EQAO and conflicts

This one has bubbled up over the past few days, starting with a CBC report earlier this week pointing to Education Quality and Accountability Office board member Lorna Earl's work as an educational consultant. TorSun's Michelle Mandel Moira MacDonald writes about this today, pointing out how political and federation foes will try and use this alleged conflict of interest in a vain attempt to kill the agency's current testing practices.

But whether Lorna Earl has been in conflict with her private and public roles or not, watch out for those who will use this to show why province-wide testing should be canned.
They will latch on to this, especially as it seems critics such as the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario are getting nowhere telling parents, many of whom support it, that this kind of testing is bad.
When people don't agree with you, you can always try death by character assassination. Hammering away at the integrity of the testing agency -- the Education Quality and Accountability Office -- might be worth a shot.
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Is teaching people how to use test data the same as giving them short-cuts to boost their marks? Could Earl have picked up special knowledge at EQAO that could help her at work? Should public sector boards not be allowed to recruit potential directors with expertise in the same field because of conflict of interest worries? These are questions the commissioner might ask.
Even if there's something there, I suspect it's not what (NDP education critic Rosario) Marchese is driving at. If Earl were using her connections to help Ontario boards "get the numbers up" it's hardly worked.
Grade 3 reading results are listless while Grade 6 results still fall short of government improvement promises. But discouraging news, like concerns about conflicts, is no reason to chuck the test. And Earl likely counsels the same.

I agree with what Mandel MacDonald is saying here. The critics of Earl's status on the board and continued work with her consulting company appear to show a basic lack of understanding of corporate governance. Boards don't usually do the nitty gritty work, they hire staff accountable to them to do this, of which EQAO has them. A conflict here would be if she still worked for EQAO in test development and then ran over to her consulting firm's offices with the confidential tests and data and then sold them to school boards across the province. Or, if she worked for EQAO and was on the board at the same time.
Or if she was using EQAO dollars to funnel test development and analysis work to her contracting firm without tenders or any similar scrutiny, a la eHealth or OLG.
Mandel MacDonald's right on the money on calling out the agency's opponents on how they're going to try and use this situation to their advantage. She's also hit the nail right on the head with her final graph included above on results.