In a decision that split Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) trustees down the middle, fourth graders in half of the city's Catholic schools will have their religious knowledge put to standardized testing later this year.
The Religious Knowledge Test, which will be instituted in six of the TCDSB's 12 wards in late May - Etobicoke's Ward 2 among them - was piloted in five schools last year by Ward 7 (Scarborough/North York) trustee John Del Grande. But not without criticism, he said.
"At one school, several parents opted their kids out of the testing over confusion as to whether it tested knowledge or faith," Del Grande said. "You can't test faith and you can't teach faith, but religion is one of our core subjects, so we have a responsibility to make sure our kids are absorbing the curriculum."
The purpose of the test - which in large part is made up of multiple choice, true or false and fill-in-the-blanks questions - is not to measure faith per se, but to measure retention of religious knowledge, Del Grande and Ward 2 trustee Ann Andrachuk said in an open letter to parents in December.
"We have heard from time to time that our schools are not up to the standard they once were in terms of providing core knowledge demonstrated by our students' preparedness for confirmation," they wrote.
"A standardized test shows that we are not only in the business of core education and faith formation but about religious instruction... Knowledge instruction creates better formed and knowledgeable Catholics by laying a foundation that can ultimately be measured."
Passed with a slim majority at a Dec. 3, 2007 school board committee meeting, Del Grande's original motion called to have the testing instituted board-wide, but an amendment to the motion allowed for individual trustees to opt out of the testing. After much debate - dating back to the test's development by staff in 2005 - six trustees chose to exempt their schools from the standardized test. And according to Mary Jo Deighan, TCDSB's coordinator of communications, parents of students at participating schools will be given the choice of whether or not they wish to have their children participate.
In Etobicoke, students in Ward 2 will take the test - along with those from Wards 6 (York), 7 (Scarborough/North York), 9 (Toronto), 10 (Toronto) and 11 (East York/Toronto) - their fellow students to the north in trustee Joseph Martino's Ward 1 will be exempt. Martino was unavailable to comment as to why he chose to exempt his schools before Guardian deadline.
Anthony Bellissimo, president of the Toronto Elementary Catholic Teachers (TECT), said many of the 4,000 teachers he represents question the need for such testing on three grounds.
Firstly, he said the assessment is redundant as students are already tested on religious knowledge as part of their ongoing curriculum; secondly, teachers feel the test undermines the larger purpose of Catholic schools in the formation of "mind, heart and conscience" in their students; lastly, teachers question the testing on grounds of scrutiny surrounding such measures.
"Fundamentally, we feel it will minimize religious education," he said. "Standardized testing has a way of skewing things... Catholic education is not about information, it's about formation, but there seems to be a polarization with standardized testing - focusing attention on what people perceive to be lacking rather than what is forthcoming."
But Del Grande and Andrachuk contend test results from the 77 participating schools will be used to assess areas where the curriculum is lacking; neither schools nor students will be penalized for poor performance.
"We should not shy away from results that we fear could be less than favourable from time to time or in place to place, there is always room for improvement," they said. "Just as other standardized tests help us target revised materials and instruction methods, so too will this test."