seminar
Improving Student Learning: Cohort Tracking and Web-Based Resource to Inform Leadership Decisions
The seminar will provide an overview of two EQAO initiatives:
1) Presentation on cohort tracking. Cohort tracking links individual student results from Grade 3 to Grade 6 in reading, writing and mathematics; from Grade 6 to Grade 9 in mathematics; and from Grade 6 to Grade 10 in reading and writing. The purpose of cohort tracking is to follow trends in student and group achievement over time to provide information for improvement in student learning.
2) Demonstration of Web-Based resource for school board directors of education. The Web tool is an interactive reporting application that enables the user to display presentations of Primary (Grade 3) and Junior (Grade 6) student assessment results for specific groups of schools and to examine these results in the context of demographic data. The tool also allows the user to examine a selected school in relation to all other schools in a school board or to other schools in the province with similar demographic data. The primary purpose of this tool is to support conversations among school board leaders, principals and schools teams about student achievement and what can be done to improve student learning.
Richard Jones has worked in the field of large-scale student assessment for 25 years. Currently, he is Director of Assessment and Reporting with the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) in Toronto. Prior to this Dr. Jones was Project Manager for National, International, and Special Projects with the EQAO; Director of Assessment and Evaluation with the Saskatchewan Department of Education; and Coordinator of Provincial Learning Assessment and Assistant Director of the Provincial and Scholarship Examination Program with the British Columbia Ministry of Education. In these various roles, related to education reform, his responsibilities have included designing and implementing initiatives related to student evaluation, program evaluation, curriculum evaluation, provincial learning assessment, education indicators, school and school board improvement planning and accreditation, and national and international testing.
Prior to working in the field of assessment and evaluation, Dr. Jones served as researcher and senior manager for an American-based consulting firm on projects based in the Middle East. He has several years of teaching experience at elementary, secondary, community college, and university levels in Ontario, British Columbia, and Africa. Over the years, he has consulted, presented at workshops and conferences, and authored numerous journal articles and book chapters on assessment and evaluation topics.