Public consultation in education is now mostly formalized, increasingly professionally-managed, and too often perfunctory. Concerned parents and citizens fighting school closures or raising “mission-critical” issues are invited to a formal school board meeting, given 5 minutes at the microphone and politely thanked for coming. School trustees listen, but do they hear? You never know and that simply adds to your sense of unease.
Telling tales “out of school” used to be frowned upon in education. Just as “tattle-tales” were not welcome on the playground, grumbling about the system has always tended to occur in around the coffee machine, in the parking lot, or inside local donut shops.
Now the official “education partners” in Nova Scotia and elsewhere are out to change all that by redefining what “Telling Tales” really means. With the launch of their cheery and attractive new website, “Get Educated,” public school parents are invited to tell “TRUE STORIES about the positive impact of the P -12 education system in Nova Scotia.” ( http://www.nstalesoutofschool.ca)
School boards and key stakeholders are adept at making it look like they are open to comment and feedback from parents and taxpayers. Upon closer scrutiny, that is not exactly what the promoters of the system have in mind. You are invited to “register” and then asked to submit only personal anecdotes about what a great system we have here in Nova Scotia.
Happy talk is the currency of education officialdom. What’s new about the Nova Scotia initiative is that the “team” of cheerleaders has expanded. In 2009-10, the Nova Scotia coalition that launched the infamous “Save Grade 2” public relations exercise included the organized voices of school boards, teacher unions, and senior administrators. This time around, the Nova Scotia Federation of Home and School Associations is on board.
When the Canadian provincial common school systems were founded in the mid-19th century, they claimed to provide “education for all” and sought to implant the sturdy values of honest effort and industriousness. Some idealists believed that the system was also capable of inculcating democratic values and good citizenship.
School board and “system partner” PR exercises demonstrate just how far we have drifted from those founding ideals. Openness and public participation are now viewed as terribly threatening. Only those parents who pass a ‘loyalty test” are welcome to register their opinions.
School systems under stress tend to block out not only unpleasant messages, but also constructive criticism. Three years ago, the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Public Affairs, based in Halifax, sponsored a Public Lecture series on “Trust in Education.” That ground-breaking series pointed out how supporters of public education could restore “public trust” in the system.
Public consultation exercises fly completely in the face of the Centre’s findings and recommendations. Telling the unvarnished truth and admitting your mistakes and shortcomings was identified by former McGill University president Dr. Bernard Shapiro and others as the fundamental starting point in recovering public confidence.
Since the “Powers that Be” in public education only welcome happy talk, it’s left to concerned parent and citizen groups to organize their own PUblic Forums and rallies to give parents and citizens a real opportunity to be heard and an outlet for their views, good, bad, or ugly (within reason).
That is what motivated us to organize a Public Forum on “Putting Students First and Fixing our Schools” (Monday March 28, 2011) at the Maritime Conservatory of Performing Arts, 6199 Chebucto Road, Halifax. (www.aims.ca)
Concerned parents and taxpayers have real stories to tell about our schools and need opportunities to voice them. It’s not new. That’s what public education is supposed to be all about. It’s high time we put students first in education.
That leads us to the Big Question: Why does Big Education seek to channel and limit public input on critical educational issues? Have perfunctory public presentations and “screened entry” websites all but replaced honest, open, frank public discussion? And what can be done to restore the public voice in today’s bureaucratic education state?
I am most pleased to see the opportunity being created in Nova Scotia to put the public back into the arena of educational debate.
The desperately needed policy and accountability analysis such a discussion should offer, with guest speaker, Michael Zwaagstra, and the reaction panel included is in my opinion a significant first step in once again putting our chilren first.
This event strikes me as a crucial step towards inclusion, not the exclusionary tactics I as a parent have experienced in public education for several years now.
The problem with our education system and the lack of public input stems from the influence of teachers. The goal of the NS Teachers Union for the last couple of decades has been to place as many union members up for election for every office from town councillors to the Premier’s Office. “Gain political power and we gain everything we want” was the thinking.
Teacher union influence extends far in Nova Scotia. I worked as a long time Conservative in my local area until a School Administrator ran successfully for the Tories in the election that gave Rodney MacDonald his mandate. The next election I worked for the NDP Candidate who became the Minister of Justice in the new government. The entire volunteer campaign force for the losing Tory was made up of teachers and police officers, The void of ideas and organization in that closed group alienated the longtime party faithful driving them into the waiting arms of a very receptive career RCMP officer who has an open door and an open ear. He personally took my advice on how to win and applied it along with many other people.
Groups and organizations that look inward cut off any new ideas that can allow the betterment for all. Many teachers hold the taxpayer in contempt. That disease runs through much of the public service attached to the education system. The Nova Scotia Teachers pension funds have needed hundreds of millions dollars in bailouts by the provincial treasury. The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan has been a major source of corporate investment in Canada for many decades going as far as owning the Halifax Shopping Centre. Maple Leaf Foods and a good portion of Bell.
The last Nova Scotia Premier to be a teacher led us down the path to a potential disaster bidding on the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
We need to separate Public Service Unions angling for the taxpayers monies from control of our our schools or we are in for more debt. If not we face serious cuts to funding of essentials like water systems, highways and other needed infrastructure.
For those of us that have reached the critical point in our frustration with the system as it exists, “Telling Tales” is just another slap in the face. “Relate your Horror Stories” might be a more honest moniker.
Even though it is an hours drive away, I am looking forward to attending the Public Forum on Monday.
My wife and I will both be there.
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist I am becoming more and more convinced that there is an organised and concerted effort to exclude parents and taxpayers from public education.
I urge parents that are attending the Public Forum, please speak up that their horror stories are being repeated across Canada. The deliberate prevention of parents from having any real power about their children’s education, the schools, the policies, and the force dance that parents must dance, orchestrated by the educrats to enforce compliance and to support public education. Nova Scotia, is not the first to implement the so called good news stories in education, to promote the standard mantra of educrats, “What a great education system we have”. But as I have observed on the site, Tales Out of School, 50 stories does not make a statement, but the absent of more stories may very well indicate the telling of a tale, that public education is viewed by most parents in a negative light, rather than a positive light.
I too, if I lived in Nova Scotia could put out my own positive story, but my story would have a big but at the end.
My youngest is currently in grade 10, and her greatest desire is to get into her university of choice in Ontario. The field of study my youngest is interested in is forensics, and just meeting the requirements for my LD child is daunting, there is the other problem of being out of province, and there is caps on the number of seats available. While the teachers and principal went the extra mile, and phone the university to asked some important questions and more details on the course. This came after the school staff, moved fairly quickly, to arranged my youngest schedule of courses that are needed to meet the application process of this university. A total of 11 credits, nine credits in level 3 and 4 that are all in math and science. Math credits must be at the advance level. Going back to the staff of the school, going the extra mile, by phoning the university, they became aware of important information, that might prevent my youngest to delay her dreams. In the new school year, in the month of September, her application will be sent off to the university, when she is only in grade 11. She will be put on a waiting list, because there is only 80 seats available for the first year program, but by applying very early, the school has more or less assured that my youngest will be obtaining one of the coveted seats.
Here comes the but, none of the school’s staff efforts would have come about, if I as a parent, decided to learn the dance of the educrats, and accept their dire pronouncements of my youngest abilities. In fact, if I did listen to the educrats, my youngest would be taking basic courses in math. None of it would be happening, if I chose to listen to the educrats pronouncements on what they considered a waste of time on my part, the hours spent on re-teaching and tutoring to address my child learning weaknesses. I might add here, that it was the same learning weaknesses that the educrats did everything in their power to denied my youngest remediation on her educational needs, because in their self-proclaimed stance of being the experts, they thought it would be a waste of time, since she was passing. And here too, the educrats would put great emphasis on her grades, and completely ignore the learning weaknesses that have never been addressed effectively by the school authorities that they are legally obligated to address. Accommodations does not address learning weaknesses, but good effective systematic direct instruction does wonders including healthy doses of grammar, spelling, sentence structure, and other reading components, including fluency. I will add here, as a parent I had to wage war and fight for everything concerning special education services for my child, but through it all I never danced to the educrat’s tune. I much prefer to dance to the tune of my children’s needs, and not the educrat’s dance of so-called expertise.
I wonder how many stories have been submitted with the buts at the end. With only 50 stories that have been submitted, with only a handful of buts at the end, most of the stories are about how wonderful school was, and the remainder of stories are the few lucky students that actually got the help their children needed to addressed the educational needs of their children according to their parents. RR figure in a lot of them, but no positive stories on remediation in reading and writing. Unless one counts the story of i-pads being handed out to the LD students in the South Shore board. Rather an expensive accommodation tech tool to be handed out. in the age of scarce resources for LD students.
This caught my eye as well, “This time around, the Nova Scotia Federation of Home and School Associations is on board. ” In reference to the organizations that are backing the ‘Tales Out Of School’ site, this organization has some interesting material on their redesigned site. One in particular caught my eye, called the “A Parent’s Code of Ethics:
Here is just a few of the commandants, that sound eerily like the Ten Commandants.
“I WILL demonstrate constructive attitudes toward the school and its programs by supporting and cooperating with the teaching staff and the School Board to the fullest possible extent.
I WILL make no criticism of the school without ensuring that I have accurate and first hand information.
I WILL encourage a positive attitude on the part of my child and will refrain from criticism of the teachers or the school in his or her presence.
I WILL expect nothing for myself or my child, which is contrary to the interests of the entire school.
I WILL accept my share of the responsibility for the partnership between the home and the school in the education of children.”
Click to access ParentsCodeofEthics.pdf
But I take it from the code of ethics, parents who voiced criticism are not welcomed in their schools. Especially the parents who are questioning the reading and math curriculum, and other progressive teaching methods that is doing harm for their children’s education. It would be a fun time, trying to convince parents who are members of this parent association, that they are dancing to the tune of the educrats, and not their own dance.
Final note, on one of the press releases for the Public Forum, it was noted: “The forum will also set the stage for the release of 10 years worth of survey results from pollster Don Mills. The surveys focused on Nova Scotians attitudes about public education.
“Ten years of data shows confidence in the system is extremely weak,” Bennett said.
Bennett said the forum was partially intended as a response to Ben Levin’s anticipated report to the province. Levin’s report was planned for the end of last month, but has not yet been released.
A provincial press release last December stated the Ontario-based educator was hired to review the education system and recommend ways the government can maintain an effective school system “in the face of significant enrolment and fiscal challenges.”
The report was not supposed to address governance or funding models, and budget scenarios given to school boards last fall aren’t part of the review.
“We need to expect more from our students and everything flows from that. Somewhere along the line we have lost a sense of challenge, which is the excitement at motivates everyone in education,” Bennett said.”
http://www.aims.ca/en/home/library/details.aspx/3114?dp=aXM9Mg__
Ben Levin, a high ranking educrat has been a busy guy of late, delivering reports for the provincial education systems. I wonder how money he is raking in? Below is a link to one of Levin’s report, dated 2001.
“This paper looks at the gap between growing knowledge of school improvement and public policy for education. I examine the likelihood that governments will actually adopt improvement-friendly policies, and the factors both supporting and militating against their doing so. A main section of the paper discusses the nature of government decision-making processes and the possibilities and limits these create for reform. A final section provides some recommendations to researchers interested in school improvement as to how they could have more impact on public policy. ”
His conclusions tells another tale.
“I have attempted in this paper to combine a realistic view of what government is like with optimism about the potential impact of research and empirical evidence on public policy. I have argued that there is scope to increase the impact of research on policy, and that some important long-term trends in policy-making appear to be working in this direction. However, some hard-headed realism on the part of researchers and analysts is required, including a willingness to understand and accept the realities of government. If we are willing to take seriously the constraints and requirements of political action, we improve our chance to bring the increasing knowledge about better schooling to bear on policy. ”
http://www.ucalgary.ca/iejll/levin
One can only conclude, his advice to the researchers is hard headed realism, and accept the realities of government. In reading between the words, I can conclude that Levin is tired of the researchers offers of solutions that really does have the science behind it, but a public education system that wants nothing to do with solutions that are not based on the progressive methods of the educrats. The same educrats that rule the roost to maintain the power structure and their ability to make lots of money on the failures of so many in the education system.
Unions doing whatever they want with their money in politics has been to the Supreme Court. The unions won.
Teachers being heavily involved in school board and provincial elections is their democratic right.
The premiiers all know the only legal right to ban union financial contributions from political campaigns is to ban ALL corporate and union contributions from politics as is done in our Federal politics and some provinces.
The courts have said “no unilateral disarmament of unions alone will be allowed to stand” To ask most Tories and Liberals to ban corporate contributions provokes a “gulp” to say the least.
To ban teachers from any other political participation (mobilization of workers, phone banks) is simply anti-democratic.
Sounds like you are all “preaching to the converted” at these meetings. The education reform movement in Canada will go nowhere until you get some serious money, do some serious polling, hire some serious political consultants, establish a head office, collect dues, nail down your policy in black and white, choose credible spokespersons-leaders, and go for it.
Otherwise you look like King Knute.
Doug,
put the children first.
So, Doug, can we sign you up for “Students First Nova Scotia” or will you be heading up our Ontario satellite operation?
Shades of Patty Hearst? Living among your captors can do strange things to your mind… ( Smile)
The Educational Whitewashers have responded in today’s Halifax Chronicle Herald with an attempt to rebutt the recent column ( March 24) by Charles Cirtwill and me. We seem to have flushed Nova Scotia’s “system partners” out of the thicket!
With their Communications staff and spin doctors (Colour/3M), why can’t they get it right? THe NS Home and School Association was not on board the “Save Grade 2” train wreck and to say otherwise is preposterous. They had the common sense to stay on the sidelines, or were simply left behind on the station platform.
By the way, the NS senior administration group, now headed by Superintendent Jack Beaton, has met very infrequently since Dr. Noel Hurley left for Memorial University. That must be an interesting group…without the elevating influence of Dr. Hurley ( a “cut-above” most educrats)
What a feeble rebuttal: The “System Partners” vehemently defend their Tales out of School” website and consider such constructive criticism to be a threat to the whole system…How predictable. Their reaction only confirms our contention that those in charge of “learning” are slow on the up-take.
All it takes is one open Public Forum on the State of Education to throw them into a tizzy. We have the momentum.
I just sent a link to a Director of Education in Labrador who is honouring research based reading instruction because they sought out an alleviation to their tenacious very low reading scores by Grade 3 a few years ago.
A Memorial Ph.D. student candidate is doing a thesis on “you don`t need phonological awareness to learn to read”.
Dangerous stuff!
A half billion dollar research study,longitudinal,with a control group and the coordination of 9 leading U.S. Universities and one Canadian lab, Keith Stanovich`s l,have conclusive evidence otherwise; now ,this one thesis paper will be out there,and others like it,and it will contest the study results.
Pseudoscience-and sadly a publisher will use it to peddle lies and Ministries whose employees are slanted on the wrong side of the Reading War will use it too.
Ever seen the documentary Inside Job?
Do you have a link for that? I can’t find it online.
Click to access reading_centers.pdf
Joanne, I love the link. Straight forward and confirms what I have always being saying about LD children.
“Special Education Does Not Close the Gap
♦Group sizes too large for pull out programs
♦Inclusion prevents effective practices for children with LD
♦Models of service delivery demonstrably ineffective for children with LD in reading
♦Occurs Too Late!!”
This is another reason for frank open discussion in the bureaucratic nightmare that awaits parents in special education, especially in addressing learning weaknesses in reading, writing and numeracy. I often found, even for such simple requests as in providing extra sheets of paper, to work things out on, or provide more space to provide the answer on tests, are met with a lot of resistance. I have yet to read on progressive or reform sites, singing the praises of over crowded worksheets, and tests nor have I seen anywhere advancing the reasons why children should not be provided extra paper to work out their answers. But again the educrat critters are out to save their budgets on the backs of the SE children. Most popular response to my simple requests, was that paper was part of the supplies, where number of sheets per student, was already determined before hand by the board. Than, I would offer to supply 500 sheets, and their response, that it would give my youngest an unfair advantage.
Paul,
The fact is that “the left” as it were considerers that admin is far too conservative and a real drag on the historic forward advancement towards excellence and equity.
I don’t know why you guys continue to resist the inevitable and highly progressive future we can all have as we make our historic journey to an advanced Swedish style social-democacy with a highly evolved education system like Finland.
The OECD just put out a recent paper that points out that, among the factors that make a school system great, competition for students is just not there. They find no evidence that forcing systems to compete for students has any positive effects.
I don’t know why the OECD always finds on my side.It is certainly not a “left oriented” organization. It is far more interested in the production of human capital than I am, although we must all factor that in.
Is it at all possible to get you to stay on topic?
If you’re so good run for office. There’s a federal election coming.
Joanne, is there any chance of telling me the name of the MUN student doing the thesis? Or even a general hint, since NL is very small, in terms of numbers of PHD students. I have been watching Labrador, and the steady success. Plus other items, that leads me to believe that there is a concerted effort among the high ranking educrats to resist all reading reform that is not based on whole language. No supporting evidence, except for my own observations , a few stat numbers that are increasing, and a few important stat numbers that have been removed. Too early to state conclusively, but there is patterns that are worrying to me, and my little war on addressing reading and writing concerns of students in my corner of the world.
Joanne has brought up a valid point on psuedo-science and the educrats that advocate on the behalf of educational psuedo-science. Psuedo-science in education helps to focus on the results, without questioning the processes behind the results. It reinforces the ideology, dogma, and the political aspects of progressive methods to have parents make decisions on believes, dogma or political ideology for their children, and not what is good for their children. The title of the thesis that Joanne has stated, “You don`t need phonological awareness to learn to read”, is a common tactic used especially in special education, and dealing with parents. I have been faced with this type of response, when I am requesting a service that is based on the science, and not a belief, or a half-truth. It can become very confusing for parents to sort out the beliefs from the science, especially when the edubabble enters the picture.
The next link is a list of edubabble words that are quite common, to justified changes to the public education system, by using beliefs, rather than the science.
“Research has shown. “A phrase used to preface and shore up educational claims. Often it is used selectively, even when the preponderant or most reliable research shows no such thing, as in the statement ‘Research has shown that children learn best with hands-on methods.’ Educational research varies enormously in quality and reliability. Some research is insecure because its sample sizes tend to be small and a large number of significant variables (social, historical, cultural, and personal) cannot be controlled. If an article describes a ‘successful’ strategy, such as building a pioneer village out of Popsicle sticks instead of reading about pioneers, the success may not be fully documented, and the idea that the method will work for all students and classrooms is simply assumed. There are strong ethical limits on the degree to which research variables can or should be controlled when the subjects of research are children. Many findings of educational research are highly contradictory. Greatest confidence can be placed in refereed journals in mainstream disciplines. (A refereed journal is one whose articles have been checked by respected scientists, or referees, in a particular specialty.) Next in reliability is research that appears in the most prestigious refereed educational journals. Very little confidence can be placed in research published in less prestigious journals and in nonrefereed publications. The most reliable type of research in education (as in medicine) tends to be ‘epidemiological research,’ that is, studies of definitely observable effects exhibited by large populations of subjects over considerable periods of time. The sample size and the duration of such large-scale studies help to cancel out the misleading influences of uncontrolled variables. An additional degree of confidence can be placed in educational research if it is consistent with well-accepted findings in neighboring fields like psychology and sociology. Educational research that conflicts with such mainstream findings is to be greeted with special skepticism. The moral: Print brings no reliable authority to an educational claim. When in doubt, ask for specific references and check them. Many claims evaporate under such scrutiny.”
http://www.nychold.com/hirsch-termin.html
The edubabble is so prevalent in the public education system, that it actually does prevent parents from questioning the educrats to wanting to participate in public education. But than again, the goals of the educrats may actually be to prevent parents from speaking their mind in the first place.
A typical response from an educrat, to dismiss voices that are contrary to their own belief system, in an attempt to change the picture from discussion of the fault lines and holes in the public education system to just another belief system.
“The education reform movement in Canada will go nowhere until you get some serious money, do some serious polling, hire some serious political consultants, establish a head office, collect dues, nail down your policy in black and white, choose credible spokespersons-leaders, and go for it.
Otherwise you look like King Knute.”
And Doug, I read something interesting last week in the stats regarding universities, and their special services departments. They are wondering why there is so few LD students in their hallow halls, since there do represent the largest subgroup of disabilities. The universities can handle quite a few more LD students in their special services departments to addressed their weaknesses in reading and writing, based on the science, and not the current psudeo-science of the progressives. How about Doug, why not elect yourself, to be the spokesperson to answer the question for them, using the current psuedo edubabble, that the large majority of LD students are confined to the basics and applied courses, and therefore are ineligible to go to university. Completely sidestepping the real reason why, – current practices for LD children in the public education system prevents most children from becoming good in the basics in reading, writing and numeracy.
“
When I ran for school board for many years with a strong left wing programme att of my lawn signs said:
Re-Elect Doug Little Trustee
Put the Kids First.
Cheap talk, everybody is for the kids.
Everybody is not for the children …
Indifference is “cheap talk”.
Then there’s the arrogance of school boards.
Our MP and MLA are both more acessible than our school board critters.
What does that tell you?
Who is not for the children?
Those who are indifferent to the children’s needs.
‘School Board Critters’ – good name for some.
One of those critters, mentioned in a recent post, is Superintendent Jack Beaton
1. Is he double-dipping, collecting teacher’s pension, while working, as the superintendent?
“No stranger to Nova Scotia’s education community, Beaton is a career educator with extensive experience in the public school system. Since 2000, he has served as the Director of Programs and Student Services with the Strait Regional School Board. He has dedicated 33 years of service to the public education system and has held various positions, including teacher, vice principal, principal, coordinator of community education, coordinator of human resources and director.” Beaton has also served as president of the Association of Nova Scotia Educational Administrators (ANSEA) as well as numerous local and provincial committees. http://www.nstu.ca/images/The%20Teacher/FEB09layoutTT.pdf
A career educator? Or he could not wait to climb the ladder, to make the big salaries that supers or directors of school boards pull in. Wonder when he was last in a classroom, teaching?
2. Superintendent Beaton is also a member of ANSEA:
“The partners launched their lobby campaign—Public Education: Our Best Investment!—to remind both the government and the public that in these difficult financial times education is an investment that guarantees dividends for all Nova Scotians. “The overall trends in education in Nova Scotia are up,” says Ron Marks, president of the Nova Scotia School Boards Association. “Student achievement is up and the dropout rate is down. We need an increase in funding of at least 4.5 per cent in this year’s budget to maintain that trend.”
Dr. Norman Dray, speaking as president of the Association of Nova Scotia Educational Administrators (ANSEA), which represents all senior management in the province’s eight school boards, says, “We are in a strong position to comment on the impact of reduced funding on students.”
Even in 2009, the partners including the Nova Scotia Federation of Home and School Associations Inc, was shaking their sabres for more money, and if not, services would have to be cut to the students , including SE services.
3. Where Beaton stands on reading recovery
“Reading Recovery was an effective program and it was expensive, he added. “It will be interesting to say the least to see what could be out there as a replacement, we don’t think there’s anything that’s been proven by the research to work as effectively,” Beaton said. “On the surface, it’s an opportunity to save some money, but not a lot.”
http://www.capebretonpost.com/News/Local/2011-03-13/article-2326574/Strait-school-board-expresses-concern-over-cancelled-reading-program/1
So Beaton, does not know of any other reading program that involves one-on-one or any other reading program that has been proven by research to work as effectively as RR. Something tells me, his e-mail box should be filled by Monday morning, telling him all he needs to know that RR is not based on the reading science, that there is at least a dozen reading programs that are more cost effective and none of them are based on balance-literacy/whole language. Oh yes, future savings are generated since there is far less if any remediation in reading being done in the older grades.
A school board critter? Yes, I would have to agree, and one of those critters who favours their personal ideology and dogma over the best interests of children.
“
R+is 90% cheaper,has no annual licensing fees is based on the NICHD research and Orton theory which means it teaches children to read,spell and write genuinely to process language not memorize it or look for context clues.
It offers a foundation to build on in the form of a SK curriculum and it remediates any child from Grade SK to Grade 12.It creates Reading Expert teachers based on the current emprical research and does not obsess over Marie Clay,one person`s theory.It has a built in Assessment Battery all the way through the curriculum.
After the SK curriculum,teachers in Grade 1 should continue to do the work preventatively with the SK children found to be struggling,although only slightly due to the instruction.
Something tells me, that reading instruction should be on the menu, and how it causes hardship for the children and in turn parents. If only, is a track that runs through my head – If only my youngest had systematic explicit phonic instruction……….
And how parents are silenced for speaking out against false science in reading. Made worse by our educators who keep repeating false reading science, as in this letter to the editor:
” Research shows that one-to-one intervention is needed by a small number of students. This is expensive, but it pales beside the cost of remediation. We should build on what we know works: Reading Recovery.
6) RR is one process that is centred on ongoing collegial evaluation by teachers, and by external, observable, standards. This is the accountability we should expect of all teaching. ”
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Letters/1235143.html
If we want to know if RR works,just test Grade 3 kids.
There is no reduction of students no tlearning to read, and spell-research shows spelling is every bit as important, because by then the effects of guessing and context clues will have ‘fallen off’.
Every single person involved in education, education policy and education politics believes they have the best interests of students front and centre.
Nobody should impute motive in education debates. It is profoundly unbecoming.
I think that is a risk we are all willing to take. Things may get a lot more “unbecoming-er.”
Nobody should impute motive in education debates. It is profoundly unbecoming.
_____________________________________________
I couldn’t keep a straight face when I read that one.
You should be a comedy writer, Doug.
In the current context it is impossible to have an open and honest discussion on public education in Nova Scotia.
Other than the parents and taxpayers being marginalised by the educrats there is another group that has been successfully silenced – the classroom teachers.
To put it bluntly, classroom teachers have been forbidden from speaking out by both the NSTU and the School Boards. To do so places that teacher in jeopardy and can easily result in dismissal and believe me, if they determine that a teacher has to be gotten rid of they WILL find a way, legitimate or otherwise.
I wonder if any currently active classroom teachers will attend the forum tomorrow and, if so, will they adhere to the “official” talking points?
Seems to me the Canadian provincial common school systems were indeed founded on “input motive ” – as in education for all.
If that was unbecoming then count me in.
How politically incorrect of you. 😉
Generalities.
If you can find a stakeholder who will say, “actually I could not care less about kids” you have a debate. Short of that, left, right, centre, bureaucrat, teacher, teacher unions, parents ALL say “we are in it for the kids”.
This makes statements such as “we are for the kids” mute.
“It was announced at the March 23rd Board Meeting that SAC’s or their designates will have the opportunity to make a (10 minute presentation) to the board on March 28th.”
signed SSRSB
Pertaining to the possible closing of 12 schools on the southshore of Nova Scotia.
Says it all Doug. Sounds like a debate to me.
As much as it would be great to have to parents come out to the public forum in Halifax tomorrow night, I hope they show up in droves down there! I hope they get lots of press and the article that gets written points this trick out!
I am quite busy fighting school closings in Toronto but it is the conservative forces of our society that wants to close schools. We should be investing billions more in smaller classes and ECE. It all pays for itself.
Your situation doesn’t sound like a “generality” to me.
The difference between a tax-and-spend “liberal” and a borrow-and-spend “conservative” is what, exactly, when
the result is pretty much the same – we can’t bloody well afford ourselves.
what total BS. Don’t buy it folks! Compared to the rest of Ontario Toronto has closed few if any schools.
Man, how long has Doug been here dazzling you all with inaccuracies?
ECE was supposed to be the great savior of TDSB schools – that’s the whole purpose behind those – that and pandering to urban votes.
The debate is established Doug and it appears you are part of it. It seems putting students first is already working.
Doug, you should know better not to advance your position without reconfiguring the public education structure and progressive education methods, that produced the 60-40 split of the have and have-nots. Toss in the heavy use of modern marketing methods, designed to make parents comply, be responsive and act favourable to policies/messages that the individual arms of the public education are trying to get out.
Most parents are under the impression that school is about the 3 Rs, and one author has put it, ‘The three R’s have become the three P’s: politics, power and protection.”
http://books.google.ca/books?id=nG-QL3asuPMC&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=Motive+in+public+education+that+it+is+all+for+the+children&source=bl&ots=CyrNidvkBg&sig=l29TNCEbZiapp8Uo64R6ta_Zt4g&hl=en&ei=aSiPTY2JBcOCtgeZ0a3GDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAjgU#v=onepage&q&f=false
Some parents learned this early on, others finally get the point by the time their kids get into high school, and others just work the system playing the game of politics, power and protection. The kids come in second place, and in some cases last place, because of the 3 P’s, and you want to put in more money, producing the same split of 60-40 or widen the gap even further in the classroom???
‘The founders of government-sponsored education were, until recently, rather candid about their objectives. From Sparta to Prussia to Massachusetts, the architects of public schooling believed they knew better than parents how to raise children. They presumed that the spontaneous growth of civil society was inferior to the social blueprints they had drawn up for their fellow citizens. In short, they were perfect examples of what Adam Smith, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, called “the man of system,” who
seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon a chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it.”
http://www.sntp.net/education/school_state_3.htm
From Gatto: “First, though, we must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands. Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants. Don’t let your own have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a pre-teen, if Thomas Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put himself through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior today), there’s no telling what your own kids could do. After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.”
http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/john_gatto2.html
And finally Doug, an insider such as yourself has a lot more than 10 minutes that is reserved for a parent at a board meeting. Plus parents must stay within the parameters that are set out before hand. Crossing the line, usually results in being evicted from the podium. Fighting school closures is an admirable action, but the solution that is offered more money and ELP is the problem. In the city of Toronto, a school with lower enrollment is against the heavy weight and allure of sky high real estate prices. The land that a school sits on, is worth its weight in gold by the big developers. Rather enticing for trustees to sell off Toronto schools, in a time of rising costs and shortages, unlike rural closures, where school and the building sits there hoping for a buyer, or someone to lease it to. The fix is in before hand, because the policies that have been developed by the educrats made sure that parents and others who are fighting school closures have limited input. In urban cities, with little land left to develop – schools, and other public buildings are now at its greatest risk being gift wrapped with a bow into the eager hands of land developers, by the trustees and help by the silent partners in public education, including the teachers’ unions.
How about crossing the line Doug? Stopped playing the 3 P’s, and used your insider knowledge to promote that parents should be the ones to decide, the power to determine what their local schools should be, and where the children are first!
“Compared to the rest of Ontario Toronto has closed few if any schools.”
Here is the link for P4E on closures of schools. It is a hot topic on their site. The Toronto Board – and the Toronto Catholic Board – have 16 schools closed under both board, and well over active 40 ARC processes in place for the current year.
http://www.peopleforeducation.com/schoolclosingreport/April2010
Check out the rest of the province, and not the differences in urban vs rural school boards. More closures are happening in the populated areas, and by just a great coincidence in the populated areas, land value are very high in these areas. In my own stomping grounds in Ontario, my two schools that I went to, are closing. One an elementary and the other a high school. Large acreage, and prefect for housing development, where the average home is getting close to the $380,000 price. Nothing fancy either. My old stomping grounds is just another bedroom community, and has lost its rural charm a long time ago. I believe the closures, are in part due to the strings being pulled in behind the scenes by the big land developers.
The same pattern is being repeated across Canada in urban areas. I am not defending Doug, but I am questioning his motives. He has stated a number of times in the past, that he thinks rural schools should be transported out to large regional schools, even if the kids spends over a hour on a bus. I disagree with it on a number of levels. But I just recently heard of my neighbour’s grandchild who lives in England, near London leaving at 6:40 in the morning, taking 3 buses to arrive at school just before the 8:30 bell. He does not come home until just before 5:00 at night. The boy is 12 years old.
Back to Doug, his motive is probably pushing the be-it-all school, that has dental and health services for the parents and children. Why is he doing this now, when the teachers’ union were silent on the closures that have taken place in rural areas.
Why is he doing this now, when the teachers’ union were silent on the closures that have taken place in rural areas.
______________________________________________
The teachers are ordered to remain silent by both their unions and the school boards.
“…Toronto has closed few if any schools”
Interesting link here to do with Toronto school closures, the Toronto school board and why it’s hard to suck and blow at the same time:
http://www.torontolandscorp.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=30&Itemid=12
A bit off topic in a way but those who are most affected – the students themselves – need to get involved as well.
With the recent closure doomsday list in Halifax on everyones mind, I hope students come out.
School closures are not the union’s issue, in their contracts, which schools stay open or close is a management function. As a total they can say “seems to us their are too many closings” but it is not their business to say “close this one and keep this other one open.”
In Ontario, teacher’s jobs are tied directly to the number of students, not the number of schools. Support staff are tied to an extent, to the number of buildings.
Indifference par excellance!
no kidding steven. Contrary to what Doug touts when our school was threatened with closure the teachers were very much involved and didn’t stay quiet or invisible.
Some years ago P4E included my local high school on their school closing list and forgot to mention the new one going up two blocks away…Just sayin’ 😉
http://www.torontolandscorp.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=30&Itemid=12
what the heck is Annie Kidder doing on the Toronto Lands Corp. board?
What’s her expertise in that area exactly?
In Ontario, the unions do not care if teachers speak out as teachers. They are just not allowed to speak for the union unless they have an official role.
Perhaps not the union, but the board does mind, especially on issues where there is a lack of services for students, long waiting lists for the services, or any other issue that would draw negative attention to the school and the board.
And legally speaking, the privacy laws does impede and block criticism of rules/policies, from teachers being aired in the public forum. Two issues such as student bullying and SE services are the best ones, where we find most teachers defending the school board, when it is impacting the students negatively.
Only when specific names are being involved Nancy. OSSTF created documented proof of bullying and created a workshop that was seen across Ontario.
Teachers can say “there is still too much bullying and the boards are not doing enough.”
They cannot say in public “Tommy is being bullied and Principal Jones is not doing enough.”
You got my point Doug, but criticism from teachers on policies of schools, boards and the ministry aired in an open forum, or at meetings with parents (IEP meeting), will not be tolerated. You do not see open honest frank discussions by teachers, addressing the fault lines where the students are lodge in, or falling through the cracks of the system. IEP meetings are priceless, especially when dealing with veteran parents. The school staff remains quiet, while the parents duke it out with the board staff that is present. The school staff is caught in the trap, that there are not allow to criticized current policies that are impacting the student, but parents can. The school staff, will remain quiet, making no comments on either side. Quite the picture, the one IEP meeting I had a few years ago to see one member of the board staff, to make the statement that dyslexia is very rare. The whole room went silent, and stay silent while I and the board staff member, duke it out. I won hands down, concerning the school staff, because it was the turning point where the school had change their viewpoints and stances on not only the dyslexic part, as well as reading and writing issues. But I did not change the stance of the board, that is still leading the charge, on producing LD policies that keeps most of the students in the lowest achievement group.
A parent can’t get away from the three P’s, power, political and protection, especially the parents who are advocating on the behalf of their children in an IEP meeting. The board staff is present at the meetings, for one reason only – to control the school, protect current policies, and to insert political /personal ideology agenda of the upper levels of the education system.
As for the bullying policies, ditto on the 3 P’s as well. Bullying would not be a big problem in today’s school, if it was not for the political/personal ideology of the upper levels of the education system. Throw in other policies designed to protect the system, and not so much protecting the students or the parents, a little growth industry has developed in areas of bullying – quite the profits being made here, on a fault line that exists today as a result of progressive policies that are formed on an ideological level, and where common sense is absent.
The public education system is emotionally bankrupt;on occasion,we meet an educator with a soul and then we can go in and get to do good things.
A corrupt bureaucracy,a jail in a way for the children they hold hostage.
Last night concerned parents and citizens from across Nova Scotia gathered at a Public Forum in Halifax and released a bold declaration of principles, entitled “Students First Nova Scotia.”
Drafted by a group of 16 Nova Scotians, the Declaration proclaims that “students should come first” in education, not “adult interests” It calls upon concerned citizens to rally behind a reform agenda exhorting education authorities to “put students first, elevate teaching, empower parents, raise standards, and spend wisely.”
The Declaration was introduced by four public school parents, Steven Rhude of Lunenburg, Catherine Levy of Porter’s Lake, Peggy Chisholm of Fall River, and Rhonda Brown of Hammonds Plains.
Michael Zwaagstra, author of What’s Wrong with our Schools.. And How can we Fix Them? was the featured speaker and he shared the platform with a reaction panel of prominent citizens and parent activists, including Doretta Wilson (Society for Quality Education, Toronto), Charles Cirtwill (President of AIMS), and Denise Delorey (Save Community Schools, Antigonish)
The new group plans to meet next week to begin the process of formally establishing itself as an independent voice in Nova Scotia public education. Parents and citizens across the province will be invited to sign the declaration and join the fledgling movement for school reform.
Good luck with that. The group that wants to put students last, lower teachers, keep parents out and spend like a drunken sailor is going to be nervous.
Doug,
did someone just tap your knee with a doctor’s hammer?
Luck has nothing to do with it. The students have everything to do with it. Never underestimate “common sense”.
Great OECD finding BTW. School systems that force public schools to compete for students have no advantage. Look it up. BIG OECD study on what works and what does not.
Lessons from Alberta:
http://www.teachers.tv/videos/autonomy-choice-and-competition
Recommended viewing for all parents and citizens of NS.
thanks Doretta.
OECD studies should be looked at with careful consideration of the numbers, that the study is being based on. Alberta is one that would state the opposite, with the educrats agreeing it may them more competitive when charter schools were introduce.
Another report closer to home, and is in the latest post at SQE.
“The Fraser Institute has published school rankings for Ontario elementary schools. The rankings take into consideration the students’ backgrounds, rating schools on the basis of how much value they add to their students’ learning. Only schools that administered the provincial grade 3 and grade 6 tests are included in the tables, meaning that few private schools are ranked (they can’t afford to pay the approximately $50 per student fee).
I looked at the 22 top-ranked schools (p. 208) to see if there were any common themes, and indeed there were! Almost every school had fewer than 400 students, and most had considerably less than that. Of the 22, 4 were private religious schools and 6 were publicly-funded Catholic schools. Only 12 (just over half) were public schools, but even some of them had extenuating circumstances – for example, French immersion or gifted programs that drew students from afar or the school that is 99.99% Chinese. Considering that two-thirds of Ontario schools are public schools, the public schools are definitely under-represented in the top ranks.”
Click to access 70ONEEL11COMP.pdf
What I find interesting, is that schools with small populations wins out. And not the present day model of big schools or as some would call it factory schools. I attended a big school like most of the baby boomers, and I found it rather easy to work around the rules, since the 7 to 8 teachers I had, were more or less located in the academic wing of the school, and far remove from the tech wing and my locker. Big schools, do not have the ability to get to know students as well as the smaller schools. Big schools are far too busy worrying about discipline and attendance, and far less time getting to know individual students.
The OECD report without looking at it (Doug, what about putting in the link), the measures and variables are suspect since OECD takes it from the macro stats, and not the micro stats. Home grown reports and studies are much better, because it is the micro stats of the individual schools that forms the basis of the study, and is more reliable for people to interpret the data. Such as the one SQE pointed out on smaller school population.
It was a pleasure to listen to Michael Zwaagstra last night introduce himself as a teacher in the public school system. It was also refreshing to hear a teacher publicly discuss problems with our public school system and posit potential solutions. Even more impressive was his ability to refute that old problem NS has that since you do not teach here you really are not acquainted with our system.
What a breath of fresh air compared to the SAC meetings I recall in Lunenburg where the teacher rep would not say a word, knowing the school closure issue – or the review process – or consolidation – or any other contentious issue related to the school board position was on the agenda.
SSRSB
Special Board meeting to address School Identification Reports.
on March 30th a meeting will be held at Hebville Academy at 7pm., in Lunenburg County, NS, to address whether the 12 schools pre listed for closure review – will in fact, go under formal review.
Is it possible that a school could be put under review because a specific school board member thought it should be put up for review?
Should one wonder if this is an in house operation?
I would also wonder, if this is an in-house operation, staff would be required to take a look at review criteria in relationship to a particular school?
Could this be the case on the southshore?
just a few questions from a parent.
Maybe your minister of education should take a look at the criteria for school review in Ontario. It’s very proscribed and clear.
Click to access reviewGuide.pdf
Here’s an example of one board’s process, as outlined by the Ministry of Education:
http://www.hpedsb.on.ca/ec/directorsOffice/arc/
and an example of one school’s School Evaluation Framework:
Click to access st_catherine_school_valuation.pdf
All of the frameworks were set out by the Ministry and were customized to each board’s ARC. ALL of this had undergo public scrutiny. This isn’t to say some boards tried to wiggle out of doing it by the book, but the were quickly called to task and had to undergo even more Ministry scrutiny if they were deemed, by their communities, not to comply with the process outlined by the Ministry.
I would not use the Ontario school accommodation review as the poster child for an effective process at all.
There are many flaws in the process. I don’t have time now, but there have been reviews of the McGuinty imposed process by the ARCs who have used them and the results weren’t great.
First and foremost the Ontario process assumes that all school councils are running effective, are in compliance and have a good community communication profile.
It’s too long and the process itself costs money to implement – way more than boards can afford these days.
If the process worked so well for the TDSB and it’s Toronto Catholic equivalent why haven’t the recommendations been followed?
If you knew how things were done in Nova Scotia for school closures, the Ontario process is much more open and transparent. There are a few horror stories from the shores that these fine people here could tell you about. It was frankly, shocking actually what some school boards get away with there.
I think the OECD POV trumps Alberta by a considerable amount. They look at much of the world.
I think people need to be aware that the OECD is not some kind of lefty conspiracy. They are a giant think tank based on western governments many being conservative governments. They are a little too into “human capital formation” for my liking but they do have the greatest reach and the most profound influence on government policy.
When they say “competition for students is no help” governments listen.
There is nothing to “trump”.
Readers who watch the Edmonton prinicpal talk about how competition makes them want to be the best school might think otherwise.
I’ll take HER POV anytime.
http://www.teachers.tv/videos/collaboration-professionalism-and-accountability
Think tank eh Doug?
“The mission of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.
The OECD provides a forum in which governments can work together to share experiences and seek solutions to common problems. We work with governments to understand what drives economic, social and environmental change. We measure productivity and global flows of trade and investment. We analyse and compare data to predict future trends. We set international standards on all sorts of things, from the safety of chemicals and nuclear power plants to the quality of cucumbers.
We look, too, at issues that directly affect the lives of ordinary people, like how much they pay in taxes and social security, and how much leisure time they can take. We compare how different countries’ school systems are readying their young people for modern life, and how different countries’ pension systems will look after their citizens in old age.
Drawing on facts and real-life experience, we recommend policies designed to make the lives of ordinary people better. We work with business, through the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD, and with labour, through the Trade Union Advisory Committee. We have active contacts as well with other civil society organizations. The common thread of our work is a shared commitment to market economies backed by democratic institutions and focused on the wellbeing of all citizens. Along the way, we also set out to make life harder for the terrorists, tax dodgers, crooked businessmen and others whose actions undermine a fair and open society.
http://www.oecd.org/pages/0,3417,en_36734052_36734103_1_1_1_1_1,00.html
More like an organization that was developed for the developed countries and their economies. Of course now, they had added terrorists, tax dodgers, crooked businessmen and others whose actions undermine a fair and open society. In their mission statements, education is not mentioned, since education and other services such as health is part of an economy. Hence they collect data, and do not do comprehensive research in education systems, and nor do they collect the micro data from countries, that often shows a different picture from the macro data. And speaking of the OECD, one thing that they have discovered, the state of literacy in Canada is not good. In their data people with low literacy skills are increasing to the 46 percent mark, from 42 percents.
Could it be that the public education system does a smashing job on ensuring low literacy skills from using whole language approaches and progressive education methods? I would incline to agree, especially when one is reviewing the adult remedial help and post-secondary remedial help for literacy and numeracy.
And Doug, Doretta has provided the link for the connection between real estate values and school boards. I don’t disagree that it makes sense to get the most value for real estate owned by a school board, but on the other hand the temptation is there for school boards to closed down the schools, rather than find solutions to keep the schools open. So Doug, are you being frank with the parents that are fighting school closures, by disclosing your insider information? Just wondering…….
http://www.torontolandscorp.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=45&Itemid=38
Actually Nancy that link for Toronto Lands Corporation is an at arms length corporation of the Toronto School Board that handles recommeded sales of board held property. The board of THAT agency is an interesting mix.
I’d still like to know how Kidder managed to get on this.
Seems a stretch.
What would happen if we turned the system on its head?
Instead of the school boards micro-managing the schools (thereby making teachers and principals highly overpriced as the deliverers of pre-canned products that don’t work) why not change their function of being the providers of outside school needs?
Need some school bus service? Negotiate a deal with the school board. If the school finds a better and/or cheaper equivalent to what the board can put together, too bad for the board. They lose the business.
Apply the same princople to all sourcing.
an interesting idea.
Here’s another idea. How about we give individual schools the power to not use their school board?
In cases where the Principal and School Councils are effective and can prove to be able to manage things without boards why not let them try?
Give managing power of schools back to their community.
Let the elected trustee be a member of the council and serve as an ex-officio?
You can dream all you want Andrew. There are 2 bus companies with the fleet to serve most boards. Travelways and Allways. It is like a cartel and they have long term contracts.
Things are usually the way they are because 150 years of education experience tells everyone that this is the only way they can be. Small steady reforms are possible, like ELP, like Iggy puting $1 billion into post sec. but nobody wants revolution. Most people are quite content wth the system as shows up in survey after survey.
Parents such as the ones at the recent meeting in NS are considered far right Tea Party like cranks who are misinformed, unorganized unfocussed and internally contradictory.
How would you know how parents feel? You are deaf to their concerns.
Were you there at that NS meeting?
Wow Doug, “parents misinformed.” “Tea Party.”
Such a provocateur.
Giving managing powers back to the community is probably the most sensible and inevitable direction for public schools caught up in the collapse of centralization. The dust will eventually settle.
The Edmonton model strikes me as a great effort that came out of similar conditions currently experienced here in NS. Seems to me they put the students needs first. It isn’t perfect (what system is), but superior to the unfocussed approach reflected by todays progressivists, and bogged down by union indifference.
Since he didn’t attend the forum I’d have to say that Doug is the official Voice of Ignorance.
Oh, Doug, you’re such a charmer!
Doug is against local autonomy for schools, for obvious reasons that the cartel, called the union would lose some of their influence and power to the parents and the schools. Also it would serve notice, to the support services of a board to complete with private services. Actually some of it is happening in my school board, and where the local school is looking at the local private businesses, to supply the food services of the high school, instead of using the services of the board. The private services would have to be superior to the food services of the board, for one reason only – a fully equipped school cafeteria stands empty for a want of a cook. This is the standard excuse offered by the school board, but next year the school’s cafeteria will be back in action, cooking hot meals. My youngest can’t wait for the day, when they are serving hot roast beef and gravy.
Doug name it cartel, and the same name cartel fits the other arms of education. Just like the mini-cartel called Toronto Lands Corporation, all have deep connections with public education, or connections with real estate, or connections with the civil service, and all have their pet charities related to children. This must be the window dressing needed to dress up the purpose of TLC which is “The TLC does this by working to maximize the income we gather on properties that the TDSB directs to us, both for lease management and for sale. The real estate portfolio is managed within the context of community building in partnership with the TDSB. We recognize that these properties are vitally important to the communities in which they are located. The TLC has the experience and expertise to strive for and achieve a balance between maximizing revenues and meeting community-building objectives.”
I wonder what kind of money is being made, on the leasing of the school buildings? Just wondering, since their administration part is heavy in the leasing aspect, where full time staff is necessary to manage the lease buildings.
Interestingly enough at Monday’s forum, the NSTU president was caught out on a couple of her talking points – they were totally false and she got caught publicly.
My husband thought she came in quite unprepared.
Was there any press reporting on the forum?
I believe Haligonia.ca was there.
When will the video be aired and where?
I wonder if there’s a way to get a space, maybe in the Chronicle-Herald or some such, to air some of the horror stories from parents and students.
It would be good to see the dark side of public education alongside the touchy-feely “Tales Out of School”.
Perhaps it is a problem of press not reporting all of the education news. I have search for the third time, and it is amazing the lack of education news in local and general education topics. It might be a problem concerning the Atlantic provinces, to show public education in its best positive light. The most recent stories is the horrible story about a young’s girl’s suicide due to bullying, school closures in the Strait board and the attempt by the St. Mary’s University to shut down the women’s hockey team.
Debate on education issues cannot happen, unless both sides are presented, and at the moment it appears to me that there is an active attempts by the educrats to slant stories that present public education in the best light, and to bury the education stories that criticizes the public education systems.
I am in favour of local autonomy for SCHOOL BOARDS because we have a real democratic election for those.
Having local schools responsible and accountable to the local community is even more democratic but you want a “democracy” where you make the rules.
Those types of “democracies” are falling apart at the seams worldwide.
school boards are no longer a guarantee of local autonomy or inclusive decision making.
They’ve expired their usefulness and have become a drag on the provincial economies.
Time to either downsize them or give folks the option of using them at all.
I attended the forum on Monday and was very impressed with Mr. Zwaggstra’s talk. I found him very articulate and exceedingly capable of addressing the many questions directed towards him. Given his book was written while still a member of the public teaching community made it even more astonishing.
I was somewhat taken aback by the NSTU president’s attempt to turn the “question period” into a soapbox lecture. I was amused however, when she was immediately confronted with data that refuted her assertations and she was unable to continue.
(“Reaction Panel” apparently was not a frivolous name choice!)
The passion shown by those on this panel was apparent and the statistical knowledge was impressive.
I wish the meeting could have been longer, it was apparent that there were folks that would have liked to have had their stories heard but understandably it ran late as it was.
I would like to congratulate those that put their time and effort into hosting this forum and hopefully it becomes but a first step in longer journey.
The Students First Nova Scotia Public Forum summary report and Declaration are now online.
For Public Forum highlights, click here:
http://www.schoolhouseconsulting.ca/nws_upcoming_events.php
For the full text of the Declaration, click here:
Click to access StudentsFirstNS_28Mar11.pdf
Seeking better schools? If you live in Nova Scotia, sign the declaration and join us.
Send all signed “Statements of Principles” to
director@schoolhouseconsulting.ca
What local autonomy does the school board have, Doug. According to this article, trustees become field agents for the provincial education ministry.
“Instead of being overseers of education in their communities and the representatives of parents and public to the bureaucrats in the school board office, trustees are really an extension of the provincial government. Elected trustees and board officials, once they get in tandem after the first few months after an election and some training, become field agents to the central authority. They are not autonomous like municipal councils.
This was well-described by a newspaper reporter before the last board elections last fall, 2008.
http://www.canada.com/northshorenews/news/viewpoint/story.html?id=95b2a310-5421-43b5-9646-f975e8883d78
http://abolish-school-boards.org/2009/10/teachers-professionals-or-union-activists/
Abolish School Board site:
Lots on unions and their role to prevent autonomy at the local school.
Here is the article that Paul mentioned earlier on, by the partners of educate to refute Paul and Charles Cirtwell.
“Nova Scotia’s Education Partners are committed to ensuring the public education system provides education for all and we strive to maintain a system that will support all students in their learning. We encourage honest discussion about the school system including a focus on areas for improvement and we intend to participate and respond to all dialogue, positive and negative, related to how the school system operates here in Nova Scotia.
We were disheartened to see the Op-Ed story submitted by Paul Bennett and Charles Cirtwill in the March 24 issue of The Chronicle Herald. We want to take the opportunity
to correct a few inaccuracies, and to set the record straight about the Nova Scotia Tales Out of School campaign.”
Click to access EdPartnersOp-EdMar2011.pdf
What no one has stated, that attended the forum, what was the issue of the president of the union that stopped her dead in her tracks? The horror stories that are repeated daily? I am curious because it was information dealing with data that did stopped her, and it is the same kind of data that some parents took the time to gathered at the famous IEP meetings. The first time I introduced the graphs and stats at an IEP meeting 3 years ago, it stopped the board staff dead in their tracks. It made them look foolish and prove to the school staff, once and for all what her learning problems were, and how they can be addressed effectively at the school level, providing they were willing to work cooperatively with me since many of the things I wanted to happen at the school level, were not approved at the board level. One thing in particular, unit guides, breaking the things that were needed to know for study purposes, with lower knowledge items first, and high knowledge items last. Apparently, it was an unfair advantage over other students. It got to the point of the discussion, one board member stated it almost asking for the questions of the test. I pulled a copy of the curriculum outcomes, and asked them if they can sense of the mumbo-jumbo? End of that discussion, and in the end I won a small victory of the school staff very interested in stats, especially in local stats, and how stats can be used effectively to help students.
There is a gold mine of data in the psycho-educational assessments, that parents can used effectively to made effective changes in the IEP meetings. Plus another gold mine in the hard copies of classroom tests, and in the CRTs. For children who have learning disabilities, it will clearly show that there has been nothing done about the learning weaknesses of these children. Most of these learning weaknesses can be targeted, to the point that the learning weaknesses is only playing a very small negative role in their learning. And the best part, the parent is creating a paper trail, that courts take seriously and where school boards usually stands on best efforts for their defense. School boards do not like paper trails that parents keep, nor do they like parents who keep log books, especially if parents are sending copies to the ministry’s level stating that the board is not following SE policy, nor are they following the spirit of the policy.
So what did the union president say, that made the panel go to the data?
Save Community Schools groups in Halifax region and Nova Scotia’s South Shore have just scored a few small victories in the perennial School Closure Wars.
Seven of the 12 Halifax Regional Board schools have been spared and the South Shore Board has halted the school review/closure process.
Three schools continue to be threatened in Antigonish County, including Canso Academy, and Denise Delorey’s local school in Heatherton, NS. The Halifax Regional School Board will review five schools for possible closure in Dartmouth, Lower Sackville and Spryfield.
More than 100 parents showed up at the March 31 HRSB Board meeting to hear the board announce which schools would face the axe.
“Anytime you’re talking about the potential closure of schools, there is a lot of emotion,” board chair Irvine Carvery told CBC News (March 31)
The five Halifax Region schools on the block are:
South Woodside Elementary (Dartmouth), Prince Arthur Junior High (Dartmouth), Central Spryfield Elementary, Sackville Centennial Elementary, and Gertrude Parker Elementary (Lower Sackville)
On CBC Information Morning, Carvery said the board will continue to look for ways to cut administrative costs.
Meanwhile, the South Shore Regional School Board decided it wouldn’t review any of the 12 schools on its preliminary list.
Board chair Elliott Payzant said people made it clear they wanted the board to cope with cuts in provincial funding in other ways than closing schools.
Comment:
The Nova Scotia Strait Board is looking more and more like an outlier. That Board’s “old school” admministration simply cannot read the signals. Concerned parents and citizens have a right to not only be heard, but respected in school review processes. It’s time for the Department to step in — for the sake of public education in that region.
Small victories are being won, but the whole process needs to be re-assessed. The quality of education offered in small schools needs to be factored into the equation and it should not be necessary to mount parent insurgencies to save local schools. One encouraging sign: Board Chair Carvery is now calling for the adoption of a “rural education strategy” to save Nova Scotia’s small villages/towns from virtual extinction. That’s music to my ears.
The Public Forum on “Putting Students First” will be re-broadcast by popular demand…and available online.
The Public Forum was filmed by Haligonia.ca and will be posted at http://www.haligonia.ca on the weekend.
Ashley King advised me that he is preparing a full documentary covering the first half of the Public Forum, including the featured speaker Michael Zwaagstra and the Reaction Panel — Doretta Wison, Charles Cirtwill, and Denise Delorey. He has also offered to produce short clips for SFNS!
Stay tuned for the premiere!
SSRSB chair Elliot Payzant said the people made it clear they wanted the board to cope with cuts in provincial funding in other ways than closing schools.
—————————————————————————
SSRSB proposal: vote 10 -2 in favour of pre listing 12 schools for review. Close consolidate, bus to more future monstor schools.
Provincial response: for now, the capital project well is dry on the southshore. Enjoy your P-9 in Lunenburg!
SSRSB: the board votes 10 – 2 in favour of eliminating the 12 schools from the review list.
SSRSB reaction: we did it for the parents and to save communities.
“Small victories are being won, but the whole process needs to be re-assessed. The quality of education offered in small schools needs to be factored into the equation and it should not be necessary to mount parent insurgencies to save local schools. One encouraging sign: Board Chair Carvery is now calling for the adoption of a “rural education strategy” to save Nova Scotia’s small villages/towns from virtual extinction. That’s music to my ears.”
I wonder what Carvery has in mind? When the PCs form a government in NL, shortly after that they created a new position called the Rural Education and Corporate Services.
http://www.esdnl.ca/aboutesd/districtdirectory/staffdirectory.jsp
My understanding of the structure, is that Rural Education and Corporate Services work for both the government and the school board, researching, improvements in rural education, and providing information for policy decisions being made either by the ministry and the school boards. From the public’s perspective, I have no idea if they are strong advocates for rural education, since they are only in the news here and there, announcing good news for rural schools. As for the bad news, from what I have observed they are no where to be seen. It leads me to believe that they work for the government and school board’s goals and aims.
I did another search, and discovered something that I was not aware of. No one communicated it to me, and I do not think a lot of parents are aware of a survey being done by the Rural Education and Corporate Services.
” School administration and staff are an important stakeholder group for the Eastern School District. Your ideas and feedback are crucial in helping continue to improve education in our District. Hence, we ask that, within the next six weeks, you have an early dismissal
of one hour, which, in combination with regular staff meeting time, you engage each other around the six core questions listed on the web survey. We also ask administration to encourage all staff, students, parents, and school council members to complete the web survey on an individual basis so as to ensure a very broad base of feedback for our consideration within the final draft document. Once the final draft document is readied it will be distributed to all stakeholders for final critique.”
Click to access memo.pdf
Here is the survey link.
https://www.esdnl.ca/MemberServices/survey/takeSurvey.html?id=21
This is the last day for the survey. I really do not think that they want parents to do the survey. IF anything, it was not well advertised.
I do believe that the Rural Education and Corporate Services prevented closures, and increase quality of education in rural NL.
The instinct and predisposition to close schools is conservative since they hope to shrink the state and public expenditure. The most conservative would abolish public education.
The instinct and predisposition to keep public schools open as much and as often as possible is progressive left oriented since they actually believe in public education and believe that government and the state is, for the most part a force for good.
I find it ironic in the extreme to watch conservatives fighting like mad to keep “their” public school open. The collar and cuffs don’t match.
that’s because their “replacement capital monster” is out of fuel.
There was no prescient recipe/solution for reform in today’s centralist educational climate.
But we do have the evidence of waste and errant idiologies which have brought us to this point. People from all walks of life and backgrounds are in fact working together, whatever their collars and cuff look like. The Zwaagstra Symposium is proof.
The recent backpeddling of the SSRSB is another fact.
A rural/small town education plan is another.
A Students First Nova Scotia approach is another which is gaining momentum.
“The collar and cuffs do not match” is one of your better lines, Doug. It is, however, a further indication that you view education almost solely through an ideological lens.
Every educational policy issue is not reducable to the old “progressive” vs. “traditional” ideological paradigm. Some”old progressives” and more than a few “neo-cons” do remain trapped in that mindset.
Rick Hess’s new book The Same Thing Over and Over: How School Reformers Get Stuck in Yesterday’s Ideas ( 2010) is aimed at all of us. Our own TDSB alerted me to it and I found myself nodding as I read that book. At times, everyone in education begins to sound like that proverbial “broken record.”
What’s my point? We need more genuine school reformers who have collars and cuff that do not match. Maybe then we would stop stereotyping people and tossing around labels.
It is on both sides of the political lines. The Ontario government has done a find job, sitting on the fence watching the closures of schools. A closure of schools crosses all political lines, and to think otherwise, is foolish.
Events like closures, unites people across the political spectrum to prevent a closure.
Even Rick Hess’ piece today on turnarounds says
1) charters don’t work and nobody wants to charter the very bottom kids because it drags down charter stats and is just too hard to have success.
2) Dumping the principal and/or half the staff does not work either, makes virtually no difference
3) Closing the school makes no difference since there is no successful school close by willing and able to take the kids.
The problem that both Bushs’ people and now Obama’s people are finally discovering is that the problem is not in the principal or the teachers. The problem is the environment the kids are being raised in outside of the school. Poverty, violence, single parents, drugs, FAS, poor nutrition, poor dental and optical health, few role models, etc
The school system cannot change these things. Only enlightened social policy that eists in every democratic nation except the USA can change this.
The Ontario government is firmly planted on both sides of the fence. If I were them I would close schools but only in Tory ridings because they seem to vote for less government. Let them deal with the hypocracy.
We know otherwise.Soon,due to research based reading instruction K-3 in some First Nations schools,we will show a 70% improvement in literacy scores bt grade 3 when it used to be 85% failure.
Your staff lacks pedagogical training K-3.
Doug, do you read the entire article, or you just like take things and twist it to suit your ideology.
“Color me skeptical. There’s little reason to think that chartering these schools works, and charter operators aren’t all that eager to take them on. The SIG transformation model looks to me a whole lot like CSR or corrective models that have never racked up much success. As for the “fire half of ’em” turnaround model, I’ll just note that firing half your employees usually isn’t a one-time solution. Most well-run outfits, private or public, don’t fire half their folks in one big bonfire, replace them, and then enjoy a miraculous transformation. Rather, weeding out mediocrity is a natural, sustained part of how they manage their team. That’s not an option here. And school closure is swell if we think there’s plenty of room at terrific schools that will welcome these kids, and if it won’t disrupt those schools. Unfortunately, most of the targeted schools aren’t in areas flush with terrific, under-capacity alternatives.”
Hess is talking about federal dollars, and in the end he states, ” When it comes to something like school improvement, something that’s a matter of practice, fidelity of implementation, and on-the-ground commitment, the frustrating fact is that federal policymakers can’t really do much. What can they do? They can provide data and transparency, research and evaluation, and political cover that permits local leaders to act, and they can scour their books to strike rules that hamstring hard-charging principals and superintendents. But that may be it. As much as federal officials would like to do more, it may well be that dramatically improving lousy schools is simply beyond the purview of folks sitting in DC office buildings, no matter how smart and well-intentioned.”
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/
Much like the MOE in provinces. And by the way Doug, no way in Hess’s article did it state what you had written, ”
charters don’t work and nobody wants to charter the very bottom kids because it drags down charter stats and is just too hard to have success”
And for that matter the rest of your take on Hess’s article.
And once again, blaming the parents and other outside factors is not going to help you in your crusade in more money for the poverty factor. Completely ignoring the school factors that the school has control over. Hess hinted in his article, here and there that rests in the local school. As Joanne has stated, it is the pedagogical training of teachers that will do wonders + local autonomy of schools.
Even if everyone in Canada was guarantee a basic income above the poverty rate, nothing would change because of the training and current progressive policies of the public education system. Oh yes, the top to bottom structure of the education system is another big factor, and even Hess knows it is a problem. Why can’t you see it?
“
The tide may come to Canada. See these US teacher union “threat maps”:
http://www.eiaonline.com/intercepts/2011/03/31/nearmageddon-the-threat-maps/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Intercepts+%28Intercepts%29
Not one state has ever passed a voucher referendum because they are very unpopular.
New Zealand decided a few years ago to get tough with teachers, attack standard of living etc, almost instant result was a severe shortage of teachers. Go for it, you will pay dearly.
I don’t know why people don’t read history. If they did, they would know that things are the way they are because this is almost the only way they can be and they are the way the majority wants them to be.
Incemental change IS quite possible. Improvements can be made. Entire new models? Very little support for that.
It’s pretty clear to me that N.S. has a terrific wave of parents and communities leading the effort to reform the schools.
We had that once in Ontario, but other than SQE there’s now younger wave of disenchanted parents in any quantity that’s making the kind of noise that the Coalition for Ed. Reform did once upon a time.
Unless there’s an infusion of new blood into an old problem who are very organized, the wave in Ontario will not catch soon enough.
With fewer and fewer families having kids in schools the effort is compounded by that.
A brief synopsis:
Department of Education: part of the problem
NSSBA: part of the problem
NSTU: part of the problem
School Trustees: part of the problem
School board staffs: part of the problem
Teachers and principals: do what you’re told and become part of the problem or your career is buggered
Parents and reformers: ignored
Students: screwed
Taxpayers: screwed twice
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/03/31/27kipp_ep.h30.html?tkn=XRLFMbtytVCrfVQYLzUYKv%2FCxgESdEmor%2BJK&cmp=clp-edweek#comments
Time will show that there is nothing of value in charters, vouchers, teacher bashing, union bashing, closing failing schools, Mayoral control, testing, etc.
Funny how all the states show great growth but the one national test Naep shows stagnation.
Part of the problem
A student who spends 1 hour on the bus each way is sitting in that bus for 72 school days each year, 936 days in 13 years of schooling – that’s the equivalent of 5.2 school years on a bus.
That is one result of school closings.
Doug, you pulling straws to defend an education structure that fails the student and than the taxpayer at the end. Furthermore, fudging the truth about New Zealand. Yes there is a shortage, and is ongoing due to some factors that all countries are having problems with. In New Zealand and Australia, part of the problem is that experienced teachers are leaving to the Middle East and other Asian countries, paying top dollar for their skills. In turn, there is a shortage of specialized teachers. The same type of specialized teachers that Canada is having a shortage in. Now for the individual states, their assessments are a whole lot easier than the national test. In part by dumbing down the state test, it ensure federal funding coming to their state. Much like the funding formula in Canadian provinces, that plays the same game in special education funding and schools who are not doing well. It is one way of increase funding for the boards, but there is no accountability, to the taxpayer, or the students.
United States also has the IDEA laws, to ensure the individual student receives an education. Although it is meant primary for students with disabilities, this set of laws are also driving change to the U.S. public system. It is becoming rather costly for boards and states, for payments or settling court cases because they fail to provide an education for the students. Most of these students, if they received the correct reading and writing help in the first place, if they received timely interventions, if they received the correct accommodations, the correct teaching methods, and the list goes on, the parents would not be suing state and the school boards. And Canada is not free, between Autism and LD parents, we are not happy campers. If anything the public education systems of Canada have failed this group as much as they have failed to provide a decent education for the low-income schools. There will be a class action suit coming in the future, and it won’t be so much about money, but rather the focus will be on the education system and teaching methods that teachers are trained with. Throw in the lousy curriculum that is based on a philosophy, or some would say a religion cult, the unions, and everything else that takes away from the students to keep some adult happy to make it up as they go, creating more edubabble and confusion for the taxpayer and parents and children.
Most mission statements of education boards are along the lines, an education for all. Taking a look at LD stats, most boards get a fat zero for the LD students. Only about 4 % of the identified LD population will actually make it to university. Another 10 % will make it to a 2 to 3 year college program. The other 85 % of the LD students they be lucky to get a certificate, and that is if they have not dropped out of school, and the rest might received a grade 12 diploma. The real shameful part, is that the 85 % of identified LD students, will have very weak skills in the basics of reading, writing and numeracy in all parts or some aspect. The mission statements of education boards and ministries are lies, because it should be stated an education for some, but not all.
If one started to break down the data, one would conclude that the mission statements are for show, because the educrats are under the impression that there will never be accountable for their failures. It is coming to Canada, and I believe ground zero will be with students with disabilities. It is here that the educrats throw out the research grounded in science, in favour of that sloppy progressive philosophy that keeps students from never reaching their full potential.
There was a massive serge OUT of New Zealand when they got tough with teachers. There was no shortage before they lost their minds.
Doug, I read the articles on New Zealand, including a few government reports going back 20 years ago. Not once did I read any shortages cause by getting tough on teachers. There was one article, that mentioned the lower salaries of teachers, that cause many of them to go and work in another country. At the time, there was shortages in England and Australia, where these countries were hiring New Zealand teachers, leaving New Zealand short of teachers. Of course lower salaries did not help either. The good news is, since 2010 New Zealand is over the teacher shortage, except for the shortage in specialist teachers.
You can look it up yourself, and read the same articles. And no where did I read that the New Zealand government got tough with teachers. Not even in the teachers’ union press releases, was they any talk of being tough with teachers, except for salaries.
Our teachers are well paid but then, teachers aren’t the problem.
I agree Andrew, teachers are not the problem.
Poverty is the problem. ALL educational data says the poor do badly. If that were fixed we would have only tiny problems.
Really?
I was raised poor by a single, divorced mother in a town controlled by the Catholic Church, got a university education working and paying my own way and managed well enough.
My wife was raised poor in Nova Scotia (6 siblings). She worked her way through university as well, has 3 degrees, including post grad degree, and managed quite well in the end.
Our four boys are also doing quite well in spite of some difficulties – mainly caused by the education system in Ontario.
Poverty impacts all of society, and not just education, Doug. However institutions such as education can limit the impact of poverty by structural reform, elimination of policies based on politics and Dewey-speak philosophy, and low expectations. It would also help to remove some of the power and influence of the teachers’ unions, and how they use political force without regard to the negative impact it has on the students.
The whole education system has to become a bottom to top structure, where the schools and their communities become the final say-so on their schools, within guidelines and respecting the provincial school acts and other legislative law surrounding education. One sized-fits-all model has been the death knell for a lot of communities, that that does not fit their unique circumstances of their community and school.
To use poverty as an excuse for poor results is completely unacceptable.
Rather,we should be doing everything we can to do much better for these communities,they should be pockets of concern and funding;not to give you more money for teachers Doug,to do as Title 1 does,to put more pressure on schools to be accountable for numeracy and literacy enhancements in these sectors and to not be allowed to say they`re poor so they can`t learn.
In my field of literacy, weak phonemic awareness is a well known cause for students struggling to learn to read and spell and it is often a prevalent symptom in these communities because the children are perhaps not spoken to as much to build early articulation and vocabularies and not
read to as much during brain development K-5.
We have so much to do to get things right,the research sits on the shelf,the knowledge everywhere on the Internet but vacant from our FOE that prepare our teachers.
To deny that poverty is the main cause of poor performance in school is to ignore the plain facts.
ALL educational data from Canada, the USA, UK and around the entire world shows that educational success is heavily skewed to the affluent and educational failure is heavily skewed to the poor.
The EQAO, NAEP, the “League Tables” in the UK all say exactly the same thing.
Arne Duncan’s 500 worst performing schools? ALL poor.
Wake up.
You’re entitled to your opinion, Doug but you aren’t entitled to your own “facts”.
Do your “facts” indicate that failure is connected to POOR SCHOOLS or POOR STUDENTS.
Targeting certain communities, can work, and work well within the big urban picture, and as well in rural communities, especially in early childhood education. But the programs must fit the unique needs of the local community, and not the rigid guidelines of a bureaucratic government department willing to sacrificed science, in favour of the latest fad.
The facts are ALL on my side Andrew.
Anybody can manipulate “facts” to achieve a specific result. Reading Recovery “facts” are a perfect illustration of that.
Without a complete and thorough understanding of the methodology used in collecting data your “facts” are simply assumptions.
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/10/problem-is-poverty-evidence-from-gerald.html
We have so much to do to get things right,the research sits on the shelf,the knowledge everywhere on the Internet but vacant from our FOE that prepare our teachers.
If the Penicillin is not prescribed AND administered,what do you expect.
Moden day illiteracy has been GREATLY exacerbated by poor teacher training as well as whole language ideology-which is still rampant.
Look at how many schools use RR and 99% of schools feel a tremble if you suggest teaching with explicit systematic synthetic phonics and doing phonemic awareness and graphemic instruction so they kids hear the sounds and pull up the pictures they make in their brains.
Doug,your views are so simplistic and your suggestions so platitudinous ,for such complex problems.You are not drawn to solutions thinking at all.
Andrew you need to look around a bit. Educational success is highly determined by class position. The evidence is overwhelming international and highly peer reviewed academic work.
It does not fit some people’s pet theories about the public sector, unions, teachers, phonemic awareness, and so on but it is far more compelling than anything ever produced by conservatives.
Some people thing that by pointing out that the poor do very badly in education everywhere on Earth I am giving up on them. Totally wrong.
Inside the school sysyem the poor need ; smaller classes, ELP, better curriculum, more in-school nutrition programs, programs like Pathways, less streaming, …
Outside the school system they need; better dental and optical care, better nutrition, better housing in peaceful neighbourhoods, better free student transportation, …..
Personally,I find this post offensive.I am not a “leftie”but I am much kinder,generous and supportive in my thinking.
You suffer from the ‘bigotry of low expectations”.
Doug, many times people have asked you specific questions. You nearly always fail to answer them and then toss in more red herrings. Why is that?
Denial is not just a river in EGYPT.
More silly platitudes.
Pouring more money into a defective model only results in a larger failure… that IS a “fact”.
See the link above. You act like I am making this up. The overwhelming consensus of the education/academic community is that poverty is at the root of education problems.
Pouring more money affects every system. Would you like them to “pour more money” into health care or sit in waiting rooms longer. How long should SE kids wait for service or how much should they get. It is all determined by money.
Well Doug, from where I am standing, low-income children entering school have already been condemned by the current policies, non-science approaches and indoctrination policies of education departments, by not providing for the needs of the low-income students.
Of course Doug, education is heavily skewed to the fluent, because educational policies are based on middle to upper-class thinking. Low income children, have vastly different experiences and knowledge, compared to their counterparts. Just like middle-class students have vastly different experiences and knowledge, compared to the upper-class students. What is missing in a public education, is that the students are not being taught the knowledge on how the other sides are thinking. Instead, they get treated with the false knowledge, that everyone is equal, no matter who you are. In some quarters they call it white class privilege, and all students are force to adapt to thinking of white class privilege. Just like all LD students are force to think and do things in the prescribe methods and materials rendered by the educrats. Methods such as systematic instruction and practice work sheets are methods that work best for LD students, but is discourage and sometimes banned from being used by the educrats. The very same methods, that have been shown to work best with LD students in the regular classroom, but the educrats would rather use other methods, to keep them part of the low achievement crowd, along with the low-income students.
Doug, and the majority of educrats are all about keeping the status-quo, so they continue on with their busy projects that have more to do with indoctrination, than about children’s learning, and reaching their full potential.
One of my favourite article, from a parent and has a blog called Steve-olsen.com, he writes about his experience with public education.
“About a year ago, while I was planning my writing projects, I contacted my 12th Grade English teacher. He was one of the few teachers that treated me like a free spirit instead of a caged animal. He was one of those teachers that fought the status-quo, and I respect him for it. I asked him what had changed about his students over the past 25 years. This is a paraphrased summary of what he said:
Critical thinking skills have been absent from my classes for years. Kids used to read the book “Catcher in the Rye” and then describe what Holden Caulfield meant to them. Today, they read it and expect me to teach them what it means. Not just most kids, all kids. I haven’t seen a critical thinker in my classroom in five years.
The top students learn the system. If they are free thinkers, they hide it, because they’re after top grades and independent thinking is too risky and unpredictable.
What’s different today is the nature of the mediocre and poor students. They don’t confront and challenge us like they used to. They seem brain dead and indifferent.
Our zero tolerance policies have created a larger gulf between the students and us. From the late sixties until the mid-nineties, the students and their culture were somewhat accessible. Today they completely shut us out.”
http://steve-olson.com/how-the-public-school-system-crushes-souls/
Independent thinking, that runs contrary to the indoctrination of the educrats, is discourage and often students get into a lot of trouble by the school for daring to express their thinking, doing things differently, than the prescribe and approve methods of the educrats.
“Junior High Computer Class Failure
Two years later in Jr. High, I took an Apple II computer class. On the first day of class, I looked through the syllabus, found the last lesson, loaded the 5 1/4 inch floppy, and completed it. I beamed with pride and arrogance. The teacher looked at my program, turned bright red, yanked me out of my seat by my ear, and I fell to the floor humiliated. He pointed to the door and said, “get out of my classroom.” He forced me to sit in the hall the rest of the semester and failed me.
I didn’t complain to my parents or the administration, because they never listened before, so I had no reason to believe they would listen this time. That day ended my stint in education – I showed up – sometimes – but I never returned mentally. So even though I have a diploma, it’s fair to say my formal education ended in the 8th grade. I never bothered trying to please the system again and I checked out of programming and computers for 15 years. I contracted a 15 year case of the F*ck Its (A term my brother learned in AA for an attitude that leads people to fall off the wagon).”
Just like what happen to my youngest, who decided to finished the math unit in one sitting, beaming and so full of pride that she has come a long way from the little girl, struggling in basic math. Instead, she was peppered with questions, with the accusation that I did her homework. My youngest laugh out loud, and informed them she would have to reteach her mother how to do quadratical equations. In the end she is forbidden to go ahead, and now she works in secret at home, doing the homework in advance, making it a lighter homework load.
Poverty is an excuse, just like LD is used as an excuse for the failures of the system. There is ways to overcome it, but unfortunately we have a public education system that refuses to do so.
Andrew and Nancy, anecdotal stories are not taken seriously in research. My family, my wife, my daughter… proves nothing.
Research looks at thousands of cases and concludes the poorer you are, the less likely you are to go very far in education. Of course some people overcome this but very few. That is the point.
Please don’t make yourself look any more foolish by denying the income education link.
I look foolish and you won’t even answer the question as to why you don’t answer questions?
Now THAT looks foolish.
Andrew and Nancy, anecdotal stories are not taken seriously in research. ____________________________________________
Of course they aren’t. It would skew the pre-determined result of the “research”.
In other words “don’t try to dazzle me with the facts, my mind is made up.”
What question do you want?
Another red herring.
This is getting funny.
Click to access reading_centers.pdf
Read it Doug,you`ll learn something.You`re not one of those know it alls are you?
Are you a teacher, Doug? one of those former teacher who couldn’t wait to get out of the classroom? a union “professional”? a “professional” school trustee?
Andrew – oh he’s MUCH more than that, and I tried to explain that in a post the Paul nixed. However if you go back through this blog’s archives you’ll see that the right answer to your questions is “all of the above”….and more.
Good grief, I’d die of old age before finding that needle in the haystack. 😉
Doug, by not reading all of my post, completely ignoring the reasons why income levels is being used by the public education system, to keep the status-quo on class divisions in society, And as you stated in an earlier post, ” Educational success is highly determined by class position. The evidence is overwhelming international and highly peer reviewed academic work. ” , is to determine the potential of human beings and their needs by income only. A big sign in education policy, is the belief of classism that is so prevalent in the upper levels of governments and very much in public education.
“Classism is the discrimination, oppression, or prejudice against an individual or group based solely on actual or perceived socio-economic class. It shapes life chances.”
Read more at Suite101: Classism Keeps the Poor Jobless: How Poverty Hinders Opportunity http://www.suite101.com/content/classism-a100599#ixzz1II2dKwGW
There is millions of accounts all over the world, of policies being shaped by socio-economic variables, that does more to hinder people, than actual help. More stories like that, than the good news stories that the public education system likes to show off. The educrats of the public education system that are in research, likes to call LD children who are not low achievers, as exceptions and therefore close close examination is discouraged, why they are performing well above the other LD children are put down to the socio-economic factors. In reality, the LD children who are high-achievers have received the correct instruction in reading, writing, and numeracy to reached their full potential, but not through the public education system. I have contacted some of the researchers that are part of education system, to here their explanations on questions I had posed on their research and reports. The picture became clear to me, that they refuse to discuss the current education policies, instruction and curriculum , and it was all due to other factors. It is the current policies, instruction and curriculum that created the need to tutored and reteach my child, and not the other factors such as having the skills to do so. If left to the devices of the public education system, my child would certainly be part of the low achievers.
And Doug, in the reading and LD fields, there is tons of research what happens to students no matter their income level, if they do not received the correct instruction in the first place. It is classism being operated inside our schools, and it is why, there is so few of the low income and LD students reach their full potential. Doug, you want it to happen this way, and you do not want to hear the stories that tells a different story. My youngest is doing very well in grade 10 math, and could finished the rest of the grade 10 math curriculum in one week, and in the next week start the grade 11 math course, and no doubt be finished the grade 11 course by June. She is no genius in math, and what she has that the public education system does not do, is a firm foundation in arithmetic. Every student is capable of doing well in math, providing it is taught systematically, in a step by step fashion. And lots of practice.
I am not foolish, but you are Doug for refusing to look at the stories, the research in reading and LD fields that shows income does not matter. But teaching methodologies matters a whole lot more, than the current practices that reinforces the class structure of today’s society and the brains of children who think differently from the norm, to remain low achievers throughout the K to 12 public education system.
We shouldn`t waste our breath on him!
I agree with large parts of your link Jo Anne but slide #2 the success rate of Black and Latino students says it all. You have proven my point, Black and Latino students have much lower incomes. Their problems are compounded in one case by racism and in the other by racism and ELL status.
ALL students get roughly the same curriculum and pedagogy however, only the poor fail to flourish in large numbers ipso facto, poverty is the source of the problem.
We seem to be beating a dead horse here.
Rick Hess must be smiling because we are providing fresh evidence for this thesis: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” (Albert Einstein on Insanity)
It’s time to turn the channel and get back to the theme. In case everyone has forgotten, it’s supposed to be “public participation in education.”
Do discussions like ours serve that purpose? Or scare others off?
Enough said. This is my last point-read slide 13 and 14 Doug-we can bridge the gap with proper instruction.
Right now,the research is a mute point in education conversations.
“Public Particpation in Education–Honest Open Discussion”
Readers in the southern Ontario area might be interested in attending Measuring UP A Seminar on School Accountabilty April 26th in Toronto.
Educhatter’s Paul Bennett is a guest panelist!
See this link for more information
Click to access Accountability.pdf
Public Participation in Education, I’m all for it. Public decision making however must move through broadly elected trustees. Some call it democracy.
Once the public experiences public education they learn very quickly that it can’t be trusted to do what it says it’s going to do – educate children in the basics in a way that will prepare them for success – not excuses, not lectures from experts on why they CAN’T reach potential, and definitely not from those seriously well-paid school board bureaucrats (which in Ontario of late thanks to new legislation pretty much includes elected trustees), then you start to understand why the public refuses to become more engaged in the system than they are.
The system has never wanted or encouraged that type of engagement. The public i.e. parents are simply a necessary evil of the job – seen but still not heard.
Educating parents and participants in discussion about education needs to be allowed to happen. It’s also advisable that parents especially know the background and sources of who they’re dealing with.
Andrew @2:14pm – I’d like to inform you of exactly where to look in the archives here – I’m thinking May or April 2010
Parent control of individual schools, the anarchist approach has proven in the past to be too wide open to abuse, stacking meeting, one issue group take overs and so on.
We will be up to our necks in book banners and anti-evolution nuts with one school democracy.
On the contrary Doug. A little anarchy is exactly what the public system needs – that it comes from the parent community truly a thing of beauty to behold.
Parents are leaders for change in their own right. What’s more they’ve learned to work around the system’s “blobs” if they have to or vote with their feet to get the education they want for their kids.
Trivialize them if you wish it’s what parents come to expect of the old guard.
I have visions of Jed Clampet with the cement pond and the fancy eatin’ (pool) table. I have confidence in parents input spread over a large number of parents but I have seen too many attempts to stack meetings and bring in outside agendas.
The left handles this with alternative schools where they all ride a bike and bring their own cup. I was going to rename one school “Mountain Equipment Coop” but I was afraid they would think I was serious.
Rather sad rhat your school is cranking out Jeb Clampetts, Doug.
Here is the video from the “Putting Students First” public forum in Halifax!
http://live.haligonia.ca/halifax-ns/community/19384-putting-students-first-in-education.html
What Doug is afraid of, and a good many other educrats is to put an end to their pseudo-science education techniques and management style, and bring in the science, the knowledge and proper service for all children. Doug is all too happy with causing divisions and splits between parents of a school. It is what the public school education system has been doing with the SE kids and the outliers. The sad part is Doug does see the SE parents and other parents who have children with needs that are not within the typical parameters of normality, as threats to the organization. Thus they need to be controlled using stealth methods, that are based on discrimination, lies and other tactics to get parents and children to agree that they are right, and know what is best for their children. Below is a link, called Asked Dr. Silver, on Online LD. Read the questions that parents posed and the answers, and at the end parents will get a pretty good idea on some of the tactics being used, and it is not certainly the best interests of children.
http://www.ldonline.org/experts/silver/current/#1
“My child struggles with reading comprehension. Could he have a learning disability?
My son has a very hard time reading and comprehending. He is in the fifth grade and reads at a second grade level. We work with him at home, and he goes to special education classes at school; but I really think he needs much more.
He has a hard time naming items. For example, he asked me, “Mom, where is the sweeper thing?” instead of asking for the broom. Or he would say, “Do you remember the place with all the games and the mouse or rat thing?” instead of saying Chuckie Cheese. It’s like his brain is not able to process what something is without describing it first.
What type of help can be offered with this type of disability? Or is this even a disability? The school did not offer a suggestion.
You should not have to wonder if your son has a learning disability or a language disability. Send a letter to the principal requesting a meeting to discuss your son. At this meeting, request formal testing to clarify if he has a learning disability or a language disability.
If the principal refuses or the meeting does not result in scheduling such testing, state that you do not agree and want to appeal this decision. (You can learn more about these steps and your rights in my book The Misunderstood Child.)”
The above caught my eye, because now it will be obvious to the reader, most advice is to seek private advice for a reason, know your rights, and seek knowledge on your child’s problems. Why? The parent is caught up in the educrat’s game of delay, stall, through any means including outright lies, because public schools do not remediate learning weaknesses unless a parent forces them to do so.
Parents bringing in outside agendas? No Doug, what you don’t like is parents coming in, bringing in common sense, and a good education for all children, with a solid foundation on the basics. The current curriculum and pedagogy is not up to snuff, but it sure does a wonderful job in keeping students dumb, along with their parents.
It seems to me Doug has circled the wagons for one reason or another. Personally I would not want to know why.
Much like the current education establishment “warm and fuzzies” approach, telling tales outside of school, and the wagon approach (save grade 2) – only solidifies what we alredy know about ourselves. that is we are caught in a system that is putting adults before the students.
In terms of trying to make a difference in the education of students, and in a time where their options seem to be restricted and often inconsistant with common sense , open debate and inclusion would seem to be a necessary prerequisite.
I sense there is already a fracture in the way school boards and politicians see the future of citizen involvement. That is the old ways of “father knows best” is coming to an end.
If there is a resurgence of ideas and comitment, and it is quite apparent there is, then it seems to follow that public confidence will eventually be restored.
If there is a resurgence of ideas and comitment, and it is quite apparent there is, then it seems to follow that public confidence will eventually be restored.
______________________________________________
Not without some significant changes and it will likely get rather ugly before that happens.
It doesn’t have to Andrew. As long as students, parents and citizens realize they are part of the solution. Even a modest change is a change in the right direction to restoring public confidence.
However, isolationalist consensus as evident “at the highest level” is eroding, whether Doug likes it or not. The back peddling of school boards recently, funding cuts and parent insurgence has become a reality in public meetings on education. The simple fact is we are more prepared for public debate and providing constructive criticism than ever before.
I hope you’re right, Steven, but I expect that apathy will return after a few cosmetic changes and some nice promises.
How many “policies” have been written up but not implemented by the educrats?
The fact is that there are things that work,
better teacher training, higher teacher education, some autonomy, smaller classes, ELP …..
And as well there are things that do not work,
charters, vouchers, testing, budget slashing, teacher bashing, union bashing, teacher testing, privatization, ……
These are not thinks that pop into some educrat’s head, they are research based consensus issues at the highest levels.
“I sense there is already a fracture in the way school boards and politicians see the future of citizen involvement. That is the old ways of “father knows best” is coming to an end.”
I think so too, based on my observations and experience in the last 12 years or so. And there was been papers, talk by the educators, and others that things have change drastically since the mid 1990s, that the old ways are coming to an end. The educrat will be dragged, kicking all the way, but their ways will end. I spent years in the LD files, learning and gaining knowledge. Some time spent trading information with other parents, learning new techniques to combat the educrats in IEP meetings and picking up new skills to help my child. There was always a few parents who did not have LD children, but were online seeking information because of the difficulties at school and to help their child at home. For example, they would have no idea how fluency in reading is very important for every child, and what is being taught in fluency are not very good methods. Most of these parents are the typical middle-class, who will either seek out private tutors or do the tutoring at home. But what is more important, this set of parents gain insights and understanding of LD and come to the realization that the public school is not all what is should be. What the public education system states, and what their actions are, two very different things.
I also found in the low-income group of parents, they become tigers for their children, once they become aware of the fault lines of the education system. As I have experience, it is the low-income grandparents in my neck of the woods who are always interested in what I am doing, because they have watch my youngest child’s learning struggles since the age of 5, and the success I have had. They seen me, go after the rubber rooms the size of a large closet for the unruly child, that were used as a daily threat for all children. I did not win that war, but I told them try that once with my child, you be facing my lawyer. The following year, other parents took up the battle of the rubber room, and after a few years, succeeded to stopped using the rubber room as a threat, and change the regulations surrounding the rubber room, to narrowed parameters on how the rubber room can be used for. Most parents in my corner saw rubber rooms as government-sanctioned child abuse, and I am inclined to agree with them. As you can see, I have no use for rubber rooms in a school, nor do I any use for principals who rather put a half-nelson locked on a student, who refuse to hand over his cell phone.
What all parents share, and this is what Doug and the rest of the educrats are afraid of, all of our children are put at high risk because they are sitting on the fault lines. The fault lines that exist because of the structure and the use of ineffective progressive methods, that keeps the fault lines in place. What they are really afraid of, when all parents start sharing information and experiences that are not very becoming or positive for the public education system. It shines a light on the fault lines of the public education system.
What the public education system states, and what their actions are, two very different things.
______________________________________________
That’s the nub of it, Nancy.
The politicians and trustees seem to think that once the educrats have put something on a piece of paper it’s “mission accomplished”.
I’ve personally witnessed Superintendants of Schools, HR Directors and other high-ranked educrats lie through their teeth to the trustees and all the trustees do is nod their heads in agreement – those who are conscious, that is.
“These are not thinks that pop into some educrat’s head, they are research based consensus issues at the highest levels.”
Yeah Doug, and the research is done by educrats, and the conclusions have already been pre-determined, regardless if the hypothesis being used is based on a false assumption. The educrats have to do it this way, because their high salaries they command are at risk if they do not produce the results that the other educrats want. No wonder the educrats hide their research in paid subscriptions and in dusty shelfs of teachers’ faculties, away from the prying eyes of people who do not work in the public education system. While the real researchers, are busy advancing the knowledge in cognitive learning, reading, numeracy and in the various disorders that impact learning. The real research is a mountain tall, compared to the educrats research of a small hill, that is filled with misconceptions, outdated knowledge, false assumptions, wrong scientific methodologies, and false intrepertations in results and conclusions. As a parent, in the early days I discovered quickly the research work of educrats in LD, offers only one thought, that LD children are difficult to teach, and there is no effective methods to remedied this situation. A lie and a big one at that, and there has been little movement since the 1950s and 1960s, where LD children were being called mental-defects by the educrats. A real shame, surfing through the LD sites today, parents in the 21st century are still dealing with this type of thinking that belongs in the dark ages. But now the educrats are calling it a mental illness, even though LD was removed from the psychiactiric list of mental disorders back in the 1980s. Hell LD kids do not need behavioural therapy and dumb-down curriculum – they need educational services to addressed their learning weaknesses in reading, writing and numeracy.
Yeah right, research-based consensus issues by the highest level??? Consensus is a strange word to used, because the real researchers do not get together before hand to reach a consensus, nor do they get together after the research to reach a consensus. Real researchers explore questions, basing the hypothesis on previous research, that has been confirmed by other real researchers. Doug reread Joanne’s link.
Click to access reading_centers.pdf
I take the word of Dr. Lyon over the word of a research educrat, who believes in spreading false misconceptions aboutinterpretations LD children, to served his best interests. rathpsychiatricer than the child’s best interest.
Great letter to the editor piece from Michael Zwaagstra in the CH today.
The Public Forum on “Putting Students First in Education” (March 28, Halifax) is now online.
You will see that the Forum is introduced by raising the very issue we are debating on the Blog and that the speakers, led off by Michael Zwaagstra, address the whole issue from a variety of different angles:
http://live.haligonia.ca/halifax-ns/community/19384-putting-students-first-in-education.html
Comment:
Viewing the Public Forum on video is amazing. The speeches, close-up shots, and reactions bring the excitement of that event back to life. Ashley King, founder of Haligonia. ca, has produced an outstanding docu-video for Students First Nova Scotia!
We have a compelling message and now a very effective way of broadcasting that message, far and wide, across Canada.
A huge accomplishment;step one happens in Nova Scotia and will set a precedent for Canada.
Congratulations on your effort AND strategy.
Are you associated with Michelle Rhee’s Student’s First bunch?
The Nova Scotia movement is home grown, Doug.
We are naturally aware of Michelle Rhee’s campaign, but if you look closely, you will see that our agenda is broader and much more centred on respect for communities. Many of our supporters are Nova Scotians who have been “shut out” by the core interests dominatiing the provincial system: educrats, superintendents, and teacher union leaders. Rank-and- file teachers, as you well know, likely sympathize with us for standing up to the status quo.
“Putting students first” in Nova Scotia is considered threatening to the education bureaucracy. That is why we have formed and will succeed in winning surprising public support.
Though it can be science-based (i.e. research on brain development) teaching is not a science and hasn’t been a science since the days of Socrates and beyond.
The educratic attitude that there is some “magic bullet” system of education is laughable.
Andrew,your answer is typical of teachers.
Teachers,as the FOE are lead by,do not rely on research based instruction for Reading when they train teachers.They believe it`s an art.
I have a friend who is a psychologist who says that Bernard Shapiro,a friend of hers,said when you try to talk research with teachers,even empirical studies with a control group,they argue with you and tell you it`s not true,they prefer to tell you their opinion.Teachers are trained I guess to bow down to nothing,in spite of their results and superficial training.
Every teacher will tell you their time getting a B.ED was mainly non productive.They learned everything they know in the classroom.
There are so many books I could quote and
http://www.childrenofthecode.org but I am sure based on your messages that your opinion will stand firm.
I have to agree with Joanne, Andrew. Based on my own battles, and decisions made on my child, it was based on personal subjective data and observations, and not on the learning weaknesses of my child. It took 9 years of hard advocacy, for the school staff to change their ways on their thinking about research, and LD students. In part teaching is a science, much like parenting is part science. It would be foolish to treat a disease using 1950s public knowledge of the day, but this is what happening inside our public education systems. The science is not being used, in favour of a progressive ideology/philosophy that many of its elements have been proven wrong by the science.
No one will ever convince me that teaching a class of 25 students using the same formula there will be 25 results that are the same.
No one is stating that class should be composed of one instruction approach. But rather the approach used should have the science behind it, especially when dealing with the individual student. In the progressive classrooms of today, applying the new learning science knowledge is not just happening, and instead students get motivation or self-esteem lessons, in place of solid instruction. I have lost track of the many times, my child was not focus enough, not trying hard enough, until the day I pointed out her reading and writing problems, which in turn stopped her from learning the actual lesson of the day. On topped of the stack of research that my child learns best in direct systematic instruction and one method only, which usually represents the most efficient method. Tons of research in the LD files, and that can be applicable for all students, regarding the most efficient methods. As for a classroom of 25 students, should there not be a minimum of a 85 % mastery, leaving 15 % of students being given targeted help, before moving on to the next topic? These days, a 50 % is the passing grade, and somehow by magic the educrats will determined that a student maintaining a 50 % is in need of no help, especially for students who have LD. One of the reasons why my youngest was denied help for her reading and writing problems, and she was in good company in her classroom. It matter not a wit, that she failed every written LA test until grade 8. Grade 8, was the year that the teachers work with me, to addressed her writing problems, and they still are. The problem was not knowledge, but her reading and writing problems. Each area was targeted, one at a time, steady improvement from 50 something, slowly progressing into the higher grades, to where in grade 10, she received a 93 % and her most recent one a 72% in written English tests on two different novels. And spelling errors are taken off as well, and her essay answers are solid, with supporting evidence. Otherwise, her written english tests are usually around the mid-60s. The hard work at home, is paying off and the teachers are currently fine tuning her writing skills, using methods that a progressive educrat would not approve of.
Which confirms what I said.
There is no magic bullet “system”.
As to the science aspect I stated that teaching methods should be based in science but that teaching itself was bot a science.
If it was a science then the results would be both predictable and mesurable. They are not.
“Education is unique among consumer products — when it fails to work as advertised, it’s the customer that gets labelled as defective.” — Kevin Killion
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Kevin.Killion.Quote.57F0
Priceless
As a speech language pathologist working with children who have difficulty reading and spelling, I am frustrated by these ‘reading wars’ and the obscene amounts of money publishers are making on programs that are not working well. In 1996, I heard about Jim Stone, a teacher from San Diego who had developed a literacy program that incorporated whole language, phonics and phonological awareness. Children learn the 43 sounds of English with a character and movement. So /p/ is for painting and the students move their arm as if painting – not ‘p’ ismfor Polly Panda. Through children’s literature (like the bedtime stories we read to our children), character stories, songs, pattern writing, drawing and manipulatives, literacy is taught from whole-to-part-to-whole. Both whole language and phonics are needed along with phonological awareness. Jim has studied the brain, language and reading research. He believes that the brain research tells us how to teach, the language research tells us in what order to teach it in and the reading research tells us what to teach. This program works with our children who are having difficulty but also causes those who learn in spite of the reading method to soar. Kindergarteners who come to school with great language are writing similes, converting words to piglatin and often reading Magic Tree House books bymthe end of kindergarten. Those who do not come to school with great language will be successful in the program because it will also build their listening comprehension and vocabulary along with their decoding and phonological awareness. My students who have difficulty, need the action for each sound to get the sound into their muscles memory along with explicit instruction in phonological awareness. This program is inexpensive, is a complete literacy program balancing reading and writing and allowing for choices and flexibility for the teacher. It can also be used in preschool through to grade 2 and then after that with students who are having trouble reading and spelling. The publishers have somehow cornered the market on literacy materials and programs like Animated Literacy are shut out and not even considered. We owe it to our children, especially those who struggle to do something about what is happening with their literacy instruction in schools. I have had children who struggle wish they were not here anymore and one whose twin sister is a good reader tell his mom that she should have had another girl instead of him.
Bonnie – “I am frustrated by these ‘reading wars’ and the obscene amounts of money publishers are making on programs that are not working well.”
If so, reading instruction should be based on the reading science. The program that you cited, Animated Literacy is only partially based on the reading science. As a parent, I have a dyslexic child. As a supplement or as the main reading instruction, my child would still memorized words, rather than learning to decode. ” Animated-Literacy™ follows the natural sequence of language development to make instruction easier and more successful for both English language learners and fluent English speakers.”
http://www.animated-literacy.com/Natural_Sequence_of_Language_Development.html
Perfect for children who have developed language within the guideline. The trouble starts when children do not follow the language milestones as they progress from infant to toddler to a 5 year old. According to the research, and has been proven without a doubt, any delay within the language milestones, the children will have difficulty in learning to read. The children with speech delays are at a 97 % risk of having language problems within the school environment. Major or minor speech delays. The recommendation is intensive speech therapy, and begin formal reading lessons at the age of three to teach all sounds of phonemic awareness. However, in the real world, not many children do received intensive speech therapy, as my child did up to the age of 4. Today, if my child was four, she would be already reading and decoding words, and by grade 1 would be reading without struggles. However, back in 1997, speech delays was not connected to early reading struggles. It was in the year 2000, and the research was forwarded to the the education researchers within the education field of the education system.
The research sat on the dusty shelves somewhere in the ivory towers of education, and as a consequence, the reading wars continue unabated, despite the outside reading researchers, and the advances being made in learning, the cognitive field and the implications for the education systems. Children of the Code provides an insight and a revealing picture of what is and what is not missing in reading instruction at the schools.
http://www.childrenofthecode.org/
That all said, the developer of Animated-Literacy has a far better chance of being heard, since James Stone is an educator. An insider, compared to others who do not have an education degree among their many degrees. There is excellent reading instruction and programs hailing from the outside developers and researchers that are cost effective, and work well for all children. Animated-Literacy is perfect for children who have well-developed language processes, but not at all effective for children who do not have well-developed language processes. Nor the dyslexics who may indeed have high verbal vocabulary, excellent listening skills but struggles greatly in learning to read.
The publishers may have cornered the reading instruction, but can they be blame when within the education ivory towers, the educators are ignoring the reading, cognitive and learning sciences that lie outside of the education ivory towers?