School boards were established for a purpose. Since the advent of the public school system, school boards have existed to provide a measure of local control over our tax-supported schools. Today the School Board system of governance founded upon elected school trustees is either in fragile condition or threatened with extinction. A recent feature article in The Globe and Mail, written by Kate Hammer (July 17, 2010), posed the whole question bluntly: “should governments close our school boards?” ( http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/should-governments-close-our-school-boards/article1643119/) Most Canadians probably favour the idea, and especially those with no children in the system. Few bother to examine the real impact of such a move on public accountability in education.
Cutting the size of government is popular these days. School board reduction or total elimination is on the public agenda as citizens see it as an obvious cost-saving measure. Regional or district school boards have become remote to most citizens and taxpayers. In the 1990s, Ontario school boards lost their budgetary authority and elected Trustees were rendered toothless. New Brunswick abolished school boards entirely, only to backtrack by establishing District Education Councils populated by well-meaning volunteers.
Local education democracy has faded over time. Robert Harris’ famous 1885 painting, “Meeting of School Trustees,” harkens back to a period when Trustees were at the very centre of the whole enterprise. School consolidation and county school boards produced a dramatic shift in the locus of decision-making power away from local communities. Today the bureaucratic education state is omnipresent. When parent concerns are rebuffed by local principals, they have virtually nowhere to turn. Local democratic control has eroded to the point where many now call for the complete abolition of the current system based upon School Boards and elected bodies of Trustees.
Elected Trustees are now in a fight for political survival. With declining enrolments and aging populations, most provinces are looking for ways to reduce education expenditures. Governments have been slowly chipping away at school board authority, taking advantage of weakly-led boards known for political posturing and nonsensical debates. Salaries and office budgets are now subject to more controls and provincial grants come with more strings attached.
School boards get little respect in Nova Scotia. In December 2006, Education Minister Karen Casey “fired” the entire 13-member Halifax Regional School Board for its petty squabbling ways and then replaced the Board with a retired civil servant, Howard Windsor, acting as a “one-man School Board. The Strait Regional School Board in eastern Nova Scotia suffered the same fate. When the two Nova Scotia boards were restored in October 2008, the Superintendents exercised greater control and elected Trustees operated under guidelines befitting system “cheerleaders.”
Stripped of tax raising powers, today’s elected School Board trustees are basically limited to advocacy and “rubber-stamping” monthly staff reports. A new Ontario education law blocks trustees from criticizing their board’s decisions. In Ontario’s Bluewater Board, the elected trustees have proven so ineffective that a public advocacy group, Mended, has all but replaced them as the credible voice of the people.
Why not replace Trustees with district or school parent councils? Prominent conservative think tanks such as the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) now favour replacing School Boards with School Advisory Councils (SACs) vested with expanded powers. AIMS president Charles Cirtwill contends that New Zealand and the Edmonton Public School Board prove that its time to “SAC” our school boards. New Brunswick’s District Education Council (DEC) system, on the other hand, has been plagued with problems. In July 2009, three members of NB’s District 2 District Education Council (Mary Laltoo, David Matthews,and Pat Crawford) resigned decrying the DEC governance model as a sham, with few real decision-making powers. In a joint declaration, the three dissenters claimed that they refused to remain as “part of a farse that is sold to the public as local governance.”
The central questions cannot be skirted any longer: Who speaks for the public in education? With School Boards housed in central offices far removed from most school communities, how can we preserve the vital principle of democratic control over decision-making? Are School Governing Councils the ultimate answer? If so, who provides the coordination across school regions? Most importantly, without School Boards, where’s the public accountability in education?
The trustees and/or school board in my region (Ontario) would not be missed. The roles of trustees have become so eroded that it’s impossible to tell the difference between them and the Ontario Ministry of Education.
Here in Ontario school board meetings usually consist of a rehashing of whatever new program or initiative the province has cooked up. We hear it a board level, at school level through staff meetings, and a school council meetings again. There is no longer any guarantee of local ownership of our schools or how education is entrusted to our elected reps.
Effective administrators coupled with well-working school councils could take the place of expensive boards. However, in Ontario school councils were very poorly rolled out initially and ill-supported by unions, other parent groups(those which support the unions) and administration. School admin generally felt threatened by the thought of parents anywhere close to the actual delivery of education.
What’s most interesting in Ontario these days is the fact that the new School Accommodation Review process assumes we have functioning School Councils. The reviews are initiated when school consolidation is being considered and they are largely dependent on school councils that are working together with their community. The assumption made by the province was that school councils were working well and effectively throughout the province. Not true. So where councils had been left to flounder, they all of a sudden found themselves in a leadership community role –a very different role for most of them.
Perhaps individual communities should have the option of opting out of the school board system. Those with great networks of councils and community could run their own show. Those who want to be run from the administrative centre would be free to do so.
The Society for Quality Education agrees that school boards could be eliminated as long as there is more accountability at the school level and school choice.
See our position here: http://www.societyforqualityeducation.org/parents/2.html
Centralizing control in at ministry levels is no solution either. In Toronto, the largest Catholic school board in the province has been under supervision of the Ministry of Education. Essentially no one noticed–the bureaucracy grinds on. The difference is that there is no accountability of trustees, who have been rendered powerless, and hence no local accountability for parents at the school level either.
Do School Boards have a future? Even Malkin Dare, founder of the Society for Quality Education, questions their value, at least in their current form.
When I posed the question, “Aunt Malkin” sent this response (from her dial-up zone in Ontario cottage country):
“We are aware that different folks have different strokes, and some models of school board governance will work in some circumstances. However, in general we observe that the large, amalgamated school boards of today are not working very well.
We favour a gradual reduction in the scope and responsibilities of school boards – shifting financial and accountability functions to the ministry, physical plant functions to the municipality, and as much of the rest as possible to the individual schools (including such things as staffing, transportation, payroll, and purchasing) and allowing parents to choose their children’s school. It is likely that some new arrangements will be struck: for example private services will probably emerge offering to take care of such things as payroll and transportation, and schools may band together to achieve purchasing price advantages.
Here in Ontario a trend towards a reduction in school boards’ mandates (although not their staffing or spending levels) is already underway, and it will be interesting to see whether there is a point at which there is a negative impact on students – or whether the school boards can be totally phased out without any pain at all. The only ones to really suffer might be the bureaucrats.”
Malkin Dare, Editor, SQE Forum
The New Brunswick example is hardly one to inspire confidence in abolition of school boards as the road to improvement in public education.
New Zealand’s experience is even more cautionary. New Zealand now has the honour of the greatest achievement gap in literacy in the English-speaking world. It’s almost a bimodal distribution: the highs are high, the lows are extremely low, and few in the middle. The differences overwhelmingly follow race and socio-economic lines. The schools which have suffered the most from the abolition of school boards have been those serving poor or aboriginal communities. Each school is governed by a board of local people, but the poor communities don’t have the human resources and skilled personnel to make this system work for them; they also have no way of raising extra money, the way the well-off schools do. The well-to-do are happy with the new set-up; the poor are not.
There was already a great deal of inequity in the system (as there is here), but getting rid of school boards only exacerbated it. The poor schools now have fewer resources, no access to centralized resources (school districts usually have media centres, central libraries, instructional materials circulating libraries, and so on), little or no access to skilled personnel in the arts, math, science or education of exceptional children. They have trouble recruiting people to serve on these boards (not sure if the board members are paid anything) as low-income people often have child-care responsibilities, irregular work hours, limited transportation and other issues that prevent their taking up active community service roles (especially unpaid ones).
A recent NZ government study of the effects of the decentralization noted that those who introduced this new system with great enthusiasm 20 years ago have now abandoned ship and left the operationalizing of their brain child to others who did not choose this way of doing things.
Our own achievement (and income) gap is significant, and growing. Do we really want to be New Zealand North? .
OTOH, the massive centralization of education decisionmaking, policy and power is ipso facto a bad thing. Sometimes I feel like Cassandra in Homer’s Iliad: I predicted all of this, with chilling accuracy. When Bill 160 was introduced in Ontario in 1997 I read through the whole bill and could see that several negative consequences were sure to follow:
(1) The Ministry of Education would have virtually unlimited power over policy, curriculum, personnel and decisionmaking. Talk about the “factory model!”
(2) School boards would be castrated and have almost no real input, as their access to information as well as their powers, were curtailed to nearly nothing. In a representative democracy, this is not a positive development.
(3) Local communities, schools and staff would have almost no ability to design, implement or execute programs and procedures geared to their own local needs. They would instead have to jump to the Mowat Block tune. One size fits all, hurray!
Foreseeing this, I supported the protest against implementation of Bill 160, though I generally don’t support work stoppages as a route to improvement. However, even I was surprised by how accurate my prediction proved to be. I didn’t foresee, however, the extent to which the MOE would police and monitor implementation of its policies, which it now does through OFIP and the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat.
Ironically, though school reform supporters generally cheered Bill 160, the consequences of that legislation (and a few others) now constitute a huge barrier to the types of changes that the reformers wish to see. I suspect that, like the GST or the income tax, this legislation and its consequences are with us to stay. It would take a HUGE popular groundswell of disapproval to reverse any of these trends, and there is little sign of anything of the sort.
A more significant gap than the “left” vs. “right” on the political scene is that between the engaged and the disengaged. Michael Adams has a sobering book about this, American Backlash, which profiles the alarming growth of citizen alienation from the whole political process in the U.S. To a lesser extent, the same trend is occurring here: voter turnout is steadily decreasing, civic engagement is lessening. Here’s a short piece by Adams on the situation in Canada:
Click to access adams.pdf
It’s slightly dated, but the general thesis holds.
The school boards issue is part of this larger phenomenon.
The system was an excellent one before Mike Harris set out to destroy it.
We should restore all curriculum and taxation power to the school boards as it was before amalgamation and Bill 160.
There should also be no pooling of tax money. The province has the responsibility to top up the school boards that do not have enough local assessment to run a quality school system.
All schools should soon be state of the art in construction, design, technology swimming pools, and should also be community schools with many other public functions conducted on the same property.
We should spare no expence to have what are clearly the best school facilities on the planet.
This is exactly the kind of stimulus the economy needs.
There are 3 great reasons for education: economic, social and personal.
The more we spend, the better the economy will do and the better prepared the individual be for their place in a dynamic Canadian economy.
The more we spend the more students have access to high quality literature, arts drama, music, phys ed etc so they become happier more worldly people.
The more we spend the more we close the equity gap between the havs and the have nots provided the money is well focussed.
Education truly is the rising tide that lifts every boat.
Steven Lewis once said, “the answer to every single problem that our society faces is more education.” Hard to argue with that.
To add to Ms. Dare’s Ontario perspective, it’s been a long-standing rumour that if McGuinty wins the next election that his government will do with school boards what he did with hospital LHINs(Local Health Integration Network) which is to regionalize the school boards so that there are fewer of them doing duplicate work as they did health care delivery.
Opposition leader Tim Hudak has already promised to do away with the LHINs because it’s turned out not to have saved money or helped the healthcare challenges Ontario faces. What it did was create mega-bureaucracies and more well-paid bureaucrats.
Mr. Little invokes the name of Stephen Lewis, someone who talks a good game of public education for all….except for his own kids (which he and his wife chose to send to private school). Hypocrites breed more hypocrites on that score.
Editor’s Comment: Setting the Record Straight – Stephen Lewis’s son, Avi Lewis, attended Upper Canada College until Grade 8, then transferred to Jarvis Collegiate, a Toronto public high school. Michelle Landsberg, Avi’s mother, wrote a column about making that decision. Lesser known is the fact that Naomi Klein, Avi’s partner, graduated from a Montreal private school, St. George’s College, on The Boulevard in Westmount, QC. (Educhatter)
more Setting the Record Straight from Stephen Lewis himself.
“Addressing a group of parents and teachers at one London high school, Stephen Lewis, the recently retired leader of the NDP and Ontario’s most prominent social democrat was quoted as attacking “the mediocrity” and “confusion” of the Ontario education system; the “obsession” teachers have with contract demands rather then classroom content and the lack of teaching excellence in classrooms. He went on to say that ‘he maintains two of his children in private Toronto schools rather than put up with the problems encountered in the public school system.”
(taken from “From Hope to Harris” by R.D. Gidney)
Looks like Lewis and Mike Harris had more in common re: allowing parental choice than some would like to admit.
Steven Lewis was and still is, a prominent advocate for public education. His demands of the Davis government led directly to Bill 82. His demands for smaller primary class sizes and a focus on high quality children’s literature had a powerful effect on the Ontario system.
The question of eliminating school boards, and replacing them with a site-based management model, is closely tied in with the “leadership” issue discussed in a previous thread. A successful “site-based” model depends on a plentiful supply of talented administrators, plus a varied and engaged pool of local parents and citizens willing to participate at the local level.
Both of these are rare and endangered species.
Data from the Educational Testing Service show that individuals going into graduate study in Educational Administration have the lowest GRE Verbal score of any group other than those in Early Childhood studies (daycare, essentially). The GRE tracks closely with IQ and cognitive ability generally, and the mean score of those in Ed. Admin is 419, which correlates to an IQ of 90, and is not adequate verbal proficiency and analytical reasoning ability even to do honours secondary school work, let alone graduate study in any rigorous field (a Verbal score of 600+ is usually required).
That this is the *mean* score is especially worrying, because that indicates a significant number of degree candidates in that field scored substantially lower. These are not people who have the skill and acumen to lead schools, or school systems, to excellence. As a group, educational administrators are significantly less able and less well-educated than most of the teachers they purport to supervise (pace Paul, I’m sure you were one of those who raised the mean score).
I’ve worked with over 30 administrators (principals, vice-principals and superintendents) personally, and know at least that many more as colleagues who went on to be promoted. Some are very good leaders, most are middling, some poor, a few are truly ghastly. None were/are outstanding. But even the average or good ones had skills in only some of the areas needed for a site-based system to work well. Had they been able to control the budget, hire and fire, make curriculum decisions, develop policy and procedures etc., the results would be very negative for the school and students in many instances. One principal who excelled at community building and parent involvement was totally ignorant about curriculum and good teaching, for example, while another who excelled in those areas lacked the ability to discern good teachers from poor ones, and showed obvious favouritism, had “pets,” and lacked financial savvy.
The example of charter schools in the U.S. is instructive: while some are outstanding, most are mediocre and a substantial number are poor . Some charter schools that start off with a strong vision get sabotaged as new people (parents, board members) join and disagree with the school’s mission, force changes and massive staff turnover, and the whole purpose of the school is suborned and achievement is negatively impacted. Strong principals who start these schools and try to maintain the high standard and vision get turfed out as the second generation comes along and wants more trendy things or dislikes the high standards. Parents who are involved in starting these schools are rarely involved for more than 5-10 years, so continuity of both leadership and clientele is a real issue.
I could cite some specific cases of which I have personal knowledge,but that might be a breach of confidence so I won’t — the data show, however, that although some individual charter schools do extremely well (often because they do have outstanding leadership), many do not.
We need to have a much higher calibre of leadership, and much more involved citizenry (not only parents), to make such an option feasible. Expanding alternatives within the public system, as TDSB and other districts have done for decades, is a reasonable place to start.
I don’t see anything “hypocritical” about Stephen Lewis, or anyone else, being a supporter of public education and also choosing private options at one time or another for his/her own child(ren). Most of us support public transit and also drive a car; we support public libraries but also buy books; we pay for maintaining national parks even if we don’t choose to visit them. Lewis and Landsberg also sent one of their daughters to a private K-8 school in Toronto (The Schoolhouse, on St Clair Avenue), but I see no hypocrisy there.
People in every income bracket make the choices they can for their own circumstances. That doesn’t mean that every choice has to be available to every citizen at public expense. If I could not afford a car, I would have to do without one and move to a neighbourhood with readily available transit or pay for taxis. Supporting good public services for all, while also choosing to purchase some private options for oneself (whether in education, medicine, entertainment, recreation or transportation) is in no way “hypocritical.” It’s a consequence of being a citizen of a society that values both the public good and the individual’s self-determination, within limits.
Sorry TDSB but I disagree with our notion that “people of every income bracket make the choices they can for their own circumstances.”
Currently in Ontario it’s only those with the means to make the right choice for their child’s education that actually make those choices. Families at the other end of the economic spectrum would like love the chance to choose but can’t.
Interestingly it is those who can’t afford choice who are the drivers behind the charter/choice movement – not the rich and powerful.
In my books when you’re taxpayers are paying a government to support public education and Ministers or government officials brag about their social championship, tout public is best for everyone and choose private for themselves is indeed hypocritical. What’s worse for me is that these same cocktail socialists are the same who criticize the move of choice for others while allowing themselves that benefit.
Do you know what strikes me as weird? We won’t trust our teachers and principals with money, decision making,or planning, but we trust them with our children day in and day out? what’s up with that? We think we need school boards because the staff at the schools couldn’t possibly do the right thing, but it’s OK to send the kids there!
The gutting of Ontario School Boards began with Bill 160, the Mike Harris Government’s Education Improvement Act. Much of the fierce debate over Bill 160 focused on the battle for control over collective bargaining, and classroom conditions, specifically teacher prep time and class size. The Act, however well intentioned, significantly weakened local control over education. Control was shifted dramatically from School Boards and teachers to the Ontario provincial government.
The raging debate was totally dominated by the fight with Ontario teacher unions and the labour disruptions. While the “School War” was underway, Bill 160 changed fundamentally how education was funded — how much we spend, where it is spent, and how we pay for it.
Hugh Mackenzie’s prophetic paper, “This is putting children first?” (October 1997) identified the issue, but it was largely ignored in the ongoing war over Bill 160.
Scrapping the old educational funding model significantly weakened School Boards. Formerly the Ontario government funded a portion of education and permitted boards to supplement the revenues (by taxing local commercial, industrial and residential property). Trustees actually set the local tax rate and attempted to respond to local educational needs. It may have been more expensive, but decisions were definitely made closer to the schools. In its place, the Harris government introduced a system in which ALL funding available to a school board was determined by the province and every cent raised for educational purposes was decided by the province.
Elected Trustees found themselves stripped of local taxing powers and the position reduced, through governance changes, to an “advisory” role in the education bureaucracy. When I left Ontario in July 1997, I thought that Trustees were (even then) an endangered species.
School Governing Councils were to have been the salvation for parents seeking a meaningful role in local education decision-making. Although Bill 160 introduced School Councils, they struggled, right from the beginning. School principals, for the most part, viewed them with great suspicion and resisted becoming what was termed “parents’ pets” The Ontario Parent Council, led by Bill Robson, and other fine individuals, did their best to breathe life into school-based democracy.
School Councils continued to struggle for legitimacy in a system dominated by centralized decision-making. In December 2000, Minister Janet Ecker released Ontario Regulation 612/00, which confirmed the advisory role of school councils and mandated them to improve student achievement and enhance the accountability of the education system to parents. A second Ontario Regulation 613/00 (December 2000) attempted to clarify the duties of principals regarding school councils.
The Ontario School Regulations were attempts to override continuing resistance from the professionals. Three years after introducing School Councils, the Ontario government found it necessary to require, by regulation, “school boards and principals(to) solicit views from school councils and report back to school councils on any advice received”; and to compel “school boards and school principals across the province (to)consult with and respond to their school councils in a consistent manner.”
Whatever the Ontario government’s intentions, the real winners were the educrats. School Trustees limped on, without taxing powers and engaged in a territorial struggle with the new kids on the educational block ( Parent Councils). Ten years later, the Ontario government still maintains a website urging parents to embrace their designated “advocacy “role in the system.
See the “official ” website at http://www.school-advocate.ca/short-history-of-school-councils-ontario.php
You can lead parents to the water, but it’s hard to compel them to drink, especially if they sense that real power to influence policy-making resides elsewhere.
Which is why, Paul, Society for Quality Education and it’s predecessor OQE advocates for parental school choice. When a family can vote with their feet, they have real power.
Paul – actually an amendment to 612/00 removed the word “advisory” from the legislation so that those councils that wished to move beyond that role could do so. Some did in fact and were permitted to sit on interviews for new principals, planning, and policy-development. Those were in the minority though.
Doretta – you can advocate for school choice and power to the parents all you wish but reality tells us(and I believe it’s been suggested here somewhere too) that no government and that would include another Conservative government will touch the educational choice issue, and there is no groundswell of a public outcry for it either or many in a leadership role to lead with any fortitude and resolve to land more choice.
Can you point to your organizations successes in moving the choice option to be of closer reach to parents in Ontario? How many times has SQE been in to see the education minister to act? How about the last government’s education minister?
We already know that there’s no way that the Conservatives will dare do anything to ruffle the educational feathers of the province after the last campaign.
What’s SQE’s suggestion for parents to move beyond reading posts and studies or contributing to blogs like this one?
“Can you point to your organizations successes in moving the choice option to be of closer reach to parents in Ontario?”
Actually I can.
We may take credit for possibly influencing the decision of the Toronto Public Board to expand more alternative schools. Three years ago, SQE sponsored the visit of Edmonton Public School director Angus McBeath to Toronto. He met with trustees at that time. One trustee, has posted this on his website(http://www.garycrawford.ca/2009/03/saving-our-public-schools/):
“A few years ago the then Chair of the Toronto District School Board, Sheila Ward and I had dinner with the former Superintendent of Education for the Edmonton School Board, Angus McBeath. He was in town and we thought it would be interesting to have a discussion with him about education. To say the evening was intriguing, animated, delightful and inspiring was an understatement. His words and passion about education still resonate in my mind today.”
The TDSB has since approved an Afri-centric school and a Waldorf-style school. McBeath’s influence made it OK for parents to ask for other broad-spectrum alternative schools in addition to the arts schools and special education-type schools.
Our documentary of Alberta’s charter schools brought many political visitors to the province, including from Ontario.
The video can be seen in three parts YouTube here:
here:
and here:
Many groups claim to be for “choice” when in fact they are for privatization. Instead of making charters more likely, public school board run alternatives make charters and vouchers less likely in the future by letting almost all of the air out of the privatization balloon.
Public school alternatives are the ally of the “public school only” system and the enemy of charters and vouchers. They need to be seen as chess moves by the public system to keep the evil forces of privatization at bay.
Some are ok and others are poorly conceived. Given the ease with which an alternative can be established in the TDSB and the fact that right now space is hardly an issue, we may be witness to the fact that those who want choice are in fact a very small group.
“The TDSB has since approved an Afri-centric school and a Waldorf-style school. McBeath’s influence made it OK for parents to ask for other broad-spectrum alternative schools in addition to the arts schools and special education-type schools.”
Thanks Doretta. What can parents do in the rest of Ontario to move the choice initiative and how can SQE help?
Short of SQE opening its own schools it’s sounding clear that choice the way the SQE group envisions is eons away…if at all given no will on the part of governments of any stripe to steer this way given the strangle-hold of the unions and the gov’t’s pandering to same.
The timing of this Toronto Sun article about Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, Elites, and Tim Horton’s seems appropriate as we continue the discussion
http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/07/28/14852951.html
Upper Canada College was once a publicly-funded school. From 1829 until 1898, it received grant support. Sir George Ross (Liberal) cut them loose to fend for themselves without drawing on the public purse. ( See Richard Howard, Colborne’s Legacy)
The only thing common about Michael Ignatieff is his nickname “Iggy.” Count Iggy is doing his best to learn the ways of the masses. While at Tim Horton’s, I’m told he now makes small talk and studiously avoids passing references to Isaiah Berlin and Michel Foucault.
Coming from Upper Canada College, he’s in good company with well-known radicals and populists. Stanley B. Ryerson (McGill/Marxist-Leninist), Dan Heap (NDP Waffle), and Duff Conacher (Democracy Watch) all developed a social conscience in that elitist ivory tower. The School claims no responsibility for what happened to Colonel Russell Williams.
One BSS old girl, Valerie Pringle, once joked with me that UCC is a school that either makes you or breaks you. “If you succeed, it was UCC’s doing,” she quipped,”and if you fail, that’s the reason.”
If UCC was hit by lightning and burned to the ground it would not be missed. Was this not the August institution where Lord Black got his start in life by selling stolen exam papers?
According to Paul Grayson at York University, when you control for SES, public schools actually do a better job than private schools.
Thank-you Paul. I find that I learn something new here every day.
If most school boards were hit by lightning, they’d not be missed either.
It’s time to do education differently.
McBeath’s influence made it OK for parents to ask for other broad-spectrum alternative schools in addition to the arts schools and special education-type schools.
I doubt that either the accession of Chris Spence to the position of director of the TDSB or the visit of Angus McBeath to Toronto was a significant precipitating event for the most recent four new alternative schools. There was much press ballyhoo about these schools as if there was something”new” about them, which is absolutely not the case.
Toronto has dozens of alternative schools, a tradition that goes back more than 40 years. Most of the elementary-level ones, at least, were “other broad-spectrum alternatives” that were initiated by parents. The arts schools, technology schools and other program-focused schools are a relatively recent phenomenon, but it’s been “OK for parents to ask for other broad-spectrum alternative schools” for decades.
McBeath may have influenced Trustee Crawford and a couple of others, but the planning for those alternatives was probably already in the works, and McBeath can take no credit for the 40+ alternative schools that already flourished in Toronto. Many have been in operation for a long time, and very few alternative programs have closed for lack of a clientele.
Other boards have alternative schools, too — notably Ottawa-Carlton, but even such disparate districts as Rainy River and Renfrew boast alternative public schools. Legislation is in place to permit their establishment in areas that don’t have them now, and boards in Toronto and Ottawa have departments to help parents organize and start alternative schools. I find it paradoxical that proponents of choice seem to know so little about the choices that are available or how to expand them.
That leads into yet another issue. With so many choices available (dozens in T.O., for starters), why aren’t more parents choosing them? And why aren’t parents initiating the type of programs that SQE wants to see? There would likely be little difficulty starting a school that focused on Core Knowledge, Multisensory Structured Language Teaching (otherwise known as Orton-Gillingham, for students with language-based learning difficulties), “classical” / traditional learning, and so forth. Why not try to get some people to do this? There would certainly be teachers and administrators who would be happy to join in.
Dissolution of school boards could well be in the offing, given that both major political parties are firmly committed (although their rhetoric would have you think otherwise) to Big Government. However, that won’t lead to more accountability or input from the local level — it will have precisely the opposite effect. Do education differently? No doubt we will. But the “choice” available will be a Hobson’s Choice. As Henry Ford famously said about one of his early automobiles, “You can have it in any colour you want, so long as it is black.” Public schooling is following the same path, but for the foreseeable future individuals will still have the option of “opting out” — homeschooling or private schooling. If people make little use of the choice available, it’s difficult to make a serious argument that “more choice” is needed. Rather, what comes to mind is the old maxim, “if you don’t use it, you lose it.”
Private schools, and who does or doesn’t use them, is really beside the point. The question is, how does the public (which includes more than just “parents”) participate in public education, and how should public education be accountable to that public? Clearly the present model is not sustainable, but what might replace it is far from clear.
Permit me to disagree with the political spinnings of “The system was an excellent one before Mike Harris set out to destroy it.”
TVO has been running a series this week with Harris. Last evening the discussion was around the public service and the requesting being made to them by Dalton McGuinty’s government of no increases to salaries over the next couple of years.
In the interview Harris touched on a truth that the unions in Ontario really like to bury re: Harris two successive majorities, and that was that it was the union “membership” who made it possible. He also believes it can be done again.
So do I.
Please, it took the unions two elections to get rid of him. He was an unmitigated disaster for education and in 8 years managed to set us back decades.
His administration was a group of rubes and ideological fanatics that actually believed, like Vietnam, “it is necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.”
Who on Earth would choose a high school drop out like John Snobelen to be education’s role model and then set him out to “create a crisis.”
He totally failed to understand what even the National Post now acknowledges, that Canada has one of the world’s best three eduction systems depending on what you want to measure.
He knew the price of everything and the value of nothing.
There have been some very bad governments in Ontario education including Bob Rae and Dalton McGuinty on a bad day but nobody will ever top Harris/Snobelen for sheer know-nothing destruction.
We may not be able to resolve this old war. To me, it’s an ideological death struggle. Most of our bloggers, I suspect, might appreciate us getting back on track.
The recent post by TDSB deserves a serious response.
Private schools are really beside the point and so are exchanges refighting the Ontario “School Wars” of the 1990s. Can we call a truce?
TDSB can be counted upon (Poke to Educhatter) to get our attention and cut to the chase:
“The question is, how does the public (which includes more than just “parents”) participate in public education, and how should public education be accountable to that public?”
If the present local education model is not sustainable, where are we drifting? Will we have School Advisory Councils everywhere, when they are sputtering in Ontario?
We better not be drifting like the USA into a corporate controlled model with Bill Gates, Eli Broad and the Walton’s throwing around their money to encourage thier perspective on education which does not have a popular base.
Gtes has filled the DOE with his people and has Duncan in his pocket but we are seeing a new serious resistance to the DfER, charter, testing RTTT model developing.
This model was recently denounced by a major Christian denomination, NEA-AFT and now a broad series of civil and human rights groups including the NAACP.
I cannot for the life of me understand why the USA must “discover” a new education model when they are lying around all over the world in Finland, Korea, Canada and a host of more successful nations.
Well I can understand it is this sense. These countries have not privatized their systems. Have not gone heavily into choice, limit their testing and keep the hedge fund managers and corporate philanthro-capitalists out of a central role.
The USA is, not really looking for a successful model, it is looking to a privatized model which it realizes is incredibly unpopular and therefore must be introduced by stealth.
Perhaps the answer is in better training school councils on more purposeful initiatives and sink their teeth into the partnership that was promised them in the education of students?
It would be very, very easy to raise the bar and take that wrongly attributed “advisory” role and allow them to be more managerial/operational in nature.
Don’t gauge the health of school councils by TDSB. There are some small pockets where they’re working very well.
The Catholic system seems to have done a much better job all around with their school councils than have the public system.
Moving councils toward greater authority would require a will by those who have circled their wagons against parents coming anywhere close to influencing delivery and management of education, even though, many parents are leaders in their communities, managers and very capable of rising to the challenge.
it would be appreciated by this contributor that the cheap political shots be curbed. When it is done on purpose to get a rise especially.
The answer is a complete return to the board of education structure before it was wrecked in Ontario between 1995 and 2003. Democracy demands elected trustees with real power to collect taxes, negotiate contracts, and decide on large amounts of curriculum and pedagogy.
There is nothing more political than education. That is why it had elected school boards before we had a legislature.
Every political, social and economic force in the land would like to influence the school system in its own direction. Denial of this only frustrates people who have trouble understanding this.
There is no such thing as a non-political education decision.
When I was even on the school board someone would always say in aid of their own position, “lets take the politics out of it.” as if that were possible.
Yes, by all means, lets get the politics out of politics.
To me this is simply an anti-democratic position by someone with obvious politics.
The system in Ontario was “wrecked” long before 1995 folks.
Don’t let the spin fool you. What happened in Toronto, and is STILL happening in Toronto in no way reflects the rest of the province.
Elected trustees either need to gain some authority and reclaim their schools from the admin., teacher unions and put pressure on the government to loosen their stranglehold on boards, or they should be disbanded.
Canada does not have a “wrecked system” although there was an attempt to wreck it in Ontario 1995-2003.
Canada is recognized as having one of the world’s really great systems.
First in the whole world in post secondary education.
Second in the world in 15 year old literacy.
This is close to as good as it gets.
There is one problem in Canadian education, (not 2, not 3, only one). The bottom 20% by SES does not do as well as it could but does far better than the bottom 20% in the USA.
We need a laser like focus on this one single problem with ECE, small classes, teacher training and recruitment, and so on. Compensatory education needs serious new funding.
There are no other problems. They simply do not exist.
So few candidates have surfaced to run for the Toronto Catholic School Board that Trustee Rob Davis felt compelled to place a WANT AD on Craiglist to solicit candidates for the upcoming school board elections.
Tooronto Sun Education reporter, Don Peat, produced this fine story (July 30, 2010) that deserves to be shared in full:
“Craigslist has been notorious for some of its hardly heavenly ads but Toronto Catholic trustee Rob Davis is using the classified site to help find people to lead the board to redemption.
Davis, who opted out of running for re-election to the board and is instead a Toronto city council candidate, put a help wanted ad on Craigslist Thursday advertising the job of TCDSB trustee.
“I wanted to alert people to the opportunity to serve our Catholic community and the ability to serve students and parents at the school board,” Davis told the Sun Thursday.
The ad, penned by Davis, invites job applicants who want to be part of the board which educates close to 90,000 students, employs 6,000 people and manages an annual budget of $970 million.
He doesn’t mention the fact the trustees have been under the control of a provincial supervisor since 2008 after the provincial government sent in its own person to run things after the board’s repeated failure to get its deficit under control.
To be fair, the provincial supervisor can’t stay around long once the budget is balanced — something that’s on track to happen.
The 10 skills Davis lists that trustees should have include high ethical standards, the ability to communicate ideas to small and large groups of people and the ability to do long range planning.
While also not mentioning trustees’ troubles with their expense accounts chronicled in the Sun, Davis does hint there are some rules to follow now.
“The willingness to comply with a strict code of conduct and generally accepted governance rules,” is listed as a skill, alongside “empathy and compassion” and computer knowledge.
Davis admits using the website where you can find everything from an apartment rental, a soulmate and a slightly used TV, is different, he said the novel approach will hopefully draw people to apply for the job where so far not many applicants have lined up.
“For my very short two-year career as a trustee I’ve been trying to bring the types of reforms that would make the organization stronger,” Davis said. “Attracting good people is the foundation of that reform.”
Only 28 people have registered to run for a seat on the embattled board.
There are 12 trustee positions in all representing 12 wards across Toronto.
Davis ends his ad with the caveat, you’ll won’t know if you’ve got the job until October and hints it’s still up to the voters.
“Successful applicants will be notified on election day,” he writes.
(Excerpted from The Toronto Sun)
Comment:
Will Trustee Rob Davis’s appeal work? Is it now necessary to “beat the bushes” to find public-spirited citizens with a passion for education? And why has it come to this?
Is it now necessary to “beat the bushes” to find public-spirited citizens with a passion for education? And why has it come to this?
Some contributing factors in the etiology of this phenomenon have been adverted to already: legislative changes in Ontario that reduced elected trustees to a rubber-stamp role not only in financial powers, but in policy, curriculum and meeting community needs. Another factor is the increasing alienation of citizens from the political process generally (as I adverted to in a previous post), which is a widespread trend not localized to any particular province, or to Canada for that matter. Economic factors also play a role.
You have to consider the incentive structures here. What motivates people to serve as school trustees, or other community public service positions? Obviously, the reasons are mixed and include shades of virtue from altruism to self-interest, but people who serve as school trustees do so for several common reasons: a desire to advocate for students or the community (often as a result of personal experiences within the system, whether positive or negative), as a first step to a political career, as a way to stay engaged in the educational system (retired principals, teachers), a desire to make change happen (often inspired by a particular worldview), and so on. The stipend involved is rarely enough to cover the expenses the elected board member incurs, so immediate financial gain is not an incentive. It can, however, be a disincentive: a quality candidate may do the math and decide s/he cannot afford to take on the trustee role.
What happens when the person is elected to the school board? S/he soon learns that the powers of the elected representatives are minimal. While accountability to the public was a founding principle of school boards, this accountability is now hamstrung because the trustees no longer have the staff or resources to investigate the issues they are asked to vote on, to gather independent data or to challenge the bureaucrats on key issues. Their ability to act as watchdogs in the public interest is severely compromised. The power balance, which was never equal, has been skewed to an extreme degree. Trustees are pawns of the administration and the Ministry, and efforts to challenge either are ineffective due to constraints imposed both by the structure and by law and regulation.
Let’s suppose the trustee wished to advocate for particular reforms or initiatives: s/he soon learns that those areas, except for minor local issues, such as whether to have juice machines in schools, are not within his provenance and he can have almost no input whatever. Trustees may act as liaisons for parents who are having difficulties with the system, but they have limited ability to resolve the issues — again, the bureaucracy kicks in. When they vote on an issue, they rarely have available any information or data other than what the board administration has provided, so it is rather like a Communist election — outcome predetermined. People who want to effect real change would quickly become disillusioned, especially when they consider they are giving up a lot of time and energy that they might be able to invest more productively elsewhere.
Any time we have had local democracy, it has been highly variable in quality — an inevitable result of human differences. Pre-amalgamation and introduction of legislation that limited school board authority, there was considerable variation in how well individual elected boards represented their constituents, managed their budgets or were accountable to the taxpayers. But now instead of variability, we have uniformity of non-accountability, inability to effect needed changes or represent constituencies, an increase in expenditures, and a greater alienation of all parties from the process.
I believe this is called the “Law of Unintended Consequences.” Is there a way to unscramble the omelette? There needs to be a better balance between local autonomy and responsiveness to local needs vs. central policy, planning and financing. Expecting unpaid or minimally-compensated people to look out for the public interest and to manage schools in a professional manner, is not realistic. On the other hand, a vast bureaucracy that is unresponsive to local conditions, different needs and values and which trundles along following the principles of inertia, is not a viable option either.
My point exactly. We need to restore all of the power trustees had before 1995 including taxation power and pay them pegged to the city council in their areas.
We need to set off a high level competition where people drop off the city council to run for school board not the other way around.
The trustees should be professors, lawyers, trade union officials, successful business people, etc, not people at loose ends without a paid gig.
Early retired teachers and principals make excellent trustees.
On the contrary folks from TDSB. Where boards are top-heavy with retired principals and teachers it leads to real problems. That happened in the case of the Ontario Bluewater DSB. A large part of the problem was that the Board became pretty much a closed shop of educrats towing the government’s line and doing a horrible job of representing their constituents.
Don’t base all of Ontario on Toronto. That’s been the mistake of too many in government and well-paid bureaucrats.
Or we can follow jtc’s model and get al the people who know nothing about education to be the trustees. Then we can explain every single item to them so the board meeting goes way past midnight to get past all of their knuckle-dragging prejudice.
There is an anti-intellectual vein that runs through the right wing that anyone from the big city or with too much education cannot be trusted.
It is usually because they have evolved past the strap and the dunce cap that they have become suspect.
Is it possible that people follow the educrats because the educrats read all the research and know what they are talking about and as a group we have built one of the world’s great systems?
There is no good reason to change our system is any significant way except to spend much more on it and share our good fortune with the poor kids.
The jobs traditionally done by the poor are disappearing fast. We need to educate a higher % of people to a higher level every year. Being the best system in the world is not good enough. We need to do much better but it will be expensive brace yourself.
A former Superintendent of Education, Dr. James Gunn, has been following our online discussion. After a long career as a Nova Scotia Superintendent, Jim now serves as a Consultant and operates Gunn’s Leadership Consulting Services.
Do school boards have a future? Here’s Jim Gunn’s response:
“My experience has solidified my position that school boards will survive. Their authority will wax and wane but they will survive primarily for two reasons:
Firstly, schools are too close to families and communities to leave them fully in control of one CEO, the superintendent, who reports directly to the Deputy Minister. Having a single elected official responsible for public education in a province cannot be tolerated for long by the public, especially when things go wrong. As a side bar, I believe that any CEO of any large organization, public or private, should be held accountable by a board.
Secondly, no Minister of Education wants the day-to-day problems of operating public schools. Sometimes they have to learn the hard way that they need school boards or school advisory councils to deal with school closures, bus stops, student discipline problems, or other contentious local issues.” ( Jim Gunn to Educhatter, August 2, 2010)
School boards associations have, so far, remained strangely silent while the debate over the future of elected trustees swirls around them.
Are they asleep on the issue? Aside from Trustee Rob Davis, who is speaking up for local democracy in education? It begs the question of who the official school board associations actually represent.
The Ontario Public School Boards Association (OPSBA) is an organization that I know quite well. Back in the mid-1990s, I actually served on OPSBA’s Governance Committee. So did Donna Cansfield and Elizabeth Witmer, two formidable Trustees under the old system (pre-1995) who went on to Ontario cabinet posts.
Working with OPSBA could be frustrating. Some of my proposals to strengthen the power and authority of Trustees in relation to senior administration caused quite a ruckus. Outrageous Trustee salary raises by the former Toronto East York Board touched off a controversy and discredited everyone. We lost that battle, and, I must say, OPSBA was complicit in the gutting of the trustee system.
Where does OPSBA stand today? You wouldn’t know, judging from their glossy magazine , Education Today. (www.opsba.ca)
The current issue of Education Today (July/August 2010) does contain a revealing feature article, written by Virginia Galt, entitled “Trustees: Making a Difference for Kids.” It’s a light and airy piece aimed at attracting people to run in the upcoming trustee elections. It comes accompanied by a Guide for Trustee Candidates.
In the OPSBA magazine piece, four Ontario public school trustees are interviewed about “what prospective trustees should know.” The four are: Catherine Fife ( Waterloo DSB, a social policy researcher), Michael Barrett (Durham DSB, CAO, Gay Lea Foods), Suzanne Nurse (Peel DSB, homemaker/nutritionist), and Mark Bailey (Upper Grand River DSB, IT small business owner).
All four of the “selected trustees” interviewed sound sincere, politically correct and harmless. Yet most of their comments about the great work they are doing amounts to promoting board-wide initiatives. They also try very hard to demonstrate that they are “making a difference for kids.”
Reading the patter, I was a little confused. Most of what they were doing was actually the work of curriculum or program consultants. I had assumed they were there to represent the public, not just to to promote pet projects…
Only one reference was made to the Trustee’s vital representational role. That comment was made by Trustee Catherine Fife, a Vice-President of OPSBA. “One of the most exciting parts of school board politics is the connection with the community,” she says. Why you might ask? She continues:” because education is one of the key factors in eliminating poverty and improving the life of children and families.”
What a bizarre comment. It sounds so “Pollyanna-ish.” Perhaps it is true that trusteeship has become little more than a cheerleading squad. If so, then the days of elected school boards are numbered. Clearly, OPSBA and their counterparts in other provinces had better change their tune.
The assumption that Doug makes is that the retired vice-principals and teachers at the Board table are more tuned in to their communities than are regular citizens who qualify to be a trustee. There was a time when all Board members represented the citizens because it was the community which employed the educators, principal and board. To apply his logic, all of the folks who have been recruited from pro-union parents groups know nothing about education either.
Mr. Gunn makes logical points, however, in Ontario the profile of trustees needs to be raised in their own communities because it’s getting harder and harder to identify where the towing the MOE line begins and when trusting in the community begins.
Paul – you are so right about the silence of boards and trustees on the debate over the future of boards themselves. In Ontario,especially. However I hear that OPSBA is busy in labour hearings watching the two teacher unions fight it out over who gets to claim the ECE teachers.
Those quotes from the OPSBA magazine sound to me like Trustee Catherine Fife has bought into the social engineering policy and policies of the union and NOT the community.
There is no distinction between being an education professional and being an elected trustee and being accountable to the electorate.
Our ongoing discussion on The Future of School Boards has now gone national with my latest Full Commentary in The Mark, Canada’s daily e-journal of opinion.
The Mark version is entitled “School Boards Under Fire” and it is the top story in the Politics section today:
http://www.themarknews.com/articles/1963-school-boards-under-fire
You will see that, I too, learn a great deal from our lively online discussions.
You are invited to comment on “Intense Debate” accessible at the end of today’s piece.
That “intense debate” seems to have gone on forever..or so it seems Paul. Are we not at the point in Canada today that we can move to pilot new ways of ensuring the trust and delivery of education?
I feel we’ve talked this to death and need some of that standout leadership we discussed on a previous post.
Which provincial government, or school community will be the first to try something new, because that’s what it’s going to take.
No need to try something new. The pre 1995 system was excellent. We need a job description that calls for full time work for trustees and about $100 000 salary for now.
The instinct that says make the system less democratic and moves the democratic component further from the electorate is fundamentally totalitarian and anti-democratic.
The “we need something new” people are all privatizers. Privatization is evil. Everybody knows that.
The Mayoral Control model of education governance has come in for heavy fire in Diane Ravitch’s latest commentary ( The Answer Sheet, Washington Post, August 3, 2010).
Diane Ravitch is scathing in her criticism of City Council control over American urban public education. Here’s a key excerpt:
“For the past five years, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein have claimed that, due to their programs, New York City was a national model. They proclaimed that the city had made “historic gains” on state tests, all because of the mayor’s complete control of the policymaking apparatus. The mayor testified in congressional hearings that New York City had cut the achievement gap in half. Klein traveled to Australia to boast of the city’s gains, and the Australian minister of education intends to align that nation’s education system with the New York City model.
It was an exciting and wonderful ride while it lasted. But last week, with the release of the state test results for 2010, New York City’s claims came crashing to the ground. The national model went up in smoke. The miracle was no more. The belief that mayoral control was a panacea for urban ills was no longer sustainable.”
Comment:
Looking for an alternative to School Boards? Attracted by the City Mayor model of education governance? Taken-in by the image and allure of decisive action to cure the system’s ills? Perhaps it’s time to think again…
The best school governance is local governance–right down to the school level. It is directly accountable and responsive.
Ontario sure DOES need to move to a new model.
When locally elected trustees become deer in the headlights and pander more to the government and unions out of fear of rocking the boat no improvement can be expected from within. If that was possible it would have been done by now.
Agree totally with exclusive local governance. If that means recruiting members of school councils that are business or community leaders and raising that bar by moving to an operational rather than advisory role for them, new visions and ideas are possible at the local level.
Teachers also need to feel that they have their own choices within and outside the system. If that means changing how they’re represented then individual educators should have that right.
In Ontario the teachers have run out of governments to fight with.
All citizens have a right to decide who governs education, not just parents. The people with power must be elected. They can not be recruited.
Are we going to have a municipal election where every school has its own elected board? Who runs the overall system, SOs, consultants, etc. Your system is unworkable JTC.
Consider this. Every single model has been clearly thought of before and the only workable one is school boards with elected trustees.
All power to the elected school boards. They gave us one of the world’s best school systems. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
If I was born yesterday I might be inclined to believe Doug, but those “people with power” are not the elected officials or the elected trustees. Not now, and not unless some major changes in delivery are considered.
The power brokers in Ontario are the 22 floors of highly-paid bureaucrats who work in concert with the teachers unions.
That’s why not much ever changes no matter which party is in power.
It’s broke big time in Ontario
The best school governance is local governance–right down to the school level.
Your data?
No data, although there is the SQE survey of private school parents, just experience and common sense. Private schools run this way. If you are not satisfied, you leave. If too many parents leave, there is no school. The incentive is to maintain a level of accountability to the consumer of the service.
Education is not a business any more than health is a business. They are services and if we are going to be fair in how they are used there must be democratic control.
The legislature is to far removed from the citizens but can make over-arching universal decisions but is ill equipped to decide if Tommy gets into a SE program or not.
There must be a local democratic government to run the school system.
The world would be a better place if thewre were no private schools whatsoever so they offer no model.
jtc
In case you were wondering, here is what works. There is no need for: charters, choice, vouchers, testing, abolishing school boards, new leadership, merit pay, witch hunts for teachers, phonics only, DI only, uncertified teachers, union bashing, or Mayoral control. As Chester Finn now realizes, none of this has worked.
http://www.changetheodds.org/
School Advisory Councils, as presently constituted, are very innocuous consultative groups. There is no accountability at all in their narrowly defined mandate at the school-level. In most provinces, they are constrained from commenting on broader policy issues or matters of intense concern to parents.
Our own Peggy has unearthed the Nova Scotia School Advisory Council guidelines, published in the Official Handbook (February 2010)
The Handbook (p. 9) sets out the current limits on the authority of SACs:
The School Advisory Council does not have a role in:
1) the day to day operations;
2) personnel matters;
3) carrying out responsibilies of staff;
4)supporting a special interest group(seeking to control the agenda)
The rules seem clear enough..but…
If these are the rules, then the Halifax Regional School Board fragrantly violated them in responding to the Ken Fells fiasco.
Why, Peggy asks, did the HRSB solicit views from the Graham Creighton JHS School Advisory Council on those very matters? And why did they base their final decision on his school placement for September 2010 on the views expressed by that very body?
What, I might add, is the NS Black Educators Association, if not “a special interest group”?
When it comes to burying the Ken Fells issue, the HRSB has now resorted to violating provincial guidelines. Does the Minister of Education know, yet? Perhaps she too will find out by reading Atlantic Frank.
The more I think about it, the more I like School Advisory Councils being all powerful! So, the HRSB violated an itty bitty obscure line of an obscure document that I can’t find on the Nova Scotia Government web-site or the HRSB site. Aww, let’s all just forget about that! It just means that we can all say that “what you do for one , you have to do for them all!”
Now we can over look that section that says “The SAC does not have a role in…” and ask our SAC groups to remove principals, ask teachers to stop giving kids detentions when their parents forgot to sign their agenda, ask that kids not be kept in during any lunch or recess to finish class work, ask that kids be allowed to run, play jump and slide in the snow,like we did,” old school”, and ask that all staff members use PEBS when disciplining our kids. (Editorial Comment: Relax, it’s tongue in cheek)
I think the community having a much louder, stronger, more powerful voice in community education is just what the doctor ordered!
Just reading a bit more. SACs are covered in the Education Act in Sections 20 to 23. here is a line:
(2) Notwithstanding subsection (1), the power to hire, suspend, dismiss or discipline an employee of a school board shall not be transferred to a school advisory council. 1995-96, c. 1, s. 23.
Now, they’ll say that in fact, it was the boards decision, but in the news articles, it was stated by the elected board chairman, that the SAC brought it to them because the community wanted them to.
As with anything, it can all be interpereted inside out and backwards, which it has been.
Doug said,
“In case you were wondering, here is what works. There is no need for: charters, choice, vouchers, testing, abolishing school boards, new leadership, merit pay, witch hunts for teachers, phonics only, DI only, uncertified teachers, union bashing, or Mayoral control. As Chester Finn now realizes, none of this has worked.”
This is utter nonsense. Finn has not instrinisicly changed his stance,
(http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/index.cfm?issue=558#a5952) Not because he is now against choice and testing,
but in fact, he thinks that charters are not autonomous enough (http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/index.cfm?issue=567#a6059)
and that NATIONAL tests are still of an unknown design.
More from Chester Finn. Hardly what Doug implies.
http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/index.cfm?issue=555#a5913
“I agree about the curriculum part but not much else. The failures of recent years have left me angrier than ever with that system, its adults-first priorities, its obduracy, inertia, and greed, as well as its capacity to throw sand into the gears of every effort to set it right. Unlike Diane (Ravich), I don’t trust teacher unions to do right by children (or to do right by great teachers, for that matter); I don’t expect locally-elected school boards to put kids’ interests first; I see “neighborhood schools” as education death-traps for America’s neediest youngsters; and I think the “Broader, Bolder” social-reform agenda is on the one hand naïve (most of these things just aren’t going to happen on their own and can’t be made to happen) and, on the other hand, deeply mischievous (because it lifts responsibility from schools for all that they could and sometimes do accomplish pretty much single-handedly).
“Where I come out–you can read more in National Affairs’ “The End of the Education Debate”–is that America needs not less education reform but far more fundamental and radical reform. I want every child to have quality school choices, I want stronger (and broader) external standards, I want more open paths to becoming an educator, I want empowered school leaders (really empowered, in ways that would also break the union stranglehold) who are compensated like CEOs, I want super pay for great instructors and no pay for incompetents, and I want a complete makeover of “local control.” The system needs a shakeup from top to bottom, not a restoration.”
Teachers compensated like CEOs, please don’t make me laugh although I did hear that Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are trying to get teaching jobs because the pay is so good but they just don’t have the seniority.
The Education Reporter, Hugo Rodrigues, spotted this Inside Toronto.com column on the deplorable lack of media attention given to the upcoming Toronto school board elections. It’s an old story, but worth repeating.
Here’s the full article:
WATCHDOG: School trustees – the forgotten municipal election candidates
JOE COOPER
Sept 24, 2010
While there has been an incessant review of the candidates for mayor since last spring, the school board elections have been sorely under-examined.
We seem to have forgotten that back when Metro Toronto was forced to amalgamate, the school boards were also folded together.
While many people have a peripheral relationship to our municipal government and its services, more than 300,000 children are enrolled in our schools.
The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) is the largest board in Canada and the fourth largest in North America, with more than 600 schools and 250,000 students.
The Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB), which is also publicly funded, has 201 schools serving 93,000 students.
There are also 10 trustees for the French public and Catholic school boards, which have a total of 21 schools in Toronto.
As it now stands there are 88 people running for the TDSB and 59 for the TCDSB, eight for the French public board and two for the French Catholic board.
The TDSB passed a budget of $2.6 billion for 2010-11, and did so without cutting programs, but deferred $30 million in maintenance.
The TCDSB has a budget of $972 million for the same years, which is finally deficit free after two years of provincial control.
So what are the issues facing these school boards and what solutions are the candidates bringing forward for consideration?
The reality is that what’s going on at school in Toronto today is not the pedagogy of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s that many people remember.
Back in the “good old days” baby boomers were being prepared for a working world where computers were rare, skills were gender based and men were assumed to take “leadership roles”.
Most of the school boards were housed in the back rooms of municipal offices and a school trustee was more of an elected volunteer position.
Today’s school experience in Toronto is a multicultural one, where basic skills now include computers, knowledge skills and being able to express yourself in multiple mediums.
The simplistic attitudes expressed in ideas such as “getting back to basics” and focusing on the “3 Rs” may appeal to those who remember their own school experiences, but it is not what is needed today.
Rather than just focusing on budgets and taxes, people need to ask whether our school boards are truly a reflection of Toronto’s demographic composition and economic backgrounds.
Far too often when an issue does arise that hits the public consciousness it is already in a crisis, making many issues seem far worse than they are.
At the same time, there are changes taking place in the city’s population that are going to become more critical as time goes on.
The question of who is having children, and who is not, along with an aging population, is going to be impacting on school closings, curriculum and which programs are to be emphasized.
No matter if you have school-aged children or not, we all vote for school trustees. So make your choice an informed one.
(Credit: http://www.InsideToronto.com)
The future of School Boards is now on the table in the United States as well as Canada. Gene I. Maeroff, a senior fellow at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the president of the school board in Edison, N.J., has just published a new book entitled School Boards in America: A Flawed Exercise in Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan, December 2010).
Today’s Education Week featured a short commentary summarizing his findings. Here is the piece:
The Future of School Boards
By Gene I. Maeroff
“Local control of schools implies to many Americans the existence of a small group from the community to oversee elementary and secondary education in order to safeguard and promote the well-being of students. This vision of the school board is synonymous with democracy in the minds of people. Yet, the arrangement does not always optimize learning outcomes and put youngsters on track for fulfilling and productive lives, stirring up questions about whether there are more effective ways to govern schools.
In part, the issue revolves around who sits on school boards and how they attain those positions. There are few tests for service other than the usual requirements that one reside in the district and be a citizen. Members may have doctoral degrees or may not even have completed high school. They may possess detailed knowledge of education or know little more than what they gleaned during their own school days. More than 90 percent gain their positions through school board elections, and fewer than 10 percent are appointed.
The problem—whether elected or appointed—is how to get the most qualified individuals on these boards, where members (usually unpaid) may encounter contention, hard work, and few psychic rewards. Educational quality may be at stake when school board candidates care about only a single issue or have no motivation but to restrain spending. In years past, school boards frequently attracted leading citizens who accepted positions with a sense of noblesse oblige, viewing their service as part of what they owed others. There was more than a hint of elitism to their board membership, and white males disproportionately held these seats.
Today, the nation has grown more egalitarian and diverse and fewer paragons serve, making school boards more democratic, more representative of the population at large. The downside, though, is that some men and women may pursue and seek to retain seats not so much to contribute to the next generation as to wield power and enhance their own standing. Board membership, for some, is the only source of influence and prestige they will ever have.
One touchy issue revolves around the propriety of teachers and other current and former employees of school systems serving as board members. While they provide an insider’s view, which can be valuable, their objectivity and impartiality may be compromised. In some states, they may even be prohibited from voting on certain matters, depriving the board of the full participation of its members.
Educational quality may be at stake when school board candidates care about only a single issue or have no motivation but to restrain spending.
I joined a board on which I sat with a retired teacher from our school system—whose wife and two sons worked for the district—and a current teacher from a neighboring school system. Another board member was the son of a former teacher in our system and yet another was the husband of a teacher in the district. On top of this, the acting superintendent’s wife worked in our system. Ideally, members would have fewer encumbrances.
Reformers over the years sought to separate school boards from politics by having candidates run without party labels and by conducting elections at a time when candidates would not be swept up by the frenzy of partisan politics. At least one-third of districts hold their elections on days and times of the year, typically in the spring, when no other elections occur. This practice tends somewhat to insulate school elections, but it contributes to low voter turnout.
School boards, elected and appointed, have a common shortcoming in that many members take their seats with virtually no preparation for the tasks that await them. Even during their continued service, some do not delve deeply into the tenets of governance and the ins and outs of curriculum and instruction, though they vote on the adoption of textbooks and courses of study. Boards might perform better if members had more opportunities for sustained training. Public schools are learning organizations. Board members normally understand the imperative to provide professional development for educators, but do not as readily recognize their own need for growth.
The challenges facing school boards in all locales may have more in common than some people realize. A study carried out by the Institute for Educational Leadership in 1986 found many more similarities than differences, regardless of demographics, when respondents rated boards for effectiveness. All members tended to look similarly on strategies for communicating with their constituencies, capacity of board members to make informed decisions, board-superintendent relationships, and use of time.
The notion that school systems might thrive without school boards, given their various limitations, is not a new one. As long ago as the 1930s, when there were still tens of thousands of boards of education, some prominent educators proposed abolishing school boards and suggested that superintendents assume most of the responsibilities.
Louis V. Gerstner Jr., the former chief executive of IBM and a longtime advocate of school reform, argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed essay in December of 2008 for no more than 70 school districts in the entire country as a way to improve governance. Each of the 50 states would have a school board, as well as each of the country’s 20 largest cities. Yet, consolidation is controversial. Issues of democracy get conflated with questions over differing tax wealth, the value of physical plants, employee pay scales, and contract provisions.
None of the proposals for reducing the number of school boards (now 13,809) or for banishing them altogether is a sure-fire way to bolster student achievement, which, really, ought to be the main reason to favor one type of governance structure over another. There is scant evidence that achievement would rise if there were fewer school boards or none at all. Similarly, little research exists to attest to the value of ceding control of the average school district to a mayor or to a state education department.
On the other hand, could it be that school boards would focus more closely on student learning if they were charged with fewer duties? This might happen, for example, if members did not have to worry about such areas as maintenance, facilities, pupil transportation, and food services. County or regional authorities could take on these responsibilities or they could be privatized.
Whatever might occur to alter governance, school boards will not vanish—even if, eventually, consolidation leaves fewer of them. By and large, the public wants local school boards, and state legislators are not about to eliminate them despite the flaws. The idea of governing from the grassroots adds to the appeal that boards have with the public. Too many Americans would consider any other arrangement undemocratic, however questionable their notions of democracy may be.”
(www.eduweek.org)
Comment:
School boards, on both sides of the border, face remarkably similar challenges of legitimacy. Much of Gene Maeroff’s analysis applies to Canadian school boards; so do his proposals for reform. We need someone to take on this critical policy issue in Canada before our boards simply self-destruct.