multiple choice questions, help in clarifying testing language and they also offer connections between test taking and reading.
To help students develop test taking skills, we need to look at testing as a genre—a particular kind of reading and writing. We must analyze the demands of tests, determine how to embed test-taking skills within the activities of the language and literacy framework, and recognize how to help our students learn the specific responses they need to call into play while being tested.”
(Fountas and Pinnell 461)
It is completely absurd that teachers are being asked to follow this method of teaching. This era of “test taking” has rendered our profession into one where we are simply technicians teaching students what to do to be successful on tests. Teachers have lost their independence and are becoming deprofessionalized because their knowledge, skills and abilities to teach students have been undermined by a political agenda of standardized testing. “Standardized testing contributes to what has been referred to as the de-professionalization of teaching, removing one aspect of professional autonomy from teachers. When the EQAO tests were introduced, the previous Conservative government made it clear that they distrusted teachers-almost demonizing them.” (McAdie and Dawson 31) Testing is a large reason for the demoralization of teachers, as it is a large movement to centralizing control over education. I think it is possible to eventually achieve higher results on standardized testing, but in actuality have a poorer education. Ontario has been slowly reaching Dalton McGuinty’s target of 75% at the provincial standard by 2008, but at what cost? Most teachers are teaching to the test, and encouraged to do so by administration and school board personnel. So in essence we are raising test scores, but we are doing so artificially. So, are students really getting smarter, or are we getting smarter at teaching to the test? This results based curriculum really seems to be pushing for a new type of teacher, one which needs to be told what to do to be accountable for his/her students’ education. Why not simply hire technicians that can open up a manual to teach students. Everything about teaching has become so prescribed and so scientific, that the notion of a “teacher” has completely changed as well.
The Ontario Standardized Curriculum and Ontario Standardized testing fail to acknowledge realities of teaching and learning. No two students are created identical and therefore the standard for each student should be looked at in isolation of what the province expects these students to accomplish. Students are coming from a variety of cultures and life experiences. Many studies have been done to prove that standardized testing results are affected by a child’s socio-economic status.
The Berthelot and Harris studies provide compelling evidence that EQAO test results are strongly linked to local and regional socioeconomic variables. The mass testing of students through imposed standardized tests does two things: it penalizes students who are socially disadvantaged, and it limits the ability of teachers to help rectify that social inequality. (Nezavdal 66)

These standardized tests put many children at a great disadvantage. In terms of the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test, the results prove even more detrimental. In this case, if a student does not pass the standardized test, he or she will not graduate. How unfortunate is this for students who are not as comfortable with the literacy being promoted in these tests? In essence, these students are being punished according to their household income or life experiences. Recently Ontario Elementary schools who have scored significantly low in EQAO test results in grade three and six, have been given some help from the government. OFIP (Ontario Focused Intervention Partnership) Schools are provided with more money, resources and help with achieving better results on the EQAO tests. In essence what this “partnership” is doing, is trying to find a band aid solution for poverty. These OFIP schools are predominantly in neighbourhoods with low socio-economic status. All these resources pumped into these schools do not necessarily guarantee a better education or future even if test scores are on the rise. If these OFIP partnerships or turnaround schools work, the government and all involved can pat themselves on the back to say that these results are indicative of a more successful education and future for these children. Improving test results is much easier than targeting the real social issues such as poverty and injustice.
The Curriculum Documents totally contradict these standardized tests. “Curriculum documents specify outcomes for students to utilize dictionaries, peer and teacher feedback for their writing, but the EQAO “on demand” series of writing tasks did not give students access to these customary resources.” (Allingham in Nezavdal 2000) Why not allow these students the same opportunities they would have in an authentic assessment? These tests are very much streaming students into categories of successful and unsuccessful. Policy makers ignore this potential outcome of standardized testing. Nezavdal (2003) makes a great point: “Why do we presume that, because historically only the “brighter” students have excelled, this is a desirable outcome?” (67) What kind of democratic system of education is it if we already put students at a disadvantage? Should we not believe that each student will be successful in their own way? Why must they be successful only in the way the Standardized Curriculum and Standardized Testing suggest? Just because students do not achieve all outcomes in the Curriculum, and just because students do not score high marks on a standardized test does not mean they will not be successful in life. Why are we promoting this message?
A professor of mine once quoted: “We value what we measure and we measure what we value.” (Orpwood 2006) When assessing we need to ask ourselves if the assessment we do truly helps students learn to be critical thinkers or are we assessing simply to prove to the country and the world that we can create students who are able to compete in a global market? Often the best learning that occurs in classrooms is the one that doesn’t count. We forget about the multitude of experiences that students acquire in classroom that are rich in discovery, storytelling and exploration. We seem to value simply what these students do in pencil and paper tests. We should not worry about proving that we have taught all the required expectations and students are able to regurgitate their leaning to us. Teachers should strive to teach in a qualitative way, not one based on quantity. “The formal curriculum is only one part and often a relatively insignificant part of what teachers teach and what students learn.” (Chudnovsky 29) Standardized tests have created too narrow a curriculum where nothing matters unless it counts or is measured. The public, ministry and teachers should strive towards an education that will matter such as creating students to be critical thinkers, democratic citizens and ambitious individuals. Students are not test taking machines, but individuals with various strengths, weaknesses and passions.
The alternative for Standardized Testing and Curriculum is Qualitative Assessment. If it is not possible to rid ourselves completely of assessment and testing, why not aim for qualitative assessment? This is a means of assessing student learning across many scenarios such as interviews, journaling, anecdotal records, portfolios etc. (Nezavdal 69) The chosen method of student assessment must be directly linked to classroom practice and instruction. This is a way that curriculum can become responsive to student learning. We must look at student learning holistically where every student approaches learning in his/her own personal way. Teachers should have the autonomy to make decisions based on each individual child. Why not put the trust back into teachers to make the important decisions about student learning. Why leave these decisions in the hands of those that are so far removed from the education system? With Qualitative assessment, there must also exist non-comparative methods of assessment which “aim to assess students in an unbiased and just way.” (Nezavdal 69) This will allow for less pressure to be felt for the student and less anxiety when being assessed. Qualitative assessment incorporates so much of what students do on an everyday basis, that students become less anxious and more interested in their learning. If students’ results are not made out to be “the be all and end all” in education, they will feel less embarrassed, and be more able to learn from the results. At this point the results from EQAO assessment provide no feedback for student learning. They simply report results, and give some feedback to teachers and school boards, but where is the role of the student in all of this? If these tests are being done to improve student learning, why not involve the student? With qualitative assessment, should also come more feedback for students. Students should also be involved in the learning process and not simply be pawns in this political game. When discussing the test results in meetings, we always speak of students in relation to the results, but we never speak to students. No authentic learning will occur this way. We must change this approach and allow students to simply compare their own results to their own previous assessments. They need to be an integral part of the decision making about their own learning.
As for the issue of deprofessionalization of teachers and accountability, change is necessary as well. Teachers do need to be accountable for students’ education, but not by means being imposed upon them. Test results should not be the method of identifying successful schools and competent teachers. Slowly the autonomy of teachers is being stripped away as they are being told what to teach and how to teach it. What is the point of being accredited as a profession? Why bother going to teacher’s college when in essence nothing you learn will be practiced when you actually teach? The alternative is putting teachers in charge of the system as discussed by Jon Cowans (2007). Cowans asks us to imagine a non-medical authority telling a doctor how to treat his patients. The whole notion is absurd, but just as absurd as it is for teachers being told what to do by people outside of the education system. A powerful quote by Bertrand Russell says:
A typical Ontario high school teacher will have two university degrees, 15 years of professional experience, taught 90 classes and over 2 000 students, logged 100 hours of parental contact, 600 hours of school supervision, 1 000 hours of extracurricular activities, 10 000 hours of classroom instruction, and marked 60 000 assignments. In spite of these impressive numbers, how often will the same teacher be consulted by administration on school policy? Never.
(Bertrand Russell 1950 as cited in Cowans 2007)

Many years have passed since Bertrand Russell stated this observation, but times have not changed. It is blatantly obvious how much experience a teacher possesses, yet he/she is not valued to make decisions about school policy? I think teachers need to have a greater voice in our educational system rather than being told what to do. Historically teachers have been excluded from school policy and have been forced to be passive implementers of policies made by non teaching administrators. How democratic a system are we creating when the voices of over thousands of teachers who can make a difference are being silenced? Teachers have very little to do with policy writing and enactment, yet the problem almost always lies on the teachers to fix. Harris’ removal of administrators from teacher unions has created a more business like mentality of schools where principals are the managers, the teachers the employees and the students are clients. Rather than working collaboratively with one another, these “stakeholders” are pitted against each other. Teachers are seen as incapable of managing themselves, and in need of someone else to step in and supervise what they are doing.
Cowans proposes an alternative to this model of the school as a business. Instead of having administration in charge, he proposes that the real experts in the education system should be in charge of the schools: the teachers. In this model principals and vice principals would be classroom teachers elected by classroom teachers and accountable to classroom teachers. These elected teachers would serve as administrators, but also teach part time. Often a complaint amongst teachers is that administrators are too far removed from teaching and they cannot remember what it felt like to teach. With this model, principals would never forget as they themselves would be teachers. School policy decisions would be reached only through the consensus of classroom teachers with input from other educational stakeholders. (Cowans 25) Cowans comments that another model of this “democratic school” would include students as part of the decision making model as will. This model is very similar to the teacher’s union where we elect members who will best serve our interest of education. Although this model may not happen immediately, it is the responsibility of teachers to have their voice heard by lobbying for important educational issues. If teachers do not push the system, change is impossible. Small steps need to be made in order to attain great results.
It is evident that the Ontario Curriculum of 1997 has created many unintended consequences in our education system over the years. Schools are no longer seen as domains of learning, but businesses where the bottom line is what matters. Out of this outcomes based curriculum has emerged the over dependence on Standardized Testing where results and numbers are what matter and not a child’s education. Teachers have become no more than technicians who must assess what their children need in order to achieve better results and reach the province’s standard. How absurd is it that 75% of the population must be at “provincial standard”. Students have become machines as have teachers and have lost their autonomy and creativity to make their own decisions. The standardization has created a control mechanism for the government over the entire system of education in our province. We are artificially raising test scores and unequivocally diminishing our education system to nothing but narrow mindedness. It is time for change. Teachers must let their voices be heard and lobby together to gain some power in decision making. What happened to professionals having some say in the decision making process? As Bertrand Russell noted, teachers are more than capable of making decisions. Why aren’t we included in the educational policy making and enactment? Alternatives exist to the problems I have described with the unintended consequences of standardized curriculum and testing. There is always a hidden curriculum that policy makers ignore. We must strive for a democratic vision of the learner, the teacher and the education system altogether. Change is possible, one voice at a time.









WORKS CITED
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