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No tests, no grades, no homework Radical message to be delivered to one of Canada’s biggest teacher’s unions By BRIAN LILLEY, Parliamentary Bureau

OTTAWA — New teachers in one of Canada’s largest teacher’s unions will hear a message on Friday that tests, grades and homework don’t really matter to a student’s success. “It is possible to have highly impressive test scores without quality learning,” author and education consultant Alfie Kohn told QMI Agency from his home near Boston. Kohn — author of The Case Against Standardized Testing and the upcoming book, Feel-Bad Education — will speak to more than 350 members of the Ontario English Catholic Teacher’s Association (OECTA) at their annual conference for new teachers in Niagara Falls, Ont. In a province that still uses standardized tests, Kohn will deliver an unorthodox message. “If the test scores in your schools are going up, that’s a reason to worry,” Kohn said. “Some of the best kind of teaching and learning can’t be reduced to numbers,” Kohn said of standardized tests and school rankings. “What those numbers primarily tell you about are the size of the houses near the school. There is a direct link between test scores and socioeconomic status.” An advocate against homework, Kohn has also called for teachers to run classrooms where students have a say in how the classroom is run and that schools be competition free zones. Patrick McCloskey, a faculty member at the school of education with Loyola University in Chicago disagrees with Kohn’s claim no tests and no grades make for better schools. “How would you possibly know? You’d have no measurement,” McCloskey said. McCloskey, an Ottawa native who has researched school systems in Canada and the United States, is a proponent of traditional schooling methods, especially for children in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. “What often works with these students is the traditional approach. They need discipline, order in the schools and basic skills,” McCloskey said. James Ryan, the head of OECTA, said Kohn was invited to share his strong views with teachers at the beginning of their career, less than five years into classroom experience. “Alfie has very strong views on high stakes testing and the damage they do and we think it’s a valuable thing for teachers to hear,” Ryan said. “It is an opinion, it’s kind of on one side of the spectrum and the other side would test everything. Most of our teachers would fall somewhere in between.” Ryan hopes the talk will spark a discussion among teachers. Ontario’s Minister of Education Leona Dombrowsky will also speak at the conference. Dombrowsky is a proponent of standardized testing.