A group of teacher candidates in Ontario claimed the math test requirement for qualification is racist and the Ontario Court of Appeal agreed. .In Ontario, teacher candidates must pass a math test consisting of questions from Grade three, six and nine math levels for qualification, as well as pass a component on teaching mathematics. .The purpose of the test is to make sure teachers had a basic understanding of math. .The court documents show teacher candidates who “identify as black or indigenous had a success rate on the test 20 percentage points lower than white candidates.” .The group of aspiring teachers made the appeal with support from the Ontario Teachers Federation (OTF)..Christine Van Geyn, litigation director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCP), a legal charity that fights for fundamental freedoms, explained what happened in the Ontario and Petrucci case. .“[The teacher candidates] alleged that the test was discriminatory because some racial and linguistic groups failed the test at higher rates than white teacher candidates,” Van Geyn said. “The divisional court sided with the teacher candidates.”.“[The court] found that the math test was unjustified discrimination and struck it down.”.Van Geyn said the Government of Ontario first implemented the test in 2020 due to concerns with “grim” math scores, which have been declining steadily since 2015. .“Starting in 2015, Ontario Elementary students’ math scores were measured by the Ontario Education Accountability Office (OEAC),” Van Geyn explained. “Those scores began to decline between the 2015/16 school year and in the 2018/19 school year the percentage of students achieving at or above the provincial standard dropped from 63% to 58%.”.“For grade six students, the scores were even worse; they fell during that time period from 50% to 48%. .The provincial government therefore developed a “four-year math strategy” to improve scores. .The strategy had many components, one requiring teachers to take a math test prior to qualification. .Since non-math teachers sometimes are asked to teach math, especially at the elementary level, the government decided all teachers must have a minimum level of math and pass this standardized test. .Parents strongly supported the decision, as a 2017 Ontario Ministry of Education (OME) did an opinion poll of Ontario parents that showed “more focus on math and better trained teachers was the measure parents believed was most likely to improve student scores.”.Van Geyn notes many other countries also have a standardized basic math test for teachers, including the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Singapore, China and many US states. .OEAC designed the test, which is the same test they give to students — except they get an extra hour to complete it and unlimited chances to retake the test without penalty. .The math questions were “screened for cultural sensitivity” and “factored in identity, social justice and equity issues” for the second time, as they were already screened when developed for the students. .The organization even contracted an external board to scrutinize the test before presenting it to teacher candidates. .“The test questions were reviewed to determine whether demographic indicators or knowledge of culturally specific information would predict reduced performance on questions,” Van Geyn said. “They spent a lot of money and put a lot of effort into making sure their math test wasn't racist. But even this wasn't enough.”.“The pass and fail rate of the math test differed along racial and linguistic categories,” she said. “The Court also found that the majority of French-speaking candidates who were not successful on the mass portion of the test were also unsuccessful on the pedagogy.”.The teacher candidates alleged the math test violated section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the right to be free from discrimination..“They said that because the pass or fail rate can be mapped along racial and linguistic lines, the test was discrimination,” Van Geyn said. .The precedent was set by a case called Ontario and Fraser from 2020, where section 15 was called into question and “adverse impact discrimination” was established. .“A statistical difference between a disadvantaged group and a comparator group is enough to find that there was discrimination,” she said. “So the court found that the math test was discriminatory because it had an adverse impact on certain races: a higher fail rate among certain races, even though there is not necessarily a connection between the test and race.”
