After thirty years, the Canadian grand wizard of “school change,” Dr. Michael Fullan, is still on top and controlling the public agenda. His seminal work, The New Meaning of Educational Change, first appeared in 1983 and today Michael Fullan Enterprises, Inc., is promoting its latest variation, billed as Motion Leadership, while selling over 20 different school change manuals and videos, including the International Handbook of Educational Change. As a “Senior Advisor” to the Ontario Premier and Minister of Education since April 2004, and a former Dean of Education at University of Toronto (1988-2003), he exerts a powerful but largely hidden influence over the school reform agenda in Ontario, Britain, and far beyond. http://www.michaelfullan.ca/
“Motion leadership,” Dr. Fullan now proclaims, is the latest wave. In his new series of instructional videos, he provides “The Skinny on Becoming Change Savvy.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpZMj9hbLhE He appears, looking much as he has for three decades, as the rather dour eminence gris of “school change” pontificating on how to translate change theory into practice in public school systems. His latest project, involving six North American school districts and 17 schools, has exported his brand of “motion leadership” from York Region in Toronto’s GTA to Fresno, CA, Sugar Land, Texas, and Honalulu, Hawaii.
While governments come and go, and public education lurches radically in one direction, then another, Fullan continues to hold sway in Ontario, across Canada, and increasingly in the United States. Public education, it seems, is perpetually in crisis, but the architect of many previous change initiatives remains unsinkable. Thousands of superintendents, principals, and leadership consultants now spout his theoretical principles, ranging from “pressure and support” to “ready-fire-aim” to my personal favourite “simplexity.” Vocal critics on the education left now accuse him of the “global privatization” of educational policy-making. http://dailycensored.com/2009/11/06/the-global-privatization-of-education-policy-lorna-earl-conflict-of-interest-is-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/
Fullan is the undisputed dean of Canadian educational consultants. He has parlayed his former public roles and professional contacts to build a mini-empire and promote himself as a private consultant working in the public interest. He somehow manages to spearhead reform initiatives, such as the multi-year Bachelor of Education degree program and “teacher-driven instructional reform” plans, and then be hired to evaluate the success of his own efforts. The 2010 OECD report on Ontario’s “exemplary” professionally-driven, system-wide school reforms (2004-2009) bore testimony to the Fullanites’ uncanny ability to influence educational “research” outcomes.
Over the past three decades, Fullan has also attracted some formidable allies, known as “Fullan’s army.” Much of his success has been derived from tapping into the practical skills and talents of leading Ontario educators. Among those considered Fullan favourites are OISE education colleagues, Dr. Ben Levin and Dr. Lorna Earl. Most recently, he has championed the remarkable leadership success of the York Region District Board “crowd,” led by former Director Bill Hogarth, former Associate Director Avis Glaze, and YRDSB consultant Lyn Sharratt. It represents the core of ‘motion leadership” and is now branded as the latest iteration of Fullanism.
From the beginning, Dr. Fullan was viewed as an “OISE change theorist” who appeared scary to most classroom teachers. After completing his PhD in Sociology in 1969, he haunted the University of Toronto and was a PD Day “favourite” of principals right across Ontario. In the late 1980s, he joined with the Brit educator Dr. Andy Hargreaves at OISE to form the “British connection.” Together with Hargreaves, he published the What’s Worth Fighting For? pamphlet series. It was aimed at principals and teachers and preached “empowerment” with a blatant teacher union orientation.
In the 1990s, Fullan and Hargreaves promoted the “teacher empowerment” reform agenda. They quickly became darlings of Bob Rae’s NDP government and when Rae went down to defeat, Fullan and Hargraves sought out greener pastures. During the hiatus, Fullan went on to reform Britain’s ailing education system working with Tony Blair’s new Labour government. He also began to morph into a quiet supporter of “school improvement” utilizing standardized testing. After the creation of Ontario’s Education Quality and Accountability Office in 1997, he also turned more and more to OISE colleague Lorna Earl, one of the very few researchers with any interest in student testing and evaluation.
The restoration of the Ontario Liberals in 2004 proved to be a godsend for Fullan. The fresh-faced Premier, Dalton McGuinty, proclaimed himself an “Education Premier” and named the veteran educator Fullan as his “Special Advisor” or de-facto education czar. In his new incarnation, Fullan teamed up with Ben Levin and began trumpeting “building leadership capacity” and “teacher-driven” system-wide reform.
The rejuvenated Michael Fullan has gone international. Since founding his private consulting practice, he has devoted much of his energy to exporting Ontario reform initiatives and establishing “a growing presence on the national and international scene.”
Surveying Fullan’s writings and line of products, it is next to impossible to identify where he actually stands on the goals and purpose of school reform. Ten years ago, he lauded George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind agenda, while expressing reservations about the “too narrow tests, short time lines, little capacity building, and punitive strategy.” Since then, he has been serving on the Advisory Board of Microsoft’s Partners in Learning and advocating large-scale system change that produces “real results.”
Conservative school reformers remain as skeptical as teacher unionists about Fullan’s real motives, strategies, and objectives. Michael Fullan Enterprises Inc. rides the sharp edge of the North American school reform divide. “ A big feature of our work,” he now says, “is to play down accountability in favour of capacity building, and then re-enter accountability later.”
Spooking educators and parents with his “school change” theory, systems analysis, and models is no longer his mode of operations. Thirty years on, he has discovered what American educator Robert Evans once called the vital “human side” of school change. “If you lead with accountability,” he now acknowledges, “people are immediately on the defensive and it doesn’t work so well.” In all of his ventures, “building capacity” takes so much time that one wonders if that promised “accountability” ever arrives.
Three decades after he burst on the scene, Dr. Fullan is not only still standing, but controlling the school change agenda. What motivates Fullan and his army of disciples? And what’s the secret of his longevity and saying power? Most importantly, why has no one come forward to effectively challenge his hegemony over educational change?
Dr. Michael Fullan is no friend of mine. But I probably dislike Fullan and his disciples for opposite reasons.
When Premier Dalton McGuinty appointed him Special Advisor, I produced a letter and then a commentary for The Little Education Report entitled “The Glass Half Fullan.” To me, he is a phony “progressive” who supports testing and too much accountability. You seem to see him as a phony accountability proponent too close in his views to to the Ontario liberal left and teacher unionists.
Here is the key passage where I analyze Fullan’s current initiative:
“Professor emeritus and former OISE Dean Michael Fullan is a critically important person in Ontario education as an official advisor to Premier McGuinty but his influence and tentacles reach around the world. This highly compromised character and a stable of acolytes of the Ken Leithwood, Lorna Earl variety are the intellectual weight, what there is of it, behind much of what Ontario does in education and his influence in the past has included the former British Labour government of Tony Blair. As professor emeritus and consultant he is free to roam the world proffering a white wine spritzer of education reform to all of those too timorous for real substantial meaningful reforms that would actually make a difference in young people’s lives.
Joining Fullan in the pushing of this milquetoast agenda is Professor Ben Levin, Ontario’s Deputy Minister of Education. I’m sure Fullan and Levin situate themselves in some progressive liberal, moderate social democratic world in their own heads that spans the 1mm gap between McGuinty and Blair. Levin was the Deputy Minister to the NDP government in Manitoba as well, but the pap that they are pushing is unworthy of anyone who calls themselves a progressive.
Fullan and Levin have just published a major 1200 word piece in Education Week, the education newspaper of record in the USA http://www.edweek.org . The maddening thing about Fullan, and I suppose Levin who seems to have the Sancho Panza role here, is that he is almost always half right and half wrong on matters of importance in education. Usually he is right on the easy stuff that the whole progressive movement agrees on and wrong when it really starts to count. This might be someone’s definition of a liberal but I digress. Fullan uses the sheep’s clothing of progressivism to cover the wolf of reaction when it counts. He leaves many progressives singing the old Peggy Lee signature tune “Is That All There Is ?”.
Fullan and Levin co-signed the Ed Week piece “The Fundamentals of Whole System Reform- A Case Study from Canada.” Fullan a ‘big picture kind of guy’ is pushing whole system reform which is probably not necessary on one hand but on the other hand is a much better approach than American so-called reform such as Charters and Vouchers where each group tries the hive off a little piece of the system for themselves and creates a ‘warring states’ system rather than fixing the big enchilada, the public school system. Even when they exclude Charters and vouchers from meaningful reform their mouth is still full of marbles so the best they can say is “Charters and Vouchers have their merits but they are not whole system reform.” Charters and Vouchers are in fact completely without merit and constitute a major reactionary distraction in the USA and wherever they pop up usually using different aliases.” (The Little Education Report)
For the full story, see http://thelittleeducationreport.com/TheGlass.html
His old partner Andy Hargraves and I correspond, even though he is now at the Lynch School of Education at Boston University. They broke a little over Fullan’s stance on standardized testing, which Hargreaves does not really support.
Conclusion
Fullan is a phony progressive. Tangential criticism of Charters, Vouchers and performance pay notwithstanding this pair (Fullan and Ben Levin) does not serve the progressive cause. Levin by association has been dragged along in this pursuit of nothing. The glass is not only half Fullan but it is a glass of water. When Fullan’s prescriptions are not totally reactionary like his endless pushing of testing, then they amount to a series of clichés, they are totally lacking in creativity or most surprisingly in focus, his favourite word. The Fullan/Levin Ontario High School reforms are disastrous. They are routinely ridiculed as a joke and they have totally lost them the curriculum and program support of HS teachers, the critical factor in reform implementation. Fullan’s manifest contempt for teachers is obvious to all who read his work or listen carefully to what he says.
There is ONE problem in Ontario education; the children of the bottom 20-40% of families by income are not doing well enough. It is time to really focus.” ( The Little Education Report)
What motivates Fullan and his army of disciples – Power, profit and the chance to transform public education using social engineering techniques to force teachers and the rest of the low boys on the totem pole to pull their weight. One just has to look at the studies, and even though there is no easy access to them, they are a wonderment of getting teachers, and the rest of them marching to the same tune, much like citizens in the former Communist USSR. There is even a study on white teachers and their future. Of course I could not find the abstract, but I bet it is well hidden so the riff-raff crowd does not get their hands on it that is probably a wee bit bias, condemning white teachers for all the troubles in the public education system.
And what is their secret to longevity – enough edubabble to make anyone confuse not to question their own policies and enough degrees behind their names. And a little bit help from the unions and the rest of the education arms, by playing games of tiddly-winks, instead of hard ball making a mockery of their policies and research on the front pages across Canada. At the very least in Ontario, where the money that could be saved from paying these guys, could go to more worthy projects such as reading tutors for students who are having difficulty in reading. One of the studies came to a stunning conclusion that low levels of reading at the grade 3 levels, leads to greater difficulties in the later grades. Does one really need another study, that most if not all teachers know already lower achievement, makes it that much more difficult for students in later years.
Why hasn’t anyone come forward to challenge them – Unions should be the one, and they are still playing tiddly-winks instead of playing hard ball with them. There is plenty of ammo to go after them, As reported in the paper from the unions: “The difficulty schools and districts have had meeting AYP [adequate yearly progress] towards universal proficiency in math and literacy by 2012 creates demands for products, services and programs that change teaching and learning from the classroom to the central office. To support the accountability…additional resources are made available for schools identified for improvement; students in those schools are eligible for federally funded tutoring; and, above all, schools seeking to avoid or escape improvement status have a strong incentive to adopt new educational strategies and to purchase new private sector products and services in the process….” (podcast August 6, 2008, siiwonline.libsyn.com)
Thus, all of the new private sector services are tailored to provide “solutions” to the problems posed by reform. Consider how governmental policy and accountability are re-framed as a problem which the private solution provider can help to solve. Beverley Freedman, for example, sells the standard school improvement product of principal walkthrough training which enables principals and other administrators to make more effective observations about teacher effectiveness without formally inspecting.”
http://dailycensored.com/2009/11/06/the-global-privatization-of-education-policy-lorna-earl-conflict-of-interest-is-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/
Not only does it cause trouble for teachers in the long run, it causes trouble at the users’ end, where students and parents are force to adapt to all the new changes, without having any viable options open to us that would addressed the individual learning needs of their children. As a result, parents are driven to seek out solutions outside the system for their children, or leave the public school system altogether.
So why are the unions not playing hard ball for the gang that is not only profiting but really is steering the direction of education, and where the education arms becomes the cheerleaders against their best interests. In the end, what makes anyone think that Fullan and his gang can run a school, teach, and everything else that a school deals with daily, when they think that human beings are mere things to be manipulated and data streams becomes the vehicle to manipulate not only the lower rungs but as well as the students. I rather deal with unions, because they are honest about their intentions compared to the Fullan gang.
What motivates Fullan and his army of disciples? Try this: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ and a coalition of very large egos.
What keeps them going? They can tell their stories better to the public and use the unions and their grants to help them do it. They also command a very connected chain of social media that they can count on to move their message. Not to mention links to faculties to infuse their “bright” ideas.
Oh, and a government ( in Ontario) that gives them a wide berth and kisses their butts.
I did my best to rough up his image in the teachers union movement. My original article pulled every single quote that would offend teachers out of his first six books to place him in context.
Fullan is no friend of teachers or teachers’ federations but not all of them realize that.
No friend of anyone, when one looks at the research, the ideas in action, the many fixes or creating new ones can generate a nice tidy sum in profits. He would be a disaster working for the federal government, fooling around with employment and pensions. Of course his ideas keeps the structure working from the top down, to ensure that everyone more or less is following the processes that are in place. And if things go wrong, there is always a few scrape goats to blame it on – the quality of students, the parents and the union heads.
the good news for Ontario is Dalton (and Fullan) are on their way out.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontario/poll-finds-ontarians-turning-against-mcguinty/article1905696/
I became curious of the underlying philosophy of Fullan’s vision of education, and who become the losers of a vision that even though teachers have more say about the direction and practices within the school, it is still a top-down approach, that mimics many of the current practices found in large corporations, and even small businesses. I immediately questioned the wisdom of fully employing a business approach where the actual product is a student, and his or her achievement.
Fullan believes in Dewey-speak, social promotion, inclusive environments, shared cultural values, and I believed the underpinning to his theory is that teachers, principles and all the upper levels see themselves as leaders, and their job is to convince others who are resisting the new reforms. Each level sells the vision to the next lower level, and teachers leadership is to sell the vision to the students and parents. I can only show bits and pieces of the criticism, because much of the papers is buried in the education journals and one needs to be a paid subscriber. I would add here, Fullan and his gang are being accused of hiding their own research, that their vision of reform is not working as they have anticipated. Of course their response is consistence, that for every educational study that has one viewpoint, there is another one stating the opposite.
Besides hiding their research, the Fullan gang is not at all open about their research findings. They are probably not at all open to their research for good reason. The main criticism is based on the actual teaching practices that has their origins in Dewey. Others have gone further, that Fullan and the gang, is introducing Marxism principles within the structure of the education system, where current practices becomes the research, rather than deriving practices from the research. One of the failures of the communist style of government, is that they collaborated among the various departments ignoring research that had been generated if it was not in keeping with the vision. It is this weakness, where the collaboration of educators that become the researchers as they share best practices among each other, is based on following the vision of Fullan and the gang. Is is really reading, writing and numeracy achievement that is the main focus, as they lead people to believe? Or as the naysayers who are called the resistors in Fullan’s world, have stated, the vision is more important than the actual learning of students. I would agree with the latter, because Fullan’s vision does nothing for the students who have learning difficulties especially when the focus is teacher driven practices and not the on-going research-based work over the past 60 years.
“Michael Fullan, a guru of systems change, reminds us that true school reform is not about this innovation or that
innovation but rather a culture change. Changing the culture of schools is essential because as David Rothsteder (spelling?) notes, the prevalent culture of schooling is consumed with who doesn’t belong, rather than making sure everyone does belong”
Click to access The%20Future%20of%20Education.pdf
On page 164, Fullan is described as being a so-called expert, and his disdain for research-based work.
http://tinyurl.com/4sajhse
In the Washington Post, “Critics of Jordan’s approach would argue that lasting change only results from consensus building and the development of organizational capacity. They could cite school leadership experts like Michael Fullan and describe the importance of relationships, knowledge building within an organization, and establishment of a learning culture. As Fullan argues in his book “Leading in a Culture of Change”:
Charismatic leaders inadvertently often do more harm than good because, at best, they provide episodic improvement followed by frustrated or despondent dependency. Superhuman leaders also do us another disservice: They are role models who can never be emulated by large numbers. Deep and sustained reform depends on many of us, not just on the very few who are destined to be extraordinary.”
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/do-we-need-another-hero.html
It sure sounds to me, that Fullan’s vision also includes no exceptional educational leaders that stand out, doing things that actually work for the latest crop of students, and may not work at all if passed around as a teaching practice. Is another weakness of Fullan’s vision, that practices that are being shared, are practices that share the vision and the philosophy. Could be, since many from other countries especially the third world, have no use for Fullan’s vision of education, when Fullan speaks of students in the abstract. The reality is much different.
On CTV – Canada AM is running a series called, What To Do, When Kids Are Failing
Since Fullan and his gang are pushing their latest reforms, philosophy, and profited handsomely for their effort – if the first segment that aired today is any indication, his reforms are a big bust for a parent who at the end, had to hire a tutor. A little old fashion technique of learning the basics, along with a healthy helping on studying skills. Something that Fullan avoids, but that is to be expected when he has a healthy disdain for research-based work.
“All week, Canada AM explores the ‘why’ behind high failure rates in Canadian kids schools. In the first installment of this series, a high school student and his parent share their personal struggle with his low grades. We’ll look at the causes and possible solutions with well-known author, educator and speaker Karen Hume who leads workshops at schools around the country.”
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/CanadaAM/20110214/failing-series-110214/
You are a little too quick to label everyone you don’t like a Marxist or a Communist Nancy. There was a Jr Senator from Wisconsin who gave his name to that urge in the 1950s.
To Mike, there is only one option in Ontario worse than McGuinty, Hudak.
I notice the Republicans south of the border are getting ready to slash education budgets to the bone in congress. Lucky there is still a Senate and a President in the way.
Harper just instructed CIDA to cancell a program run by CTF to send teachers and education experts to help 3rd world countries improve their education systems. Apparently we need the money for jet fighters and prisons to house our falling crime rate. Interesting priorities.
He who closes a school opens a jail – Victor Hugo.
Get ready for “Son of Harris” to do the same in Ontario. We have seen this movie, strikes, lock-outs, work-to-rule, schools turned upside down, green ribbons, …..
Does anyone wonder why teachers and most active parents hate the Tories? Could it be their scortched earth policies?
What does any of this have to do with Michael Fullan?
I did not labeled Fullan anything, but there is people including some educators that are pointing it out in various ways. Even the committed socialists, are not fans of his theories, because it forces change upon the users – the students and parents to their way of doing things, without taking into account their cultural background and values. In order for Fullan’s theories to work, all must share the same values and the same vision. As for students who have some type of learning problems, I can only get bits and pieces, since much of the criticism and any research of Fullan that he wishes buried is in the paid subscription journals.
“The concept belongs to Michael Fullan, an expert on instructional leadership and change. (I wonder if anyone has called him an “implementation dip”?) “According to Michael Fullan, the early stages of an innovation are likely to involve participants in considerable difficulty and frustration. The real benefits of the new approach may not be realized or noticed for months. In fact, early attempts may result in failures of various kinds. Fullan suggests that participants need to know something about the change process and this implementation dip before they proceed so as to minimize problems with the next peril ………………….. I need to do some more reading about this idea. It does seem appealing, of course. How nice it would be to think that the drop in scores this year is actually a good sign. It’s too depressing to consider how hard we worked in the past year and that we didn’t get something positive out of it. Maybe we just need to remind ourselves that change takes time and that if we’re looking for immediate gratification, we’re looking for the wrong thing. Maybe we need to cut ourselves some slack and keep pressing forward. I’d like to think that we’re doing the best we can.. . disillusionment.” (source)
http://blog.whatitslikeontheinside.com/2005/08/implementation-dip.html
Comments are interesting – “Reading a couple of his papers from his website, he seems to think that most problems in schools are solved by better leadership. That doesn’t seem like a farfetched idea, but I wonder how he thinks these better leaders are going to find their way to the right spot in the school bureaucracy? All it takes is one dull, unimaginative (but not otherwise incompetent) school principal and, by his formula, a whole school is denied improvement for a decade or more.
If I was trying to solve this problem I would sure look for a bottom-up solution before I looked for a top-down one.”
And yet Fullan insists his vision is not a top-down solution.
Fullan is committed to changing the structure, but not at all concern with the other parts that need addressing, such as curriculum. The best teacher can do bad, due to poorly written curriculum and poor resources. But his little change theory, is where apparently it is only leadership that counts, along with collaboration, plus the shared vision. Nothing else matters, even under the poorest resource school. There is a wealth of information from teachers in third world countries, that Fullan theory is meant only for education systems that are well endowed with the resources and technology. Others have stated that it is the importation of North America middle-class values that is being imposed on the education systems world wide, because Fullan’s ideal student is the middle-class student with certain cultural norms and backgrounds that will allow his other part of the theory to work, the accountability part. There is harsher criticism that does state, none of the Fullan gang could run a school, much less teach in a classroom because they would meet reality head on. Running a school system, is not like running Google or any other company that is producing a product or service. Google does not change or force people to adapt to their product, but they work around people’s values and cultures, to locate a new product. Fullan and his gang, is determine to have people adapt to the thinking, the values that originated from the top , and filters down to the lower rungs. What happens to a student that is not learning in a school that is driven by Fullan’s theories? CTV, the link that I provided is one of the outcomes, and we’re going to see more of it.
There is a disconnect between the money being poured in the upper levels of the education system, and the percentage of money for resources in the bottom rungs of the system. Too many people have brought his vision, without looking at the end results. The series that is on CTV is an example of end results. Fullan may mouth the words that every student can learn, but he is not committed to this idea in the where that most people are. He has conditions put on, and that is every student can learn, providing they have the same goals and vision of the teachers, the school, and so on. When students do not perform like trained monkeys believing that they can, do these students get the correct help?
Another aspect to look at, is England and the Fullan’s theories that were in place, but now is very much a weaker version. Fullan blamed it on the cultural values of the people, and in part how the different parts of government did not work very well as a cohesive unit. In Ontario he is has better success, because it is the opposite when it comes to government operations, but he is still running into cultural values and norms that are very difficult to change.
Relax Doug, you can always applied for new teaching positions in the prisons, and at least in this area that Harper is spending some money, other than F-35 fighter jets. As for Harper cancelling the funding to send education experts to help third-world countries, perhaps he received a few calls from the third world countries, that all their fancy ideas still does not help a country who does not process the rich resources that Canada has. One gets the impression when reading articles from teachers from third world countries. They are not impressed with Fullan, but their leaders are, because it brings prestige to their country. I guess it might be a chance to dream, just for a little while before reality sets in once again.
What does any of this have to do with Michael Fullan?
Ask Mike, He is the one that introduced partisan politics. Oh I forgot, it is only politics if it comes from the left.
Although Michael Fullan has been involved with other provincial governments. Apparently, he is a sly fox in shifting his theories to suit whatever the political slant. I read plenty on his tactics, so one does not have to go and blame a conservative government for bringing in partisan politics. Apparently, the unions have been doing a pretty good job, since the Davis years.
Found an interesting slant, by the Ontario Library Association.
“Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty today outlined the government’s vision “for unleashing the potential of every student in Ontario’s publicly funded education system.” The strategy his government has “unleashed” is to create a new position in every school that will be devoted to teaching literacy and numeracy skills. There is no attempt to use the resources that exist in schools – the teachers, the librarians, the book collections, the specialists – the collaboration of gifted, passionate people. There is no vision of a unified approach by everyone in the education system to create thinking, problem-solving young people who can not only contribute to our society and our workplace but who can be successful and satisfied as individuals – social, safe and sane. Where is the capacity building? There is just the bandaid of adding a new specialist – and a very questionable one at that. Fifty years of research ignored and a new expense for a school system starved for money. Is this the best that Michael Fullan could offer the Premier? Is this government doomed to surround itself with advisors who give them such a sterile vision?”
http://www.accessola.com/ola/bins/content_page.asp?cid=2-301-347-385
A sterile vision is what they call Michael Fullan and his gang.
OMG I agree with Nancy, circle the calendar.
Not again.
Another “trend” that’ll cost millions in taxpayer dollars and further mess up education.
How long will this trend last before the next one? 6 months? 1 year? 12 minutes?
Best comment so far for me goes to Andrew Gilmour.
You said it Andrew! Lurching from trend to trend seems to be what happens to good students, teachers and parents who opt for the public system.
Another rule of thumb is that if we wait long enough those “trends” get recycled and come back to us re-gifted as something new and improved.
In Ontario an example of that would be how block scheduling of the 1970s came back re-gifted as something called the “balanced school day”.
Whole language & balanced literacy – also re-gifted.
I guess we could leave things the same forever. We could keep the strap, the dunce cap, and the teacher could scrub the floor and start the fire in the morning. We could pay her peanuts and fire her if she got pregnant. Each student could have a little slate, there would be no special ed or computers, and we could be happy with the education data from that era where only a tiny sliver of the already prosperous made it to university.
Sounds like Utopia.
At least the school I attended in Ontario, did not see me as a mental defect. Once upon a time Doug, that is what was done to children who did not make the grade. Thankfully, there was educators, and others that surrounded me that was well learned on the knowledge of the day, and of the knowledge of the past in areas of learning, that the public education system of its day, had already rejected. Rejected, because it did not represent the forms of progressive education.
Moving to the present, I have been following the witch hunt of the Canadian Association of University Teachers. They have seen fit to go after the universities whose mandates and missions are of the Christian types.
“And that is precisely the problem. These institutions, you see, are committed to something other than secular relativism; and that sticks in the craw of the CAUT and however many of its 65,000 members actually support these ludicrous investigations.
As it happens, I have lectured at both Trinity Western and at Redeemer College, as well as many secular Canadian Universities, and, for that matter, at Oxford and Cambridge in England. So I am in a position to offer a bit of direct evidence, evidence overlooked by the prolix twosome of Bruneau and Friedman: Yes, faith-based Universities are different. Allow me to explain.
At Redeemer and Trinity Western, the buildings are clean, the walls undefaced by graffiti. The knuckles of their students do not drag the ground. I noticed immediately that informal and animated discussions were going on everywhere on campus between students and faculty — and the faculty seemed to know each student’s name.
The Staley Lectures, which I was at Redeemer and Trinity Western to deliver, continued over several days: public addresses, seminars and discussions, an evening panel, etc. I experienced culture shock.
I discovered that these faculty and students were unafraid of concepts such as “truth,” or “good” and “evil” — words not only foreign to, but suspect in, the secular university. The students, mirabile dictu, were not intimidated by intellectual debate; ideas were not threatening to them, nor was free ranging inquiry immediately challenged as “offensive.” In fact, I never once heard the word “offensive.” Controversy was not something to be avoided. I quickly realized how long it had been since I had spoken at a school without speech codes and “equity officers.”
Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/02/15/ian-hunter-education-thrives-in-a-world-without-equity-officers/#ixzz1E2WlJJsq
Speech codes and equity officers can be added to the long list of trends, and where children like myself, the misfits are treated to the messages telling us that others have to take care of us, because we’re not much good at anything, including school work. A real pity, since a good number of my teachers came from Christian colleges and universities, who actually thought the opposite, we were capable learners, and just needed the individual attention on the basics in the three Rs. As the NP article stated, “Today, university dissenters from politically correct orthodoxy are encouraged to keep quiet, to fit their conclusions to premises they believe to be false. Instead of providing intellectual leadership, our universities are full mostly of CAUT-types, those whom J. S. Mill aptly called “conformers to the commonplace.”
Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/02/15/ian-hunter-education-thrives-in-a-world-without-equity-officers/#ixzz1E2Zd8GEl
How many public school teachers are urged to keep quiet, in our public education system, or else face the firing squad or an equity officer reading them the riot act?
BREAKING NEWS – B.C. Liberal candidate opens the school choice door there……even wider. Go Christy!!!
http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun/blogs/reportcard/archive/2011/02/14/christy-clark-s-education-vision-more-school-choice.aspx
Read the letters below. Not very popular.
I guess this means she won’t win. Far more people oppose these policies than support them.
Cate I assume you will be admonished for not talking about Fullan. Doretta doesn’t like it if you stray off topic.
On the issue of school choice and parent advocacy B.C. is light years ahead of Ontario.
I’ve always admired Christy Clark and hope that some of what she’s doing rubs off on Ontario politicians sooner rather then later because currently we have some gutless wonders
playing politics with each other rather than actually moving Ontario forward to play with the other provinces who have long ago understood that having more choice in and outside the system challenges status-quo. Never again will governments have to be pushed to silence by the teacher unions.
There is no virtue in choice. There is only virtue in excellence and equality.
Some parents operate with the school system to attempt to give their children an advantage in education and life. This is a very poor reason to have any state support.
All thinking in education needs to be based on squaring the circle beteen excellence and equality.
I believe in equality not advantage for a few and disadvantage for others. I do not believe in lowering standards to achieve equality however.
We must first set the bar high. How high? Such that no nation is higher. After that we measure our progress by putting more students, in terms of % of their age cohort, over that bar every single year.
Anyone who thinks this is either easy or cheap is not thinking much. It requires radical increases in spending and resources plus great wisdom in where the resources are allocated.
Is it worth it? Yes for our economy, yes for the individual student, yes for equality.
Choice is a needless distraction that diverts time energy and resources from far more important projects.
Polls in BC show that the majority of citizens do not support the existing public support for private schools. All we need is for the NDP to wake up and campaign to eliminate it.
As government support for public education is cut, more and more question how they have the money for private schools. Only a matter of time before it goes.
While Fullan et al try to twist and turn and blame teachers, the admin, “the system”. Some here would say “the blob”, it seems that the problem lies with poverty and parents.
Geoffrey Canada calls Dr Ferguson “national treasure”. The economist is THE major expert on the achievement GAP.
He says 50% of the gap is economics, (social class) and the other 50% is the lack of intellectual interest in the homes of blacks. Ferguson is black BTW.
That leaves 0% for the school. Hmmmm
50% class, 50% parents, 0% school. That can’t be, can it?
Not exactly what was stated about Ferguson. The gap is about race and culture.He even found the same numbers in the wealthier schools, with a black and white gap.
“His research indicates that half the gap can be predicted by economics: even in a typical wealthy suburb, blacks are not as well-to-do; 79 percent are in the bottom 50 percent financially, while 73 percent of whites are in the top 50 percent.
The other half of the gap, he has calculated, is that black parents on average are not as academically oriented in raising their children as whites. In a wealthy suburb he surveyed, 40 percent of blacks owned 100 or more books, compared with 80 percent of whites. In first grade, the percentage of black and white parents reading to their children daily was about the same; by fifth grade, 60 percent to 70 percent of whites still read daily to their children, compared with 30 percent to 40 percent of blacks. ”
Culture probably plays a larger role than educrats like it to be. Fool around with culture, unintended results can happen. Results like telling a parent what they are doing wrong, lecturing people. Ferguson’s way is far more tactic.
“. “I don’t want to be another one of those people lecturing black parents,” he says. “I tell them we in the black community — we — need to build stronger intellectual lives at home.”
Far better to do this, because it allows the parent to think about, and to take action on their own. Being told you must do this or do that, really does not work, especially when the person that is doing the telling is not explaining the why of it.
Than there is the biases of people. How strong it is, the views held by teachers and the rest of the educrats can be powerful if handled the right way, and can be devastated if not handled properly.
“He is often surprised by what the numbers tell him. He was compiling test scores for special-education students when he noticed that the biggest school in Massachusetts, with more than 4,000 students, Brockton High, also had the largest gains in English scores by minority students. “Just popped out at me,” he said. ”
I bet Fullan and the gang have interesting biases on SE children. If anything, they do a whole lot running around the SE issues, and nothing to pinned them down.
Read it carefully Nancy. Even in wealthy neighbourhoods, blacks usually have less money which is why he says, even there they do not do as well as wealthy whites.
One can assume more professionals living in wealthy neighbourhoods, and where blacks may be paid less for the same type of work. Or the other way around, where people moving a notch or two above, to get out of the former neighbourhood. Lots of people do that, just to give their kids a better life. If it was just income, than someone should do a study in mainly white neighbourhoods, going by income – and here too one is going to find that some people have less income than their next door neighbourhood. But will the numbers show that in a mainly white neighbourhood, with homes that have more or less the same value, will achievement increase as income levels rises? In this scenario, one can assume that the people living there, have the means to buy a home, holding a mortgage, etc. Lots of people save their money, until they have a large enough down-payment to get a home in a desired location.
Being white, does not mean they hold all the same cultural values, and the same desires. Too many sub-groups within the white race, where cultural is impacting achievement especially in Canada. One can’t pretend that cultural values do not matter. They matter a great deal, but it is difficult to measure, if one can measure it at all. Often the educrats make sweeping generalizations about people, that are imposing their values and cultural on others. One can only look at the social studies curriculum, to see that. I lost track how many times I had to correct my own children on values that are today’s values that are being injected into the constant revising of history. Pretty soon, our first settlers will be described as pansies, always awaiting to follow the orders of the British or French crowns.
Nancy, the data shows that white students are also highly stratified in education by income.
When your survey is large enough you see that the slightest change up or down the income scale will lead to higher or lower scores respectively.
There is a race factor but it is not as significant as the class factor.
Don’t you think it is facinating that Geoffrey Canada’s ‘go to guy’ explaining the education GAP says;
50% economics
50% the home broadly speaking
0% the school, admin, teachers, union, blob, Ministry, …
refreshing.
Hmmm…
So that means that we’d be best advised to dump resources into improving the economic lives and homelives of struggling students and not pour it into our public schools?
That IS refreshing 😉
That seems to be what Doug’s argument is suggesting. Who better to be on the receiving end of tax credits and money than parents. That way they’re supported in the choices they make.
Very nice catch.
Certainly we cannot expect to make any real difference with the education of the poor but also allow them to remain poor.
Finland child poverty = 4%
USA = 20%
Finland PISA = #1
USA = #19
If you don’t think they are connected, remedial school improvement for you.
Where does the data said that about homogeneous populations? If that was the case, than the wealthiest students would be at the top all of the time. Another question arises too, that the curriculum is designed around the wealthiest values and culture as well. Another question that would arise, is that teachers have biases towards children of lower income. Culture plays a strong role where income can determine the values. For example lecturing people on food choice, may go to waste on a group that cannot always afford nutritious food. However, educating people on how to find affordable food is a better bet on changing people.
Only the few have the benefit of going on vacation a few times each year, seeing different things, but the great majority is tied to their economic circumstances, because of the great wage gap that is eating away the middle-class, and keeping the poor, poor. However, education levels does play a role, in the great divide, and where the public education system does a poor job in addressing the education levels, without running head on into the cultural values.
Furthermore, income is a variable that can be easily measured, as well as education levels. However it is the cultural values that cannot be easily measured. It is probably the reason why the low income school in the Niagara school board, has dropped the requirement on low income, and just kept education level of grade 12 or below. Actually, now it will include many from the middle-class whose parents only have grade 12. Below is a Star article, on a new school in Toronto, and is rather novel to say the least.
“A private school for low-income high-school students — where the kids would work to pay for their own tuition — has made its first inroads into opening in Toronto.
Father Joseph Redican, president of St. Michael’s College School, once ran a Cristo Rey school in inner city Detroit and wants to bring the model here. Students would work one day a week to pay their tuition and attend longer days the other four to make up. Redican says the placements do more than cover tuition costs — students gain important job skills and experience.
He says the Detroit branch was “unexpectedly successful” because it set high standards for economically disadvantaged students to become the first in their family to attend college. The Cristo Rey Network, which runs 24 schools in the United States, says 100 per cent of its graduating students went on to post-secondary education last year. A steering committee for the Toronto Cristo Rey school will launch a feasibility study March 1.
But is a separate school for low-income students segregation, or simply a leveling of the education playing field?”
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/938805–school-for-poor-kids-would-make-them-work-for-tuition?bn=1
I actually think both schools is a leveling of the education playing field, because both would be looking at the cultural values that are experience with parents of low-income or lower education levels. Having all students sharing more or less the same cultural values, can be helpful insight in motivating students.
When you plow into culture, you are really walking on eggs. If you go as far as saying black or Spanish culture is responsible for lack of success, you will certainly raise the temperature of the room. Black and Hispanic education leaders say no or at least, not much there.
Too far you are into Charles Murray and the Bell Curve. Race explanations are not far behing “culture” explanations.
Majority Black culture is a subset of working class culture. Poor black students face two hurdles that middle class whites don’t face – class and race.
Here you go again, referring culture into the various classes. Working class such a old fashion term, to cover up the sins of the economic systems.
Here is a little information on Finland, related to food costs.
“As Global Food Prices Soar, Even Wealthy Finland Sees Food Queues Flourish”
Read more: As Global Food Prices Soar, Even Wealthy Finland Sees Food Queues Flourish http://www.medindia.net/news/As-Global-Food-Prices-Soar-Even-Wealthy-Finland-Sees-Food-Queues-Flourish-36760-1.htm#ixzz1EAwQlQF4
“Miettinen is not alone in complaining that sky-rocketing food prices have made it difficult in recent months to make ends meet.
According to the World Bank, 33 countries around the world face political and social disturbances due to rising food and energy prices.
Few would have expected Finland, one of the world’s wealthiest nations, to feel the pinch.
But the Nordic country, which has long aimed to smooth out all class difference in its generous welfare state, has experienced growing income disparity in recent years, leaving the poor trailing ever further behind. ”
Other articles, have stated that the middle-class in Europe is feeling the pinch just as hard as in Finland. Furthermore, Europeans spend a greater percentage of their income on food, compared to United States. In Canada, we do as well and that is if one wants to eat good food. Food banks are in another high growth cycle, not only serving people of low income, but as well as the lower end of the middle-class.
Furthermore, Finland is an expensive country to live in, but not as expensive as Sweden. Income disparity and gap is widening at a greater pace, when most countries in Europe have extensive social programs in place. There will be a time, when it is North America’s turn where governments are going to have to make some choices. In education, Fullan and the gang will be let go, for something far more sensible and far less costly.
There is not one word in there that undermines even one aspect of my argument.
Here is my full argument as articulated by the one American who really knows what she is talking about in education. Fullen is a huge “data driven” guy which is his main tie in with the privatizers. BTW DR was the Under-Sec of Education under George Bush.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6939/obama_sides_with_corporate_attack_on_teachers_instead_of_new_war_on_po/
She says I’m right Nancy, you act like I make this stuff up. This is what the sharpest minds in education believe.
Poverty and social class is not one of many factors in education. It is the single only significant factor. Everything else is window dressing.
No doubt there’d be far more social and cultural diversity (and poverty) in a country with a population of 300 million than in a country of about 5 million.
The point of measuring poverty is by % not by totals. It does not matter what size a nation is.
We know you have difficulty with the fact that Finland is a democratic-socialist country that is recognized as having the world’s best education system mainly due to its low PERCENTAGE of poverty and its investment in the high education level of teachers.
You sound a little out of sinc with mainstream thinking on PISA, TIMMS, OECD etc that says Finland is #1 with no testing, no charters, no vouchers, etc.
The world of education, lacking any better evidence, takes the OECD results as the best there is.
There is proof in the article above that ONLY poverty matters but I know you have difficulty swallowing that because it undermines the core of your probably life long belief system regarding what actually matters in education.
The repeating of the mantra “Finland doesn’t count” does not change the fact that the world’s experts say “Finland is the model”.
Well, in the first place Ravitch was at the top engineering the first reforms, before she change her tune, that was in keeping with the teachers’ unions. At the end of the article ,
“All of these high-profile attacks on teachers, their unions, and union-won rights avoid the real causes of poor school performance. “Most of the nations that the US is comparing itself with have much lower rates of poverty among their children. It’s 20% nationally here, and I know it’s much higher in this community.” (32 percent of children in Milwaukee are poor.)”
Besides Finland, the top performers are Asian countries that have a higher percentage of poverty than United States. Of course looking at the percentage of income needed to cover the basics in food, shelter and transportation, the 20 % poverty rate can be had in countries such as Canada, Britain, and other European countries.
The many experts across the different fields define poverty differently. But few if any especially governments want to define poverty in percentage of the cost of basics to their income. If it was done this way, a greater number of people would be included, as living in poverty.
One thing that has not change about Ravitch, and she states it again at the end, “The over-emphasis on testing, the targeting of teachers, the senseless closing of schools, and the substitution of a market model for the basic democratic right of public education are all generating an increasingly vocal backlash from both teachers and parents.”
She wants a return to community schools, that provides a basic foundation in the ABCs, bring back art, music and the rest of the very things that were thrown out by the progressive educrats.
Yes, one can make a case that low-income affect cognitive ability of children, but without returning to a more traditional curriculum – it is impossible for progressive teaching and its philosophy to have any impact on children who are low-income. Low-income must be taught, in the same way as a dyslexic. Systematic instruction that start in the beginning, and not as many of the progressive methods start at the end, and let the students figure out the beginning. One sure fire way, of loosing students get them confuse from the get-go.
Fullan and the gang, love their progressive philosophy, because it keeps their pockets lined with dollars. They are not at all concern with the fall out, once students graduate from high school.
There are far more variables possible in a country sixty times larger than the other. As to poverty I suspect you’d find that a far higher percentage of the Finnish workforce work for a small number of companies (hint:Nokia) so if its doing well so are they. Contrast that with a far more variable number of challenges facing workers in a broader employment scenario.
As to “high education levels of teachers” in Finland I suspect they’d take on duties appropriate for their level. In Ontario a Masters degree and a Bachelors degree could be teaching at exactly the same level in classrooms side-by-side. Maybe we should tie additional responsibilties to additional credential and not simply for having “higher education levels”
On the issue of diversity it appears Ms Ravitch was addressing a pretty narrow crossection of the populace.
Well it certainly does, since to obtain the percentage, one must use the population number. In Finland, the poverty rate is low to begin with, due to the social programs in place. But that figure is rising, as basic costs are rising, and if one include low-income in Finland, the percentage rises to 22 % plus the 4 % who live in poverty. In China, I think they have 6 billion people, and here there play the number game, depending on the audience.
That is an old ploy Doug, and in fact it is being played now with the Ontario government, beating the drums of equalization. Comparing NL to Ontario, and to state that we get more services than people in Ontario, is false. NL just looks good on paper, the reality is much different with smaller populations. Any country looks good if they have a small population. Iceland looks good on paper, but the reality for the citizens is much different. Finland, took two strategies in re-branding themselves. The first one, is finding a niche in the globalized world which is being very good at high tech, and the second strategy improve the social programs to a point where it was no longer interfering at the school level. It has worked fine, until the global economic crisis, and the other pesky problem that often crops up in countries that have high levels of social programs, unemployment for those who do not have high levels of education. Lots of trades people, walking around looking for work.
One can look at just the poverty level, but to make plans without looking at the whole picture, is throwing money down a bottomless pit. The focus has to be on the whole picture or otherwise it is a fool’s errand. It is exactly what Fullan and the gang is doing, narrow focus on a few goals which probably explains why the achievement rates have risen only by 13 %. How much money has been spent, is probably in the billions for an increase of 13 %.
FWIW Nokia alone employs about 20,000 workers in Finland. Consider that in context of a nation of about 5.3 million.
right John L. and I would also bet that the corporations contribute big time to the successes there educationally.
Let’s open the corporate flood gates here in Ontario and see what happens?
I happened to note also that children in Finland don’t start school as early as our kids. How be we move to that model to and save ourselves some cash?
John, 20% of teachers in the TDSB have a MEd or higher, 85% of those are in a position of responsibility. The system does sort this out.
Finland attempts and largely succeeds in demanding 2 masters degrees from its teachers. One is subject based (English, Math, history) and one is in education MEd.
There are a few hard to fill positions (physics in northern town say) where they will hire with less, but not many.
Most kids in Finland are in a high quality ECE setting quite early, it is not just the official school system.
Nancy, of course the poverty reduction and mitigation programs of Finland play a large part in its success. That has been one of my main points from the beginning.
Shanghai scored very well in PISA this time. 80% of Shanghai students pass the Gow Cow national exam and go to university. The national avg is 24%. Do you think Shanghai is representitive?
Students in Korea attend school many more hours than Canada, teachers are honoured as nation builders. Korea has recently slashed their class sizes. They have been the most rapidly rising country in OECD rankings lately.
I hope you are beginning to see what works:
1) low poverty levels
2) highly educated and respected teachers
3) smaller classes
Teachers with master degrees usually climb the ladder to become the educrats, and if not, they get a another prize, an increase in salary. However, at least in Finland, the teachers with masters degrees are throughout the whole education system, and are well versed on language teaching. In Canada, many are not so well versed on language, and perhaps teach science with only an English degree.
As for China, if one wants to trust any stats from a country that locks up their poor migrant workers at night, and let them loose in the morning – China does not include all the students, since only a portion of the student population actually makes it to the high school level. Figures have been sited at a low of 25 % to a high of 40 %. Most students that manages to get to high school, do go on to post secondary institutes. The students at the high school level, represent the best minds and it would be expected to score very high on the PISA tests. Most students who do not meet the grade, end up going to work early on, and some of them as young as 14. The national average is 24 % that do go to university, but throw in the 6 billion number for population, the number of students at the university level becomes a very large number, compared to Canada.
As for South Korea, things are not as rosy as you think. Culture plays a big role where parents are making a lot of sacrifices for their children. In the first place, poverty level is 15 % dating back to 2007, and probably has gone up since than. Another thing, is their income tax system where about 67 % of the population take on the tax burden.
“The tax burden in South Korea also falls even farther below the OECD member nation average in the case of higher income brackets. The 2009 tax rate for high income earners, namely those with incomes 167 percent of average income or higher or with annual income of 58 million Won ($46.8 thousand) or more, was 15.2 percent of income, some 16.2 percentage points lower than the OECD average of 31.4 percent.
In the cases of low-income earners, those making 67 percent of average income or with annual income of 23 million Won or lower, and average earners, those with yearly salaries of 35 million Won, the difference is just 12.1 percentage points and 13.8 percentage points, respectively. This indicates that the richer South Koreans are paying less by a wide margin, compared to taxpayers in other countries.”
http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/424784.html
Teachers are honoured in their society for good reason. They too are not the average earners, and are considered wealthy to most of the population with the average jobs. The people with the average jobs, don’t have much left over, to even take a vacation – when they are pouring their money into private tutors for their children, so their children has a chance for a better life that a university degree can offer, and the prestige it brings to their lives. And of course an easier life, without the tax burden.
Korean poverty rate 15% USA 20% Hmmm
These long trips through the Wikepedia atlas of the world are interesting to some I guess but the OECD is the only credible source of who is doing well.
They say Finland, Korea, Canada, Singapore and Shanghai are the top 5.
Finland, sure but low poverty plays a major role.
Korea sure but many longer hours than Canadians would tolerate.
Shanghai? Interesting but not a nation. China’s highest educated big city
Singapore? A highly specialized city state, doing well yes but lives off a low level labour class of imports.
Korea should count, not Shanghai or Singapore so Canada is one of top 3 in the world no matter how you slice it.
It is interesting that many reformers want us to adopt losing strategies from nation #19, the USA when the USA ought to be looking to Canada for answers.
No matter how one dices it, Finland, China, Korea, Shanghai and Singapore more or less have homogeneous populations, sharing more or less the same cultural values. Canada and the United States have populations that share diverse cultural values and as for homogeneous populations, it depends on location.
As for reformers in Canada, would you not agree that Fullan and his gang are reformers, or is your dividing line it depends on the reformers, who represent the lesser threat aimed at teachers unions and keeping the status-quo.
As for Finland – here is a link from the government showing some pretty interesting data on poverty levels.
Click to access Karvonen_SummerSchool2010.pdf
“HELSINKI, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) — The number of poor in Finland was growing at an increasing pace, local media reported Tuesday.
According to EU and OECD standards, between 600,000 and 700,000 people in the country are classified as living in poverty, which is roughly 13 percent of the whole population. The status of the unemployed, in particular, has worsened as benefits have not kept up with the general rise in income levels.
Many people in Helsinki struggle to make ends meet. Nasu Kuuvalo is a department store sales clerk, earning 1,300 euros (1,823 U.S. dollars) per month, 150 euros (210 U.S. dollars) above the official poverty line.
“I pay my bills, buy food and that’s all my money. I’ve had to give up the membership of a gym,” she said.
In Helsinki, the number of poor had jumped by the end of 1990s. The increase has been explained by structural changes in the economy and the bursting of the IT bubble at the beginning of the 2000s, according to Finnish media reports.
“In Helsinki, 14 percent of the population live below the poverty line,” said Leena Hietaniemi, researcher of Helsinki’s urban facts department.”
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-11/03/c_13587984.htm
Youtube video – Getting out of Poverty in Finland.
Another video – Finland’s Education Success
I very much like the last line – ‘free from politicians, no one gets left behind’
Seem SOME people in NC didn’t want desegregation by income:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0324/Busing-to-end-in-Wake-County-N.C.-Goodbye-school-diversity
and:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/12/wake-county-school-board-_n_808329.html
Implications of Income-Based School Assignment Policies for Racial School Segregation
http://epa.sagepub.com/content/28/1/49.abstract
Looks like parents in NC should visit this site:
http://www.pefnc.org/
Of course the government in the past in the USA used bussing to “integrate” by race. The USA now has a lot more middle class black people and poor white people so it makes more sense to integrate by income today.
Nobody tries to “create” poor schools like the idiots in Niagara. On the other hand, schools in bigger cities are often income based ‘naturally’. There are similar situations in Ottawa hamilton etc.
Many schools in Toronto draw 100% of their kids from public housing. Naturally they are near the bottom of EQAO ranings no matter how much people try to deny income (SES) is THE critical factor.
Some web sites like to tout “successful” charter schools. Everybody now understands the charters ‘secret’ formula for success.
-make people attend information meetings (already screens for the motivated)
-tell the parents they cannot handle special ed, ELL students
-kick out all behavioural students
-push out low achieving students just beore big tests
-keep the kids many longer hours than public schools
-get foundation money so that you actually have more money than the local PS
– after all of that CREDO at Stanford says, on average charters do no better.
I haven’t, admittedly, read a great deal of Michael Fullan’s stuff, primarily because his work is process focused and doesn’t deal with the “what” and why” of education, while my interests lie in instruction, curricula, assessment and cognitive science. That said, I think the reason for Fullan’s success is precisely that he has developed a workable change model that school systems can use to implement their chosen reforms.
Note that the content of the reforms is probably irrelevant to the viability of the Fullan protocols: he was instrumental in bringing in more “instructivist” practices in the UK, while doing the opposite in Ontario. A contradiction? No, because the client is the one who determines what the desired changes are and what the results should look like. Most school reformers, of whatever political or ideological stripe, focus on very specific things (we’ve seen it right here!): standardized testing, teacher evaluation, report cards, “choice,” promotion/retention issues, reading pedagogy, etc. Most of the time these issues are dealt with discretely, as if they could be isolated from the interlocking system of which they are a part. Then, when reformers achieve — or appear to achieve — a victory on one of these fronts, invariably a concatenation of negative sequelae results that makes the victory a Pyrrhic one.
There are many system thinkers in the business world, but relatively few prominent ones in public education. Thus Fullan has limited competition for his consulting work. He does clearly see the importance of starting at the top and immediately roping in layers of middle-management to get fundamental reforms in place. Then, the boots-on-the-ground staff must be engaged in a participatory (but not really contributory) manner — that is, they are “involved” in a variety of ways, but their actual feedback and ability to influence or modify the process is quite limited. The reforms have been identified by upper echelons of the hierarchy, and will be systematically and incrementally put in place. The content of what is put in place — curricula, evaluation, grouping and instruction of students, school organization, and much more– are not part of Fullan’s mandate. I think it is disingenuous to term him a “progressive” (or a “traditionalist”), since his work is mainly of a pragmatic, not ideological, type.
Why does he remain popular and successful? Probably because he can point to numerous examples of success (if not success as we see it, success as those who hire him see it). Ontario is certainly a case in point. At least at the elementary level, the system evolution he has been part of engineering has produced a sea change in teaching practices, curricula, student evaluation, working conditions, school management and ambience, and the whole internal climate of the system. Teaching and learning in Ontario public schools are hugely changed from 10-15 years ago. One of the most obvious changes is the gradual shift from activity-based learning in the early grades to direct instruction. In fact that shift has been so nearly complete that the OFIP personnel are trying to beat it back somewhat to have more student-generated learning activities going on, instead of teacher-directed instruction.
Of course, the direct instruction is not that preferred by many reformers: it adheres to the new literacy guidelines (in Ontario, those of Fountas and Pinnell dominate the scene) and targets higher-level thinking, not the basic skills , which are presumed to be acquired in a just-in-time manner, by participation in “authentic” learning experiences. Nevertheless, it is direct teacher instruction, and little “discovery learning” is involved. Boards have traveling teams that visit schools and inspect every classroom to ensure compliance with the new approaches and monitor resources available and quality of student work produced. It’s a much more “tight” system now, with little room for “lone rangers” — teachers who shut their door and teach according to their own lights.
This standardization has its positive side — the less gifted learn from collaboration with grade and division team members who have better skills, but all, including the most able, must teach pretty much the same things in the same way — common learning tasks, materials, assessments, etc. Those who always taught “the basics” discreetly, out of sight, can rarely do so any longer. The effect of Fullan’s system success is to standardize the system to a great degree, and this has both positive and negative aspects.
The lesson to be learned is that if reformers want real and lasting changes to public schools, they must, like the Fullan consultants, think top-down and system-wide and take the various feedback loops and chains of command into consideration. Rick Hess makes some points similar to this and argues, persuasively, that the model we have had is no longer viable. We must quit constantly reacting to this or that specific aspect of public education and instead put forward a comprehensive new model, with a well-thought-out implementation plan.
One of the various critical problems for the conservative-traditionalist-reformers, (the same problem is mirrored on the left) runs along. not the X axis of right and left in politics but the Y axis of centralization-decentralization.
One can clearly see the bluff being called in the USA where the drum beat of “standards” on the right comes up against “national standards” even though they were worked out by state reps not the DOE.
VERY low achieving states like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas are also very conservative states. Very high achieving states like Minnesote and Massechusetts are liberal states. Conservative states will be ‘exposed’ by national standards and national testing, they understand that and run for the hills from national standards.
Whole system reform is the opposite of charters and vouchers. Many conservatives simply wanted Mike Harris to hand over the money, tax credit (voucher) style rather than centralize.
The alliance of centralizing reformers and decentralizing reformers can be papered over for long periods of time but the contradictions eventually come out.
From what I’ve seen, private schools for the wealthy don’t score a whole lot better than public schools. However, private schools that pick and choose only top academic performers score better.
A major study from York University on Ontario showed that, when you control for SES, in other words, compare apples to Apples, private schools were no better than public schools.
The above study was by Paul Greyson.
Sorry, but not being an “educrat”, your acronyms are meaningless.
SES ? Socio-economic Status, a nice way to basically say social class not totally based on income but based on broadly accepted scales like the Blishen scale where large groups of people are asked to rank people.
A humble clergy with a minimum income but a lot of education and respect would probably rank above a much higher paid electrician for example.
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-7964024/A-socioeconomic-scale-for-Canada.html
Thank you.
_______________________________________________
We have 4 sons between us.
Each was allowed to learn at his own pace and in his own way rather than following the “system du jour” – which seems to change almost anually depending on the latest fads and trends.
All 4 are rather successful in their chosen fields as a result.
Q: The “School Change” Wizards: What Drives Michael Fullan and his Disciples?
A: Money. There’s lots of it in doing trendy research and writing trendy books that educrats lap up in order to appear on “the cutting edge”. When they fail, it’s always somebody else’s fault.
Q: The “School Change” Wizards: What Drives Michael Fullan and his Disciples?
A: Money. There’s lots of it in doing trendy research and writing trendy books that educrats lap up in order to appear on “the cutting edge”. When they fail, it’s always somebody else’s fault.
That is all totally true except for the fact that the Ontario or Canadian system is not failing. It is the #2 or 3 system in the world. If we are doing badly, everybody else is doing worse.
You should take a look at Nova Scotia’s schools.
They’re a mess.
Compared to who?
Just about every other province in the country.
Why make a comparison when the evidence is staring all of us in the face. Andrew’s point is that the public system in Nova Scotia is boardering on being disfunctional.
Nova Scotia’s destination schools are big, precast, centralized boxes; more often than not, needing a prodigious busing pilgrimage equal to a full day of the school week spent by children in transit.
Perhaps Nova Scotia could look hard at the recent developments in PEI.
Doug, you can continue to paint a rosy picture in Canada’s public education system, defend the practices of educators making reams of money promoting so-calling education reform, while they collect a hefty salary from public tax dollars, support the right of union executives to travel by private jet, and to justify practices that leads to more inequities. But sooner or later, the gravy train is going to stop given the current economic climate, and the ever growing size of the public sector, and their appetite to grow jobs. How many employees are needed to change a light bulb at a school these days? Or to repair a flapping shingle on the school’s roof? How much paper work is needed?
Funny thing, about the public education system that instead of having wage repression, the system has resource repression. Resource repression, where resources and funds become scarce at the school level, and what resources and funds are available, are subjected to controls and criteria. In the Wikipedia, economic repression is define as: “Economic repression refers to various actions to restrain certain economical activities or social groups involved in economic activities. It contrasts with economic liberalization. Economists note widespread economic repression in developing countries.[1][2][3]
The main goal of economic repression is protectionism, the instruments for which include fines and ceilings on interest rates or exchange rates.[1][2]
A common type of economic repression against individuals is blacklisting.[4]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_repression
Resource repression, is taking place at the bottom levels of the public education system, in order to feed the appetites of the upper levels.
Here is the latest scheme to generate more tax dollars, on a problem that has existed for years, and yet the problem was all so preventable.
“A Toronto Liberal MPP wants to give Ontario’s cash-strapped school boards a little taxing power — but only so they can repair crumbling infrastructure.
David Caplan (Don Valley East) will introduce private member’s legislation Thursday that would amend sections of the Education Act to enable boards to raise money for the “renewal and maintenance of school facilities.”
With the accumulated capital deficit of the Toronto District School Board alone being around $3 billion, Caplan, who was a former trustee and infrastructure minister, said something has to be done.
“The cost of doing nothing means it just gets more and more expensive the longer you defer investment,” the MPP said Wednesday.
“There’s a whole generation of schools that were built in the 1950s and 1960s that are now … badly in need of repair.
“These are important places, where children are learning, teachers are teaching, and these are also important public assets that we have to invest in, whether that’s replacing the roofs, replacing asbestos or replacing windows or expanding for child care.”
Caplan’s bill would have the minister of education create a capital plan forcing school boards to identify what needs to be fixed. Boards could then raise an additional 5 per cent of their annual revenue from property taxpayers.
In Toronto, that would collect an additional $100 million annually.”
I wonder if the $100 million will go into repairs, or will the money come in handy by waiting for the ceiling to cave in, or the roof to cave in, and still move in the direction of selling off board property, closing down sections of schools, in order to pay all the salaries needed to change the light bulb in a school.
“The $3 billion (backlog) is increasing exponentially,” he added. “We’ve not been able to be proactive in the work we do on our buildings, and instead we’ve taken a reactive approach. So when a ceiling collapses that’s when we fix it; when a roof starts leaking, that’s when we replace it” and emergency repairs are much more costly.
“It’s really a situation that snowballs,” he said.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/943917–mpp-urges-infrastructure-help-for-school-boards
Perhaps number 1, 2 or 3 in putting out the many small fires, and creating new jobs at the top to promote more of the same – resource repression at the bottom levels.
Nova Scotia is famous for the high number of universities in such a small fairly poor province.
Rather irrelevent in a discussion about public education.
I don’t have numbers at hand but, if I’m not mistaken, the majority of our university population is from out of province.
Doug, there is a historical reason, why Nova Scotia has a large number of post-secondary institutes, for a small geographical province. What does that have to do with Steven’s comments on the public education system, K-12? One can reduced or eliminate post-secondary schools in Nova Scotia, but it still would not undo the problems of the system K to 12.
Although the new found oil wealth is upgrading NS, the collapse of the fishery is offsetting on the other end.
Historically, the poorer the province, the lower the education standard. As NFLD or NL as Nancy calls it is booming due to oil, its education system is catching up as well.
All education problems, I don’t mean most, I mean all education problems are totally congruent with poverty. Poverty must be totally eliminated as THE GREAT NATIONAL PROJECT. As poverty goes down, education results will climb.
Canada is one of the wealthiest nations in the world. It is not poverty as such, IMO, but the huge discrepancy between wealthy and poor. That discrepancy is growing at an ever accelerating pace.
It isn’t how much we have that is the issue but what we do with it.
Better be careful, people on the Atlantic coast have rather strong views on the problems of the Atlantic provinces. With the bulk of blame being placed on Ottawa, with another percentage on Quebec and Ontario policies that really promotes and drives the poverty and job rates in the Atlantic provinces. What we have in the Atlantic provinces are stronger poverty strategies than Ontario has. Due to the smaller population base, there is the ability to set money aside for poverty, health and education strategies, without costing a great deal of money. Once upon a time, Nova Scotia was a booming province, until policies of Ottawa and Ontario decided that all manufacturing, shipping points would reside west of New Brunswick. Than they needed labour, and the raid begun on reducing the Atlantic provinces population. At least there is a silver lining, the Atlantic provinces does have more resources that directly benefits the students, compared to Ontario. And Fullan’s ideas are too expensive for the Atlantic provinces.
I am very interested in education as it pertains to community. Whether it is an urban community or a rural one, resources seem to play a critical role in the manner in which a community evolves, or in many instances devolves/stagnates. My experiences have more of a rural focus.
The SRSB has as we speak put up three schools (again) for review. One of which is in Canso; a community that recently announced a new fish plant processing under utilized species. A small plant, but worthy of optimism for the symbolic town that never says die. It is obvious their school is crucial for their future – period.
The community of Guysborough (the county municipal seat) has been sitting on a mountain of cash from sable gas revenues and it shows in their waterfront development over the last several years. The school located in Guyborough is the result of much consolidation in a seriously depopulated region. This community has all the bells and whistles. However, even councilors have expressed concern that it is a shame to have so much in the way of financial resources and so little population to benefit from it – as they observe out migration continue its rapid pace.
Minutes away is Lincolville, a small community settled by Black Loyalists. This community is adjacent to the county landfill site, the first site for years seeped into the water table of nearby citizens. The rerouting of route 16 insured local traffic would no longer have to drive through this community. Linconville currently has a population of about 60 people, mostly seniors. Most people would use the word poverty to describe this tragic situation.
All of the communities mentioned have had community leaders struggle to express the need for sensible and reliable K-12 education as a fundamental hub for community growth and identity; not just as a spoke. The feeder communities (how I dislike that word) have suffered greatly and unless there is a structural change in Nova Scotia’s centralization idiology, which I believe includes accountability, our public system will continue to deteriorate along with the notion of community.
steven – your experience mirrors my own re: rural/small town education and its delivery.
I grow increasingly tired of the system being controlled from the centre and based on the needs of larger urban boards.
Similarly there are few to zero, organizations that can move their minds away from the urban centres of the universe long enough to realize they’re not connecting on the rural/small community opportunities.
Structural change is needed in Ontario also in a BIG way.
The blame should be placed on the DREE grants and all that followed. People without work should be “encouraged” to move to Fort McMoney, not sit and collect EI.
When the shift in jobs happens to NS and NL oil, they can move back. We can no longer afford to support “old man and the sea, way of life ” romanticism. It is too expensive.
The romance lies in the “wizard complex”. Something that should be “goin down the road”. We are only as strong as our weakest link. There is nothing romantic about Canso’s or any othe rural/urban struggle.
Indeed.
We (Bridgetown) were on the verge of getting our elementary school closed and students bussed to another school.
Two municipalities, 3 schools in 2 towns, the general population, the local Chambers of Commerce etc. prepared impact studies and alternatives to the Annapolis Valley Regional School Board administration’s plan.
These studies were given to the School Board administration but they were never passed on to the elected board members who were considering school closures/amlgamations. Needless to say, they were proceding without complete information.
I was present at an SAC meeting when our local School Board rep was advised of the reports’ existence.
The result is that our elementary school will probably be closed but instead of bussing our children they will be relocated to our high school which will become a K-12 school.
The point is that the school board administrations (superintendents etc.) are no longer worthy of the public trust. We are not unique in facing these situations.
Andrew – same thing going on in Ontario. The rate of school closures in rural/urban communities is marching right along at a much greater pace than urban schools even though on scale the rural/urban schools are not under-enrolled.
Here’s one example of many
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/christina_blizzard/2011/02/18/17331661.html
But Doug, I guess you be real happy in the morning, waking up to everything processed in China, and reserve any local product for the well-to-do. I heard a carton of organic eggs in Toronto is going for $6.99 cents. You have swallow hook, line and sinker on the demise of the fishery, including the romantic tales of the land and sea. Funny thing though, most secondary food processing takes place in the big cities of Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver, and very little of added value processing takes place in rural areas that are closest to the resources. For that matter, one can throw in mineral and oil processing as well. The big cities gets the jobs, and than the products are shipped off across Canada and where the consumer ends up paying a steeper retail price, because of the high costs of labour in the city. Add in the transportation costs, a dozen eggs or a gallon of milk cost more in rural areas than in urban areas.
The same thing can be applied to educating our children in rural areas vs urban areas. Even here resource regression is actively at play here. In my community, our science teachers could have active science classes outdoors, exploring the biology of the local pond , but that is against the so-called rules of the education ministry. Someone might get hurt, since it is not an approve site, filled with the educrats espousing their latest social drivel, and apparently keeping children safe from the dirty ponds located in small communities. My point is that most of the so-called regulations/policies of the education ministry is aimed at the urban children, and not necessarily good for rural concerns.
Furthermore, jobs in Alberta are finite in the sense there is only so many good paying jobs to go around. And after training, the oil companies decided to create work camps, and fly out workers from various places. In part, it is actually keeping rural communities alive since their wages are being spent in the local community, and not in Alberta. Moving out to Alberta is not an option for a good many of the workers, since the assets if they have any are not worth the same as it would be in Alberta, and there is a housing shortage plus high real estate/rental prices. No wonder, outside of Toronto nobody likes Toronto and their elitism attitudes.
As for DREE, resettlement of communities only happen in more remote places at the present time, and the residents must all agree to it, before government commits time and purchasing of the properties. I think the last resettlement, a few years back, each received $90,000 to go elsewhere.
It is the policies and regulations that hail from our bureaucracy and governments that are created by people who either think rural residents need guidance over their affairs or they need the heavy hand of regulating our lives. Either way, underneath it all the policies are meant to drive out people out of rural areas, increasing the bottom profit and revenues of corporations and governments. Education systems have gone that way, closing down rural schools, and building large schools in a centralized area. Saving money is the last thing on their minds, but that is what they tell the people, as the bus rides get longer and longer. That is what they say, saving money telling the people in the community that you will only have a part time guidance teacher and vice-principle because of low student population. The money that is saved, moves to the resources for urban areas, but sooner or later the government ends up paying a steep price for neglect in the rural areas. Case in point, neglect of building maintenance cost the government close to 3 million dollars to repair the high school, and even with all the money, they could not find the money to put on a new coat of paint for the main office. It was left untouched. I guess it be left up to the teachers to give it a coat of paint on their own dime, as it has been left up to the principal to shovel the sidewalks. I guess the janitors have better things to do, than being exposed to snow and sweat. I bet those things are not on any union contracts, but probably will be there soon, so unions can nickle and dime the taxpayers for working on such things as changing a light bulb or shoveling a sidewalk. Meanwhile, the bio labs in rural schools, can do without for a little longer, in hope of having more people move away to the big city.
Rural Canada, needs their own policies especially in education and health. We need community-based solutions that works for the individual communities, and not the stuff that is suitable for urban areas. School boards and ministries of education, can no longer be trusted in making good decisions for rural areas, and for that matter other areas such as health or local economies.
I don’t think that the NSTU being in bed with the NSSBA will improve matters either.
Nice country out there. I know the area well. I like the end part of the article: “It makes no sense to shut down local schools and shove young people onto buses just because a big city bureaucrat crunched some numbers and came up with a one-size-fits-all model that doesn’t really measure up for anyone.
It seems to me Pink Floyd was right after all.
We don’t need no education.
We don’t need no thought control …
All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall.”
That’s all we are to some slick city bureaucrat, a brick on a wall, to move at will. And yet not a single school closure in the high rent district of a city. Not one………….but than again they have to keep the well-to-do happy and contented.
It seem to me the more common the example, like the one in Zurich, ON, the more national the problem becomes. However, accountability forms slowly in assessing and opposing the punitive strategy implimented by those endorsing centralization.
The South Shore Regional School Board has just today implimented cuts to special needs, community based education and so on, (13 positions in total) in an effort to meet the objectives decreed by the NS provincial government budget reductions. Most of these cuts will directly affect the classroom.
Punishing the children seems to be the only form of rhetoric school boards know when faced with cuts, or when not obsessed with school reviews and closures. Punitive, but for what reason? To have all the marbles?
This is the same board that closed the Lunenburg junior/senior High school, the Lunenburg Academy P-5, Riverport Consolidated, and Centre Consolidated. All to build and consolidate students into a post modern P-9 box. All of these schools were healthy, especially the high school, and will be replaced with a capitol project of approximately 30 mill.
How much will really be saved if ( a big if) the project comes in at that price? Don’t forget to add 10 more buses a day to the costs.
The Lunenburg town council approved of the closures before the SAC’s even had a chance to review the impact studies. Not that it mattered much, as the SAC was not given an independant facilitator on hand to assist them in obtaining accurate information in the first place.
Lunenburg High students now travel to Parkview in Bridgewater, eating up over 2 hours of each day. Sounds like a familiar tune.
What lies did they put forth to get what they wanted?
Oh, and of course everything was done in secrecy… aka, in camera.
Wow, a hour in one direction. Even our own school board, when looking for options when the high school went under renovations, dismissed the idea of travel every day 55 kms one way. It was cheaper to renovate the community centre, which was a school once upon a time, than to bussed the students. It would have taken 4 buses to do it. So far we have been lucky, since our population is more or less stable, and for that matter the whole peninsula has a stable population. Of course, our provincial representatives are cabinet ministers, and that helps a great deal in making sure there is no closures in health or education.
Lucky you. Everybody else is getting the royal shaft.
As of today there has been 11 schools on the SouthShore Regional School Board web site “Identified” for review. This is only the identification period but if past experience is of any consequence, this would be cause for concern. The question is which ones will make the review list.
I took a look on the SouthShore Regional board, to read the announcement of review. It looks very much like other announcements, stating a slate of schools to be review, and the board already knows what schools will be close. They just have to go through the process. It does not look good. I also look at the number of students being bused, which is 91 buses carrying almost 6800 students, out of a total of 7442 students. Just a little over 91 % of students being bused. I bet they figure out another couple of closures won’t increase their transportation costs. It is going to cost a fortune if the price of a barrel of oil keeps on increasing, along with other costs. Would it not be cheaper to downsized schools in the communities, rather than closures that does bring other problems not only to the community, but as well as the school that is taking in the new students?
I bet Jim Gunn is a “consultant”.
Nancy,
back in the eighties the SSRSB was encouraged by the development of an IB program at Parkview, located just outside of Bridgewater. Rather than pursue a satalite campus, say in Lunenburg, parents and students followed the road to educational excellence regardless of the effect on their community or the negative influence on student enrolment at their home town school. It became culturally acceptable to kneel at the shrine of Parkview no matter where the student lived on the south shore. Even a recent AIMS B minus rating has not tinged the generally accepted view in Lunenburg that perhaps the IB program is propping up Parkview’s performance and academic standards/image. Each year the number of graduates from the IB system is nominal.
Throughout this time the school board fostered the commute to Parkview with a vigerous transfer policy which continues to this day. A good percentage of Lunenburg High students have always bused their way to Parkview. Optimal program delivery was not possible in smaller more “inflexable” schools like Lunenburg High, according to the school review report prior to closure.
One has to seriously question why a community no longer see the need for a high school in its future.
programs, programs, programs… are these schools or fast food joints?
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/02/25/rhode.island.teachers.fired/index.html?hpt=T2
Cate,
That has to be the dumbest move ever and most education people agree. They have sent demoralizing message to every teachers and they will not soon recover from such stupidity.
When you deal with students this is called “negative reenforcement”. Highly counterproductive.
Time to see how strong the union is in Rhode Island. IMO, all teachers in the state should immediately start working to rule.
It appears that the overwhelming majority of people interested in “education reform,” as well as many actively in the field of education, are almost completely ignorant of the science — and it is a science — of human behaviour and its laws and applications. Many problems in both the structure and delivery of public education are rooted in this lack of knowledge.
For a start, read Murray Sidman’s classic Coercion and its Fallout
It’s life-changing.
Follow it with Karen Pryor’s popular classic, Don’t Shoot the Dog! (about humans, not dogs, although positive learning techniques have been adopted by animal trainers, if not educators, and so Pryor added some info on this to new editions and it’s a runaway bestseller among animal people. Still, the book is about human behaviour)
Have a difficult spouse, teenager, boss? This is the book for you. Seriously. It also explains how one can change one’s own behaviour — sometimes a good idea.
The ne plus ultra in understanding and changing human behaviour is the book by Israel Goldiamond, Functional Analysis of Behaviour. Although it’s an academic book, it is lucidly and engagingly written, with many vivid anecdotal illustrations of specific principles. Truly outstanding.
http://www.behavior.org/item.php?id=144
Many well-intentioned “reforms” end up on the rocks through failure to anticipate the inevitable behavioural consequences they will have. Successful reformers must arm themselves with the knowledge to design effective implementations that take the science into account. It also makes huge differences to student learning.
Andrew Gilmour
Time to see how strong the union is in Rhode Island. IMO, all teachers in the state should immediately start working to rule.
I agree Andrew, but the union would have to “make it look” as if every teacher decided to do it themselves. For the union to advocate a work-to-rule in Ontario for example, during a strike would be the same as councilling an illegal strike.
Work-to-rule must otherwise come at the end of a contract after the failure to negotiate a new one. It is a form of strike. I in fact strongly endorse it since the workers get full pay, put pressure on the employer and the employer’s only recourse is to lock the workers out thus escalating the situation and taking the blame.
By “firing” an entire group of teachers the contract has already been breached. Any action by other teachers would depend on if the contract is local or statewide. As for the “fired” teachers they should all call in sick.
Steven – That is quite the commute, just by eyeballing the distance on a map. One does have a beautiful school in Lunenburg – it looks like a fairy castle or something only the wealthy lives in. You are probably right in your assertion on Parkview. But can one blame the parents to send their kids there, when it is the only school offering the IB program, compare to the other local high schools. I still lay odds the board did it with deliberately with purpose because of the declining enrollment and eventually closing of other schools. The board will soon whittle down the schools to 20 to 25 schools, due to the geographical landscape and where communities are closer together than in NL. My question is why did they not look at retaining the schools, by redesigning them into smaller schools, that still offers all the regular stuff. It is the same, but it is on a smaller scale? Just have one or two schools that specializes like Parkview. There is lots of schools in rural NL with a population hovering around 150 + with one or two schools that are located in a central region that has well over 500 + students. If the neighbouring town that is 55 kms away, started to offer the IB program, there would be few takers from our community, and I highly doubt the board would offer transportation. The school has a hard enough time getting sports funding, to finance the transportation side of things, much less finance an IB program.
I’m becoming more and more convinced that public education has become one huge racket designed to enrich publishers, educrats and consultants.
In the U.S., some 10% of all jobs are supposedly directly or indirectly dependent on the public education system. This would include not only direct employees but also (as you allude) outside suppliers of instructional materials, furniture, cleaning supplies, technology, service technicians, electricians, construction workers, heating and air conditioning specialists and suppliers, building materials, landscapers, groundskeepers, vehicle suppliers and maintenance personnel, insurance agents, lawyers and accounting firms, public relations personnel, printers and media specialists, cafeteria personnel, food suppliers (U.S. schools provide breakfast and lunch in many schools), and on and on and on. Not to mention the mega-suppliers, like the publishers and many consulting firms and traveling-road-show gurus.
10% of the economy is a pretty powerful, if unrecognized, force.
It’s probably a smaller percentage in Canada due to a more decentralized system with fewer levels of bureaucracy. But I’ll wager it’s still significant.
Nancy,
it is hard to argue against the desire for parents to see their children get the best education available to them in their region. I am one of them. But program delivery has become an old rhetorical dog in the annual discourse when closing community schools. Yes it was a deliberate strategy with debilitating consequences. But I agree with you, smaller is achivable in a very competative landscape; only it would take an idiological shift in school board thinking here.
The building you mentioned is the Lunenburg Academy, a P-6 and one of the endangerd schools currently on the verge of limbo. It is a brilliant, unique, and excentric school constructed on Gallows Hill next to the Lunenburg Graveyard. It is one of the best, if not the most relevant school in todays big box obsession with uniformity.
Andrew and Steven, I’m in NS too and have been face booking and tweeting today about the South Shore Board stuff. My questions are:
1.Why does one Board come forward and announce randomly that they are going to begin budget cuts before the Department of Education even reviewed them?
2. Why is the classroom and special needs the first on the list when they wereminstructed to protect both?
3. Why did notmeven one politician jump on it and comment? I tweeted the Liberal Education Critic, Kelly Reagan as she had not made any comments about it. She blamed the Premier!
You may both like to check out a good group on fb of parents trying desperately to fix our system in NS. it’s called Choice Words! We need to ban together!
The Lunenberg school is truly unique, and I bet it does create a pride within the student population, and a few ghosts stories. I would think it certainly sparks creative story writing, because it would take at least a couple of years for students to have the outlay of the school down pat. Hence the ghost stories, listening to the creaks and groans of an old building. The school should exist in all of its glory, and as a parent I would not be crazy to have little ones bused between 12 to 25 kms or more. Another reason, since Lunenberg is one of our heritage towns, the school is and should be part of the landscape, as a living heritage school.
One must wonder if the only way to get school boards to do their jobs properly is a bit of civil disobedience.
Peggy
#1 – Good question. I believe the answer (in my humble opinion) is that this particular board has never been interested in working with anybody, they are used to directing, not receiving direction.
#2 – Simple. Heartstrings make good headlines. This board has decided that all communications must first go through the media, allowing it to place it’s spin on any given subject first.
#3 – Again, good question. A phone call was placed (several months ago) to the Liberal party requesting information regarding the tendering and awarding of a school construction contract and the curious absence of any announcement or information regarding costs. This was done after current government failure to provide information.
Response = None!
I very much welcome the new posters to this list. Very refreshing from the usual suspects and in a way encouraging to know that Nova Scotia’s going through much the same thing as Ontario.
I do believe that the teacher unions need to be challenged in Canada, as is being done in the USA currently. They are fast becoming unpopular entities hellbent on getting their own way and holding governments and children for ransom at will.
Give parents the power to make educated choices, provide them with the truth of what to expect upon making their choices and let’s include choice for teachers as to who their represents them, or not.
The current reform movement has fizzled in Ontario with maybe a half-dozen hangers-on towing a line that is fast becoming redundant.
When we break the union somewhat while building the confidence and education of parents and individual teachers reform may have a shot.
For the folks from N.S. – where’s your government in all of this? Here in Ontario we have a union-bought Premier and a challenger for the job in the PC’s Hudak who is so gun shy of tackling education that there’s no hope but the status quo for the next few years.
If I had to do it again in Ontario I’d homeschool.
Disobedience – a few years ago I threatened to camp out with my youngest at the minister’s office, and have all documentation of my youngest available to all, including the press to put on the record, the neglect and the non-enforcement of rules/regulations regarding children who need SE services, and can’t get them. The ironic thing, and I am sure the media would have picked it up, is the type of SE services that my youngest was in need of, was the mechanics of reading and writing. It is bad enough that any child within the education system, is not getting nearly enough to make most children effective readers and writers, but the very children that need it the most are being denied this educational service.
Well it work somewhat, and where the ministry finally picked up the phone and cracked the whip at the board to fixed the problems of my youngest school file. I have always maintain the problem lies at the board level, because of their interpretation of guidelines, acts, rules/regulations and other policies. the neglect in enforcing them, and their own personal biases and beliefs on children’s learning.
Fullan and his gang, makes it all the worst by adding more dogma and ideology, to promote that reading and writing is a skill that can be taught by the mystical act of osmosis. Osmosis not to be confused with the science definition which is, “Osmosis is a process in which a fluid passes through a semipermeable membrane, moving from an area in which a solute such as salt is present in low concentrations to an area in which the solute is present in high concentrations. The end result of osmosis, barring external factors, will be equal amounts of fluid on either side of the barrier, creating a state which is known as “isotonic.” The fluid most commonly used in demonstrations of osmosis is water, and osmosis with a wide variety of fluid solutions is key for every living organism on Earth, from humans to plants.” http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-osmosis.htm
In the public education system, osmosis is a term used not by the educrats, but nevertheless the process of osmosis exists that somehow students will learned on their own the essentials of language, and if not the teachers are always allow to give a two or three minute demonstration on addressing the essentials. Any longer than that, the students self-esteem will suffer. There is many articles on the act of osmosis in the education files. Here is a link on one, ““When high school students cannot use their own language correctly, their overall communication skills—both in written and oral form—suffer tremendously,” writes Archer, who blames curriculum developers for his students’ poor skills. Somewhere along the line, he writes “teaching grammar has become something that we teachers can simply ‘imbed’ into the reading and writing curriculum.” Trouble is, it’s not working.
“I’m sorry, but in my experience, the term “imbedded” is nothing more than educationalese for ‘not ever specifically taught.’ Somehow, this grammar-is-imbedded movement is supposed to help students naturally take in what proper grammar is (i.e., grammar by osmosis). It’s very much a hyper-constructivist approach to education; the students are supposed to “discover” proper grammar on their own as they read good pieces. Then, somehow and some way, they are to emulate these proper mechanical structures in their own writing. And if the students don’t quite “take it all in,” the teacher may take 2.5 minutes here and there to show them what a damn verb is.”
http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2010/08/16/teaching-grammar-by-osmosis/
Going back to school boards, there job is to enforce all regulations, rules and policies to allow the mystical act of osmosis to occur. In the education part, I have lost track of how many times, staff at the board level chastised me for re-teaching at home, that for all purposes bypasses the act of osmosis. There defense, was to tell me that my child will never become an independent learner, because she has not learned the new found knowledge of the mechanics of writing on her own. In other operations of the school boards, osmosis is at play here too. Trustees are forever playing the ‘isotonic’ game, by trying to balance the needs of all the players. Children and parents lose out, along with the taxpayers because in order to have equilibrium, children, parents, and taxpayers must be kept off balance or put on the sidelines. Their needs are neglected, for the greater need, of serving the best interests of the school board, the educrats, the ministries of education and of course the Fullans of this world.
Civil disobedience may be the only option left, because all other options that parents/taxpayers have, by creating traffic jams at the membranes of the education system. Thus blocking access to parents, children and taxpayers, and the education type of osmosis only works one way, for the benefit of the adults who work within the system.
Check out today’s School For Thought, “Who’s in Charge here?” http://www.societyforqualityeducation.org/index.php/blog
you’ll hear a sobering look at why what Mike says is so very true.
Harris could not break the union even though he certainly tried. It took 2 terms but the unions eventually broke him.
Unions are primarily responsible for the fact that a middle class even exists in North America. Study your history. Evrybody worked Saturday until unions fought to get it off, they fought for stat holidays, pensions public and private, public schools and medicare were union demands before anyone else raised the issue. They brought in health and safety rule, got the children out of the mines, fought for womens’ rights and rights for racial minorities. The fought for the 40 hour week.
Almost anything that is worth having in Europe, or North America came from unions efforts.
Unions raise the wages in the non-union private sector as well by creating expectations of jobs worth that private non-union employers need to meet to keep unions out. Unions fight very hard to raise the minimum wage although few union members are at that level.
In education, unions have fought for smaller classes, better building, safer classes, more special ed, more support services and generally better resources.
Choice is simply not important in education as compared to excellence and equity the really important issues. It is a distraction.
Teachers are overwhelmingly satisfied with their unions as they are. Decertification is always possible but not 1% indicate interest. Premier George Drew a conservative granted statuatory union rights to teachers in the mid 1940s.
BC premier Bill Valder Zalm made membership in BCTF totally voluntary. BCTF had signed up 95% of the members voluntarily within 3 months.
Nancy, OSSTF never did own a private jet, they did own a turbo prop because a study told them it was cheaper than flying commercial. It was sold 6 years ago when a new study showed it was cheaper to fly commercial again.
OSSTF is the smallest of the big teacher unions in Ontario. ETFO and OECTA are larger. OSSTF turns over $60 000 000 in revenue per year. They maintain a reserve fund (strike fund) of $70 000 000. It is far bigger than most businesses.
You really need to do some research before you opine.
Teacher unions are under attack for a few reasons.
1) Pay back to far right Republican backers like the Coke brothers who fund the GOP
2) They block the road to reform which is really the road to the total privatization of the public education system, the project of Gates, Broad and the Waltons among others.
Andrew Gilmour
By “firing” an entire group of teachers the contract has already been breached. Any action by other teachers would depend on if the contract is local or statewide. As for the “fired” teachers they should all call in sick.
All the teachers were not fired, they were given notice that they could be fired. It did not breach the contract. It was just a bone headed move.
want to know the truth about what’s killing our education system read “Our Big Fat Bureaucracy” by Kevin Libin in today’s National Post
“The strong performers of Korea, India, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand and China have small public sectors, while moribund economies breed university grads for the state bureaucracies that provide some measure of job security, buying regimes some stability.
“Past some tipping point of a population employed by the state, an economy starts to choke,” (writes Wall Street Journal’s Dan Henninger).
He’s right. We’re choking in Ontario in many sectors that we can no longer afford.
With and aging population and fewer and fewer families with kids in school the priorities change and so do the expectations of how the public service meets our needs and gives up value for our money.
In Ontario we’re there and a groundswell of discontent between what the private sector had to give up or do without during the economic slump vs. the public union sectors who, appear to have given up nothing but continue to milk the taxpayer is approaching a tipping point.
China has one of the most overwhelming bureaucracies in the world.
Are you paying attention Doug? It’s not a politician that’s going to break the unions it’s going to be a two-pronged approach, the thrust coming from a majority of the people who have paid too long for mediocre results of public service service delivery.
A Premier, or politician will be a bit player left to support what the citizens are wanting.
It’s not a matter of “if” in Canada…..it’s “when”.
Right.
The public sector unionms signed the contract on behalf of both parties.
You might want to reconsider your false logic.
The role of the public sector unions is to work on behalf of their members.
On the other side of the bargaining are the people you and I elected to office.
So the unions, being better at doing their jobs than those we elect, are to be punished for being more competent.
To Doug, and others that might be interested of the power and influence of public sector unions, and how private unions are constrained by the economic environment. So unlike public sector unions.
“Levin got a very enlightening email from a retired police officer in California who is currently receiving his very buff pension that was based on 90% of his salary in his last year. The email is full of details that explain how the unions are in bed with the Democrat party and makes it very easy to understand why we must break the back of these unions if we want to get back to fiscal health. ”
http://www.therightscoop.com/levin-reads-insider-email-from-retired-union-cop
From the Economist, of January, 2011.
“Economists still debate exactly what impact public-sector unions have on pay. Evidence from the American Bureau of Labour Statistics support the conservative argument that they have used their power to extract a wage premium: public-sector workers earn, on average, a third more than their private-sector counterparts. Left-leaning economists reply that public-sector workers are, on average, better educated. Whatever the merits of this argument, three things seem clear. Unions have suppressed wage differentials in the public sector. They have extracted excellent benefits for their members. And they have protected underperforming workers from being sacked.
Wage differentials are relatively small in the public sector. Lower-level workers, such as secretaries, are usually better paid than their private-sector equivalents, whereas higher-level workers are worse paid. This not only makes it difficult to attract high-flyers into the public sector, but also makes it hard to raise standards by, for instance, putting the best head teachers in charge of groups of schools.
At the same time, benefits are generous in the public sector. Governments tend to give their workers light workloads and generous pensions in lieu of higher wages (which have to come out of the current budget). In America teachers teach for a mere 180 days a year. In Brazil they have the right to take 40 days off a year—out of 200 working days—without giving an explanation or losing a centavo of pay. The defined-benefits revolution that has swept through the private sector has hardly touched the public one: 90% of American state- and local-government workers have defined-benefit plans, compared with 20% of private-sector workers.
Generous pensions have produced an epidemic of early retirement. In Brazil civil servants can retire on full pay after 35 years on the job (30 for women) and teachers can retire after 30 years (25 for women). The result is that Brazil spends as high a proportion of its GDP on pensions (12%) as Britain does, even though the population is much younger. In Poland soldiers and policemen can retire after just 15 years, so it is possible to come across 33-year-old retirees. Add to this the fact that any public-sector worker can hide behind union power to game the system—82% of senior California Highway Patrol officers discover a disabling injury about a year before they retire—and you have a dysfunctional mess.”
http://www.economist.com/node/17849199
And here in Canada, one point of Doug’s must be address. The only reason why public sector unions and some private unions pushed for minimum wage increases, is to be used as the reason to increased their salaries in negotiations at contract time. They have to find reasons, why they need increases in their salaries, that are already far more bloated than private salaries for doing the same type of work, and doing less work than their counterparts in the private sector.
Another article, from the Winnipeg Free Press called, Public Sector Unions Not Exactly In A Heyday.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/public-sector-unions-not-exactly-in-a-heyday-116459738.html?viewAllComments=y
I like this comment from one of its posters. A feeling that is shared by people with or without a union.
““Private sector workers would rather forget labour was either directly or indirectly responsible for many of the rights and protections all wage earners enjoy now”
Once upon a time labor needed unions but 1919 was long ago. It’s 2011 & we have labor laws, health & safety codes myriads of government ombudsman & departments dedicated to labor protection & finally the coup de grâce, the wrongful dismal law suit. Unions must evolve they’ve outlived there old tired mantras.
Union sit on mountains of your cash casting disparagements at those that do not buy into the seeded lie of solidarity. It’s always about the cash for these pariahs of the labor world. Their mantra “look what we’ve done for you” or “where would you be without us” is odiously self serving. With every new contract negotiation the status quo “confrontational strike tactics” continue. They don’t know how to negotiate from a position of strength drawn from integrity & mutual respect. There executive consist of brain washed plebeians who generally don’t want to work at the company that hired them so they join the unions. A change is coming on the labor front workers are catching onto the unions money grab game & reform is coming. This is the one thing that terrifies unions because without our support they fade into the night like a bad dream. ”
Doug, do you consider yourself a brain washed plebeian? It is pretty mild, and have read far harsher criticism when unionists from the public sector, employed and parade the old reasons why unions are important in today’s society. When in reality the old reasons are the window dressing, to disguised their power, influence to maintain their privileged middle-class status in today’s society. People are not buying it anymore, especially when the clerk from the public sector, who is receiving a handsome salary is doing far less work for more pay, and has the ability to be rude to the citizens seeking services. At least in the private sector, there is consequences to being rude to the customers, so unlike government services that are run through the lens of the public sector unions. Excellence and equity in the public sector unions are code words to keep their special status and the perks to themselves.
Won’t happen Mike but keep dreaming. Public unions drive up wages for everyone and create out middle class life.
Where do you get the idea that these nations are strong performers? India has more illiterates than sub-Saharan Africa.
Korea yes but only by spending an incredible number of hours in class.
Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, are you kidding?
China? All the wealthy Chinese kids are in western universities because Chinese universities are not up to snuff.
Only Finland and Korea outperform Canada.
Finland child poverty rate = 4%
Korea, incredible hours spent in class, teachers respected.
To add to what Mike has stated, Doug are you paying attention to that the growth of the public sector, when it starts to out pace the growth of the private sector discontent develops between the masses who do not enjoy the privilege world of the public sector employees, and are protected by the everyday economic whims and the topsy-turvy market environments. It is happening across the world, in countries no matter what political stripe or governance of the state, civil unrest occurs where there is large public sectors, that have become far less responsive to the needs of their citizens.
In North America, as Mike has said – It is not if, but when. And it is coming down the pipe line, because it is killing the overall economic environment, by reducing citizens to the point where it is becoming a struggle to maintain food, shelter and transportation at a level, that does not impact their health, and their well-being in the future. No one in the teachers’ union ever addresses the final outcomes of students. Or question why educational services are being denied to those students who are found to have reading deficits, along with the accompanying writing deficits. Unions play along, because exposing the final outcomes of students, would put all their reasons why public sector unions are good for a country as being little more, than serving the best interests of public sector unions.
Here is the link to what Mike had referred to.
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/bureaucracy/4351326/story.html
Food for thought.
The SSRSB has made a plea to the local NDP MLA and parents in the region to retain the reading recovery program eliminated by the NDP in recent education budget cuts. In fact I have received email petitions on this issue.
Apparently, the SSRSB has a very good sucess rate with
this program and does not want to see it removed and replaced with an intervention plan at 2/3rds the financing.
Other regions in NS have not seen the justification of this program or the required success; although I do not have the data, my own school board rep stands behind the program.
Yet this board also implimented the special needs cuts, autism cuts, community based cuts, (I’m referring to staff) made by his superintendant and fellow board members.
Anyone have a view?
Reading Recovery has a loyal following, but the most cogent criticism of it is that it is not good value for money. It serves only a few students (and those are Grade 1 students) per year in a school, and for the same cost a school could offer a variety of more empirically validated, effective interventions for groups of children at several grade levels.
Here are several sources to familiarize yourself with the issues (if you wish):
1) Reading Recovery:
What do School Districts Get for Their Money?
A Review of the Research
by Melissa Farrall, Ph.D.
http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/read.rr.research.farrall.htm
This is a good overview of some of the criticisms of Reading Recovery and it is generally accurate. There are links and references to some very authoritative critiques.
2)Review of Reading Recovery by Kristi Gerig, Jan Perry, and Leanette Spencer
The University of Georgia
http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Reading_Recovery
This is a detailed overview from the viewpoint of strong RR supporters. Has video links so you can see what a RR lesson looks like. It is very structured and follows a predetermined format, although the exact lesson content varies with the individual child.
3) Reading Recovery: Distinguishing Myth from Reality
by William Chapman, Ph.D. and James Tunmer, Ph.D.
Click to access Reading%20Recovery.pdf
Tunmer and Chapman, from RR’s birthplace in New Zealand, have done extensive research on the program and developed alternative interventions that yield better results at lower cost. Their work is rigorously empirical and has been replicated by many others.
If many special programs for students with severe challenges are being axed, while RR (a Cadillac program) is retained, there are likely political elements to the decision.
Here’s an interesting video from a low-SES UK primary school that found they no longer had a need for Reading Recovery after implementing a structured and systematic reading program:
http://www.teachers.tv/videos/applying-a-systematic-phonics-scheme
Enjoy.
Quite laughable Doug, trotting up Finland and Korea, and than dismissing the other countries. Last time I check, in North American, we have our fair share of people with low literacy skills. The last stat available, in 2007 is at the 42% mark in Canada, and it is much higher in the United States. Both countries with bloated public sectors and unions. In Canada, apparently the low literacy skills have increase to the tune of 48 %, but no doubt this will be confirm by Canada Stats in the very near future. As for the rich Chinese coming to North American universities, is it not because the Chinese government deemed these student unsuitable for entry into their universities? And not as you put it the universities in China are not any good.
Furthermore, do you think that ordinary people are falling for the obvious propaganda. A lot of ordinary Canadians have the opportunity to talk to recent immigrants, and we are not talking about the mundane topics such as the weather. We are actually exchanging information, that leads to mutual understanding of each other, in honest dialogue. The last time, two years ago I had the opportunity to have such a conversation with two Chinese men, who was in NL for obtaining a supply of fish. Interesting conversation developed, and where they told me that one went to university here in Canada because he was not accepted in the Chinese universities, and the other was accepted in the Chinese universities. The conversation developed, because I asked the innocent question, why one spoke better English than the other. Imagine that Doug, asking questions does lead to increase knowledge, or in this case an exchange of cultural and education systems.
Nancy, I have a question for you. Ask yourself why the direction of education migration is all one way, from them to us.
LEt’s be careful when we discuss literacy levels. When one talks about illiteracy in Canada they are discussing people who can read but just not as well as they could. In India and China, they cannot read at all.
There is only ONE recognized world standard, OECD PISA and TIMSS. Canada is #3. Only Finland and Korea have 15 year old who read their own language at a higher level. The gap is almost insignificant. The obvious reasons are above.
Doretta Wilson
Check out today’s School For Thought, “Who’s in Charge here?” http://www.societyforqualityeducation.org/index.php/blog
you’ll hear a sobering look at why what Mike says is so very true.
Looks like the teacher and union bashing over at SQE is costing you the support of 2 of the brighter people Wayne Ng and TDSBNW.
The mask has slipped a little and they can see the true face of reaction and deception.
Steve, I believe they have to find reasons to promote the need of more funding, jobs and to prove that their existence is of paramount importance to the existing model of public education. What better way to do this, but to cut essential education services on children who would benefit the most, and provide the many one-sized-fits-all solutions, that not only increases the size of the education work force, as well as providing the urgent need of educational services well into the adulthoods of children.
One just has to take a look of remedial courses for math, English and the sciences at the university level. Or the rise of private tutoring, especially for young adults who have reading and writing deficits.
The trustees are nothing more than the henchmen for the unions and other special interest groups within the public education system. Trustee boards, have already been co-opted by the staff of the board, where the majority hold an education degree and a teachers’ certificate. What really galls me, is when a trustee defends their decisions, using the same reasons of the union. Teachers’ unions won’t be happy, until students are warehouse in large schools and where it will take a small army of staff to operate the schools. Along with it, one can bet there will be heavy enforcement of rules/regulations that would ensure compliance among the parents and children.
Sadly, I see that some of this discussion has degenerated into attacks of a personal nature, (questioning someone’s level of education). Too bad considering a lot of it was informative and interesting.
I think I shall take my leave.
Doug has been advised by Educhatter to stick to commenting on the issues.
For a little perspective on Doug’s comments you may want to consider taking a look at Sandy Crux’s expose (Crux-of-the-Matter), where she claims that Doug Little enjoys playing the cheerleader of public education in public, while (at the same time) being a heavy hitter and co-administrator of a private school in Toronto Ontario. That said, on Doug’s own website (where comments are not permitted) he is quite open about his intent to “provoke” folks on education blogs and chat rooms.
He’s small potatoes in the greater scheme of the future of education Perry and not at all representative of the genuine posters here actually looking to enter into discussion without judgment or personal attacks.
I would hope and encourage you to visit here again and don’t let the bluster fool you.
Perry, just ignore the off-side comments. Stay and make your points. Now, about the SSRSB, it’s good to know that others are watching this closely. Our heads have been the sand for too long, so we have to pay attention and follow all the moves.
Hmmmm let me see, fewer public employees. Sounds interesting. Would that be ;
A small armed forces? No?
They a smaller police force? No?
You must mean fewer fire fighters? No?
Then I’m sure you mean fewer nurses? No again?
You must mean fewer EMR ambulance folks right? No?
How about meat inspectors? No?
Doctors are often public employees? No?
How about fewer MNR types protecting the forest and wildlife? No?
You must mean fewer fewer caretakers or fewer garbage collectors or fewer EA’s or fewer hospital workers, or fewer lab techs or fewer professors,
The idea that private workers are the “productive” economy and public workers are the parasitic workers is not only insulting, those who say it reveal a profound ignoarance about how things actually work.
Add me to the ranks of those encouraged for new posters to this forum! Especially those who contribute to the discussion rather than taking shots at folks who disagree with their point of view.
Perry – making personal insults and judgments is what got one poster to this blog bounced from other such discussion forums. He’s very quick to criticize things like education and spelling errors of others yet makes mistakes himself.
“Anyone have a view?” steven – how about taking the choice of programs out of the hands of the politicians and leaving it up to schools and their communities which programs they’d like to see run at their schools based on what works for that particular school? Let each individual school community make it’s own inclusive decision.
Perhaps allow individual schools who wish to, to opt out of using top-down or board-driven programs.
In order to effectively do that an individual school would have to include a good parent-based council and representation at individuals school level by individual teachers, staff, a community representative.
Keep dreaming. There is an anarchist naivete to the whole approach. Can anyone find even one politician including conservative ones, who just want to hand over the money and let folks “do their own thing” with the money.
Even Alberta the charter section is tiny and insignificant. The people who want this stuff are a tiny group.
Actually in the news articles and on the blogs in the education area, it is what they are calling for, a return to the community based school, where parents have the greater say and authority over what happens in their local school. It would quickly put an end to the progressive approach taken when addressing the essential basics in reading, writing, and numeracy, in a lot of schools where no student is on equal footing because of income and social status.
As Doug has portrayed himself as a unionist belonging to a public sector union, it is obvious he has utter contempt for those who work in the private sector, at whatever level.
“The idea that private workers are the “productive” economy and public workers are the parasitic workers is not only insulting, those who say it reveal a profound ignorance about how things actually work.”
The public sector has grown leaps and bounds, in a way that adds more employees at the top to middle levels to be essentially in charge of creating more bureaucratic red tape for the citizens the public sector serves. Secondary, they are hired to enforce the union contracts, the rules and regulations to ensure compliance by the public. In the news last week, the National Post reported that newly minted doctors are in search of full time work, but can only fine temporary work. And yet the headlines screams out that there is a doctor shortage. This story is buried in hoped that it dies an early death by the public sector. The public sector unions have the ability, and they are not afraid to use it by limiting the amount of front line workers via through regulations/rules that in most cases are not of their own making. It is the response from the government, who controls the purse strings to the demands of those who work within the public sector.
The public is left hanging and often we pay dearly for the demands of the public sector. A manufactured doctor shortage, delays in medical treatments. And for some, it could be a two year wait for a foot disorder, unless one is waiting for hip and knee replacement. At presently, hip and knee replacement have greatly reduced times, because lots of funding is thrown that way, much to the chagrin of other necessary medical treatments dealing with bone disorders. The same thing can be said about the public education system, where the individual arms of the education system, work very hard to serve their own best interests, squeezing out and sometimes silencing the voices that they are meant to serve. The South Shore Regional School Board is a case in point, where plans are made, set in stone and they make their own citizens dance to their tune, using the very rules and regulations that were put in place for the benefit of having an open and transparent process for consultation of their citizens. Open and transparent depends on which side one is on, but citizens in this region are constrained to follow the process, in order to have their voices heard. Much like the processes employed when a parent files a complaint against a school, or a school board. All designed to make it a very difficult process, in the hope that the parent will give up the complaint.
Most citizens already know only to well, the limitations that have been placed on them, by the demands of the public sector and the growing bureaucracy that feeds the demands. It is not the front line workers of the public sector that are the parasites, but the leeches of the bureaucracy that is the problem for one and all.
Seeing the obvious is not the naivete of the few. The gaining of sight is insight; in this situation the creative approach is, by Cate’s perspective “inclusive” as it relates to the community in question and their specific concerns. If the SSRSB did not exhibit the predictable knee jerk reaction to DOE cuts and reveal an unpalitable punitive strategy, their approach to defending reading recovery in their region may warrent more community support.
As it is now, the public trust is fragile at best.
Where did I say utter contempt? Obvious? Where?
I am all for community schools but you misunderstand what it essentially means. It means multiple use buildings day care adult ed, health services etc. Integrated services of course like the fabulous new kindergarten extension, but more parent involvement? Parents told the Ontario government they are as involved as they want to be.
Where do you get the idea that people will demand your pedagogy. There is almost no demand for it. The vast majority of parents are very happy with the public system.
What do unions have to do with the doctor shortage? Nothing. Doctors do not want to work in rural settings.
I happen to support RR very much but the conservative forces cannot demand massive cuts and savings and then run and say, “not my favourite program, I didn’t mean cut that one.” BTW please don’t close my local school, close somebody else’s school.
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/moira_macdonald/2011/02/25/17411731.html
Let’s take time today to congratulate B.C.’s Christy Clark on her election victory yesterday.
Clark is a champion of school choice and the parents’ right to choose the best education for their child.
It’s a sign of the times where open minds and ideas are fast taking over the old stale notions of education of past decades.
Put the decisions into the hands of local and individual schools and parents and we begin to seriously crack the power and slither the old guard top-heavy bureaucrats and union lobbies.
Mike Michelle Rhee is a walking disaster. She had all her firings reversed by arbitrators who said she did not follow proceedure, she has been caught lying about the academic gains her kids made during her brief teaching career, She was fired from her job in Washingtom DC.
She is finished and an embarrassment to the “reform” cause.
Put the decisions into the hands of local and individual schools and parents and we begin to seriously crack the power and slither the old guard top-heavy bureaucrats and union lobbies.
The polling in BC clerly shows that the BC residents want to put an end to public support of private schools. I hope it becomes a bigger campaign issue. As the government slashes the public system, people say more and more, how can we give money to private schools?
spin all you like Doug because the results of yesterdays elections put a lie you that spin.
Clearly the pendulum is in the court of parents and more school choice.
Tough nut to swallow but I’m betting we see B.C. at the head of next year’s first every School Choice Week parade in Canada.
Ontario as always will not even be in the parade. Ten years behind the times unless Dalton follows Cristy’s lead.
“I am all for community schools but you misunderstand what it essentially means. It means multiple use buildings day care adult ed, health services etc. Integrated services of course like the fabulous new kindergarten extension, but more parent involvement? Parents told the Ontario government they are as involved as they want to be. ”
Community schools, the Doug version is rather an expensive way of duplication of services being done elsewhere. For example health services, including dental.
I much prefer the community learning centres in BC. It fits the needs of the local community, and actually saves the school site from being close due to decreasing enrollment.
One of Christie Clark’s platform for education. “During the race, Clark said her four cornerstones for education are: Improving innovation in the classroom, giving parents more choice and more of a voice in K-12 education, helping schools become community learning centres and re-uniting colleges with universities under one ministry.”
http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun/blogs/reportcard/archive/2011/02/26/christy-clark-former-education-minister-now-premier.aspx
Here is one example of a BC community learning centre, and it is in a rural area. An idea worthy of discussion, in rural communities.
“Blueberry Creek, near Castlegar, is a place where families feel safe and children are free to ride their bikes or play after school.
The rural lifestyle sounds idyllic but, until the late ‘90s, many of the neighbourhood’s children were “not doing well academically or socially,” says Bev George, coordinator of the Blueberry Creek Community School. “They were referred to at their receiving schools as ‘those Blueberry kids.’”
Today, the only thing separating “Blueberry kids” from others in School District 20 (Kootenay-Columbia) is geography. And much of the credit goes to the partners supporting the school. Government agencies, the private sector, community groups and volunteers work together to provide educational and other services for residents of all ages. The district in turn provides the facility and also supports programming at the school.
“We offer childcare, preschool, after-school care and a StrongStart Centre. We also have youth programs, a literacy program, seniors’ coffee sessions, adult fitness, parent workshops, summer camps…” and the list goes on.
Along with partnerships, George says the key to their success is to focus on the needs of individuals. “Everyone’s situation is different and they need support in different ways. The cookie cutter model will not produce the results you hope for.”
Her advice to others starting out? “Involve your neighbours. Invite them in and use their expertise.” She also advises schools to “work closely with your school district. You are there to support your learners and there are many ways to do that.”
In Blueberry Creek, the school reflects the day-to-day life of the community. As new needs arise, new programs and partnerships are tailored to meet them.
“We live by the adage that children do well when families do well, and families do well when they live in supportive communities,” says George.
“We change lives one child at a time.””
http://www.neighbourhoodlearningcentres.gov.bc.ca/centres/success_stories/welcome.php?story=Blueberry Creek
Here is the school site, for Blueberry Creek. Check out the newsletter, that gives a good impression that senior citizens and everyone in between are included, and somehow they manage to retain the culture values of this rural community, without being bombarded by the mandates and directives of the education ministry and board.
http://www.blueberrycreekcommunityschool.org/main/about-us/
If one looks at all the community schools in BC, each is unique that fits to the local community needs and culture. Certainly not a one-sized-fits-all approach, and it sure creates community involvement, without using the nanny approach that governments love to use.
I’m much more in favour of one size fits all. I find all of this claptrap about every community every child is unique is a bunch of overly precious, naive, backwards looking nonsense.
I want for example, ever HS kids to take the same English,(X4) same math (X2) same history(X3) same geography (X2), same science (X2), Phys Ed X2, and after that, some electives. There would only be one level to all course, a university bound level. Students with difficulty could slow down credit accumulation and get lots of remediation, but there would be no”lower streams”. Special Ed would largely take the form of booster programs to get kids back in the regular stream and not become a stream onto themselves.
Christy Clark, a disaster as education minister, is now Premier. For a different take on her, read the comments under the following article.
http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun/blogs/reportcard/archive/2011/02/26/christy-clark-former-education-minister-now-premier.aspx
IMO, all that’s needed is to let the teachers teach and let the principals do their jobs, which is to administer their schools.
The role of the school board staff should be to see that the needs of the schools are met – no more, no less.
As it is now, teachers and principals are nothing more than delivery clerks delivering the “product” according to the school boards’ instruction manuals. One doesn’t need a university education to do that.
This is all because of the demands of “accountability”.
The business community is searching for a scape goat so it can blame the multiple failures of its own making, on someone else and another section of the business community is attempting to privatize the public system so that they can make a killing, same as medicare.
If you can’t see this, remedial education politics for you.
The charter movement in the USA has morphed into 4-5 elements of monopoly capital in record time. KIPP, Green Dot, Imagine a couple of other will soon dot the land like McDonalds with an education of similar quality.
Doug, what makes you think it would work, under the current curriculum and teaching methods, and where students are at various levels within the subject, including the fundamentals of reading, writing and numeracy. The other thing that you seem to have forgotten, is the requirements for entry at the university level. The university that my youngest wants to attend, is requiring 11 credits that is heavy in science and math, and are at the advance level. Now what was told to me, advance is no different than the academic except that they do more. In your approach, using only one level of electives, how would you propose to include everything that a university demands? Advance chemistry, math, physics, does require a firm foundation in math, and basic laws of science, and at the university level, they considered the advance courses in high school, suitable to cover the fundamentals and to prepare students for university.
Take in consideration, the many different levels of students at the grade 9 level, one does not have any choice but to stream students by grade 10. And it is what you have suggested, by separating students who can slow down, and have lots of remediation, and the SE students in some kind of booster program (whatever that means). I am sure it cannot be done in one classroom, especially when the real problem is the lack of the fundamentals that were never address effectively at the elementary level. Another problem with your model, is that you are suggesting students who are the future doctors, engineers, scientists, and fields that have an emphasis on science and math will add another year to play catch-up to meet the requirements before entering university, or will the extra year be tagged at the university level?
There is a lot of remediation taking place at the high school level in areas of math and English at all levels. The teachers have no choice, since it was not addressed in the lower grades. Today’s math curriculum certainly reflects it, along with student’s writing skills. What you are suggesting is that remediation becomes part and parcel of high school life, and even rewarding credits for it. For skills that should have been taught in the early grades. I bet universities would take action along the lines, of excluding students who took two years to complete one of the courses in math and science, unless they have a reasonable reason such as illness. And I bet a lot of students would take the slower route, for obvious reasons. As my youngest wishes sometimes, when I remind her that the doors to post-secondary are open for her, even though she has LD, but not for the students who are sitting in basics and in some cases academic courses. They end up doing a lot of upgrading on their own dime, for fundamentals that were never adequately addressed in the K to 12 system.
I have been reading a bit on blogs from university professors, lamenting on the lack of numeracy and writing skills of their university students. It might do wonders, if the public education system of K to 12, actually start working with approaches that fits the individual student’s learning needs and the communities as well. And of course, make sure that students do have the fundamentals down pat, before diving into advance work.
Those jurisdictions that abandon multistream HS programs and say “you will all be in a U-Bound stream” put many more students in university than jurisdictions that allow muli stream systems. I have always said, the variable ought to be “time” not “difficulty”. There will be a very small number of very educationally challenged students in any system but any IQ bell curve will tell you that 80% of students have the inate ability to go to university. The rest is opportunity and personal motivation and effort.
We need a school system that sends this message to students “You are all expected to go to university. You will get all of the help you need but the work is difficult. There is no alternative. Any subject with which you have difficulty will lead to a lot of extra time and tutorial effort.
Good luck in that 80 %, you are going to need it.
“only 24% of Canada’s youth who recently completed high school are enrolled full-time in university (Trends in Higher Education: Vol. 1 AUCC 2007).
Canada is in the bottom half of the OECD nations in the proportion of youth attending university (Trends Vol. 1, 2007).
U.K., U.S., Australia, Korea, France, Greece, The Netherlands and ten other countries have a higher proportion of youth in university (Trends Vol. 1, 2007). ”
http://www.universitiesmatter.ca/just-the-facts/
The majority of students, enter colleges Doug. And in fact some of the college courses actually require advance high school courses as their requirements. The figure of 24 % has not change much over the years, and even if tutu ion was free, it still would would not bump the percentage of students going to universities. One of the reasons why NL is considering free tuition, as it comes up once a year or so. They did go another way, by not charging interest on school loans on the provincial portion. This has help to put more students into post-secondary institutions, but it did not increase the percentage of students going to the university. Most still went to the college, for some type of 2 to 3 year certificate. A lot cheaper to go to college than university.
The variable of time can be questioned, especially at the high school level. It is basically proposing to break down courses to where there is additional years being added on in high school. Two to three years, and you are talking about extending public education to 15 years, without doing any fundamental changes to the elementary education.
As for innate ability, now you are straying in dangerous territory, Are you alluding that innate intelligence triumphs over practice, practice, practice? One cannot expect a student to do well in university, without having a firm foundation in writing and numeracy. That also holds true for a LD student, or a child like mine. She certainly did not show any skills in her early years, besides a burning desire to learn. Unfortunately, schools today do not provide a very good grip on the fundamentals, that are necessary to do school work at the university level. All the practice, practice at home is paying off, because my youngest is doing quite well in school. It was not her innate ability, but her desire, abilities, hard work and lots of practice that has enable her to release her innate intelligence.
“JOHN Mighton was not a born genius, in fact he was just an ordinary kid, who barely passed calculus in a first year university course and received disappointing marks in creative writing. Today, Mighton is an award-winning playwright, an author, the brain behind the pioneering knot and graph theory in mathematics and an internationally-recognised math teacher.
Mighton attributes his success to years of rigorous training and holding a strong passion for what he does.
“People with expert abilities are generally made, not born and often their abilities arise out of a great deal of repetitive practice and imitation and copying of other peoples’ styles and ideas,” he said.”
http://www.dawn.com/2011/01/16/talent-is-made-not-born-is-innate-intelligence-highly-over-rated-in-our-society-2.html
If anything, the current public school system does a real lousy job in this area, and in your model, it is addressing problems that really should have been addressed in the early years, and not at the high school level.
Not everyone wants or should go to university.
Too many rocket scientists without enough engineers dowsn’t work.
Too many engineers without technicians doesn’t work.
Too many technicians without mechanics doesn’t work… and so on.
This constant focus on university only is for the birds.
Yes, Andrew some want to become carpenters, car mechanics, work on an oil rig, fish for a living, or even go out and start work. There is a millionaire in Canada, who did just that, without ever stepping into a post-secondary institute. I am actually encouraging my youngest to explore the options in college, instead of her narrow focus in forensics. But that has been her dream since she was 9 years old, and it was the dream that I used to motivate her to cooperate at home in the tutoring sessions. It certainly help when she needed so much work on the basics. Having an university degree, is not for all, nor do I think it should be a desire goal for any public education system.
Take note Canada – particularly Ontario and Quebec
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704150604576166011983939364.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
Please MurdochCo on the US side of the border along with the Koch brothers and other assorted rightwingnuts.
Fullan’s work, manifested in Ontario’s rollout of educational change raises some serious questions:
Why has it become possible his changes to actually occur in Ontario?
Why is the relationship between Superintendents and Principals more strained than ever?
Why is there seemingly no push back on issues that are contentious?
Why are teachers, in general, stuck in pushing curriculum at the expense of truly engaging, creative, and thought-provoking learning experiences?
Who is supporting Fullan at a higher level to keep his agenda going?
It would be interesting to know what is his yearly income is. He has certainly found the formula and support to sustain and massive income at the cost of taxpayers, teachers and students.
My fear is he will be around for quite some time working his magic to financial fortune.
Canada’s leading school change wizard, Michael Fullan, is quick to seize an opportunity to trumpet his own school change efforts. When Larry Ferlazzo at Education Week started exploring the “Ontario Education Miracle,” the architect of system-wide reform saw his opportunity.
His latest commentary adds further credence to my rather cheeky post:
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2012/05/response_factors_behind_the_success_of_ontarios_schools_–_part_two.html
You have got to admire a school change theorist who somehow manages to double as a legitimate authority when reviewing his own handiwork and those of his camp followers.
Our favourite school change theorist Dr. Michael Fullan has now blasted off into the Stratosphere. Totally bored with terrestrial “system-wide change” disrupting routines in thousands of schools, he has discovered a new unexplored frontier — cyberspace. You will enjoy this entertaining “MindShare” moment likely inspired by the discovery that the Internet would benefit from his systems approach to school change.
Just when you think that Dr. Michael Fullan is burning up like a booster rocket, he reappears on TVO! His recent interview on TVO with Steve Paikin is a classic. It’s a fascinating case study in re-invention for a new century:
http://theagenda.tvo.org/blog/agenda-blogs/pull-michael-fullan-technology-classroom
Sadly, he’s now flying solo into Cyberspace, having lost (for now) his OISE wingman.
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