All of us are now inundated with information. Every day we are literally bombarded with new facts and opinions. On the Internet and television as well as in newspapers, magazines and textbooks, writers and posters present ideas they want us to accept. Academics and media analysts argue about the real impact of overexposure to violence, skinny models, and gratuitous sexuality on today’s children and teens. One educational progressive says we need to “respect the child” at all times; an education reformer rails about the latest abysmal test results and says we need to restore “standards.”
Today’s educational world is downright confusing to most observers. Rarely do the educational “experts” agree and when they do get ready for wholesale implementation of the idea. One of my favourite little books, M. Neil Browne and Stuart Keeley’s Asking the Right Questions (Prentice Hall, 2001) puts a finger on the essential problem: In most cases, you are faced with the prospect of deciding on your own which ideas to accept, which to reject, and which to withhold judgment on.
Since the time of the Ancients, education has been guided by philosophical principles. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates observed that “The unexamined life is not worth living.” It follows, then, that a truly educated person is one who lives “an examined life.” And one would expect to find many such people in the world of education. Yet everywhere you look educators seem to be parroting dogma or accepting most of what they encounter, making someone else’s opinion their own. It’s become so prevalent that whole books are being written and workshops being given on “How to Do Critical Thinking” in schools.
Self-examination is good for you. In my case, it was prompted by being asked by Stephen Patrick Clare to do a “Question and Answer” piece for a local Halifax monthly magazine (The Southender, August, 2010). That little exercise forced me to think more deeply about my core philosophy and what really makes me tick. Here’s a sample of my responses:
Q: What are the biggest challenges facing you?
Engaging the public in education is the biggest challenge. Schools and school systems tend to be surprisingly insular and can become modern day fortresses. Our aging population is gradually becoming more disconnected from the educational world. We need more public accountability in education, not less. Public concern over the state of education remains high, but many feel powerless and adults without children in the system can be indifferent. Most educational “research” is politically-driven, so there’s a great need for people who can cut to the heart of the matter. It takes a crisis like the whole Ken Fells fiasco for most people to sit-up and take notice.
Q:What are the rewards of doing what you do?
Educating children, mostly teenagers, and leading schools has been my life’s work for over three decades, in Ontario, Quebec, and now here in Nova Scotia. Since the founding of Schoolhouse Consulting in September 2009, I am enjoying the new-found freedom to think, read, and write about issues that matter. Being accountable only to yourself is far more satisfying and I’m much happier tackling big issues than fretting about petty issues or administrivia.
Q: What motivated you to write The Grammar School: Striving for Excellence for 50 Years in a Public School World?
With the Grammar School’s fiftieth anniversary approaching, I became fascinated with the untold story of the School’s unique origins, trials, and triumphs. Board member John Kitz, son of one of the Founders, Leonard Kitz, piqued my curiosity and provided a missing link. It was through John that I learned of the important role Hilda Neatby’s 1953 best seller So Little for the Mind played in sparking the whole Grammar School experiment. Right from the beginning the School has been a “lighthouse” seeking to raise the standard in what Neatby called a virtual “sea of mediocrity.” It’s a ‘warts and all’ story of one school’s titanic struggles to carry the torch for standards in a public school world. It ended up being my gift to the School and a fine way to finish my tenure.
Q: In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges currently facing the city’s – and the province’s – education sector?
Our education sector is in far better shape than that of the United States, where the “School Wars” are tearing the public system apart. Judging from Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System (2010) we are fortunate to be living here. Having said that, we do face our own challenges.
Complacency and insularity are bigger issues in Nova Scotia because we are quite removed from the main currents of educational change. Our Halifax Regional Board has aggressively embraced standardized testing and systematized school improvement strategies. People are now asking “how much testing is too much?” and can we continue to defend the “one-size-fits-all” model of public education? We are lagging behind in “resetting” the system for the 21st century.
Closing the alarming educational gap is becoming one of my biggest concerns. With 81% of Nova Scotia students securing a high school diploma, we are producing far more university students than we can possibly absorb in the workforce. Yet about 38% of Nova Scotians still lack basic literacy and are facing gloomy life prospects. We simply have to narrow that gap between the educated and the undereducated in our society.
Q:What are some of the solutions to those issues?
That’s a much tougher question and there are no easy answers. If it was up to me, I’d focus on restoring academic standards, developing workplace transition partnership programs, and social enterprise solutions such as Pathways to Education. We would benefit greatly from introducing more school choices within the publicly-funded school system. Your everyday garden variety public schools suffer in comparison with mission-driven schools. More school options for parents of autistic children are desperately needed, as are “stay-in-school” programs that actually work to produce motivated, productive citizens.
Q: What does the future look like for the Canadian education sector?
It’s much brighter than that of the United States. We would benefit from taking a hard look at what’s happened to the entire American school system. Some say it’s “creative destruction” but I see it as more of a “class struggle” for control of the schools. We have to overcome the desire to provide schools that try to be ‘all things to all people.’ Public issues that inflame racial tensions in Nova Scotia continue to be worrisome to me. Good sound curriculum, more effective teaching, and support for the vulnerable and disadvantaged remain the best routes to better schools and educating motivated, purposeful children.
Thank you for bearing with me and taking the time to consider my responses. You are, in all likelihood, a thoughtful person.
Why the rambling discourse? Have I hooked you?
If so, the Big Question is: What Makes You Tick? And what matters most to you in education?
What matters to me, are the same issues as has been outlined in the post. “Good sound curriculum, more effective teaching, and support for the vulnerable and disadvantaged remain the best routes to better schools and educating motivated, purposeful children.” It is what exactly should be in the schools, but of more importance is the educational component for special-needs children. As a parent with a child with a learning disability, it has been difficult to overcome the biases and in some cases out right discrimination, to get the powers to be to see my child as being more capable academically, and as such deserved to have her reading and writing problems corrected, In their eyes, her reading and writing problems were connected to her intelligence. Other parents with special needs children that I have met in the last 15 years or so, feel the same way.
I know the last two sentences are strong words, but making it easier for children who are having learning difficulties, by either accommodating or downgrading the work a grade or two, without paying attention to the core deficits of the children, and correcting them, is a waste of time and money for all concern. Even more so, for regions that has few choices, which is probably why rural NL, has a much higher rate, closed to 50 %, when it comes to low reading, writing, and numeracy skills.
This brings me to my final point, that our education system should concentrate on ensuring that each and every child, reaches a high standard in reading and writing, before grade 6. It is pretty hard to watch and read, how many post-secondary students, especially the college students are taking remedial courses in reading, writing, and numeracy, on subject material that the students should have learned in grade school.
Enjoyed reading this one! Great questions and interesting answers. Thankyou for pointing out that the aging population is a factor in the decline of our schools. A big part of the problem is that the bulk of the total attention of society is elsewhere. I hope you can hook some more people out there soon!
I too quite enjoyed reading this post. I’m taking some time to respond because it’s worth pondering.
I have recently been invited to sit as a member of my school board’s communications strategy committee. The board is facing a drastic enrollment crisis and is seeing roughly less than 27% of families in their catchment area that have kids in school or approaching school age. The board is really having to think about how to communicate and make education important to those other families who don’t have kids in the system because they are very much disengaged. There top three priorities are not education.
This is why the new Ontario Early Learning Program isn’t going to fly here. No kids, no interest…not necessary.
We have a huge problem also attracting principals and trustee candidates. It seems to be that few want to take things on.
We see more and more of the decisions being made by the Ministry that is lobbied for by the teacher unions and then the dog is wagged.
From semesters, to balanced school day, to balanced literacy, to class room caps to character education….all union driven with one thing in mind and it’s not students I’m afraid.
I agree that an increase in choice for all partners in education both inside and outside of the system is the future of education.
I would also like the usual suspects who currently have no faith in their ability to compete with the private/alternative schools to fight back and prove that they can compete and deliver the same results as can the private/alternative schools. If Canada is no. 2 in the world then we should have no problem with the threat of private, alternative or corporate schools.
I just figure that if 150 or so Canadians died trying to get some of Afghanistan’s children to school, we can certainly all step it up at home, honor their sacifice, and at the very least, pay attention to what is going our here with our own education system. That is part of what makes me tick. Being fully responsible for getting three children to the productive adult stage is the other part of what makes me tick.
What matters the most to me in education? If I could boil it down ,I would say that I would most want for each child to feel encouraged, happy, valued, and like they have something to offer the world from the first day of grade primary to the day of graduation.
What motivates me is The Learning Gap and it has motivated me for 35 years. I usually thought of it as the bottom 20% of students almost 100% of whom are poor. Gerald Caplan in the Royal Commission hearings really said the bottom 40% need to do better and can do better.
To me, every other problem in education pales by comparison. We know what to do and we also know that it is cost efffective to do it. Some say “we can’t afford it” I say “we can’t afford not to do it” or we will be left behind economically, socially and in terms of ‘the good life’ for all.
We need to fight this battle on two fronts. The first is the elimination of poverty, a national disgrace on the Rez and in our cities but rural poverty is a hidden situation.
This will involve the state as the employer of last resort to create jobs, the best social program by having the cities, school boards universities, public services, etc take on more people at good wages. We also need to build public infrastructure at a much faster rate to build what we need while we create jobs and wealth.
In the mean time we need to raise the minimum wage, increase welfare and EI, build more public and coop housing and public transportation.
On the school side we need to extend free child care 9-5 down to age 2, crate subsidized wrap around child care, reduce classes where poor kids go to school to 15 and cap them at 22 everywhere else. We need to raise teaching to a “high profession” where it involves Finland style 2 Mster’s degrees to teach but raise the pay to well over $100 000, more like professors pay.
We need to keep open community schools and focus on a less cluttered, well thought out, age appropriate curriculum.
Every child must get exactly the same program until grade 11 when specialization between academic and voctional education can begin.
The “summer slide” must be met by free summer programming for poor kids that mimicks camp and trips that middle class kids get. Programs like Pathways need to be brought under the public tent and taken off corporate charity. Otherwise they are an excellent idea. The private sector like Gates, Broad and the Waltons like the Westons in Canada must be kept at bay from education.
This agenda will take us a long way to having both an excellent school system and an equal school system.
Yes we do have the 2nd best system as the National Post now acknowledges but who wants that? We need to have the best system and a system so good that we cannot even see another country in our rear-view mirror.
Go Canada.
Doug, you did not mentioned any curriculum changes, or any changes to do with the actual delivery of education into the classrooms. Nor in your version, have you mentioned accountability to the taxpayer, the children, or the parents. Nor have you mentioned the outrageous costs regarding text books and the added-value attachments to the texts, and how the present set-up causes that costs to increase to the education system, and adds to the increasing profits of the publishing companies. All done, without a care about the long-term consequences that is inflicted upon the children.
Which brings me to the final comment on, “Every child must get exactly the same program until grade 11 when specialization between academic and voctional education can begin. ” And the other comment, “We need to keep open community schools and focus on a less cluttered, well thought out, age appropriate curriculum. ”
Open community schools, cannot be done with standardized programs across the board. In your version, the schools becomes the enforcer and the slave to the government without concern for the local issues that the local schools are dealing with.
As for the poor, and pouring money to eradicate poverty, is commendable, but is it really the education system job to advocate and put in programs that are targeted at the poor? Does it make sense to put in more money, when the number of poor have remained at the 10 % mark for over 15 years, across Canada? At the same time, ignoring the middle-class, especially the lower middle-class who is burden with the increase costs of live, including taxes so governments can provide services to their citizens, without the accountability? When have you heard a discussion or a debate, why communities across Canada need to fund literacy programs during the summer, because the education system did not do its job in the first place? If anything, there should be public inquiries being held across the country, to determine if the public education system is doing its job, or is it adding more fuel to the fire of less and less accountability to their citizens, and the downgrading of the education system, where we may just find ourselves teaching remedial math, basic facts in grade 10 for all high school students.
I am not the education system, this is a two level problem and as a taxpayer, a citizen, a parent and a grandparent I am saying we need to seriously mitigate poverty esprcially child poverty. Politicians of ALL stripes promise this every ten years and then we get nothing.
The curriculum and teaching pedagogy can always be refined but do not constitute a significant problem. The dropouts created by the tests and the demoralization and the narrow curriculum are the fault of the tests.
If test made any contribution to educational improvement whatsoever then the USA would have the world’s best system but they are lucky to make the top 20 on a good day. NCLB the test and punish system has been a total failure as proven by the NAEP.
Your class definitions I assume are different than mine. I now agree with Gerald Caplan. It is very easy to spot the neighbourhoods and schools that are low achievement and it was long before testing.
The problem is with the poor (thing welfare, EI and minimum wage jobs) and the low end of the working class (think non unionized factory work retail, McJobs), the upper end of the working class and their kids (think high skilled or unionized jobs, ) and above that everybody is doing fine except isolated cases.
Guess what, the education community can do its job AND we still need literacy classes.
This blame the system populism stuff is Tea Party thinking although I know some of you will take that as a compliment it was not intended as one.
I watched an incredible stream of Asian kids stream into a tutorial centre and have watched this all summer. I asked the parents if their kids were doing badly and they said, no they are getting mid 80s but we expect 90s and we plan to send them to Stanford MIT, Harvard or at an absolute minimum U of T. The entire parking lot ws full of Mercedes, BMW Lexus and all new. Where is that effort for the poor?
It should be free so that everyone can compete.
“It should be free so that everyone can compete.”
except that the public system refuses to compete and let the best teachers, schools, boards be rewarded for excellence based on the merit solely of educating children effectively and proving it.
The mere thought or mention of competition is usually enough to send the educrats turning tail or demonizing competition.
There is NO RESEARCH that supports merit pay, teachers, all teachers, even so-called leading teachers do not want it. As a profession we oppose it.
In education competition creates winners and losers in a system that wants only winners and no losers. Competition is inherently incompatible with quality education.
BTW jtc, all of these conservative approaches are being tried in the USA and ALL are failing badly. Most recent studies show no gains to be made from merit pay, uncertified teachers, NCLB test and punish, Mayor control etc. The NAEP scores just demolish these remedies. Charter schools do no better than regular PSs.
Chester (call me Checker) Finn is the Dean of American conservative education and works mainly through the Fordham foundation.
He has recently said basically all of these approaches are going nowhere and is putting his faith in the national standards movement.
This causes a big split in the conservative movement because many conservatives in education in the USA also favour state and local control. They fear national education movements will be dominated by liberals on the east and west coasts.
To make a long story short jtc, your solutions are not theories to be tried. They have already been tried and they have failed or are failing.
Who’s going to need classrooms or teachers when getting a high-school diploma over the internet is approximately 5 years away.
You snooze….you loose. Makes the idea of corporate schools and partnerships almost a given.
http://educationnext.org/will-we-have-the-best-courses-online-in-five-years/
On-line courses is already a given in rural areas, where the schools do not have the teachers to teach the courses, or the students. Although, the on-line courses are created in-house, I would like to see partnerships with the schools, for such things as tutoring on basic skills, and private on-line courses where students earned their credits for their diploma through them.
On one such on-line course, that I am thinking of plunking my money down, is a site called Skills Tutor, that covers all aspects of high school math, science and other aspects of language in reading and writing. Short mini-lessons, visually pleasing and gets to the point, with lots of practice. It also covers all aspects from K to 12. It would be nice to see partnerships of this kind, that actually would help students, because it can be tailored to the student problems and strengths in the subject material, and a great way to study for the essential material that is needed to do more advance work and for mastery.
http://skillstutor.com/cms/site/skillstutor/page402.html
Note the operator of the above site. A publisher, and they already have their foot in the doorway, and so 5 years as jtc states, would not be far off the mark, at least for high school students learning on-line.
there is a private on-line high school in a town near mine that not only offers students an option but is learning very quickly how to fill in the gaps that the small, rural high schools are creating.
Interesting that in looking at the staff there are retired teachers from the local high school and/or their kids employed here.
https://www.virtualhighschool.com/
I really like the Virtual High School, especially since anyone can enrolled in any part of the country or outside. I just have one question, and I could not find the answer to the site. How many other provinces and their boards are willing to accept a credit course from the Virtual High School? The reason why, I have attempted to do this with the Alberta on-line courses offered by the education ministry of that province, only to be told that the courses would not be credited by the home province. The Alberta on-line school was offering a course of remedial English, that I felt would have help my LD child, in improving her writing, and in part comprehension. I could not justify the expense, nor would I have been able to convince her of doing it, unless she could obtain a credit for it.
This all comes from Bill Gates, you think he might have an interest here? Teachers were first going to be replaced by radio believe it or not, then by TV, later by the computer without the internet and now by the internet. What a joke.
I’m sure you will love the internet for science, every home hs the test tubes, microscopes etc. Education is a full contact spot as Rob Prichard said when in charge of U of T. There will always be a place for a few internet courses around the edge but discussion like we are having here does not replace classroom discussion. PE ought to be fun in your home gym. Grade one will be a snap, you can teach your kid to read at home on the internet, oh you have to go to work? Too bad. Social interaction the hidden curriculum of all schools? Who needs that? The school dance will be fun eh?
School replaced by the internet. What a joke. Do some actual thinking about it.
For many students in remote rural areas, school is taking place on the Internet. In more populated rural areas, it is becoming the norm, where high school students are taking more than 2 courses on-line, which are the science courses such as biology. If the students need to do an experiment, they will use the school’s lab under the guidance of the current science teacher in the high school.
By the way, PE has been reduced over the years. One is lucky to have it twice in a 14 day cycle. No one is stating that the Internet will replace schools, but it will certainly and is now changing the deliver of education. It should be another choice, for students. Even today, one can get a university degree on-line, with only stepping onto the campus a few times in the year. I can see this with high schools, especially the rural schools that cannot supply the specialized teachers needed to teach the courses. I can also see it as a natural for elementary students, who need work on the basics, and often schools do not have the time, or the necessary curriculum to improve their work.
Most parents, are already using the internet for education purposes for their children. Either for working on the basics or to further their knowledge on subjects such as math, science or literature. It is just a matter of time, when schools moved away from their traditional approaches, to the 21st century, where the computer can offer that much more in offering individualized learning than what the classrooms of today are offering……..an inclusive classroom with everyone, no matter their difficulties, and a hit and miss approach for individualized learning.
The only joke is that it’s happening all around us and the usual suspects bury their heads in the sand.
There’s not one thing you can do to stop it Doug. Not one thing. Unions don’t matter, and it’s nice to see in the case of the On-line high school that new teacher grads are at least getting work there that they can’t find within the public system.
Public education isn’t the only choice any more. Either get good and compete for those fewer kids or…..or what? Continue socking more money for too many teachers for fewer kids to do less?
Not a winning proposal by any stretch of the imagination.
You are the only person that takes it seriously here. Nancy has a realistic attitude, a couple of courses here and there.
The Canadian system is already second best in the world. There is no testing advantage to private schools who do no better than public schools on EQAO testing, we still have a great system and are the envy of much of the world in education. Could it be better? Sure it could but we don’t spend enough to make it truly great.
Unions BTW have already covered virtual schools in their public school contracts. The teachers that work in public virtual schools must be union members but they don’t pay virtual dues they pay the real kind.
A private school is a private school so it must charge its students for what is free in public schools. Who will choose private virtual schools when public virtual schools are free (and unionized)?
The Canadian public virtual schools are not as good as the private ones. Although the American public ones are good, especially in Florida. Many rural students go this route in Florida. One reason, they are not as good, is the design of the courses. It seems that school boards are cheap when it comes to the programing of the courses. In some school boards, and provinces, there is serious thought of cutting services for on-line courses. Rather the wrong move, just like cutting back services in special education matters.
Free is still free and private fee paying is still not free. I’m sure the boards have done a cost-benefit analysis and determined that the grants they get to provide virtual education does not cover the costs.
Seldom do you see the boards go after an increase, or present plans to the ministry, to improve the Internet capability of the district. One just have to hear the excuses given, for software purchases for students, and/or to be used at home, especially for students who have learning problems. Of course the education ministries are sometimes the blame, for not coming up with solutions, and presenting them to cabinet.
There is nothing free, including public school. Everybody, ends up paying for it through taxes, and in some cases some pay more dearly, in other forms, rather than the tax dollar. Parents end up picking up costs, that really should not be picking up, but if the school or the board demands it, what is a parent going to do?
“You are the only person that takes it seriously here.”
Thanks Doug.
Public education is NOT free. We all pay dearly for it and will continue to do so until we, the public start asking for something in return….like proof that the money is being spent appropriately and educated students are the result.
As we speak municipalities are figuring out the cost to them of the McGuinty’s cobbled together Early Learning Programs and boards are already sending signals that they can’t afford it either while the unions fight for the ECE workers like vultures. A sorry spectacle.
We have the world’s number 2 system acknowledged by the OECD PISA TIMSS and put more people in post secondary than any nation on Earth.
You simply refuse to acknowledge that we have an excellent system by world standards and the ELP will make it considerably better once again. Almost all international experts agree that ECE is the main way to improve even further.
You don’t seem to understand the simple fact that it is much cheaper to spend extra billions on education because it raises the standard of living for all people.
Do you understand the concept that insulating your house or buying high efficiency appliances is free because the ROI creates a situation that more than pays for itself?
Economists estimate that the ROI of investing in eduction is at an absolute minimum 4 to 1. In other words, for every billion we invest in education we are $4 billion dollars better off. We cannot afford NOT to invest heavily in education.
This is a concept that Mike Harris could not understand either. That is why he was such a total failure.
Guess what, Bill Davis got it so we have him to thank for our advanced CAAT system.
By the time a child has gone through the public system the amount of money spent to educate him/her PLUS those “extra” dollars parents are made to fork out each year could buy a alternative education.
In Ontario with the per student funding average exceeding
at approx. $10,000 per year, add to that an average of $300-$400 expected through fundraisers, student fees, user fees for joining teams/bands, uniforms, photos etc. and Nancy is so right.
We’re paying way more than we have to in Ontario for the system to do less with fewer kids. That’s not a equation that’s going to stand up to the value-added smell test much longer.
If parents did their homework they’d see that alternatives exist throughout this province. Alternatives also exist for teachers. There may be those willing to give up their union perks for well, less union and less intrusion from school boards/government.
jtc the teching force is very ware of the private system. Teachers are very supportive of their unions because that is where the raises, benefits, pensions and most of all respect comes from.
They are very aware that the boards fight very hard every round of bargaining to keep the raise too low, the benefits too few, the pension too low, the work to onerous and only the union stands in the way of them having all of these intolerable conditions shoved down their throats.
When teachers look at private teaching especially private for profit teaching their first thought is, “there goes my pension” the wages are too low, no benefits to speak of, and reject it out of hand. This leaves private schools with teachers that the PSs won’t hire or with a little luck a surplus right now. Many private schools run mainly on uncertified teachers and it shows.
Notwithstanding their ability to be elective, they score behing catholic public schools and only a tiny bit above the public schools who must take in everybody.
Seems like there is almost nothing attractive about teaching in a private school.
Unions don’t tell teachers what to do jtc, they tell those who try to tell them what to do to leave them alone and let them teach.
Doug:
“You simply refuse to acknowledge that we have an excellent system by world standards and the ELP will make it considerably better once again. Almost all international experts agree that ECE is the main way to improve even further.
You don’t seem to understand the simple fact that it is much cheaper to spend extra billions on education because it raises the standard of living for all people.
Do you understand the concept that insulating your house or buying high efficiency appliances is free because the ROI creates a situation that more than pays for itself? ”
Early childhood education and the need of it to improve outcomes in education is a fact. However, pouring money into ECE using the education system to do so, without providing full access and improving services into the other parts related to health, medical services, the transportation/roads grids, and other government services that directly impacts the common citizen, and their children, helps to erode and defeat the intended goal, and that goal is to improve education outcomes, among the children.
Services provided by the state, often come with hidden costs, that their citizens bear the burden of providing, and is often expected to cover as a norm. It is these hidden costs, that are rising. In health, either the citizens pay for services such as a plastered cast by cash or their private health insurance will pay for these services, that are not covered by the state’s health systems. Drugs is another example, where the costs of over-the-counter drugs are sky-rocketing for basic health care concerns, where access is limited to one factor of income levels.
The little theory of ROI, using the example of insulating one’s home, or buying high efficiency appliances, does little in improving standard of living, except in improving one’s own pocketbook. Even here, there is questions related to the trend of consumers using energy in a much more efficient way, and as a result can look forward to lower bills. For how long, that is a $64 dollar question, when our energy providers, will raise rates when consumption rates drop, to maintain their profit margin. As a result, the consumer is no better off, since the rate increase will wipe out the savings. As we all know, energy rates increases have fast out-paced inflation, where energy rates have increase well over 60 % in the last 15 years, and some of the increases, is directly related to the lower consumer demand in energy, because of their undertaking in using energy in a more efficient manner.
Applying the ROI theory in education, is an exercise in short-term solutions, without providing evidence that the long-term outlook. will provide the same return of investment as it once did. It is here where the education services provided by the government, are not designed to ensure the money invested in the education system, will be used in an efficient manner, and flexible to meet the changing variables and demands of the students. When public education systems meet the changing variables and demands of their students, it is done using solutions that remedies and solves the problems for the short-term future, but the long-term future of the students is put at risk, because the methods that are practice, forces the students to take the burden and the responsibility in providing and paying for services that the education system is no longer willing to provide.
As a result, the lower down the income ladder, parents are making choices in their children’s education, that are based on what they can afford, in response to the down-loading of services that the public education system is no longer providing in an efficient manner, or in some cases not providing at all. Art, music, and PE are services that have been down-graded in our schools, and to the point where most parents are picking up the costs to provide the same things. It does not matter if the parents are paying for the services, or doing it themselves, there is costs associated with both. Doing it yourself, whether one is talking about art lessons or math lessons, one still needs to have the essentials to do it, plus the know-how. It is the essentials that the parents are picking up the costs, and the education system gets another free pass of avoiding accountability in providing the very same services, even though funding has been set aside to provide the services. in some cases. It forces all parents, no matter their income, to make choices based on what they can afford, and what often happens, education concerns becomes a lower priority, as one goes down the income ladder, because they have lower ability, to pay for the essentials needed because of the high costs of transportation, shelter, food and other related basic living needs. As a result, they are force to make hard decisions on what is essential and important in their lives. Having a printer and the costs associated with ink supply, to print off school reports, would certainly not be on the list of the parent’s priorities, when the home insurance is far more urgent in their eyes.
At this point, Doug, you would point out that public schools do provide printing services for their students. Yes, they do, but the quality is far poorer than what I have provided on my own dime, using my own printer, my own software, to provide a quality print for students, who do not have parents to provide the means to produce a good print off. There is thousands of parents across Canada, doing the same thing, and it is not because the parents have a soft heart, but access and issues about quality of printouts are the main culprits.
Making an investment in education, is done much the same way in making an investment is other things. The only difference is, often public education do not expect a pay-back in the long-term future as an individual would expect and to keep it for future years to come. The public education system has the ability to pass on costs to the users of the system, whereas the parents do not have that luxury passing on the costs to our neighbours. There is immediate consequences , and the long-term future is put at risk for their families in terms of their general welfare. Even more so, when governments moved to down-grade education services, or the out right elimination of services, and pass the costs to the parents and their children.
As jtc has stated, if parents did their homework, there is alternatives. Many parents are finding our there is alternatives, because the public education system is forcing them to seek out the alternatives, to lower their own costs, but more importantly looking out at the long-term future of their children lives. As a parent, being concern for my youngest and her lower skills in reading and writing, I quickly discovered that schools only provide for so much support in reading and writing. Anything over and above, is passed down to the parents, and it is often expected that the parents will picked up the costs, giving the schools a free pass for not providing and picking up the extra costs to teach a student to read well. My willingness to pick up the costs, was based on the fact that my child’s long-term future of education, jobs, and quality of life, was at great risk, due to either the inaction or the putting off of education services to correct the reading and writing problems, by the education system itself.
There is problems associated with ROT theory, and the use of it , to justified the increases in government spending in education.
“By way of summary, and based on the fix provided by the newer quasi-experimental research on the economics of education, investment in education behaves in a more or less similar manner as investment in physical capital. In advanced industrial countries, the returns to
human and physical capital tend to be equated at the margin.
At the same time, we should point to a major research gap, which is the marriage between the micro and the macro evidence on the returns to education. Whereas at the micro case, as amply demonstrated above, it is established beyond any reasonable doubt that there are tangible and measurable returns to investment in education, such evidence is not as consistent and
forthcoming in the macro literature (see, for example, Pritchett 2001; …… and Krueger and Lindahl 1998 for a different perspective).
More research on the social benefits of schooling is needed. For developing countries,
there is a need for more evidence on the impact of education on earnings using quasiexperimental
design. There are more opportunities today for this type of research. Moreover, this research needs to be used to create programs that promote more investment and reform
financing mechanisms.”
Click to access Returns_Investment_Edu.pdf
Another link provides another take, where and how investments should be made in public education, Not surprising, it is the type of investments using a preventive approach that is the most cost effective. Yet it is our public education systems, that will not implement them due to the costs, and because the pay-off is long in the future, and benefits all of society, and not necessarily the education system.
“This study has shown that by focusing resources on students who are receiving inadequate education, it is possible to obtain benefits far in excess of the costs of those investments. Increases in tax revenues and reductions in taxes paid into public health, criminal justice, and public assistance would amount to many billions of dollars a year in excess of the costs of educational programs that could achieve these results. But, it is important to note that this is more than just good public investment policy with monetary returns. A society that provides fairer access to opportunities, that is more productive and with higher employment, and that has better health and less crime is a better society in itself. It is simply an added incentive that the attainment of such a society is also profoundly good economics.”
Click to access Leeds_Report_Final_Jan2007.pdf
As jtc has stated, “By the time a child has gone through the public system the amount of money spent to educate him/her PLUS those “extra” dollars parents are made to fork out each year could buy a alternative education.”
The costs associated with my child’s learning problems, that were picked up by the education system, I could have brought a high quality one at a much reduce cost, and produce results at a much faster rate, than what the present education system is capable of doing. The difference would be that my child would have her reading and writing difficulties corrected, and hence would become a good reader and writer. Essential skills that are essential and vital to society. Instead, my child among many, are put at higher risks to become learning failures, and many doors are closed to them in the future, as adults. I would estimate my costs on the average is about $1000 a year for the most part, on things that the school does not provide. All educational items, that will enhance her learning, and help with the learning problems. The latest expense is a graphic calculator, that is a touch screen, capable of splitting the screens, saving, and printing out the graphs, and I might add it was a suggestion from the school, so she could practice at home, because the school does not allow graphic calculators that are owned by the school to be taken home, to do one’s math homework or practice on it. In her case, she is the exception to the rule, because of her learning disability. I brought the top of the line, because the features will have benefits in a deep understanding of data management and as well, skipping the frustration of plotting data manually using paper and a pencil.
The image I have, and no doubt will come true, is seeing a teacher trying to figure out if the memory has been wiped out, when using it for final exams. Now that is priceless!
In your last post, Doug, you talk about private schools. I just read an article on private schools in New York, who provide services for children who learning disorders or disorders that will impact learning and their education.
“Lawyers and other advocates for special education students say that parents who press for reimbursement come from all economic backgrounds-and they do so only when the DOE has failed to give special education kids what they need.
“We have some wealthy clients, but the majority of our families are struggling middle-class families,” said Susan Luger, a lawyer who represents families in cases against the DOE. “The law is an entitlement law much like Social Security or Medicare. If Congress wanted the law to be means tested they could have written it that way.”
The result is that New York City, the country’s largest school system with 1.1 million students, has more claims for special-education reimbursement than any other district, according to Council of the Great City Schools, a national coalition of the largest major urban school districts. ”
Private schools for SE kids, is a growth industry, and it is not at all surprising, when departments of education or the boards steadily refuse to provide services, or to provide the correct services for these children.
“”It’s a federal law that the DOE will provide education for all students,” said Brian Kaplan, a spokesman for MetSchools. “Because the DOE is not providing services in a way that is adequate to individuals” with certain challenges, “the only solution is to find an appropriate school… We have a superior education to what the DOE is offering.” ”
Sounds like the same thing we hear in Canada, although Canadians do not have a law to back us up.
“Mr. Bezsylko said that more than a quarter of Winston’s families are low income and as many as half are middle income. About a third are members of minority groups. Last year, the DOE spent $5.6 million to pay for 155 Winston Prep students. Mr. Bezsylko said 53% of his New York students are from Manhattan, 20% are from Brooklyn, 4% from Queens and 8% from the Bronx. He said the school has a nearly 100% graduation rate and 95% go on to college.
There are 160,000 special education students in New York City schools. Critics of the DOE’s special education program say the $116 million is tiny fraction of the system’s $22 billion budget, and that some schools spend less per student than the public schools.
The DOE argues that the amount is substantial, because it “could save or create jobs for nearly 1,200 teachers,” according to Matthew Mittenthal, a DOE spokesman.
“These are dollars that would otherwise be going directly to the classroom, to fund supplies and textbooks, instruction and additional supports for high-needs students,” Mr. Mittenthal said.”
Don’t you just love it, when public servants will argued the merits of increase educational funding, because it would save dollars and/or create more teaching positions. Rarely, will one read or hear using increase spending, on improve results, by making sure most children with learning problems, will all graduate, and continue with their education, because their problems have been corrected. There is a reason why parents are enrolling their children in private SE schools, at least here, parents can see the steady improvement of their children’s education, without the hassle of dealing with entrenched bureaucrats, who are more willing to say no to services, because they can. At the very least, the private schools will ensure that the SE students become good readers and writers, and that is one area the public education system does a poor job in, with or without the legal laws in place.
1) Governments simply refuse to give boards the amount of money necessary to do a proper job, especially with kids with learning challenges.
2) Because of this failure to tax and spend enough, there are gaps in service.
3) Business people move in to fill the gaps.
4) Parents then demand public funding for private choices.
5) This could all be avoided at the beginning by funding public schools properly.
Your enemy is not me Nancy it is people like jtc who wish to underfund public education which results in underfunding for SE kids for sure.
jtc does not care what happens to kids in public schools, he just does not want to pay more taxes because he is selfish. The desire to pay less in taxes is contemptible.
Doug, most people are willing to pay taxes, and what they are not willing to do, is to have the taxes being spent recklessly and without accountability to the taxpayer.
The education system are complicit in spending tax dollars, without adhering to the accountability principle, whether in numbers on a page, or dealing with real people, with real problems.
I do not mind paying taxes, but if I need a government service, I expect to have access to the service in a timely fashion. Likewise, in education, I expect learning problems to be dealt with in post-haste, and to practice preventive methods, to lessen learning problems in all children. In reality, most users have access problems to services, and are faced with long delays to get the service. On the other hand, governments have no problems in implementing well-designed systems, to gathered tax monies from their citizens.
I hate paying taxes, and any form of taxes, because I believe our tax money is being spent without the necessary accountability to the people. In the ROT literature, there is lots of information regarding ROT in social policies such as education. It is rather complicated and I might add, a rather new subject that I have added to learn more, but what I have read – to get a good rate of return, there is two things that are essential. Accountability and a good system design to meets the needs of the people who used the system. If either or both are weak, the rate of return or the intended goals will not be met, even when new strategies are put in place to correct problems that are caused by the weaknesses in accountability or system design.
Until the accountability and system designs are corrected, tax dollars in education will continue to go down a dark hole, spending even more, to move one percentage point. It is how our tax dollars are being spent that I object to, and if that is being selfish, than there is a lot of people in Canada, that are in good company with jtc.
Speaking about accountability and system designs, I had the pleasure of hiking up to the cove, to meet my daughter who reported a run-off that was colouring the rocks purple, with puffs of gases being released from the rocky cliff. I took a soil sample, and in the morning I will report it to the town. It will be interesting to watch, how fast the town will moved to investigate, and even more so, how fast the provincial government will move to investigate it. The environment is another area, where governments are lax in their accountability to the people, and how our tax dollars are spent on environmental concerns.
On the positive side, my daughter is excited of the possibility of discovering the first natural gas deposit in the area on land that her great great grandfather owned, based on the science knowledge she has. She could be right, and is a prefect science experiment for the next science fair.
The accountability nonsense is just that. One citizen’s wasted money is another citizen’s absolute necessity. We solve this problem with what some people like to call politics but I choose to call democracy.
All I hear all day long is one citizen say “the long gun registry is a total waste of money” while the next citizen agrees with the police chiefs that “the long gun registry is critical in the fight against crime.”
Education is exactly the same. One person, “the money spent on a football team is a total waste.” the next person, “the football team was the highlight of my high school experience, I might have dropped out without it.”
Every single program or expenditure in education, like every expenditure in government is the same.
If you win the election thaty means people want to do it your way for a while.
The accountability issue is real, and it often surprises me that it often gets dismiss quickly, by swinging to the side on where money is being spent, and the unwritten story goes untold, by all governments of all stripes. It is the story of not tracking the money, to see if it is hitting their intended goals. If the goal was to improve reading scores by 20 % by year’s end, using a new curriculum, the assessment methods become very important, because it is the only means to determine if the curriculum is working or is it another factors that are impeding the intended goals. It appears to me, that assessment methods are not worked on, because the powers to be are not much interested in the outcomes, or to ensure that the goals will be met, because politically speaking, announcing funding gives a bigger punch, than the nuts and bolts of a new program.
Politics entering into the equation, often dilutes accountability to the point where targets are not being met, and allows factors outside the education system to become the blame, for failure within the education system. Politics should not be in the equation dealing with social issues such as health, and education, but in reality politics is hot and heavy, and impacts greatly on the education or health system. Politics prevents real progress in education, and does a real number on a school’s stated goals and mission statement. Furthermore politics create more inequities within the education system, on top of a system that is already riddled with fault lines of inequities. Access and accountability go hand in hand, and politics moves the access and accountability issues back to the end of the line, along with the children and their learning needs. Their learning needs, become whatever the powers want it to be, forcing students to adapt regardless of ability to do so.
“Your enemy is not me Nancy it is people like jtc who wish to underfund public education which results in underfunding for SE kids for sure.
jtc does not care what happens to kids in public schools, he just does not want to pay more taxes because he is selfish. The desire to pay less in taxes is contemptible.”
Don’t put your torqued words into my mouth Doug.
It’s quite a shame that your philosophy no longer represents the future of education in our country.
The writing’s been on the wall that the days of tax and spend are over and unless school boards start shaping up they’re going the way of the dodo bird.
What makes most open-minded individuals tick is that outside of the union ranks there’s are many ways out there to deliver effective education. Public no longer holds the premium, or the future of the education of Canada’s children in their hands.
The future is with increased parental choice, no highly paid school board bureaucracy and taking much of the decision-making away from central command and the unions and giving it to local schools.
You can keep dreaming jtc but public funding of private educational choice is very unpopular in every poll and every party knows this. Ask John Tory how popular it is to fund other religious choices. He blew his career and his partie’s chances to govern because he campaigned on “choice” and therefore no party will do it again.
Choice in the public system? Some are good, some not so good on a case by case basis.
Have you ever heard the expression “you get what you paid for”? It is the same with a new car, a house, furniture and it is true with education as well. If Canada wants a world leading education system they need to pay for a world leading system. Education is very expensive but ignorance is far more expensive.
Our standard of living increasingly depends on us not only keeping up in educational expenditure but going boldly into ECE, refunding adult education, expanding universities and colleges, lowering and eventually totally eliminating tuition as many northern Europen nations do, as well as rapidly expanded opportunities in colleges and apprenticeships.
You are going to have to pay much more jtc or Canada will decline and take you with it. Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society.
No matter what Doug, what is describe in your last post will take a major reconfiguration of the education system, as well as major policy changes in other areas, related to education, and jobs in both federal and provincial levels. In fact, it may need to reconfigure at the municipal level. For what you describe, you never mentioned in your posts, what impacts it would do to the operations of education systems, the actual administration, and the delivery of education. You like to mentioned Northern Europe, who has a very different system than the North American ones. It is very decentralized, where the education of the children, and practices are left to the local school, and board, and centralization of teacher training still remains in the hands of the state.
Furthermore, in Canada, policies related to job training, and education that is tied with adult education, federal and provincial levels have their fingers in both pies, and often policies of both levels, are in conflict with each other. Another point to add, is the work force of Canada, is moving in the direction to a different configuration, where there will be a major increase in migrant workers, workers who go away to another province and work, and come back to their home province every few weeks. I do not think this practice will change in the short term or the long term, unless governments moved to change policy that promotes sustainability of rural communities. Many migrant workers lived in rural areas, and many of a small rural communities are being saved to live another day, because they pay cheques made in another province, comes back to their home province. My point here, Doug, that you are still advocating for the status-quo, and that is a strong centralized education system, with increased spending in all areas of education. It does not make sense to do so in rural areas, since centralization often plays havoc with the rural concerns that are so much different than the urban concerns. The rate of return in rural areas would be much lower than the urban areas, if strong centralization remains in place.
In a G/M article, “The question of short-term gains versus long-term gains as part of corporate strategy arose in the class I took recently at Harvard Business School. The discussion broadened to oppose wealth and social development. In my mind, it is not a matter of choice. One cannot enjoy wealth without strong civil society and vice versa. Voltaire pointed out that without food, shelter and clothing, people would not be in a position to contribute positively to the social fabric. By the same token, if there is not the means to improve one’s status through education and hard work, chaos results and wealth disappears.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/without-access-to-education-wealth-disappears/article1672570/
The above is the beginning of the article, but it does offer insight that education should be done right in the first place. Perhaps you should think about the current system, and how much wealth is lost through the present education system, and the costs to recoup that wealth, by running adult education, job retraining, and other courses that shows the education system is not doing a great job addressing the education of these children in the first place.
Choice should be on the table, just like choice is in the health system. No one is made to go to just one hospital, or ordered to go to just one doctor. Yet, in the public education system, parents and their children are offered no choice depending on where one lives, and in other areas they are offered limited choice. By the way standard of living relies on a host of factors, besides education. One can have the most expensive education system, and still have a low standard of living.
I have never advocated a centralized system, I have fought centralization at every turn. I favour a return to almost total school board control with powerful trustees with wages pegged at the same as the city or county council.
The boards are also too big and need to be broken up. Everything was almost fine until Mike Harris decided to really screw it up.
Right Doug…..I guess that’s why the PCs are in the lead in Ontario these days….people are fed up with Dalton’s pandering to the unions and a little Harris control and accountability is looking very, VERY good right now.
You have to know that it was your members, individual teachers that will trump Dalton and vote in another gov’t next year right?
Your glory days are over but hey, keep fighting over those Early Childhood Educators. As a matter of fact SQE has a terrific illustration and post up depicting the unions fighting over their victims. Truly pathetic.
Not about the kids, never was, never will be.
Truth be told in Ontario these days McGuinty should take a page from the success of Mike Harris, because he was successful.
“As premier, has tried, without success to best the record of his rival. Despite proclaiming himself the “education premier”, McGuinty has failed to build on the Harris reforms to Ontario schools. In fact, his need to appease the teacher unions has led to a softening of standards for student achievement.
McGuinty has fared no better on health care. Despite seven straight years of throwing money at the health monolith, including the eHealth debacle, and adding a new layer of health bureaucracy, Ontarians are not receiving better health care than they did under Harris. In fact, several important health services, such as physiotherapy and chiropractic, have been de-listed under McGuinty’s watch.
Economically, the McGuinty government has been an unmitigated disaster. From first to worst in provincial standings. Double the debt. A record deficit.
And the cherry on top – have-not-status.”
“The inconvenient truth that is about to strike McGuinty is simple. He is yesterday’s man.
All around the world the tax, spend and borrow theories that McGuinty has personified are falling out of favour. IN a country that is outpacing our economic competition, Ontario is dragging behind, not leading as it once did.
Shocked by the financial disaster in Greece, voters are finding favour with politicians who have the courage to curb spending. This is not McGuinty’s forte.
Before he takes the next election leap, McGuinty needs to get in touch with the global trend to more efficient and effective government.
Heck, maybe he should ask Harris for some advice.”
(john.snobelen@sunmedia.ca)
Don’t let the rhetoric of the soon-to-be extinct union mantra fool you folks. McGuinty will not be returned to office next election and Ontario still has nightmares about Bob Rae’s NDP.
A little Mike Harris is looking better with each passing day.
The largest anti-tax nation on Earth is also in terrible financial shape with unemployment and a deficit much higher than ours, perhaps you have heard of the United States. Bush followed your theory to a gigantic deficit because he refused to tax the rich. Now the chickens have come home to roost.
Where do you get the idea that Hudak is ahead of McGuinty? I see no evidence of that. Be that as it may, I am not a big McGuinty fan. Horwath is also a little too right wing for my taste. The only way I can describe my political leanings is to use scale of 10.
NDP = 5/10
LIB = 4/10
PC = 0/10
The only reason I give the right-of-centre McGuinty government any time is because Hudak would be worse, much worse.
Doug, I read an interesting article on deficits of governments. United States and Canada, are in far better shape compared to most countries. The countries that are in bad shape, are the European countries. At the end of the article, it is suggested that deficits are growing by leaps and bounds, because no one is tracking how the money is being spent. Governments of any stripes, for some reason do not want to track the money, because it might be their undoing and being booted out of government. It is probably why, reports are not made public, when policies are not working, unless it is helpful for the governing party.
I would love to see the accounting books on public education, and the increases in spending far above the inflation rate, as student population are decreasing overtime. It would be interesting how many are feeding at the public education trough, leaving less and less resources and services for the users of the system.
this is just the beginning in Ontario. The electorate will wake up and show Dalton the door, and individual teachers will again stray from their marching order to vote in who they’re told to vote in and go to with the PCs.
http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100527/tories-widen-gap-100527/20100527/?hub=TorontoNewHome
No one has sunk the province lower that daddy Dalton McGuinty. He’s outpaced even Bob Rae.
You’re right Nancy.
Your poll is the federal scene jtc, that has nothing to do with the provincial scene. Every poll I have seen, and I work for a polling company that tracks other companies, still has McGuinty ahead of Hudak.
Hudak is simply not well liked.
Yes many teachers will be moving their vote away from McGuinty but not to Hudak but to the NDP if they hear any more talk of wage controls. Remember it was the Social Contract that killed Bob Rae.
my mistake
Here’s the good news for the Hudak PC.
The momentum has just begun.
Your myths of teachers not choosing the Conservatives is just that – myth. I know it’s not true and that individual teachers are intelligent to make up their own minds.
It was individual teachers who sent Harris his second majority.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/toronto/Tories+edge+into+lead+latest+Ontario+poll/3427131/story.html
Actually an Ipsos-Reid Poll puts Hudy one point ahead yesterday but it is all within the 4 point margin of error. McGuinty had a bad summer full of stupid mistakes.
He will now concentrate on demonizing Hudak by telling Ontario that he is the second coming od Mike Harris. That ought to scare the heck out of them.
Of course there are teachers who vote Tory, I’m sure you have met them. I certainly have but there are not nearly as many as say when Bill Davis was in office. There are bankers and business people who vote NDP as well, what matters is what most people do.
The strength of teachers in elections is not mainly about who they vote for. It is about who they work for aand where their money goes. The OSSTF alone gives $100 000 to each of the Liberals and NDP every year and much more during elections. This does not count wht ETFO, OECTA and AEFO give. They also target the swing ridings and mobilize members to go out and vote for the best candidate to keep the Tory out of the seat.
The Harris scare tactics will not work this time because most voters have had to make alter their lifestyles or do without while Dalton’s been flipping our money out the wazzoo to pacify the public servants and asking for little in return.
People are in a finding efficiency mode and willing to scale back even if that means scaling back the public education.
Good luck with that out-dated strategy though.
Doug, I think jtc is right about the voters in Ontario, being open to a more efficient government, and are willing to vote with their feet opting for efficient governance, where money is not spent on comforting the high-price help. Help that rather find cost savings on the back of its citizens, and at the same time, limit access points to government services, through the use of rules, and regulations.
One just has to look at the procedures and process to received SE services in our public education system. With the HST addition in Ontario and BC, I can thanked the two governments for contributing to another round of price hikes that all Canadians have to contend with. When school begins, it would be of interested what supplies and other essential things are cut by the boards, because they too have to pay the HST. Or will the schools and boards demand parents to purchased the supplies, on top of what is already being purchased by the parents? Probably the latter scenario would be their preference, as this is what governments are accustom to. Downloading unto others who have lesser ability in purchasing power, and demanding compliance to their rules/demands in purchasing school supplies.
As an example, demanding that grade 10 binders be decorated. Just told my kid, that is not on. It is an unnecessary expense, for any parent to take on, when school supplies of paper, pencils and other school supplies are now at a all time high.
If I were running the Liberal campaign I would have a pic of Hudy that slowly morphed into a picture of Harris while we viewed pictures of strikes demonstrations green ribbons etc with the caption. “we can’t let Ontario go back to the days of constant and unending strikes, blah blah blah. Hudy can’t survive the truth.
not going to happen. Can’t run a campaign of fear when the scariest guy to hit Ontario in years has been Dalton McGuinty, followed closely by Bob Rae.
The TRUTH isn’t decided by teachers unions any more. Voters are seeing through the smoke and mirrors and those green ribbons – the ones that bind and gag. Given that we are now a “have not” problem because of McGuinty’s pandering the green ribbons will not work, just like they didn’t work last time.
Hudak will be Ontario’s next Premier.
Folks looking in from outside of Ontario, THIS is why Dalton’s done in Ontario and common sense never goes out of style.
“public accounts released Monday show the province’s debt grew by $35 billion to $212.1 billion, with the increase going mainly to financing the deficit.
Ontario’s debt was $138.8 billion in 2003-04, the first full year in office for the Liberals.”
Yes, jtc I read about that a couple days ago. I thought to myself, perhaps my moved to NL will indeed have a silver-lining, and I can overlook the problems that I have had dealing with an education system and limited services for LD children. Here in NL, no matter what, the government has seen fit to pay down the deficit. I think NL now stands at 9 billion, from 12 billion dollars. It would be lower, if not for the economic crisis. However, expenditures have increase in education and health, that are targeted to make the best possible use for each dollar. In education, it is the rebuilding of the foundation, to make it more responsive to the needs of the children. I do see a lot of positive change that makes better use of taxpayers monies, but I am still waiting for changes on how the province delivers education to the classroom. This past year, there has been a committee set-up to begin the process on curriculum changes, including changes to the reading instruction of children. This is a ray of hope, that Nl may be the first to bring actual reading science to the classroom.
Nancy, it was the topic of discussion on my local talk-radio show this morning.
Apparently right now in Ontario healthcare consumes 50% of that budget with the possibility that it could go as high as 70% if changes aren’t made.
That doesn’t leave much to run all of the other services.
When the bulk of the population is aging, and healthcare, jobs, the environment and so much else are what folks see as their priorities something drastic is going to happen to public education.
People in Ontario are 1) sick of being lied to by Daddy Dalton and 2) being taken for idiots by the public service who continue to cry poor when the rest of the province has had to tighten up to survive.
Oh and by the way, also on this talk radio show they spoke of a new ranking of the best countries to live in the world based on various criteria. One of those was education and it looks like Finland’s still number #1 but Canada has slipped to #3 after South Korea. Bummer.
Did you happen to notice that we had the world’s biggest crisis since the depression over the past year jtc? Once again the state had to come to the rescue of a system of Wall Street capitalist greed on steroids this time.
I always think of the deficit a uncollected taxes from the wealthy and the corporations.
Canada has slipped to #3 after South Korea because Korea moved up, not because Canada moved down. Korea cut their class sizes in half over the past few years and heavily invested in education and it is paying off for them. They have been moving up the rankings very fast in recent years due to a massive investment in education. We SHOULD learn from them for sure. I have been warning for some considerable time that we would fall in the rankings if we continued to underfund education.
Doug, you might consider looking at the history of public education in South Korea, that has a direct relationship with the problems of the present day state of education in South Korea.
“Clay Burell, an American high school humanities teacher, who currently lives with his family in South Korea, reports on his blog that Korean students are forced to study in “hagwons” — private night, weekend, and summer classes where the overwhelming emphasis is on learning English. The Korean Education Ministry estimates that as a percentage of GDP, South Korean parents spend four times more on average on private education than their counterparts in any other major economy. Most of what they study is “worksheet-based, scripted, and devoted to passing college examination tests, the SAT, TOEFL, and all the other tests these classes teach to.” What Burell finds ironic is that despite all of this investment and high test scores, Korean students are notoriously poor at reading, writing, and speaking English. In other words, they can’t use what they are supposed to have learned and what they test well at.”
This is on top of the tuition fees paid at the public high and middle schools.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/obama-korea-and-american_b_365885.html
“Under the plan, hagwon will be banned from offering lessons to students after 10 p.m., universities will not consider academic achievement scores during the first year of high school in recruiting and schools will be required to activate after-school programs for students.
The proposal also calls for better evaluation of teachers, an increase in the number of art and sports schools and improvement in the quality of lessons provided by the Education Broadcasting System, a nationwide television network, to draw more viewers.
Analysts say that to help households cut private education expenditure, the government should improve the public education sector and provide more higher education opportunities to students from poor households.
According to the National Statistical Office, household expenditure for children’s private education rose to 18.7 trillion won ($14 billion) last year, up 1.3 trillion won or 7 percent from 2007, with each family spending an average of 1.1 million won annually.”
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/07/116_47904.html
South Korea is constantly under reform, and the latest move is to cut private education expenditure. From what I have read so far, I understand the government does little in reforming public school, to cut the amount of time spent in school, and of course the tuition fees in the upper grades.
“High expectations gone berserk
South Koreans attend school 220 days per year, almost two months more than the 180 days of Americans. (The Japanese enroll an astonishing 243 days per annum; South Korea abdicated first place in 2005 when its students ceased going to school half days on Saturday.) What distinguishes South Koreans from everyone else, however, is the immense number of hours they study outside the classroom. High schoolers, and even middle schoolers, in South Korea are often engaged in scholastics until midnight or 2 a.m. After taking classes in up to 11 subjects, they attend private academies called “hagwons” where they obtain supplemental learning. The bottom line? Most South Korean children spend 13 hours a day or more with their bottoms glued to a chair.
Although these grueling schedules help South Korea’s high test scores, the nation is remarkably inefficient at another PISA criterion known as “study effectiveness.” When PISA calculates each nation’s achievement based on the number of hours spent studying, South Koreans rank only 24th out of 30 developed nations. The winner in study effectiveness is Finland, the world’s true PISA champ, placing first in science, second in math, and second in reading. Finnish students only attend school 190 days per year (two weeks more than U.S. children) and receive less than a half-hour of homework per day.”
http://www.greatschools.org/students/academic-skills/South-Korean-schools.gs?content=2427&page=1
As to what South Korea is spending their dollars in education.
Take a look, and tell me is a robot in the classroom necessary?
“Should we use South Korea as an object lesson in excellence or how a culture of high-stakes testing can go too far? Either way, South Korean schools do deserve recognition for their innovative use of technology. In 2001 the country became the first to provide high-speed Internet access to every primary, middle, and high school.
Presently, South Korea is aiming for two high-tech goals: By 2013, “flexbooks,” or digital textbooks, will be given to every student — these 3-D learning tools are easy to update with links to online articles and visual and audio material, and they’ll lighten backpacks that have been weighed down with heavy outdated textbooks. Robots for kindergarten are also due in 2013. IROBI will be a teaching assistant and a convenient “friend” who can register students, converse, sing songs, take photos, read stories aloud, and show films on its belly that has a seven-inch screen. Though U.S. teacher unions might reasonably object to a non-human teacher entering the labor market, no doubt many educators would welcome a professional stapler and housekeeper to help them with their endless classroom chores.”
But of course, a robot may finally eliminate the teacher. Perhaps South Korea, should learn from the Western countries, that children are not studying machines, nor are the teachers willing to work 10 to 12 hour days, to ensure that students are studying in all their free time. Oh yeah, what about the high suicide rate among the high school students, especially those who end up failing a test, or did not get in the right school, or worse a bad recommendation from the teacher. Is that worth killing one’s self over?
People in Ontario are sick and tired of being asked to pay more for less Doug. That includes education. It simply does NOT take more money to educate fewer and fewer and fewer students. No matter how you slice it or the believed myths (excuses) about how students at the lower end of the poverty scale just can’t be expected to come from a home that values their choice as much as does the family who can afford educational choices for their kids.
The mood in Ontario is venomous toward the continue glut of money being dumped into a black hole of public service with little to show for it at the end of the day.
It would seem that even in the Liberal stronghold of Toronto that folks are sending that message loud and clear
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/lorrie_goldstein/2010/08/24/15129836.html
Lorrie Goldstein is your source? Why not Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh? LOL. Try to be serious. There is very little savings in declining enrolement especially in the rural areas unless you are willing to close the schools and bus kids for hours and hours. The city councils in small town Ontario know that closing the school means the town dies.
People who want a quality education know you have to pay for it one way or another. Some opt out and pay high tuition to give their kid an advantage. Some demand more be spent on public schools. You just don’t get quality “on the cheap”. This is something conservatives understand when they buy a car or buy a house but somehow it doesn’t seem to apply to education in the Tory mind.
There is always hope for maturity. Bill Davis understood what so-called neo-cons have never understood.
Doug, Bill Davis is in a different era, that had a much different picture with different problems. The baby boomers, the kids born after WWII. School expansion was a natural progression in all areas of North America, and not just Ontario. Many changes occur during that time, including the build-up of the bureauracy and of course the teachers’ unions. Bill Davis did not have the problem of a bloated bureauracy, and in fact it was just in its infancy. As for teachers’ unions, it was also in its infancy in terms of power and influence.
Today, closing down schools, savings may be questionable, because of the cost of transportation and fuel, to bussed the students over long distances. There is other costs, that the province and municipalities that are connected to the closing down of the school, but the education arm does not pay for. Costs involving snow plowing, keeping bus route roads in good repairs, and the hiring of more staff, to coordinate with the school board. In many school boards across the country, the transportation department, has become a bloated bureaucracy, where the initial savings of closing down the school, is eaten up very quickly.
There is trade-offs with the closing down of the schools, and often with the trade-offs, the school board are dealing with a different set of problems, dealing with the students who are being bussed.
jtc is not talking about doing education on the cheap, nor am I. I am talking about how the various education parts, spend their education dollars and how very little of that money, actually reaches any of the students. Transportation costs is one of them, that eats up a good portion. The funding formulas that are in operation at the moment, often are formulas that will ensure keeping a certain level of staff at the board level, with added increases, even though student enrollment is declining. It is the administration costs that are eroding the budgets of the local schools and their students.
Watch carefully with Ontario’s ELP with daycare and the administration costs to increase over time. It will become a bloated bureaucracy without accountability of the tax dollars being spent, entering the dark hole of education expenditures.
Rural and small towns abhor the ELP, that’s why many are panning it because they can’t afford it or the way it pits community partners against one another.
jtc, I wanted to mentioned the present set-up of ELP and daycare, and how it is not a good fit for rural and smaller towns, and why ELP will fail first in the rural areas. But it is par for the course, when education policy is being applied by a central authority, regardless of location. Perhaps the educrats should be sent and ordered to live in rural areas for a 2 year period, to show them, the impact of education policy, and how it is not as effective as in the urban centres, and actually cost more money in the long run.
There is no requirement for anyone in Ontario to put their kid in school or ELP before they arre 6 or grade 1. The people who want the ELP will avail themselves of it. The ones who don’t wnt it will stay out. It is totally voluntary.
Private childcare suffers, boo hoo. Nobody guaranteed them a living. This is for the greater collective good.
The program will be exactly the size of the people who want it. Slowly those who stay out will begin to feel that their kids will begin school at a disadvantage and will enrole.
My problem with the ELP is that it does not go far enough (yet). We should be starting with 2 year olds.