ONTARIO MATH SCORES IN THE TOILET

What I don't understand is how anybody is surprised by the results of math and english testing in our public schools. Literally for decades governments have kept hands off while teachers, trustees and school boards did their utmost to improve the lot of trustees, taechers and school boards. Do you see any mention of student learning in those previous two sentences. Teachers unions especially at the elementary level, combined with Board bureaucracy have worked hard to keep themselves unaccountable and non-tramsparent. it has worked beautifully - for them that is. Never has so much tax money gone into such mediocre results while keeping parents sucessfully at bay and governments generally looking the other way.

On August 31, 2017 the Waterloo Region Record published the following story titled "Math test scores "disappointing". Mary Reid of the University of Toronto stated that math proficiency tests must be made mandatory for elementary school teachers. This is because these teachers struggle with basic math skills which obviously affects their teaching and thus their students' learning. Oh surprise, surprise! Don't be surprised if the union insisting on layoffs by seniority instead of by either competence or abilities in particular subjects such as math is also a strong factor. Exactly how many teachers kept their jobs teaching math which they themselves furiously dropped as fast as they could when they got to high school? Remember education isn't about common sense. It's about privelege, power, status and authority that most could not get in other fields. Our provincial governments have done little over the decades to improve things.