The long, slow decline of government education reaches its logical end point:
If these skills are so important, it’s time to actually test students for them when they enter university or college, and again when they leave, said Weingarten, whose Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) advises Queen’s Park on higher learning.
In a groundbreaking pilot project this fall — the first of its kind in Canada — HEQCO is looking for several colleges and universities to submit their incoming students to a 90-minute online test of literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills, and give the same test to the graduating class as they leave.
Before the hosannahs begin rising from the conservative choir do please pause and consider. The popular perception is that the young spend more time in schooling while acquiring less in the way of useful knowledge or practical skills. Proposing a test to address that very issue sounds like an excellent idea. A clear metric to objectively prove whether the vast sums spent on our post secondary institutions are actually being wasted. The numbers - as we are so often told - don't lie.
That is unless they do. The most effective way to lie about anything is with numbers. This is because most people are too busy/lazy/stupid to bother asking how the numbers are calculated. Any numerical value is meaningless if the methodology behind it is flawed. The odds of HEQCO giving us an accurate test are about the same as the odds of a Brock poly sci graduate finding a job without a name tag.
This is one arm of the provincial educational establishment evaluating another arm of the provincial educational establishment. It reminds me of elementary school. My third grade teacher was a remarkably lazy and incompetent woman. Naturally she attempted "progressive" teaching techniques such as having the students mark each other's tests. By the strangest coincidence I always marked my best friend's test. By another remarkable coincidence he always marked my tests. Guess how many tests we both aced?
In my defence the tests were nonsense and I was eight years old. The Educrats have a much better excuse: They work for the government.
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