Kathleen Woodcock: Latest News

Ontario’s provincewide high school math test this year.Some school boards are asking the province’s permission to cancel the Education Quality and Accountability Office’s Grade 9 Math Assessment, while others are acting without seeking the government’s blessing. Some Ontario teachers refuse work over school COVID concerns Still, many are going ahead with the standardized EQAO test, as required by the Ministry of Education, despite a bevy of pandemic-induced interruptions including a two-week period of remote learning after the winter break and widespread absences brought on by the highly-contagious Omicron variant of COVID-19.But some say cutting the test — which is not a graduation requirement, but is used to assess student performance at the school, board and provincial level — is an easy way to ease students’ load during a third academic year altered by COVID-19.“It’s just adding burden to an already incredibly burdened system, from a mental health perspective, to students and staff and all their families,” said Kathleen Woodcock, a trustee with the Waterloo Region District School Board who’s introduced a motion to request another year of reprieve from the test, which was temporarily shelved last year due to the pandemic.The committee of the whole will vote on the motion next week.