Ontario’s Divisional Court branch of the Superior Court of Justice released a decision on the week before Christmas striking down the provincial requirement that individuals seeking to be certified as teachers in Ontario must successfully pass a standardized math test to demonstrate their mathematics proficiency. The factual basis for the decision is that the evidence presented to the court “points to significant disparities in success rates of standardized testing based on race, including statistical evidence of racial disparities with respect to the [provinces Mathematics Proficiency Test]”. This violated the entitlement, under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (section 15), of racialized teacher candidates to equality under the law without discrimination and, in particular, in this case, because of their race. The disproportionate effect on racialized teacher candidates was not, by the evidence, minimal and the option to retake the test does not answer the issue as “there is a cost to retaking the test in time and money for those [the teacher candidates] who are least likely to be able to afford this”. Although the court concluded that the Mathematical Proficiency Test furthered a pressing and substantial objective (the education of students) there were options to achieving the objective which had less impairment on teacher candidates charter rights. The decision can be appealed. The full text of the decision can be found at:
https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onscdc/doc/2021/2021onsc7386/2021onsc7386.html Comments are closed.
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