Cheaters do not really prosper in schools, but many are now being given a “second chance.” In a few Canadian and American school districts, giving students a second chance to pass tests, examinations, and other assignments, has actually become accepted as “student assessment” policy promoting a unique 21st century concept of “fairness.” In Newfoundland’s largest school board, the Eastern School District, the policy was changed in October 2011 so students cheating or plagiarizing will no longer be assigned a mark of zero. http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1075276–cheating-students-get-second-chance-in-newfoundland
The Newfoundland and Labrador school board’s policy change is not what it seemed – an isolated and rather bizarre deviation from sound education policy. The tradional “automatic zero” is dying a slow death, aided and abetted by student assessment experts, and being supplanted by “do-over” evaluation practice in schools across North America. The Eastern School Board Superintendent Ford Rice was quite accurate when he claimed that the policy was driven by “current literature in education” and was “consistent in philosophy” with policies in other boards across Canada. http://www.cbc.ca/news/pdf/nl-evaluation-regulations-20111005.pdf
Publicly announcing the Newfoundland school board’s new policy is what really sparked a firestorm of protest. President of the provincial Teachers’ Association Lily Cole spoke out, saying that teachers were not only frustrated but very unhappy with the policy which took responsibility for teaching “responsibility, respect, honesty, and values” away from regular teachers. “This just takes it out of our hands,” she told both CBC News and The Toronto Star.
“Students will not be given zeros for cheating,” Rice insisted, because the Board’s educational philosophy was to “separate student behaviour from learning to give us a true picture of what the student knows.” Rising to defend the new student cheating policy on the airwaves was perhaps the leading exponent of “do-over” student assessment, Ontario education consultant Damian Cooper. In the old system, he claimed, students who “failed at the test” were “tossed onto the heap ” and branded “non-achievers or low-achievers.” http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2011/10/25/nl-cheating-student-reaction-teachers-1025.html
A close examination of newly revised Student Assessment policies in a cross-section of school boards in Ontario, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Ohio is most revealing. Most of the policies are like that of the Halifax Regional School Board (C.007 Program, 1.2.6.4), clearly separating the evaluation of student achievement from that of student behaviour. Indeed, many use the same wording when separating the two and virtually identical to that found in Damian Cooper’s book, Talk About Assessment. http://damiancooperassessment.com/talk.html In his more recent offering, Redefining Fair, he goes even further in trying to dispel “outdated beliefs regarding fairness” in so-called “mixed-ability classrooms.”
What’s really happening in the strange world of student assessment? A small band of learning assessment experts, led by Damian Cooper and one of his mentors, Scarborough consultant Ken O’Connor, The Grade Doctor, exert a tremendous influence over school administrators and consultants with little or no background in testing or evaluation. “First and foremost,” O’Connor preaches, ” accuracy requires that behaviours and attitudes be separated from achievement, so that grades are pure measures of achievement.” According to this iron dictum, late penalties, absence, academic dishonesty, or even bonus marks have no place in determining student grades. And furthermore, awarding percentage marks is unacceptable because “no one can accurately describe 101 levels” of proficiency. http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol5/503-newvoices.aspx
Student assessment experts like Damian Cooper pop up everywhere because most school boards are desperate to improve their idiosyncratic, autonomous, teacher-driven student evaluation practices. Over the 2009-10 school year, Cooper was hired to give “Tools for Assessment” Workshops from one end of the country to another, including prominent recorded talks in Vancouver, Barrie,ON, and Sackville, NB. From July 5 to 8, 2010, he was the sole presenter a a two-day intensive Workshop, entitled “Fostering Assessment Literacy in Our Schools” sponsored by the CMEC -Atlantic section, and funded by NB Education and all four teachers unions.
How were Damian Cooper’s assessment theories seeded in the Maritimes? Look no further than the the Assessment Summit, held in late August 2009, at Halifax’s World Trade and Convention Centre. Close to 600 school officials and teachers attended the extravaganza headlined by Damian Cooper, Ken O’Connor, and Rick Stiggins, head of Educational Testing Service (ETS) Assessment from Portland, Oregon.
A Media Advisory issued by the NSTU left no doubt about the actual purpose of the education Summit. ” These most distinguished assessment experts,” the SSRSB’s Sue Taylor-Foley stated,” will illustrate the fundamental purpose of assessment is not to rate, rank, and sort students, but rather to provide meaningful feedback that leads to improved student learning.” The core theme, she emphasized, was to promote “Common Assessment” across schools in Nova Scotia and beyond. http://www.nstu.ca/images/pklot/MA_NSELC09.pdf
Since the Newfoundland cheating policy change hit the news, an eerie silence has descended upon Student Assessment Divisions in most Canadian school boards. Superintendent Rice and NLSBA Executive Director Brian Shortall, supported by Cooper, have been fending off a wave of vocal opposition, leveled by irate parents, taxpayers, teachers and high school students. Over 75% of all respondents to a CBC News St. John’s poll were adamantly opposed to “pardoning” student cheaters. On the CBC Radio Maritime Magazine show (October 29), “Mind the Gap,” Shortall offered a rather feeble defense of the change and received some tacit support from NB Superintendent Karen Branscombe (NB District 2, Moncton).
Not every Canadian school board has given up on curbing student cheating and plagiarism. The Toronto and District School Board policy on “Academic Honesty” stands out as a prime example. “Cheating and plagiarism will not be condoned,” the TDSB policy (PR613) proclaims. What happens if a student violates that policy? “A mark of zero may be awarded for the assignment in question and a repeated pattern of academic dishonesty may result in an escalating severity of consequences.”
Giving student cheaters a second chance is symptomatic of profound changes now underway in student assessment policy. Where is the educational research to support the student evaluation theories being espoused by Damian Cooper and his cohorts? Does separating completely student achievement from student behaviour in the evaluation process make any real sense — and what are the likely consequences? Should student cheaters be pardoned in our schools? Taking the larger view, is all of this threatening to produce what might be called a “do-over” generation?
The opening piece confuses some issues that should be separated.
First there is a STRONG research base on the power of second chances: in sports, in artistic performances, in writing, and in classrooms: rehearsals count! Second chances based on quality feedback work. See the results of ten years of study at Harvard University on improving the undergraduate experience (Harvard Assessment Seminars). More recently the study (meta-analysis) of more than 800 studies by John Hattie in Visible Learning supports this.
To do otherwise flies in the face of research AND reality.
Related somewhat but not the same is the role of grading. Should we grade each “draft”? Research is not so clear since grading is more a matter of professional judgment than objective reality. Grading has remarkably little direct impact on learning except on struggling students early in the course who figure they “can’t do it” and give up. See the work over two decades by Carol Dweck and her colleagues on the power of persistence (Mindsets). Maybe more assessing with quality feedback and less grading might be in order; hence, the stress in some quarters on “recent consistent performance” and the phrase the Ontario Ministry of Education uses “by the end of the course students will . . .” If students can catch up they should not be penalized for mistakes early in the course. When I taught ESL those students needed time to “catch on” then if they “caught up” they were rewarded accordingly.
Averages can distort what learning has actually occurred.
One research-backed approach to grading with which Ken O’Connor disagrees despite its research in inner city students which I replicated nearly 3 decades ago is the use of “improvement scoring”. Here students get bonus marks for improvement or in the case of high achievers perfect scores. It works because it gives students hope and they are less likely to give up. We are not talking about giving away marks; just enough to maintain persistence as Carol Dweck has promoted.
Now the cheating bit in this internet age: here are some approaches to minimize this
– make sure students know the rules (seems even journalists and writers sometimes break them)
– change your assignments so that it is harder to copy what others have done
– as in the writing process, monitor and check on drafts before the final product due date
– if your school has turnitin or another plagiarism-detecting program make sure kids are aware of it
Those “cheaters” who are left? Well, everyone has a right to fail. But let’s make sure we do the due diligence to promote success in our classes.
One slight addition. Marking “behaviour” is VERY DANGEROUS!. It is why we have standardized tests, because when these are well designed they eliminate teacher bias. It’s why I had my kids put their names on the back of the paper.
It is not fair to give or not give a student the benefit of the doubt in “borderline” responses depending ion whether you like them.
Yet there are exceptions to this. If a kid is almost at a pass in a required course; e.g., math. They will NEVER take math again. As I said they are close but not quite there. So . . .?
The Federations and I suspect the populist inclinations of the reform movement are on the same page here. Yes behaviour is behaviour and not achievement however I suspect that the VAST majority of the public and the teachers would say that the student should lose that credit and be forced to begin again.
Second chances are great for shoplifting, not so much for treason. The academic consequences of cheating post secondary are potentially so severe that students need to get it through their heads much earlier.
All I ask is that we be clear on the issues- more than one here – cheating is not the same as second chances unless one gives second chances for cheating which I would be VERY RELUCTANT to do
The original post confuses things by combining important issues that should be separate or a) if there is a relationship, then b) it should be explained
I am happy if the thread sticks to one of these – cheating or second chances or grading.
I would prefer to explore one or more of the following:
– why do they cheat?
– what can we do to minimize it / prevent most of it?
– what do we do with the remaining few?
A couple of years ago I had to deal with a conflict between a high school principal who said cheating was a behavioural issue and should result in a second chance and a department that was opposed to the principal. It was a tough spot since I knew all the parties concerned
My solution: if my caveats are observed, then I would have to side with the teachers. At some point students must take responsibility for their actions.
It is like when the Ontario Ministry was MISINTERPRETED by school boards on the “no zeros” and “penalties for lateness” issues. The MOE NEVER said either of these, but what it did say was that use as a last resort after other methods which they outlined were tried with students. That seems to me to be a reasonable thing for Ontario to do
This is an endemic problem when you have professional development consisting of drive-by workshops with not enough time for teacher discussion.
All you need to hear is one wacky comment and everyone takes it as gospel!
‘ In the old system, he claimed, students who “failed at the test” were “tossed onto the heap ” and branded “non-achievers or low-achievers.”
What a joker this Damian Cooper and his cohorts are, claiming when it comes to fail tests and this on top of students who are cheating on tests. The real problem lies with the reading, writing and numeracy skills of students, and it starts in the primary grades where students are tossed onto the heap of the low-achievers. because of their reading, writing or numeracy skills. And NOT because they have failed a test or a series of tests. The failure of a test is a symptom and in the younger grades it usually relates to their inability to express themselves, and their knowledge. What Cooper has cooked up, will still not do anything for the overall achievement, except to lower the bar, at the individual student level. The first part of overall change, is, “By contrast, the purpose of a criterion-referenced system is to ensure that all students achieve proficiency. And because students are different, fairness requires not
uniformity in testing but equity of opportunity. This means that the number and design of the assessments for a given subject or course may need to vary to enable all students to achieve success. Such a system still demands that the ‘what’ and ‘how well’ of the learning (content and performance standards) do not change; however, the context and the nature of the assessments
may differ for some students.”
Click to access redefiningfair.pdf
The new way of assessment, called criterion-referenced systems, is under the overall umbrella of improve teaching training and practices. The second part is the actual grading where there is no failure, including cheating. “In a criterion-referenced grading system, mediocrity is not acceptable. Implemented properly, such a system represents a significant raising of the bar. Quality, rather than being an option, is non-negotiable __ and what is needed to certify proficiency is accurate evidence of each student’s level of achievement, based on clear performance standards. The message to students is “Excellent, proficient, or not there yet __ do it again!”
This is exactly the same found in every SE class across the country. Dropped it down two grade levels below, and assessment is based on clear performance standards. That is what happen when my child spent two years in SE class, doing two grade levels below, and if criterion-referenced grading was employed, she would have been a 5. I can well imagine what a regular class would look like, under his regime and it is not a pretty picture for the 40 to 60 percent of students who have weaker skills in the 3 Rs. Temptation to cheat would be even greater, since there is no consequences except for doing a repeat until one reaches a proficient level, but more importantly it sets up students for failure in the way off future, and when they enter the work force. It sets them up for failure, because they are no longer motivated to improve, or work hard. They are already under the impression and the false promise that there is always second chances. Why study hard the first time around, when it can done at another time.
Since the cheating policy came to light, it has already started in the local high school, where my child spent time on her weekend to study for the biology test on Monday. She was pretty peeved, the test was delayed because some of the students claimed that they did not know the test was on Monday. The students have taken the rule of 5 days notice to heart, and using it for all its worth. The only thing I could say to my child, was at least you only have to study for 30 minutes or so on Monday night, and the other students will be doing another repeat of 5 to 6 hours of studying, just to get a 60. Failing or getting a low mark, is often related to the student’s skills in studying, taking notes, and other basic language skills that in my opinion are not taught in the first place. They went the way of the do-do bird sometime in the 1980s, and compliments of like-minded fellows like Cooper.
In the CBC article, “It’s not too coddling. We’re not saying ‘no consequences,’ ” said Cooper, adding that schools need to adapt to how different students learn.
“Some students take longer to achieve certain competencies than others,” Cooper said.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2011/10/25/nl-cheating-student-reaction-teachers-1025.html
Sure does take longer, especially in the lower grades, when students are weak in some aspect of the 3 Rs. Sure does take longer, when students are no longer taught the writing skills, grammar or spelling that is so crucial to expressed their knowledge on paper. I can well imagine what the universities will be doing sorting out the new student applicants, especially the students who are applying in the studies of sciences and maths. It sure takes more to motivate students, when they are weak in some aspects of the 3 Rs, and much easier to motivate along the pathway of least resistance. Second chances is the only choice, when students are weak in the skills of the 3 Rs, but there is the danger the motivation of second chances, will just provide another excuse for students to work less, exert less effort for the same output. It is what happen to my child and her two years in the SE math class. The math whiz in the SE class, but in reality, she still thought she was dumb, and in the end reinforce the dumb feelings from grade one and her struggles in reading. After all, she still could not do what the regular students could do with ease, she knew it and the other students knew it, and from grade 6 and on, the long road of proving herself to her classmates, as well as other teachers, by providing her the tools and skills in the 3 Rs, began with earnest. If she have had second chances, she would no longer be motivated to work hard the first time around, and work even harder on the 3 Rs, The key to motivation for most students, is to give them a goal, but make sure that they have the basic skills to reach the academic goal. Cooper’s way, is just another path of avoiding the difficult tasks of providing the skills and abilities needed to access the knowledge. And very much like the present system, where the skills in the 3 Rs, are glossed over in favour of some sloppy pedagogy that does not withstand scrutiny of any kind.
Paul,
You have a false dichotomy in this post. You’ve assumed that policies which separate behaviours from performance are the same as “giv[ing] up on curbing student cheating and plagiarism.” In fact, quite the opposite can be true.
When you separate the behaviours from the performance, and then share BOTH grades (which is good practice, no?) with parents, you shine a gigantic spotlight on something which had previously been buried in the single “old-style” grade.
Previously if Johnny was really smart but did no work, he could get a good enough grade and his parents would be happy, not at all aware of the lack of work habits which will likely prove disastrous in college.
If Johnny has good work habits, and good grades, then both of these are shared, and there’s no change from the previous system.
If Johnny has poor work habits, and poor grades, now you can point at the work habits, and share actual information on a report card (one of the few opportunities schools have to communicate with parents, unfortunately) on what can be done to improve student performance.
Further, if Johnny has cheated, one has not collected information about his ability to achieve a particular standard. By forcing the student to redo the assessment (hopefully with more supervision to try and prevent a repeat performance of the same act which got the student into hot water) you’ve not only given them more work, you are now more likely to be able to ask the important question assessment gets at: does Johnny know how to do this? If you ask students, by the way, they will say that they prefer the 0 for cheating system, which of course they do, since it requires them to do less work.
David
“When you separate the behaviours from the performance, and then share BOTH grades (which is good practice, no?) with parents, you shine a gigantic spotlight on something which had previously been buried in the single “old-style” grade”
If that was the case for cheaters, than why does that not happen with the typical LD student? In a typical teacher-parent interview, how often is the focus on the LD student’s behaviour, and being the main mechanism used by the school, as well as teachers to avoid talking about the general weaknesses in the 3 Rs, concerning LD students. Funny thing, a cheater gets up to two weeks for the rewrite of a test, and LD students receives the dumb-down curriculum, minus effective remediation of the 3 Rs, and allows both the student and the school, to focus on the behaviours, and provides the excuses for low academic achievement. Than have the gall to tell parents who decide to arrange tutoring of their child’s weaknesses, as a form of cheating, and is only teaching the child how to cheat. Lots of talk on the LD files, where behaviour becomes far more important than the actual remediation of the child’s weaknesses.
I don’t see how your response has anything to do with what I posted. Can you clarify?
Kids who are caught cheating, and now having the behaviour – the act of cheating separated from the evaluation, and as a result will get another second chance and have up to two weeks to study for the make-up. However, with LD students and other students with the invisible disabilities, there behaviour is never for the most part separated from the actual assessment and/or evaluation. The behaviours of LD are often used as an excuse not to remediate the underlying weaknesses, and/or the actual remediation method, is to treat the behaviour, and not the underlying learning weaknesses.
LD students often get blamed for pretending to forget, pretending to have terrible hand writing, always daydreaming, and not paying attention to the teacher, and in fact LD students are the likely students who will have NI written right across the education categories. They are also likely candidates to be accuse of cheating in a classroom. I became aware of it, when my child came home crying, being accuse of cheating by her follow classmates in grade 6. and the tale of the teacher, saying if eyes are not on the test paper, than it is likely the student is cheating. That night, I learned on the brain science research, what dyslexics do when accessing their memory files inside their brain. The dyslexic eyes will first move up, than down, locating general area of a memorized fact, than to the right and to the left depending on exact location. Mind you, the work is still in its infancy, as well as other dyslexic behaviour such as not knowing your right from your left, to the reading of an analog clock or even their directions. There is a reason why I am relating this to cheating and the new policy.
Cooper insists that the new cheating policy is offering second chances to students who cheat, to determined if the student have reached their academic outcomes. Where are the second chances for LD students, to addressed their weaker learning weaknesses, that actually hinders a true picture of their academic outcomes. How can any teacher truly evaluate a LD student’s written test, and his knowledge, based on the standard evaluation parameters, when the test becomes a test of reading and writing skills, and not the LD student’s knowledge. For the cheater, there is benefits to cheat, and for the LD students, there is few benefits to change behaviour, since the underlying learning weaknesses are nor corrected and/or remediated. What I am trying to convey, the cheating policies provides an equitable opportunity to addressed the unique set of problems that teachers have when they do not have all of the data set to evaluate a student. While there is a different set of equitable opportunities for LD students, that in the end cheats the LD student of the very things that they need to be on the same playing field as their classmates, using exactly the same standards for all students. Namely, the remediation of the 3 Rs.
Another thing the Ontario ministry brought in in the 1990s was a special section of the report card dealing with learning skills into which the cheating thing could fit. This section does separate behaviours from other learning.
I remember at conferences employers liked this section and often thought it more revealing than marks.
Teachers still have not (nor have parents) given this section the merit it deserves.
It would be nice but it does not work that way. There is a large section on the report card to explain achievement. There is a tiny spot for behaviour to put Excellent Good Fair Needs Improvement. … Now we have dumped the problem back once again on the teacher to phone home and get answering machines for 2 weeeks before they give up.
There is cheating and there is cheating as always. There can be one unattributed idea in the middle of an essay or their can be an entire essay not written by the student. There needs to be a spectrum response.
It would be nice but it does not work that way. There is a large section on the report card to explain achievement. There is a tiny spot for behaviour to put Excellent Good Fair Needs Improvement.
It does work that way in the elementary panel. The Ontario elementary progress report has a whole page for learning skills – several paragraphs long, with room for detailed comments on initiative, task commitment, assignment completion, responsibility, organizational and study skills, etc. etc. These have to be personalized to the individual student and detail the student’s particular accomplishments or areas of need. They are very specific – a big improvement over comments like “Ethan occasionally with intensive support compares like fractions using manipulatives.” These new progress reports are a great deal more work for teachers, but they do provide parents (and other staff) with a lot more information on the student’s school related behaviour and suggestions for improvement if needed.
Thanks TDSB. I too am hearing from parents that they like the new page for learning skills…for the reasons you state.
“I remember at conferences employers liked this section and often thought it more revealing than marks.”
What type of employers would be interested in learning skills data from a report card? Keep in mind, the privacy laws that governments must abide by, as well as needing the consent of the individual for an employer to access records.
Perhaps, it is time for the public education system and those who work within them to be evaluated by the parents? Things like background education, would be of an interest to a great many parents. How often a parent hears the words of an educrat condemning the child according to their so-called expertise based on their education degrees, and all done strictly through the window of subjective observation. Cooper is a very good example of such a beast wallowing within the public education system, that makes Fullan and Levin look like the angels of academic professionalism and decorum.
“Damian Cooper is an independent education consultant who specializes in helping schools and school districts improve their instructional and assessment skills. In his varied career, Damian has been a secondary English, Special Education, and Drama teacher, a department head, a librarian, a school consultant and a curriculum developer. He has specialized in student assessment for more than twenty years. Damian served as assessment consultant to the School Division of Nelson Education where he worked on the development of assessment principles and strategies for a wide variety of K-12 resources. Prior to that appointment, he was Co-ordinator of Assessment and Evaluation for the Halton District School Board in Burlington, Ontario.”
http://www.damiancooperassessment.com/biography.html
I became really curious, when I read a special education teacher. He has been a busy boy, climbing the career ladder within the public education system. I bet my child’s grade 5 teacher would have the same type of education history, except for the climbing the career ladder. After all, quite a few of the teachers living in rural areas, often wear many different hats, throughout the teaching day, but would never dream of claiming expertise in areas of special education, in curriculum development, or assessment. But than again, as I said Cooper is the newer breed, lying in wait for the next opportunity within the education system, to make a buck, and a chance to hobnob with the mucky-mucks of the top levels of the education system. In the second paragraph, of his bio it reads like he is the next best thing and saviour for all things assessment and evaluation. “Damian’s expertise in assessment is sought across Canada, and internationally. He is in constant demand, both as a consultant and as a dynamic, entertaining speaker. His current work focuses on helping teachers and administrators connect curriculum, instruction, and assessment in ways that improve learning for all students. He is a frequent speaker at major conferences, including ASCD, STAO, and Solution Tree Events. In 1997, Damian was a member of the Canadian delegation invited by Nelson Mandela’s government to establish a national curriculum and assessment framework for South Africa. Damian has worked in all Canadian provinces, many U.S. states, as well as in India, Greece, the U.K., and Thailand, helping educators improve their planning, instructional and assessment practices.”
Funny thing though, I never heard of him, or read any articles on him in the last 10 years or so, or even an article on severe LD he professes to have some expertise, in many of the short bios that appear on education conferences to which he is speaking at. I search for a while on the web, looking inside-out and outside-in, top to bottom, and from bottom to top, searching for the extra letters behind his name that were beyond an education degree. From where I am looking, and what I have learned over the years, assessment and instruction methods requires education beyond the hallow halls of the teacher faculties, in the realms of the social sciences at the very least. One would even think, one should profess knowledge in the psychology field, and in particular the children and how they learn. The Wikipedia article on academic dishonesty, does indeed show how complicated it all is, but after reading it, I can conclude the Cooper’s take on cheating is wrong. Why? It still will not stopped the behaviour that allow the student to cheat in the first place. By separating the behaviour from the assessment of what the student knows, it allows the student to continue the cheating behaviour, by ensuring they will not get caught the next time, to avoid the re-write. A student becomes a more effective cheater, since there is little to no negative consequences to his cheating in his mind. The cheating student, already has justified to himself, that cheating is moral in his mind. Very difficult to overcome, and in the same way as a student who is struggling in academic subjects, and uses his learning difficulties to justify his stance of low grades. In this case, the student is comfortable of being a low achiever, and feels no need to improve his grades, or even cheat on a test. Behaviour cannot be separated from the other components of the student. If behaviour could be separated, than there would never be problems in the schools.
Cooper’s academic standing by the OCT.
http://www.oct.ca/PublicRegister/memberDetails.aspx?memberID=245782
Forgot to include the Wikepedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_dishonesty
I wish we could stick to evaluating the arguments and not call the presenters of such arguments (e.g., O’Connor and Cooper) names or make inferences about their motives or character. Assessment should be based on evidence.
The arguments presented are fair game. Unless you have evidence, the other stuff reeks of the “genetic fallacy”- accepting or rejecting a claim based on who makes it.
This is not talk radio. It is supposed to be a civil dialogue, especially when people disagree.
Fair game in my eyes, as to question the credentials of educators, who may have other ulterior motives that are not in the best interests of the students in the first place. How many times have parents been rejected by the educrats based purely on their education levels and achievement? Probably happens daily in each and every school in some form or another. Especially when parents dare to question the curriculum and other practices of the public education system. After all, throughout the education literature authored by those who work within the education system, the practice of squashing dissent is used as a means to keep parents in their place. If those who work within the education system are justify to use any means to squashed dissent among the parents and students, including being disrespectful and dismissing parents on the basis of education levels, why not others who are not part of the education system, as well as footing the bill are not qualify to question the credentials of educators? What is good for the goose is good for the gander, except in an education system where they practice what is good for the goose, is never good for the gander.
Cooper and his cohorts should indeed be look at through their motives, as well as they so-called expertise. I learned that lesson a long time ago, that having a piece of paper that certifies a teacher to teach, does not implied expertise in all things in education. But the public education system, takes it one step further, where they are the only ones that that knows what is best for each and every student’s education, based on their expertise.
Cheating is cheating. no matter how you dice it. The behaviour must be stopped, and giving them a second chance, with plenty of time to study will not stopped the behaviour. It will only reinforce the cheating behaviour, because the student now has the time to study, unlike the other students who did not cheat, It benefits the student, because there is a greater chance of receiving a better grade than the other students in his class. One of the reasons why the teachers at the local high school, put down some new ‘dire’ consequences if a student is caught cheating. The rewrite will be that much harder, going beyond the outcomes that are being tested.
” School policies that permit the use of penalties for late work and zeroes for missing work and other behavioural infractions, such as academic dishonesty, stem from a belief in the power of threat and punishment. But as Guskey and Bailey (2001) point out, “…no studies support the use of low grades or marks as punishments. Instead of prompting greater effort, low grades more often cause students to withdraw from learning.” And while many teachers will argue that the threat of late penalties and zeroes motivates students to complete all work and to do so on time, a quick survey of work completion in any middle or high school will indicate the fallacy
of this argument.”
Cooper’s way, allows the student to retained the cheating behaviour, because their is a greater payout for the student in taking the rewrite., and lighter penalties for the act of cheating. How many students will cheat in NL, because they did not study for the test or exam? Probably a lot more will be cheating since the new rules have been put in place, and quite a few of them will be the students who never found the time to study the night before. To eliminate the moral dilemma of cheating is rewarding students that cheat. To where the risk of getting caught cheating is rewarded with more time to study and the payoff is in receiving a better grade, as well as doing your thing, by learning the lesson that there is only benefits when not handing in your work on the original date, as well as cheating on tests. Furthermore, what does it tell students who hand in their work on time, and do not cheat? Should they not also earn an extra 5 percentage points for handing in their assignments on time, as well as not cheating on tests? And what makes anyone think that the only students who cheat are the students who have low grades. It has never been my experience, and in my day, the students being hulled off to the office for cheating, were the good academic students, who managed to rationalized for themselves that the risk of cheating was worth it to them, rather than face the consequences of failing a test. Failing a test was no option to the students I knew, but cheating was an option in their eyes, to prevent failing the test.
Moral dilemma to be sure, as well as other vices that is part of human nature are only punished if the individual is caught red-handed with the goods. What usually keeps people in line are the punishments after the fact, which stops most people from cheating in the first place. Another area that the public education system does a poor job in teaching, the morals and the dilemmas that people are caught up in day to day living. To cheat or not to cheat? To delay or not to delay? To steal or not to steal? Three moral dilemmas in a modern school, that students face each day. Unless one does not think about the theft of erasers, the nickles and dimes, the sneaky glances to copy the answer of the other students, or coming up with the creative lies of delaying, such as the dog ate my homework, are just that kids being kids.
What Lesson Does Pardoning Cheaters Teach?
______________________________________________________
That cheating is ok.
When you deal with the arguments made, fair game.
It is true that “expertise” is really slippery.
I do think we bring in too many outside “experts” too often in part because it devalues local talent.
But there are times when bringing in someone from the outside is good to offer some missing info and some different but powerful experiences.
ESPECIALLY when they actually work with local teachers and share experiences and perspectives. This is done way too seldom!
What one needs with any learning are people with a range of experiences.
Busy teachers who have to juggle many competing demands need to have a chance to work through some of the “bright ideas” those of us with the privilege of working elsewhere with the big picture might offer.
It may mean that teachers take some of the ideas and not others because for one reason or another the idea will not work at all or usually
in the way the presenter shares it.
Having done grade 3-adult in four provinces and three countries means i know a few things, but it is still a teacher’s classroom and school.
Yet if we leave it strictly to an individual teacher in their classroom, we miss things that could be useful.
This is the 21st century! Things change. Sometimes for better or for worse, always different.
As I appealed earlier, the discussion would be better served by offering ways to prevent “cheating” in the first place. That does a service.
How, you might ask, did Damian Cooper end up being the answer to student assessment in Newfoundland and Labrador?
Look no further than the ASCD’s Canadian branch (ASCD-CEN) for the answer. The BCASCD e-Newsletter provides the full story:
“With the support of ASCD and our membership we were able to conduct a series of cross-Canada conversations on high school assessment using Damian Cooper’s Talking About Assessment as an anchor text. We were delighted that Damian was able to join us in conversation on many of these occasions. Our Network Forum at the ASCD Annual Conference, at 8:00 am until 9:30 am on Sunday, March 28, 2011, entitled Using Powerful Conversations to Change High School Assessment, will highlight these discussions.”
* We thank Damian Cooper for taking time out of his busy schedule to deliver our first webinar, Assessment for Learning: Are We Losing Ground? on December 9. Using participants’ questions about formative assessment to frame his webinar and answering questions posed during the session, Damian engaged participants from all over Canada in what has become a very timely topic. The webinar was recorded and can be accessed by clicking on Webinars.”
.
ASCD-CEN has also launched a new journal Canadian Perspectives: Education Coast to Coast to Coast (January 1, 2011) and aimed at promoting (Guess what?) Differentiated instruction and Assessment for Learning (AfL)!
The Editorial Board is well populated with DI and AfL apostles:
1. Dr. Shelley Hasinoff , Coordinator, Independent Education Unit, Manitoba
2. Dr. Nancy Maynes, Nipissing University Schulich School of Education; Chair of the Concurrent Education Program, Ontario
3. Blaine Hatt , Nipissing University Schulich School of Education, Ontario
4. Lynn Thomas , University of Sherbrooke, Quebec
5. Dr. David Mandzuk , Associate Dean, Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba
6. Barb Isaak , Assistant Superintendent , River-East-Transcona School Division, Winnipeg, Manitoba
President of Manitoba ASCD, Director, Manitoba Association of School Superintendents
7. Karen Goodnough , Associate Dean, Undergraduate Studies, Memorial University of Newfoundland
8. Thomas Falkenberg , University of Manitoba
For more information on the ASCD Canadian Education Network go to http://ca.ascd.ca
The Premier Issue of the Canadian Perspectives consisted of one solitary article on a very predictable topic: Student Assessment
http://canadianperspectivesjournal.ca/index.php/cpj/article/view/1
It also contains some rather fascinating passages, adding further support to Educhatter’s purportedly fanciful assertions.
The Premier Issue of ASCD-CEN’s Canadian Perspectives (Vol. 1, 2011) provides a detailed survey of professional initiatives aimed at inculcating Differentiated Instruction and its Student Assessment handmaiden, Assessment for Learning (AfL)
Authors Joanne L. Reid, Susan Drake, and Danielle Beckett of the Faculty of Education, Brock University promote AfL and openly acknowledge what amounts to fierce resistance ( primarily from “colleagues”). It’s worth a careful read:
http://canadianperspectivesjournal.ca/index.php/cpj/article/view/1/1
The Summary Conclusion says it all:
” It appears that if we want new assessment policies to take hold, we must consider more than policy imposition and professional development to develop techniques. We can predict that educators will experience tensions in the face of innovation and new assessment policies. To ameliorate these tensions, we should also consider the alignment of the reform with educators’ beliefs and values regarding learning, roles, and relationships and, in doing so,educators may act from a genuine inner motivation for change rather than shallow compliance with externally imposed mandates. As a result, assessment reform may actually stick.”
In case you are wondering, this is no hoax. That’s the actual conclusion of the first article in the new journal.
Given the recent firestorm in Newfoundland’s Eastern Board, AfL promoters like Damian Cooper would likely be happy to settle for “shallow compliance with externally imposed mandates” when it comes to pardoning student cheaters in public schools. Those sometimes difficult teacher “colleagues” are not only restless; they are outraged over the latest assault on teacher autonomy and professionalism.
Looking at the origins of this initiative is useful though it does come close to implying sinister motives.
My interpretation of the quote is
ok
so
what evidence and support can you provide to teachers if in fact
this is a useful direction to take?
I favour the direction with the usual caveats- there are no magic bullets and teachers need the support to work things out in their classes and assess the results in terms of student learning.
On the other hand the quote as is
seems to be a nuanced version of something former Toronto district director and I termed the “cardiac method”; namely, “We believe it in my hearts, therefore, you do it.”.
“Do-Over” student assessment has been with us for ages, especially in classrooms where differences arose naturally and were quietly resolved between students and teachers. Hard markers held firm, but many teachers showed an inclination to make adjustments, generally favouring students. Indeed, teachers once enjoyed considerable autonomy in such matters. What’s new about its current mutation is that policy mandates are removing the “automatic zero” and the right to adjust student marks.
New forms of student assessment are part of a much larger movement to supplant summative (end result) assessment with “formative” (ongoing) student assessment where the goal is not generating measurable grades but “improved student learning.” Pursuing that philosophy to extremes leads inevitably to sometimes repeated “do-over” opportunities.
Where’s the peer-reviewed research to support this radical shift in student assessment? A small band of Canadian experts, including Damian Cooper, Susan Drake, and Ken O’Connor always claim that research is on their side.
Making the case that the new Student Assessment philosophy and practice is soundly based has just gotten a lot harder to sustain. In the January 2011 issue (Vol. 18, No. 1) of the leading academic journal, Randy Elliot Bennett (no relation) of the ETS (Princeton, NJ) delivered a stinging critique aimed at the new student assessment techniques.
His critical review of Formative Assessment (pp. 5-25) is summarized in this short abstract:
“This paper covers six interrelated issues in formative assessment (aka, ‘assessment for learning’). The issues concern the definition of formative assessment, the claims commonly made for its effectiveness, the limited attention given to domain considerations in its conceptualisation, the under representation of measurement principles in that conceptualisation, the teacher support demands formative assessment entails, and the impact of the larger educational system.
The paper concludes that the term, ‘formative assessment’, does not yet represent a well‐defined set of artefacts or practices. Although research suggests that the general practices associated with formative assessment can facilitate learning, existing definitions admit such a wide variety of implementations that effects should be expected to vary widely from one implementation and student population to the next. In addition, the magnitude of commonly made quantitative claims for effectiveness is suspect, deriving from untraceable, flawed, dated, or unpublished sources.”
Can formative assessment be salvaged as a legitimate form of student evaluation? Here Bennett is very clear that major changes are in order:
“To realise maximum benefit from formative assessment, new development should focus on conceptualising well‐specified approaches built around process and methodology rooted within specific content domains. Those conceptualisations should incorporate fundamental measurement principles that encourage teachers and students to recognise the inferential nature of assessment. The conceptualisations should also allow for the substantial time and professional support needed if the vast majority of teachers are to become proficient users of formative assessment. Finally, for greatest benefit, formative approaches should be conceptualised as part of a comprehensive system in which all components work together to facilitate learning.”
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0969594X.2010.513678
What’s the significance of this research literature review? Simply put, the whole movement rests on shaky research foundations suggesting that a balanced approach, mixing performance measures with ongoing assessment would be far superior to eliminating marks, pardoning cheating, and providing more “do-over” opportunities.
From Paul’s link:
“Black and Wiliam’s (1998) seminal research demonstrated that assessment for learning (AfL) can improve student learning. Although subject to critique (Bennett, 2011), Black and Wiliam’s conclusions have been supported (see, for example, Barootchi & Keshavarez, 2002; Black & Harrison, 2001; Lee & Gavine, 2003; Orsmond, Merry & Reiling, 2002) to such an extent that provincial Ministries of Education have developed assessment policies explicitly promoting greater use of AfL. Despite such endorsement, implementation of AfL over the last decade has been slow, patchy, and superficial (Popham, 2008; Tang, Leung, Chow, & Wong, 2010; Tierney, 2006; Wiliam, 2009). Assessment experts note that Canadian educators focus on AfL tec2222techniques and strategies without a fundamental understanding of the AfL philosophy (Cooper, 2011; Earl, Volante & Katz, 2011).”
http://canadianperspectivesjournal.ca/index.php/cpj/article/view/1/1
It does explain the trouble I have had as a parent, explaining to school officials why their approved methods , is not a good policy for LD children, and their education needs. Keep in mind that I never learned about AfL until today, and in the link, sprinkled throughout is many of the methods that I objected to. No wonder, the educrats were able to thwart my every move and attack me on a personal basis regarding parenting ability and being too harsh on my child. I actually did look like a harsh parent who has no room for collaboration, of the AfL. I actually don’t, because it hinges on the student being a lab rat working their way through a maze, filled with conflicting and confusing messages, and where the student is learning collaboration with no clear rules of the game on display. No wonder a student thinks cheating is OK.
“AfL redefines the roles of teacher and student by emphasizing their mutual responsibilities as collaborative learning partners (Popham, 2008). The metacognitive features of AfL encourage students to play an influential role in shaping instruction and assessment. Thus, AfL brings the teacher and student into a closer, more democratic relationship. These two aspects of AfL – purpose and relationship – imply that its implementation is not a tweaking of traditional practices or a simple substitution of one strategy for another. Rather, by integrating instruction, learning and assessment, and by accentuating the collaborative nature of the learning and assessment processes, AfL asks educators to adopt a philosophical stance different from the transmission and judgmental model of traditional schooling.”
This bunch of educrats, have never had the pleasure of dealing with the more capable LD students, who finally received the needed help to remediate their learning weaknesses by other means, than the public education system, who is loath to addressed the learning needs of LD student using efficient, effective methods of remediation. Nor have they had the pleasure of being on the receiving end of a sassy LD student, telling the educator in question, “I would not be having a learning problem, if I was taught how to read and write properly.” Or the other common one, that is seen at the high school level more often, “Just tell me what to do, because I don’t know where I went wrong in the first place!” More common, since AfL does not recommend an approach where the teacher fills the work of the student with red circles, and cryptic remarks along the side. It is the collaborative approach where student and teacher work side by side, making nice talk about how the student could improve the paper. I can well imagine the stimulating conversations of students who are already weak in the 3 Rs, would be like. The students soon learn how to play the game of working at the lowest level of effort and time, and for the teachers, exhausting work to follow the AfL protocol, only to see more students cheat rather than the intended outcome where student actually wants to learn.
The fans of AfL, “A positive experience with assessment that excited a secondary school math teacher was replacing a final exam with interviews because she felt that the feedback that she got on formal written tests was not really a good indication of what kids knew. While another teacher noted, ”We know that a lot of kids aren’t really good formal exam writers. I’m hoping this is going to shed some light and maybe open up the possibility of some alternative ways to testing. So that’s exciting “(ST3 Male). An administrator (SA1 Male) recalled that his best assessment experience occurred when the
materials for a major project were taken to a suspended student’s house so the student could have the opportunity to complete the assignment and successfully earn the course credit.
Besides the last one, which should be a given but commonly is not a given in the public education system. The first two, are a recipe for future doors slamming in the students’ faces as well as be handing pink slips for your troubles. I wonder how that works replacing a final math exam, with interviews? Or the second one, why bother to teach the ways of writing a formal exam, when AfL’s philosophy allows the possibility of alternative ways to testing? There has been alternative ways of testing, but unfortunately they are rarely used unless the student has been diagnosed, labeled and vetted that alternative testing is suitable and approved at the highest levels. One can only wonder what a teacher will do with a class of 20 students, all demanding different things for their evaluation, like 20 individuals would do ordering in a restaurant.
John Hattie (see earlier post) also supports the power of formative assessment as did Ben Bloom (mastery learning and Bloom’s taxonomy fame) in his conclusions that the BEST method for improving student achievement is one to one tutoring. Why does that work? Why does JUMP math work? Because we can give timely feedback (a key aspect of formative assessment quickly). When students practice formative assessment can if well done kick in with and after each practice. I learned that as an athlete and coach.
I DO NOT GET the opposition to formative assessment and the power of practice.
You can always find a study saying otherwise- it is like research in medicine which educational;research most closely resembles.
The overwhelming evidence is that practice counts, especially when you learn
– what you did well
– what you can do better
and
– how to move to the next level?
This is a different issue from cheating. Or it should be.
We could return to the good old days of the 1950s and early 60s when 2/3 of us dropped out before graduating from high school.
I think I would rather pay for educating all as best we can then
paying for jails and welfare.
Will it be perfect?I wish but the least we can do to work based on what is known rather than what we believe.
Evidence counts!
One problem, as noted before, is the timeliness of grading compared to assessment.
The final grade pour les Canadiens comes at the end of season after many games and many many more practices.
John you state, “Why does that work? Why does JUMP math work? Because we can give timely feedback (a key aspect of formative assessment quickly). When students practice formative assessment can if well done kick in with and after each practice. I learned that as an athlete and coach.”
Question: Would not a teacher not only have deep knowledge about the subject, but deep knowledge about how children learn, the cognitive aspects of children, as well as having deep knowledge on the learning problems related to the education of children, in order for formative assessment to work well? Keeping in mind, the current pedagogy taught at the teachers’ faculties are questionable and may ultimately harm the education of all children, as well as creating the conditions of the repeating cycles of low literacy and numeracy achievement, the constant battles of students dropping out of school. as well as the expenditures to keep the students in school, and the many different levels and abilities of students in one classroom.
Throw in the cheating, which from what I have read, is on the increase, but the experts argue among themselves on the reasons why students cheat. Formative assessment seems to me, another way to avoid the deep-seated fault-lines of the public education system, and their practices. Formative assessment can work very well, if the teacher has the deep knowledge. But how many teachers would know dyslexics will ‘misread’ material, and the reasons under it? How many teachers would know, how to overcome the problem of dyslexics misreading the material? How many teachers would change their instruction methods, when it is obvious the students are not getting the material? How many teachers, know that practice and the number of problems practice varies among the students in any classroom, at any time? Why than does the current pedagogy taught, including formative assessment all recommend 6 to 10 practice problems, and than move on? Current science research says otherwise, that most students need at least 20 practice problems, in ensuring the new knowledge is permanently learned. Why is it, teachers are surprised, when students forget the material, and has to be retaught again?
I can go, but formative assessment is only as good as the teachers’ knowledge and the depth of his knowledge. From what I have observed, most teachers’ knowledge of learning lies within the student population who are the top 40 percent in achievement. Learning comes easy for them, but when they do struggle the reasons are very different for them, compared to the other 60 percent sitting inside a classroom. Solutions coming from within the public education system, often are solutions for the top 40 % of the student population, and the other 60 % are made to adapt to the solutions, that often will do nothing to lift achievement for the bottom 60 %. Or even change behaviour of students, in wanting to learn.
John, you mentioned Jump Math. The only reason why Jump Math and other curriculum and instruction methods developed by those who are outside of the public education system, are not in the public schools because they are too scriptive for the tastes of the educrats and run roughshod over their pet theories, and current fads of the public education system. After all, the only experts are those who hold a teacher’s degree and the magic certificate that shows expertise in all things education.
I have said in earlier posts “when done well”
And I agree that we do not do enough
– practice
– comparing, contrasting, and classifying
In the previous post the genetic fallacy is committed. JUMP math works
and it is used used in some schools
is NOT because of the person but because of the method involving large dollops of quality feedback.
As for the top 40% solution. I use Ben Bloom as proof that this does NOT need to be so. Mastery learning, direct instruction and , ironically enough, well structured cooperative group work, work, based on evidence.
It’s not clear to me whether the topic here is “cheating” or “formative assessment.” The two are not closely linked: in general, formative assessments do not lend themselves to cheating, and they are rarely or never “high stakes” assessments where students may have an incentive to cheat. “Summative” assessments are more likely to be ones in which efforts to cheat can be anticipated.
Formative assessment, as pointed out above, goes back many decades (to the ‘60’s at least; it was a component of Benjamin Bloom’s mastery learning approach.) and has a formidable database supporting its effectiveness. Precision Teaching is one validated set of practices which relies considerably on rapid formative assessment. Direct Instruction, which also has extensive evidence of effectiveness, makes considerable use of formative assessment. The current movement towards CBM (curriculum based measurement) is another example of empirically validated formative assessment (CBM’s main focus is on progress monitoring – to inform instruction on an ongoing, regular basis; it is particularly useful for students on IEP’s or modified programs – see http://www.interventioncentral.org . ) The DIBELS assessments for K-6 are used in a number of Canadian school systems; another popular producer of CBM assessments is Aimsweb. http://www.easycbm.com is a good site (free) for individual teachers, parents, tutors or homeschoolers, and includes math skills (various strands) as well as a number of different reading component skills. See the work of Jim Wright and Stan Deno and others for more examples and explanations.
Formative assessment is separate from diagnostic assessment, but is essential to monitor progress so that instruction can be tweaked, repetition or alternative presentations provided, or objectives and timelines modified in response to how students are progressing. Waiting weeks or months to assess what students have learned wastes much valuable time that could have been put to better use. There is so much evidence supporting this practice that I share John Myers’ incredulity that serious students of effective teaching would disparage it.
Assessment is a very important topic, but a complex one; the confusion of two issues here is merely a symptom of the lack of understanding of the different types, purposes and value (or limitations) of various forms of assessment; here’s another project I’d love to see The Education Reporter take on. The issues could be clearly explained for parents, teachers and members of the public, but the exposition of the issues needs to be lucid and very clearly organized, with examples and non-examples.
Given that the field is a growing one, with different types of formative assessment being introduced (and not all being of equal validity), some controversy is inevitable. Looking at the references in the paper which Paul cited, I noted a couple of real experts on measurement and psychometrics, including James Popham who is one of the most prominent names in the field over the last 50 years.
It’s probably too big a topic for a blog post, but a movement towards wider use of formative assessment (coupled with appropriate instructional response) is all to the good. Integrating it seamlessly into everyday practice is an ongoing challenge, but I personally have seen much progress in this area over the last decade or so, and this is certainly a benefit to students.
Thank you, TDSB.
I support the movement since the teachers I work with say they would like to do more formative assessment but lack the time.
Formative assessment is one reason explains why direct instruction is so effective while lectures by themselves are not.
Jim Popham and Robert Linn, another psychometrician of long experience have both recognized the limits of the approaches they have supported for decades. They still support testing but see it as needing to be combined with other measures.
Behaviour and achievement should be separated as much as possible, however, what education’s chattering classes always fail to appreciate is that jerking the system around quickly causes deep resentment on behalf of teachers and parents.
Doug has a big point. Remember to avoid the “cardiac method” noted in an earlier post.
One of the reasons behind the new ‘do-over’ student evaluation, and the new cheating rules, is to prevent the natural biases and personal beliefs of teachers, Or to limit the biases and personal beliefs that teachers imposed on their evaluation, as well as imposing punishments. But I somehow do not see the natural biases and personal beliefs being downplayed by the individual, when the behaviour and achievement is separated. Hard enough to do it in a court of law, and probably very difficult to do it as a teacher, depending on who one is dealing with. I can imagined the parent-teacher interviews, of Little Johnnie is doing average work, but he can do better. On the other hand, his behaviour indicates that he will always be a C student. Maybe not in those words, but in some fashion that it becomes predictable for parents, and the same parents will slowly come detached from the whole school process or limit their contact with school. For parents, separating behaviour from the rest of the child is alien, and probably in a good many child behaviour books for parents, it is not recommended.
The only lesson that will be learned, that cheating is another crime that goes unpunished, as bullying is when they is no adults to witness it. In my day, calling a person name, the kid got into trouble with or without an adult present. As for cheating, no one did until I got into high school, and those that cheated were the very good students, who were frightened of failing a test. Either way, the new cheating policy will go away, since the teachers and its’ union are not on board, and never will be. Even they themselves can see it not working, and they have the majority of parents along for the ride. More of a deep cultural thing with Newfoundlanders, living and forging a living off the ocean, and cheating can also lead to the unforgiving Atlantic or our roads to take another life for payment. Children need to learn the lessons of cheating, and the harm that it does at the end of the day. Not the harm that is imposed on other people, but on the child. As I said to my child, hammering it in, no good to cheat on the unit test, because you still have to preform on the final exams. Cheat your way through the many tests and exams, sooner or later the vindictive god named cheater, will have his way with you.
Those with a subscription the latest edition of Educational Leadership (100,000 circulation) features grading etc. as a theme.
I shall find time the next week to read.
BTW
I think the discussion on this thread has picked up- a clear pass approaching A level I hope.
I have some experience in the area of assessment have published nationally and beyond and in Ontario I am considered an “:expert” legally due to being a witness in a case nearly a decade ago), but
it is important to read how people outside the academic beltway think. It’s why I have a teacher network + kids, including my own, to keep me grounded.
So why am I not on the circuit?
I like teaching too much.
I am glad to hear it John, to keep me grounded part. Theory is one thing, but what happens out there in the real world matters. It is like what my 16 year old and I listen to on Canada AM today, and we had our first laugh of the day. The sitting disease, is the new kid on the block, that has all the underpinnings of a theory, that soon we will hear the new causes for heart disease and other diseases. If only they got up once a hour, in the last 20 years while sitting over extended amount of time, they would not be sitting in a hospital now. What never happened on the interview, is asking the credentials on the persons who is proposing a new disease, call the sitting disease. How much money will be made? Have no idea, but my 16 year old the cynic she is sure some people will make a boat full of money, rather than dealing with the underlying causes of disease, that can be prevented.
In much the same way, the education system can prevent low literacy and numeracy in our students. at the grade school level, so the high school teachers can get on with the preparation of students entering the real world after grade 12. It makes the job of teaching that much harder, when new rules such as cheating, plays havoc with the values that are held by the outside world, beyond the school walls. For example, if students are involved in the Special Olympics as coaches, or the local sea or air cadets, and are caught cheating by the school, these students can say goodbye to their coaching days as well as the sea or air cadets. This set of students, are to set a good example for the community, and it is effective to keep students in line. Or the local business person, who likes to hire students, will usually let go of a student, if he hears the kid did some stealing, or cheated on his test. Harder to do with the new cheating rules, since the act of cheating , as well as the privacy acts, will prevent schools from being transparent in their actions. At the same time, parents and the wider community are kept in the dark on the actions of the school, regarding the student.
As I have observed and experienced, transparency is not the public education thing. Yet, if the educrats were open and transparent, willing to communicate on two-way communication mode, people on the outside might be willing to change their values to reflect more like the values of the public education system. In the same way, as you were speaking about your experience, and in the same way as some teachers were dealing with my concerns as well as trying to work together cooperatively for my child, the world would be a better place. Or at the very least, the day to day living, and perhaps no one has to wake up to a new disease called the sitting disease.
Why does jump math work – timely feed back.
————————————————————————————————
My son’s teacher is using Jump Math. What is timely feed back ?
Timely feed back is “being there” at the split second where confusion occurs and a student might feel he can`t learn it-the right words and the right information from teacher bring him to the knowledge goal for that day.
Below is a video, that shows what a school and their teachers can do for students, when they are allow to used their common sense, as well as thinking with their hearts. Too bad, all the micro-managing done in secret from the educrats always gets in the way, and so many students become ‘what ifs’, rather than become ‘ I did it ‘ success stories.
The new cheating rule gets in the way in my opinion, and belongs in the trash heap of the so-called rules created by many educrats who have not seen a classroom in many years.
It sure brought a tear and a smile…………………..
Why stereotype “educrats’? All it does it cheapen evidence-based discussion, even disagreement. I know of this example and it is an exception.
Some of this CAN be used elsewhere but it is not a magic bullet.
Besides when it comes to “educrats”, some of my best friends . . ..
They are responding in large part to their political masters whom we elect, rightly or wrongly. That is one reason why I turned down a chance to be one.
Education has always been political and let’s figure out better ways to work the system. There are many voices out there. They are not always informed and even some informed voices disagree on some things.
When I was asked by York U to teach a course titled “The Politics of Ontario Education 1945-2005”, the dept there had encountered a total lack of understanding about politics from education students plus some others. They kept asking “why does education have to be so political? Can’t we just do what is right.” Sweet but naive.
Education has always been and probably will always be political because the shape of the next generation is always in the schools. The political parties, the interest groups, biz and labour, environmentalists, feminists, human rights advocates of all types, pedagogical warriors, privatizers, religious agendas pro and con can not and probably ought not to resist having something to say about what is taught, how it is taught and to whom.
One of the really great political splits actually exists between the political masters and the top bureaucrats at the board and ministry level but this is nothing new and certainly not confined to education.
Now John, playing nice from a parent’s perspective does not work at any level in the education system. Playing nice, leads to nice nods and smiles, but at the end of the day everything remains in place according to the educrats who make up the rules, and some at the school level who will do everything to march to the tune of the educrats.
Too bad, you were not in my local post office this morning, and as I was walking in, the parents complaining about how and what is being taught in the schools. On top of the demands being made that parents shall not help their kids to do their homework, and never teach a child the same way that the parent was taught. Would you like to hear more, because I left a few seeds of stats relating to the local area, that I hope will blossom and germinate.
Since I was the only high school parent, and as I was telling them my sorted story, they also inform me of a few little stats, that the public education loves to ignored. Apparently, more and more parents are undertaking the tutoring at home, go on the web and anything else to help their children on the 3 Rs. The new cheating rules, are just another thing in the parents’ viewpoints that is cook up by the educrats, to dumb it down for every student. After all, learning the basics, a solid foundation does not count anymore with the educrats. Parents in my area are really peeved about the state of the education, and they fully know that going after them is a waste of time and effort on their part in a system, that virtually ignores parents, as well as the best interests of students.
The public education structure is a politicized structure that works for the best interests of those who work within the education system. A typical line, is often stated to parents in so many different ways and versions – “There are many voices out there. They are not always informed and even some informed voices disagree on some things.”The line that John has written, is a typical line offered by those within the education system, meant for parents ears, in numerous situations to have the parents voluntarily complied to the goals and agendas of the education system. The newest one, in the local grade school, is having parents stopped helping their children with homework, as well as teaching their children methods that run counter to the school’s methods. This morning at the post office, it really peeved off the parents, and was music to my ears this morning, that parents are very much aware of the education system and how it is doing harm to their children’s futures. They are also aware that they have no power, no political capital, to change things from within the system, but are very determined to ensure that their children will received the stuff they need at home and their futures.
The trouble with lines they are not always informed and even some informed, when educrats used this line or some other version of it, the educrats want parents to adapt to their way of thinking and doing things. They want parents to become the cheer leaders, as well as to accept full responsibility when their children do not achieve. Been there, done it, and in my opinion being nice to educrats who never did have the best interests of my child at heart, is a waste of time and effort, and as a parent said to me this morning, a grandparent, going their way, will certainly closed the doors for kids who struggle in learning.
My trouble has never been at the political masters, but at the education system. It was always been easier to talk and write to the political masters, except for the politicians who had former lives as teachers. Somehow the former teachers will see it is OK not to have a solid foundation in the 3 Rs. Somehow the teachers will see it is OK not to be able to multiply at the high school level, and still find blame and assigned it to parents. It is OK to give students second chances over and over again when it comes to cheating and not having assignments in on time. But in their eyes, it is never OK, for parents to question the public education system, and their questionable policies. Except, under strict protocols and processes set up for parents created by the educrats. Playing nice, will just get a parent on the treadmill with a carrot as the bait, just out of reach, in the hope that the parent is either motivated to stay on the treadmill, or steps off the treadmill, and crawls under the rock they came from.
If it was not for the political masters, my child would not be a honour student. As for teachers, isn’t it about time to used the political capital that your process, and go after some of the bad practices such as giving cheaters a free pass? Or is it, that the teachers’ union of NL standing up to the other educrats on cheating and giving out no zeroes is not what a union should be doing? Rather refreshing, since most where their blinders and do not used their political capital for the best interests of the children and their education. After all, giving cheating students a second chance, is not the kind of thing, that could be work into the contracts and negotiations, and other issues that deals with the day to day responsibilities of teachers.
I would not ask us to play nice, but to play smart.
that’s because you’re drawing the line from the inside John. Parents have been relegated to the “play smart” role for too long. Once there parents realize very quickly that even playing smart doesn’t get one an educated child or anything close to accountability on the part of those same folks who are doing a lot of drawing of lines.
Parents are tired of being told how to advocate for their children or how to abide by rules. What happened to that true partnership parents have been promised? You know the one, where we too have a hand in drawing the line?
In reading this series of postings I am reminded of the story of the High School Teacher who couldn`t Read novel-he was on Oprah Wynfrey several years ago,I think his name is John Cochrane-sometimes,if you tests these students you find out that to survive and try as they might to get a high school certificate,cheating becomes modus apperandi because they are not able read,spell and write.
A much more thoughtful educator would say,I wonder if he is drowning in quicksand,is that why he`s cheating,is he holding down two jobs to help his family survive economically and didn`t have time to study,was he a child left behind..?
I was involved in a thesis study for a psychologist at Regent Park School in 2005,behavioural children engaged dramatically better after experiencing remediation and experiencing some success.
You don`t need to be Einstein to figure this out.
A second chance after exploration is a wonderful idea for all human beings.
For anyone who wants to know more John Cochrane…….
“While still teaching, Corcoran dabbled in real estate. He was granted a leave of absence, eventually becoming a successful real estate developer.
It wasn’t until he was 48 years old that he gave reading and writing another chance. He drove to an inconspicuous office with a sign he couldn’t read. He studied and worked with a tutor at the Literacy Center of Carlsbad. Assigned to a 65-year-old volunteer tutor, Eleanor Condit, he was able to read at a sixth-grade level within a year.
“I’m just an optimistic hopeful person that believes in the impossible and miracles,” said Corcoran.
Carlsbad City Library literacy coordinator Carrie Scott said people of all walks of life go through the reading program, including teachers.
Corcoran is now an education advocate.”
http://www.10news.com/news/15274005/detail.html
And his foundation is below. “The John Corcoran Foundation was created to promote literacy through John’s advocacy efforts, through support of special literacy projects, and through the development of tutoring programs which provide the highest quality research-based instruction. The Foundation has trained 300 tutors and tutored over 2000 students. Come into our website to learn about illiteracy in America, John’s amazing story, and how to teach every child and adult to learn to read and write.
Our vision is to help create a society in which each individual has the basic skills necessary to become a success in all aspects of life including education, work and community.”
http://www.johncorcoranfoundation.com/
In which each individual has the basic skills necessary to become a success in all aspects of life, is what the public education system does not provide for all of its students, just a certain percentage. The rest will get the new cheating rules, or other reforms, that does nothing for their basic skills and foundation needed to navigate in this world.
Just a tad more to add on. I believe for the most part, parents want their children well versed on the 3 Rs, a solid foundation to rest upon. Learning new knowledge becomes a whole lot easier to obtain, Performance evaluation, and whatever the new changes are or have been, are still the same type that will dumb down the work for the students who are weak in the 3 Rs. In the end, the foundation of the 3 Rs need to be taught, and not left up to motivation, self-esteem methods, and whatever is cook up to create happy students and the presume outcome, students will learn.
Once my child had a somewhat solid foundation, she was eager to learn, as well as to perform on tests. She did it for the most part without accommodations, and her pride came as a result from the hard work, and I might add a lot of tears. All done without the support of the school board, and in many different ways the school. However the school, turned a blind eye to my re-teaching at home, and more than likely, they ran tactical support to the keep the board at bay. But in many different ways, they did not communicate to me their concerns, and the board, well they get a big fat negative zero or less from me. If the board was not telling me how to advocate, they were telling me to abide by the rules, and if not, they were using their power to intimidate me to abide by the rules. Once I threw the legal law at them, and the implications of the laws, as well as the ministry of education, and other agencies dealing with children, than I had their full attention. It took 9 years, hours upon hours over the 9 years for re-teaching at home, and when I was not re-teaching or combing the web for how-to tips; I was looking up research and information on the inner workings of the provincial education system, and other education systems. I did this for my child, and as a parent I only wanted a solid foundation in the 3 Rs. It took me 9 years because the school board could not be bother to remediate her obvious struggles starting in grade 1. It took me 9 long years, to get my child up to a standard to where her foundation skills and abilities worked in tandem with her obtaining new knowledge. In order to do this, I had to look at the public education system at every facet, nook and corner , upside down, inside-out, and along the way I pick up knowledge on evaluation, curriculum and the many different practices that are part of the day to day experience in any school.
Evaluation, my concern was giving dumb-down outcomes, or feeling sorry marks for my child. All I wanted was a sense of fairness, understanding and to acknowledge every child is capable of achievement, providing they are not measure to a mythical standard of educrats. Cooper strikes me as a typical educrat, and of the kind, that I do not particular like, because he has had three jobs – one as a teacher, the second working for a major education publisher, and his third as a paid speaker currently. Cooper’s version of performance evaluation is based on a mythical standard that does not exist in today’s schools, How can it, when all the students are not at the same level more or less? In his model, there is methods that are used to over come the variability of students’ levels. One of them is portfolios. and is outline here. “Portfolios
The portfolio is an excellent vehicle for communicating with students about their learning. It is also one of the most effective ways to make assessment a collaborative process. A portfolio is much more than a container for storing student work. When implemented effectively, the portfolio becomes a window into learning that enables teachers and parents to “see inside” the learning process. As such, the portfolio provides a focus for student-teacher and parent-teacher conferencing. A major purpose for using portfolios is to foster student metacognition—that is, to teach students how to monitor, reflect on, and then improve the quality of their own work, and, in the process, to become less dependent on the teacher’s assessment of their work.”
Click to access csl_doc.pdf
However, on the many different parent sites regarding education, pain in the you-know-what, and just another way to control the parent-teacher interview, Personally, I find them useless, and somehow will evade all questions regarding the actual work, and that is if one can read the material. “Portfolio Assessment: A version of performance-based assessment, where students preserve in a portfolio all or some of their production during the course of the semester or year and are graded, at the end of the time period, for the totality of their production. It is good for teaching writing and painting…but not much else!” http://granitegrok.com/blog/2008/11/edubabble_what_do_those_words_mean.html
If the portfolio is a window in the learning process, why bother, when homework and other work brought home can be seen as a timely way for parents to gauged their children’s learning? Or is portfolios just another way to ensure parents buy the line, hook and sinker of educrats like Cooper and questions asked by parents? Just like the new cheating rules, which will soon be in every school district, whether parents or teachers want them.
Support Jo-Anne’s comments. There is even research suggesting that taking a challenging test and then doing it again results in improvement.
but
to Catherine,
Playing smart should not be an empty slogan. It means playing to win.
While we do not know [precisely why, +ve parental involvement (you can define +ve how you will) promotes higher achievement.
More of the original purpose of the thread after I finish reading current issue of Ed Leadership (see earlier post)
“to Catherine,
Playing smart should not be an empty slogan. It means playing to win.”
no John. If playing smart were more than empty rhetoric it wouldn’t mean playing to win, it would mean recognition for those parents who come to the table more than adequately prepared and just as knowledgeable as do some educators and “experts” on what’s best when it comes to getting the education students deserve.
Too many parents find out through their own experience that playing smart is not only an empty slogan but can result in a very tough go of it for the child (& parent).
“A second chance after exploration is a wonderful idea for all human beings.”
______________________________________________________
Nothing wrong with a second chance and nothing wrong with help where needed (help that all too often isn’t there no matter what) but it needs to be pointed out that cheating is NOT ok and that and that the results of cheating is a big, fat zero. To do otherwise is to enable the cheating.
Parents are tired of being told how to advocate for their children or how to abide by rules. What happened to that true partnership parents have been promised? You know the one, where we too have a hand in drawing the line?
Do you have a true partnership with the hospital? How about police or fire or your sanitation department. The education system cannot operate with the cacophony of parent voices out there.
Annie Kidder told the government “we don’t want to run the system, we just need to be consulted” The system is very well run by professionals who put more kids in post secondary that anyone on Earth.
McKinsey Group, Ontario best system in the English speaking world. Only Finland and Korea outscore Canada
Finland: Master’s degrees for all teachers, only 1 in ten allowed to teach. Easier to get into law or medicine. 4% child poverty, USA 20% Canada 15%
Korea: Longer hours, longer year, private cram schools until 10PM
Which do you want?
I would choose Finland myself but we can make incremental improvemens here.Reduce poverty, extent ECE to 2 year olds, abolish EQAO, Lots to do.
EQAO is the best thing we have in Ontario-it aids school boards in appraising how they are doing.It simply is incredibly important to also compare yourself to other boards.
Parents need something,we can`t just give money and pray-Law,Medicine and Education need to be accountable to their clients.
Why do you feel education should be the only field that gets a free from accountability card?
That just doesn`t work for me,in my work,accountability is my favorite word,I take a teacher who doesn`t know how to teach kids at risk to read and allow her to take a child reading at Grade 1 level to a grade 5 level in 6 months.
Jump Math does the same for Numeracy.
Accountability is crucial and many fine educators feel it is too.
“Annie Kidder told the government “we don’t want to run the system, we just need to be consulted” The system is very well run by professionals who put more kids in post secondary that anyone on Earth.”
If she were truly representative of parents and the advocate she claims to be she wouldn”t be settling for a line drawn in the sand for her and her organization either. She speaks for herself and herself only.
Doug, if you have Kidder bending down any further, she be kissing the boots, before she would be allow to speak. Kidder does not speak for any parents in Ontario, let alone the rest of Canada, P4E is purely a man-made construct, to give the illusion that parents have a say. Kidder is all about the status-quo.
Have to laugh about the McKinsey Group, raving about them, since they are part of the corporations that are so dislike by certain fractions within the education system who believe corporations are the ruin of the education system. That said, the McKinsey Group is something to behold, boasting to take care of the top Fortune companies, to meet their needs. I wonder how many solutions put out by the McKinsey, are designed to create the future problems, to where the only answer is more staff and of course more funding, in the public sector? In the same way, the performance evaluation model of Cooper’s is designed to create and increase the work load of teachers, without mind to the other responsibility, ensuring that all students meet the outcomes.
http://mckinseyonsociety.com/how-the-worlds-most-improved-school-systems-keep-getting-better/
http://www.mckinsey.com/en/About_us/Our_people.aspx
There is no such thing as a partnership with parents, within the present day public education system. If there was a true partnership with parents, there would be no need to fund parental involvement policies, I wonder what the cost of the policies related to parental involvement is costing the taxpayers? In millions of dollars every year, and they exist to prevent parents from becoming real partners in their children’s education. The secondary reason, is to brainwash the parents, into adapting public education practices and agendas. Both work in tandem, to divide parents as well as uniting parents in a cohesive group, to work for the agendas of the public education system. It does not matter, if parents do not participate at the school level, or if they do not support their children’s education, or if they do fully participate, What is important, how retaining the status-quo, creates multi-million dollar investment in parental involvement to assessment to research in education.
What would really terrified those who work within the education system, if parents ever unite in a cohesive group, going after many of inequalities and/or fault lines of the education system, that slams the doors of their children’s futures. It is within the inequalities and fault lines of the education system, that allows the Coopers’ of the world, to profit as well as to keep the status-quo that has so enrich them, and more importantly to keep parents, taxpayers looking in, shut out and regulated to mere cheerleaders. One of the reasons why shadow education is growing and increasing in all developed countries, a option for parents, rather than the offers of the public education system, that always seems to have strings attached to them.
John states, “While we do not know [precisely why, +ve parental involvement (you can define +ve how you will) promotes higher achievement.”
I doubt parents would want to follow my pathway that was foisted upon me by an education system, who have their own ideas on how children learn, and what they are capable of. What I do know, it is not the stuff that the public education keeps on repeating over and over again to parents. Nor is it the busy activities recommended by any school to increase interest in math, science or reading, that makes parents jumped through hoops, while bouncing up and down on their heads. It certainly did raise my own child’s achievement when I became involved, but it was without the support of the school. And as one educrat said to me, it is my responsibility to ensure that my children have a foundation in the 3 Rs. My response, does that make the school, a glorified babysitter and rather an expensive one for my child? That conversation quickly turned into a rather nasty one, and if I remember correctly, the educrat hanging up on me. What was the cost savings for the school, and the board for not providing remediation for my child in the 3 Rs? I don’t know, but even if Cooper’s model of evaluation was common in the education system, the teacher still would not have time to considered my child’s garden variety problems in the 3 Rs, because there is so many of them in each classroom. What will be repeated, if my child was starting out today, I would be re-teaching, home schooling, and everything in between because the present day education system, still refuses to be held accountable, and responsible for the children under their care when it comes to their education.
When did “parents”, millions of them, in Ontario actually give Annie Kidder a mandate to speak on their behalf or claim to know they they think?
I suspect you’d find they never have.
She’s to “parents” what some of the folks here are to teachers; quick to claim to be speaking on behalf of far more people than they actually do
The accountability movement is at the heart of everything that is wrong with education. NCLB = accountability, a sad joke, your talented teachers leave education in droves before first 5 years, reason? too much accountability.
Testing increases the dropout rate (University of Texas at Austin study).
Testing does not tell us anything that we did not already know (Vito Perrone past Dean Harvard Grad School of Education.
Look at PISA if you want. Canada #3 and nobody it seems, wants to do what Finland and Korea do to improve.
It testing was related in any way to school improvement, the USA would have one of the world’s best systems. There is no relationship between testing and improvement.
Accountability drives out joy and creativity. They are opposites in schools.
Many reading experts believe test prep is destroying the instinct of children to read for the sheer joy and edification of the activity.
Nancy,do you have an equivalent to EQAO?We are thrilled with it-
Doretta and I attended a Fraser Institute debate where Annie Kidder debated with Peter Cowley from Fraser Institute on effectiveness in schools and she did mention she was not a fan of EQAO-Has this MOE PR machine become a representation of the voice of parents?
If so,it is duplicitous-they are On.government funded and would be more sympathetic to the Dougs of the world than the parents.
A note to Doug-we can read the U.S. stories on our own-we are in Canada and I don`t need the U.S.links.
Nancy and I speak teaching according to the empirical research and doing early reading intervention according to how the NICHD study told us we should in order to save kids from failure early which saves the system a lot of money by alleviating the special ed machine.
which saves the system a lot of money by alleviating the special ed machine.
____________________________________________________
…broken special machine.
You have to love the Corporate Education Reform movement. Every single idea they have is American, vouchers, charters, testing, teacher bashing, but if an American reform idea fails (NCLB and most other ones), all of a sudden “we are not interested in American examples, we are in Canada” LOL
Pretty much all of the emperical research says testing gains you nothing and in fact is worse than a placebo, it actually makes the education results worse by discouraging marginal students.
http://www.fairtest.org/whats-wrong-standardized-tests
Edited to Remove Personal Comment
Some educators do not care enough about children caught in the wheel of academic failure. I think testing to analyze what is wrong and how to proceed to improve is an essential education policy. I also want to reiterate that early intervention based on research unclogs a a great deal of the special ed entrapment.
It is tiresome to keep hearing a point-of-view not helpful at all to students and their parents.
Everybody knows where the intervention needs to happen and they have known for 50 years. No test is required. “Testing does not tell us anything we didn’t already know” Vito Perrone, former Dean, Harvard Grad School of Education.
http://hechingerreport.org/content/poverty-and-education-reform-and-those-caught-in-the-middle_6100/
He should consult Jean Chall from Harvard (who is unfortunately deceased) or perhaps Dr.Reid Lyon and Joseph Torgesen
Edited to Remove Personal Reference
My thoughts to EQAO and other assessments is that I value them as a measure, and I used the old American SAT testing, as well as other copies of assessments at home, as a way for my child to study on, I look at the tests, as a means to see what areas needs work on, and as a way to point out the areas she has a firm foundation.
EQAO and other provincial standard assessments, never do look at assessments in the same way as a parent would. Once they see so many students passing, and no matter if a good majority just barely passed, they are off and running to the press, eager to tell all, their spin. Nothing is ever done to have students move beyond the passing rate. And what solutions are announced, amounts to more funding, more narrowing of the curriculum, and a hodge-podge of what I would call ineffective policies and practices, for students who did not pass or just barely pass. I wonder what is the amount of energy being used in the public education system, to advance students by 2 months? Meanwhile, my goals for my youngest, that i really thought very modest, was to see steady improvement in the 3 Rs, while quickly moving up to strong Bs. The latter was accomplished within 6 months starting in grade 4, and the 3 Rs was steady improvement, and ongoing currently. My youngest child was meeting the outcomes, but she could not passed the provincial standard testing in grade 3 and grade 6. As for grade 9, she just barely passed by her skin of her teeth, and we had our celebratory ice cream cone for that milestone.
Kidder and her ilk, would like to see EQAO gone, for numerous reasons, and keep a system of evaluation that is based on what I call down dumbing it down for each student, by grading it according to the various levels of the 3 Rs of the individual students. So a kid like mine, sitting with the label of LD etched on her forehead, although fully prepared to be tested on all outcomes, would be graded on reduced outcomes, and not the knowledge that she processes. So a parent will hear, it is not necessary for your child to know this knowledge, even though it is part of the outcomes. What they don’ t tell a parent, is that the grading is really based on the levels of the 3 Rs that your child processes. Within the education system, it is their way of leveling the playing field, and Cooper’s model strikes me very much like an evaluation model, that grades the knowledge based on the levels of the 3 Rs of the student.
A falsehood Doug – ” Testing does not tell us anything that we did not already know (Vito Perrone past Dean Harvard Grad School of Education.”
Testing is the only way of knowing if one has the knowledge, to proceed to the next level of knowledge. As well, as the only way of knowing where a student needs improvement and in what areas. A test is only as good, as to what is being tested, and not to take the measure beyond the purpose of expanding it to include pronouncements, judge on a single measure. How often I heard, that my child is a good speller, based on the weekly spelling tests of 20 words or so, as one of their reasons why my child does not need help in writing. Sure, students are quite capable of scoring a 100 on the weekly spelling tests, but it does not tell a teacher, or make a greater leap, this student needs no help in writing, based on solitary words on a spelling test. Nor does it tell anyone, that the student will remember how to spell the words two weeks later. Or in my child’s case, the day after the spelling test, which does tell the teacher that spelling in isolation may not be the way to go to improve spelling, and perhaps a change in instruction is in order. Testing is the only way to improve achievement, by changing instruction and other practices to enable the students to improve. How else would one do it, without testing as the measure, in order to determined the instruction and practices to improve their achievement?
Lines like Vito Perrone, is just another way to avoid the remediation and changes to practices that are ineffective for students. If there is one thing the public education system is very good at, is to always force the student to adapt to the remediation and practices of the public education system, based on philosophy ideology, and not what is effective for the child to increase achievement. Cooper’s model and second chances, is based on ideology and dogma, and not based on proven research that has been replicated over and over in many different school environments. What passes for research these days in the public education system, is a study based on one classroom, and the ability of the teacher working his or her charm that this practice is the next best thing besides the discovering of sliced bread. or the mouse trap. Or a few professors in the teachers’ faculties, creating theories to fit in nicely with the current status-quo of providing quality according to some SEC factor, and the excuses to be used for the failings of the system.
Gee, I wonder how Finland got to be #1 in the world with no testing and the USA got to be #26 by testing everything that moves?
There again, is no relationship between ST and educational improvement. Zero, zilch, nada.
Even the EQAO testing shows the very same thing every single year. The poor do badly the affluent do well and the middle class is in the middle.
The reason scores move up very slowly is because students become good ‘test takers’ and the test is made slightly easier every year. Even then they ‘plateau’.
This is the same the world over every single year. Think there might just be a connection?
This has been covered repeatedly; unless you compensate for all sorts of variables between Finland and the U.S. (or Canada) any attempt to compare the two is meaningless.
To add on to John’s remarks, standardized testing is really only meaningful at the local school level, where each and every student can be compared since all variables remain the same for each student, the schools and the staff. Standardized testing becomes less meaningful comparing between schools, between school boards, between provinces, nation wide, and than world wide. As John has stated, the variables are the wild cards that impact achievement and render the comparisons meaningless.
What Doug, and others like him would like us to compare at the macro-level, than at the micro-level. At the micro-level, the individual school level there is very little they can do for good news announcements, compared to what can be done at the macro-level, to hold press conferences and announce their spin. There is very little spin, looking at the numbers at the school level. One of the top reasons, why parents, and teachers are not allowed the hard copies of the testing. If it was, reading, writing and numeracy would be under going drastic changes and be the highest priority. On P4E, one of the major complaints from parents is the fact that EQAO, there is no hard copies so parents can study the hard copy, to understand the scoring. Most parents would conclude, they kids can’t write and express themselves on paper, and not because they did not have the knowledge. As for numeracy, it would not take long for parents to figure out their children are in need of remediation in the basic facts of arithmetic. By spinning at the macro-level, the educrats can hide a lot of bad news, and keep hidden the weaknesses in instruction and curriculum. As as for the pretense, that all schools are equal in resources by standardization, all educators are equal in quality, and each and every school has the same standard delivery system for education, can be kept up to cloak the bad news, and the SEC factors develops legs to where all bad news and failures are blamed on the SEC factors.
Doug, and his gang, can easily state his spin with a straight face. One way around it, to make their chins drop, is to asked them to take a walk through the school in the high rent district and a school in a low rent district. Big differences between the haves and have-nots, and no amount of spin will change the scores and the variables concerning the school’s environment. As for the students, how can one compared apples to oranges, when both income groups live in completely different worlds when it comes to access to education. Access is a given in the high income group, compared to many inequalities of access to education in the low-income school. Why? Students in low-income schools must over come the first hurdle of being labeled and sorted through the SEC factors, to access education opportunities and education services. EQAO and providing hard copies, would show one thing that is common and shared with the high income and the low income school. The ability to expressed the student’s knowledge in clear and understandable language. It would also be really interesting, as to how personal biases of the markers seeps in, concerning the schools, and their reputation.
Put out the spin, but even parents on P4E are starting to wake up, as well as a few teachers to my surprise. The spin is no longer matching the reality of the students, nor the biggest spin regarding how well every student is achieving, to the reality of private tutoring and remediation at the post secondary level, for the 3 Rs. Too bad, the hard copies are not used at the school level, teachers than would have very good evidence as to why students are not achieving, and for the most part it will be on the basics concerning the 3 Rs.
Exactly, Finland has a 4% child poverty rate Canada 15% USA 20%. There is your variable. Same as the variable between all schools in Ontario so I guess attempts to compare Ontario schools is meaningless and a good argument to abolish the EQAO. Thanks John L for making the point.
We seem to be drifting off-course in our discussion, once again.
On Saturday Nov. 5, 2011, a B.Ed. student at Acadia University’s School of Education told a closed-door Liberal Party of Nova Scotia Education Forum that the Halifax Regional School Board has adopted a “no fail” policy in its schools. He said that he was aghast when he learned this from one of his instructors during an “off-the-record” discussion in one of his courses.
Student cheaters are now getting “second chances” in many schools and, if this revelation is true, any hint of “failure” is being banished from the system.
Where are we heading in our public schools? Is every transgression on the way to becoming becoming excusable?
I cannot speak for Nova Scotia but I know that when the Ontario Ministry came out with its Growing Success document in 2008 it was misinterpreted.
It NEVER said
– no zeros or no penalties for lates
It did suggest that these be used after other alternatives were considered.
Policy by rumour, innuendo or anecdote is NOT policy.
that may be so John re:Ontario but the silence by all of the education experts in opposition to the Ministry’s plan and the misinterpretations was deafening as to not to be heard at all.
Why was that?
Student cheating is not a matter of conjecture in Canadian schools and universities. Back on July 7, 2010, the Canadian Council on Learning produced a very thorough research report accompanied by an Executive Summary entitled “The 21st Century cheater: Academic dishonesty in Canada’s schools”
Here are the startling facts ( Quotations from the CCL report summary):
“Spurred on by new technology cheating in Canadian high schools and post-secondary institutions is growing and evolving, to the point that students and teachers differ over what qualifies as cheating…”.
“Nearly three-quarters (73%) of first-year students across Canada admitted to committing one or more serious acts of academic dishonesty on written work while in high school (including cheating on essays or assignments) and nearly 60% admitted to serious acts of cheating on tests in high school, according to a survey of 20,000 students at 11 post-secondary education institutions.”
“Over the past decade internet and high-tech devices have enabled a virtual explosion of classroom cheating,” said Dr. Paul Cappon, President and CEO of CCL. “As this article reveals, educators, parents and students have to work together in order to properly address what has become a serious and widespread problem.”
“A report from one Canadian university shows that instances of cheating and plagiarism in their institution increased by 81% between 2003 and 2006 while reported cases of internet-based plagiarism nearly tripled from 54 to 153 over the same period.”
“The survey of 20,000 university freshman revealed that students in Canada perceived many acts of academic dishonesty as “not cheating” or “trivial cheating,” while faculty perceived these same acts as moderate or serious cheating. As well, in surveys of post-secondary institutions in the United States and Canada, 41% of faculty admitted to ignoring incidents of suspected academic dishonesty.”
“Researchers argue that a failure to act in such instances can lead to higher levels of dishonesty as some students conclude that their dishonest actions will not be punished, and other students conclude they must cheat to remain competitive with students who are already doing so,”
Comment:
Once again, the CCL pointed us in the right direction.
CCL recommended that Canadian school and universities take action with a number of strategies to help deal with the rise of academic dishonesty, including online anti-plagiarism programs and academic honour codes. Such codes, which define a code of conduct for students, are most effective when they:
* develop clear, specific definitions of dishonesty and apply them uniformly;
* appeal to students’ personal integrity;
* reduce the temptation to cheat;
* encourage active student participation and critical thinking; and
* impose reasonable but strict penalties.
None of the CCL strategies countenanced removing academic penalties for cheating and plagiarism, nor giving students more second chances.
With student cheating so rampant, why remove any of the existing deterrents? Is this yet another example of education policy-makers flagrantly disregarding the educational research?
“CCL recommended that Canadian school and universities take action with a number of strategies to help deal with the rise of academic dishonesty, including online anti-plagiarism programs and academic honour codes. Such codes, which define a code of conduct for students, are most effective when they:
* develop clear, specific definitions of dishonesty and apply them uniformly;
* appeal to students’ personal integrity;
* reduce the temptation to cheat;
* encourage active student participation and critical thinking; and
* impose reasonable but strict penalties.”
The first one is very important, to develop clear definitions of not only dishonesty but other undesirable behaviour and applied it uniformly. The latter applying it uniformly, is the one area that runs counter to the current philosophy within the public education system. Where one student has the full weight applied to them, and another student, is told don’t do it again. I have observed it over and over again, where students are let off with lesser penalties according to their grades, and who they are.
In the 2007 Macleans article, “More often than not, too, academic integrity policies produce “confusion” among both students and faculty, says Christensen Hughes. “Maybe policies exist but don’t have the confidence of the people who are supposed to implement them,” she says. “They’ll make their own private deal with students or they can’t be bothered to use that formal process.” Such tacit collusion between students and teachers makes sense only in an environment where both camps harbour the perception that misconduct is endemic. “People in general think that everybody else is cheating, and that makes it okay for them to cheat too,” says Kremmidas. “It’s true of school, and it’s true of the corporate world.” The result is an uneven playing field — some classes fairer than others — a situation that in turn serves to reinforce the tendency among students to cheat in order to resolve that injustice.”
http://www.macleans.ca/homepage/magazine/article.jsp?content=20070209_174847_6984
Further down, the article suggests in the end, society ends up paying for it dearly, as well as the responsibilities of the education system. “Imagine putting one foot in front of the other and falling into an abyss. Bad bridge-building, like a bad education, compromises a public trust. Certainly universities owe a duty to the companies that rely on their product — the graduates who arrive each year as interns and articling students. “This raises an interesting question: should employers start thinking of suing universities, if they can prove this, for producing a student who actually cheated his way through university?” asks Mintz. “I think there actually may be a case for that.”
But what of the university’s responsibility to the public? “Professionals are expected to be in positions of trust,” says Len Brooks, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. “They have expertise that people who rely upon them do not. The professional is expected to demonstrate fiduciary responsibility — fiduciary duty — toward the client or public.” Universities — home to the teachers who produce our healers, our bridge-builders and the CEOs who generate our wealth — are failing to demonstrate that responsibility by permitting widespread cheating among students. And we will all pay.”
The new cheating policies, may indeed set up the conditions that cheating is acceptable norm in today’s society.
John Myers
I cannot speak for Nova Scotia but I know that when the Ontario Ministry came out with its Growing Success document in 2008 it was misinterpreted.
It NEVER said
– no zeros or no penalties for lates
It did suggest that these be used after other alternatives were considered.
Policy by rumour, innuendo or anecdote is NOT policy.
John… these “all other possible alternatives have been considered” are hated by teachers because they simply do not have the time to jump threw every hoop, phone everyone involved, meet in the principal office.
No penalties for lates and no zeros for kids on your roll but you could never pick out of a line-up are a joke. OSSTF came down hard on Ben Levin on that junk and told him he was just too isolated from daily life in schools. An article “Why Johnny Can’t Fail” in the OSSTF magazine captured the imagination of the teachers and was posted on almost every bulletin board in Ontario and stuffed in principal’s mailboxes. Levin was furious but the teachers were virtually unanimous that 35 000 of them we right and he was wrong.
I follow this axium. If the teachers don’t like a policy you better reconsider because they will work on it forever until it is reversed.
These namby pamby policies are concocted to please a small percentage of middle class parents with children too fragile and precious to face real consequences. This junk approach is behind many of our problems.
Teachers should not have to consult with anybody to give a zero or impose a late penalty. Late penalties should be known in advance.
“These namby pamby policies are concocted to please a small percentage of middle class parents with children too fragile and precious to face real consequences. This junk approach is behind many of our problems”
And who would be these parents, Doug? If it was left to parents, the consequences would be a lot harsher than what is presently in place. As well, as ensuring all of the rules are enforce, and followed by the school and the school board. SE would not be in such a mess, if the school and the school boards followed the guidelines, and rules.
No, Doug, the problem lies with the many different consultants and educrats with their pet theories that does not necessarily fit in with the reality of the schools. Throw in the many different agendas within the schools, the school boards, the education ministries and unions, it becomes a game of political gamesmanship, rather than looking after the conduct, character of students. Plus the privacy acts enacted across Canada, just adds another layer of official bureaucracy preventing clear and transparent rules to the conduct of students.
I remember Doug, when my child was in the younger grades, dealing with memory issues, and I devised a strategy for her. As soon as she starts a test, put it down either in a shape of a triangle, a word such as Sunshine, or a series of numbers, or 3-D symbols to remind her of operations and to check. Now, I never thought it would be considered cheating, but it was with certain teachers. She was made to erase it, and do the test like everyone else, within the parameters set out by the teacher. It came to a head, one day when I devised another strategy, using a triangle for conversion of the metric system. The staircase method was too confusing for her, and the triangle with 7 lines, was a much better method to used, because than she could do it in her head. But to do it in the head, she needed the triangle image on paper. She was told to erase it, and it was the day, she learned how to provide for her needs by stealth. She was convinced that this was cheating, no matter what I said about it, even when the school allowed it. She still behaves using her methods in stealth, and carefully erasing anything that might be construed as cheating. Today, her methods are a lot more sophisticated, to counteract her sequencing problems, but she still feels very uneasy, that someone down the line will accuse her of cheating. I keep telling her, crib notes is cheating, and what you have in your mind, is not cheating, and it is ok to put down stuff at the beginning of the test to jog the memory, as well as to be a reminder to recheck.
Often the educrats, and their pet theories often are theories aimed at some ideal model of a school and the students. They rarely reflect the reality of schools and the student, but more importantly, the pet theories rarely go deeper than the surface. The pet theories are too generalized, and vague, allowing people to put their own interpretation. It is at this junction, that things can go crazy, leading one school to interpret that writing symbols, words, and little helpers at the beginning of the test, is a form of cheating, and in another school, a very smart way of writing a test.
Another example of the Unions running the show.Details on education,excellence in delivery,research that supports consequences,all thrown out with the article`s view about the issue-more adultcentric legislation.
Is public education become a place to simply pay people with no consideration about the product they deliver ?
Something that galls me to no end-your hours,not a mouse in the place by 3.45-that`s just wrong for any employer to give that kind of perk.That means they look forward to leaving by 3 and start to disengage so they can be in the car by 3.35.
I think you forgot that they leave with a briefcase full of marking and spend the time after supper until bedtime 3-4 nights per week on marking and lesson prep. Try it some time. Most teacher critics would change their tune after one month of actually having to do the job, especially in poor schools.
Teachers should have the same influence in education that doctors have in medicine and lawyers have in law, that is to say, most of the say. The unions are the spokespeople of the profession.
http://educationviews.org/2011/11/08/the-global-search-for-education-the-20/
Something that galls me to no end-your hours,not a mouse in the place by 3.45-that`s just wrong for any employer to give that kind of perk.That means they look forward to leaving by 3 and start to disengage so they can be in the car by 3.35.
The teachers are paid for a 5 1/2 hour day. You want them there more than that, you will need to pay overtime @ time + 1/2. Some will stay for reasons, I coached basketball for 20 years and spent years travelling arount Toronto on streetcars with 12 boys and a big bag of balls in the snow and getting home at 8PM. Every teacher has their thing. When you are hard on them by increasing “accountability” or attacking wages, pensions or benefits you can expect them to do less. “Accountability” takes time away from extra curricular and after school support.
Doug has a point in defending individual teachers who must and usually try to do their best despite the obstacles set out by policies and sometimes “unions’.
If Ontario assessment policies make sense, and they do from my experiences over decades teaching elementary and secondary in several provinces and countries along with experiences as a parent and grandparent, we need among other things, more support and quality pd.
Quality pd allows for teacher discussion and even argument, not a powerpoint(less) lecture done to us.
This thread has had some good points (more light) and like other threads on other boards wonders from the topic
or degenerates into labelling (more heat).
Let’s have more light and less heat, please.
Back to marking sigh
again, those brave individual teachers you speak of John are too often either being drowned out or bullied by their union rank and file.
More light? Parents would much rather hear from those individual teachers, sans their union overseers than they would from the union. That relationship is too often killed off…and it’s not by individual teachers or parents. I can tell you that there are teachers that will confide in parents of truths before they’d risk their butts with the usual suspects.
Cheating isn’t acceptable and deserves consequences acceptable to both educator, parents and where applicable students.
Individual teachers speak only for themselves, not for the profession.
Parents as a collective are very reasonable. It is when policies apply to “their Jane or Johnny” that they believe boundaries must be changed.
We see everything including kids with late assignments because “I told him all his assignments could be late so we could enjoy a family holiday in Florida” outside of school holidays. Happens every day.
Teachers bend over backwards to accomodate late assignments due to illness, big events, “I deleted it by mistake” 😉 whatever but bone laziness doesn’t count.
Notice Doug’s comments on parents as a collective, is a common viewpoint held by many within the education system, as the only means for legitimate conversations with parents. As for complaints, and such things parents do, are than seen as individual silos, and are not seen as legitimate, and therefore their actions must be carefully control and monitor via through the rules and regulations.
Notice the individual silo treatment for teachers, stating that teachers speak for themselves, but not for the profession. The reverse of parents, where teachers are only allow to speak on their profession through the collective voice at union headquarters, but are very discourage not to act for the profession at the school level. No wonder an individual teacher, will not go up to bat for students, who are being hard done by policies of the upper levels. Or speak the truth to the parents as he or she sees fit. Sure fire way to create mistrust and very likely to set up the conditions inside a school, to divide and silence people. Than the political games begin, and a downward spiral of poor behaviour by one and all.
Of interest to some, and does mentioned many of the points that John has expressed, as well as the negative distractions. Although, there is no mentioned of cheating, but Cooper’s model, is almost identical to the models describe in the paper below, on England, Scotland and the difficulties of formative assessment.
“CATCH-22: ASSESSING ONTARIO’S PROPOSED FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
POLICY WITHIN ONTARIO’S STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT FRAMEWORK”
Click to access Project%20Paper.pdf
Just in case the link does not work, the original link can be found here.
http://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/5406
“Therefore addressing accountability with formative assessment is problematic and remains a Catch-22. Whatever public trust exists in the education system will need to be maintained in terms of accountability lest schools once again run the risk of being perceived as ‘kingdoms unto themselves’. How to
provide a mechanism for accountability that would facilitate formative assessment without impeding its successful implementation remains, as yet, unresolved. Successful implementation of formative assessment may indeed require a renegotiating by all stakeholders in terms of what the purposes of education are and how they will be achieved.”
Doug’s comments strike me as maintaining the kingdom of the public education system, and the little fiefdoms, called schools. When trouble comes to the school’s moat, raising the bridge, and order the archers to prepare to aim at a far off distant target, rather then what is in front of them, and that caused the raising of the bridge in the first place.
More light? Parents would much rather hear from those individual teachers, sans their union overseers than they would from the union. That relationship is too often killed off…and it’s not by individual teachers or parents. I can tell you that there are teachers that will confide in parents of truths before they’d risk their butts with the usual suspects.
Teachers are profoundly loyal to the federations. They are well aware where the wages, pensions and benefits come from. Every single round of negotiations, the board demands something important be taken back from teachers but expects loyalty, duh.
“Teachers are profoundly loyal to the federations. They are well aware where the wages, pensions and benefits come from. Every single round of negotiations, the board demands something important be taken back from teachers but expects loyalty, duh.”
Another comment that speaks volumes that teachers must do their jobs, first by remaining loyal to the union, and second on the list is the school board. As for the students, parents and taxpayers, somewhere down the bottom of the list or to be used as pawns for the next round of political gamesmanship. As Catharine states, the relationship between parents and teachers are killed off, before the seed is allow to germinate. And than all within the blob, expects parents to remain loyal to the school and the rest of the education system.
It is called solidarity, that is why the old song is “Solidarity Forever”. With it, teachers can carve out the middle class life they deserve. Without it they have no bargaining power. Both leaders and grassroots understand this very well.
Some education directors are surprised by this loyalty. They should not be. Check out the police or the firefighters. They are rock solid behind their union.
Parents are wasteing their time if they are attempting to wrestle control of education away from teachers. Profoundly naive.
So no concern will killing off the relationship between parents and teachers, when it comes to the power of the union? No concern over cheating policies, let along evaluation policies, that has standards to go by? No wonder the public sector unions are facing attacks daily by the various government levels, and the public is standing on the sidelines, amazed at the self-entitlement oozing out of the unions.
How can John and teachers like John, let alone the upper levels that decide policy offer olive branches to parents, or partnerships in the community, when there is a union ready to stepped in and put an end or watered it down to rendered the policy useless.
The big difference between education and policing or firefighting. The latter protect and save lives. The education system has no define goals that set them apart, that would constitute a vital part of society. A point being raise by the upper levels, including Cooper as well as others, the lack of public trust and the difficulties in having successful policies. The example of the new cheating rules, was largely done without consultation for the parents, and a union who stood on the sidelines watching it become a policy in one board two years ago, but took no action until it came into their neighbourhood. The union played politics, using the students, parents as pawns for the rigged game of chess.
Can you read Nancy, both OSSTF and I took a very hard line on cheating, zero grades, etc?
The federations have a very good relationship with the parents, just ask Annie Kidder and all the parents in Campaign for Public Education in Toronto. We all have the same goals
Bigger budgets
More arts and Spec Ed funding
Keeping schools open
Smaller classes
More ELP/ECE
the end of EQAO
Parents and teachers are pretty much on the same page on the big issues. Parents are happy with the system and their role in it. That is exactly what they tell the government.
Kidder and P4E are the parent equivalent of one of those cobbled together Disney boy-bands of the 1980s.
I’m sure Kidder was very deserving of the Lamp of Learning award bestowed upon her by the OSSTF. What price to parent advocacy was paid by that win I wonder?
No Doug what OSSTF had/has in Ms. Kidder is a bookend to sing the praises of the public system….unearned praises. Nothing’s changed in that regard except that now P4E is getting gov’t money. Money from parents that do NOT support or claim to be in the same ball park as P4E.
No parent leaders in education that I can tell. More like sheeple people.
P4E and Campaign for Public Education, do not speak for the Ontario parents, nor do they speak on a comprehensive agenda crossing all intersections of education. The big issues you speak of are the union issues, and if one takes a peek at other boards on Ontario, the cheating rules are a lot more relax than on the Toronto board. As for the union on good speaking terms, done very easily when the teachers representatives on the parent councils, are also the union reps as well as being closely associated with the unions in other aspects. But there is one group of students, that are constantly pushed under the carpet by the many agendas within the blob. Special education, and the many agendas make sure, that they never received the education services they need to reach their full potential. But one day, the education system may be faced with class action civil suits from coast to coast, for playing politics on the backs of students and their futures. And perhaps a hard look, on foolish policies such as second chances for students when they cheat, and the outcomes in society as a whole.
Time to reign it in again I think. I would like to propose that the more regular of us to this forum take a week off unless we stay on topic….me included.
The teachers are paid for a 5 1/2 hour day.
______________________________________________________
$70.00/hour by your own admission, Doug.
The Prime Minister of Canada doesn’t get that.
That is because you only count the income divided by 5 1/2. They spend as much time at home working as they do at school.
Teachers are seriously underpaid since engineers, pharmacists and dentists against which they measure themselves, make more on average. Senior teachers and cops both make $100 000. Teachers have much more education. Personally I would pay top end teachers about $140 000.
Have you ever been to a P4E conference? About 10X the size of a SQE conference. Who speaks for parents? The politicians know for sure. They fear her, not SQE.
Sheeple People Doug. Oh and by the way. Kidder and P4E have been known to approach SQE for reading help/direction.
Politicians don’t fear Kidder the keep her close to keep her quiet and on-side. See, that’s how it all works, Now the gov’t is paying P4E with our taxdollars and also school councils in this province – buying their silence too. It’s too transparent.
I was a paid lobbyist in my past life for OSSTF and met with party leaders, ministers and critics regularly. Kidder makes them nervous because she and P4E have clout. Nobody is worried about SQE or similar groups because they are considred marginal and outside the mainstream with little influence. Only Tories pay attention to them but even there they are divided. Witmer argues “stay in the mainstream, support ELP more funding, small classes ….” Urban Tories, where they must gain to be the government consider the SQE POV to be the small town, village view.
Even the Tories have learned to keep that SQE POV at a distance or they get in trouble with the mainstream voters and parents. Choosing hardliner Lisa McLeod may be a sign that the Tories are angry that they are not accepted in serious education discussions. We will see where they head.
Interesting few hours spent following the trails at the P4E site, Using search words such as cheating students, and other words on the P4E site, is short and sweet. For cheating students, a few words, if assistive technology considered cheating. Not a word on policies such as conduct, cheating, and other policies that are very much part of the day to day operations of a school. I would call the policies, keeping people honest, without resorting to playing games, but for the most part, P4E advocates policies that forces everyone to play the game, and one does not have to conformed to the value of honesty, The cheating issues only comes up on a regular basis on the P4E site dealing with teachers who cheat on the EQAO. The teachers actions are not condemn, but the EQAO is rake over the coals as being the reason why teachers cheat. Much like the second chances for cheaters policy, and those that defend them, it is the SEC factors of society that gets raked over the coals as being the core reason why students cheat.
Not a word that perhaps it is human nature to cheat, if given a chance. People should be aware of it, to create policy that actually limits cheating, rather than to accept cheating, and have it become part of the acceptable norms in a school, at a lower tier.
What I observed in my searches at P4E, a common trait on the issues that are discussed, and how they are shaped. Cheating students, as well as other bad behaviour of students,are not discussed, because it does not support the teachers, their union, and the agendas within the public education system. I was amazed that the regular posters on P4E are not the ordinary parents that the Dougs’ of the world would like us to believe. Many of them make their livelihood off the public education system, to provide services, education material and in many cases are funded with taxpayer’s dollars. Found three such beasts, in the first three hits, following names. Cheating students are not discussed, because it is the stuff that others connected and within the public education system, can make a profit supplying the materials and the how-tos. for the educators. All in line with current pedagogy, philosophy and practices of the education system.
But more importantly, P4E exists to ensure parents – the average parent, organizations concern with education, and other outside organizations that deal with children are kept out of the discussions and events because they represent a threat to the underground economy where profit is being made off the backs of the students, parents, and in the end the taxpayers.
Students who cheat, and other bad behaviour is not an issue within our public education system. Cheating, bad behaviour, and other related issues concerning conduct, moral or character are just that, a means to create economic activity within the public education system, and to reinforce the fault lines of the education system. The Dougs of the world, may claim that they care about cheating students, but their actions speaks more of their motives, rather than an genuine effort to limit cheating and other bad behaviour.
If there is a voice for parents in Ontario it is Kidder and P4E. Name another parents’ group that is in the same order of magnitude. I thought so. Easy to sit behind a computer screen somewhere not even in Ontario, and be an armchair critic of the people who actually go out and do the heavy lifting. “Oh they don’t represent REAL parents” and who does, some radical right wing fringe groups that could not organize a lineup to the washroom?
Sheeple People.
I was born and raised in Ontario, as well as living over half my life in Ontario. The grade school I went to, was a well known public school for their ability for high levels of reading, writing and numeracy. Walking out of grade 8, each student had a reading level of grade 10 or higher. Ditto for writing and numeracy levels. But what the school was really noted, is their ability to bring second language students up to speed in six months, and sitting in the regular classroom, speaking English like a trooper. And the school is well documented in the files of the Ontario education ministry. So don’t tell me that I am an armchair critic, when I and my first two children went through the Ontario education system. What is really sad as the years have rolled by, is the systematic downward spiral of the public education system, that does not educate children.
As for Kidder, she is a pussycat when it comes to the real issues of the public education system. Her silence on the real issues, speaks more about maintaining the status-quo, as well as rubber stamping her questionable seal of approval of policies of the education system. If she belong in my school’s old PTA, she would have been tossed out in short order, for always acting against the best interest of the children, as well as protesting on the politically incorrect literature the children were reading, and the morals that came from the reading. Back than, in the politically incorrect literature, cheating was a big no-no, and always had consequences.
As for cheating, and other issues the use of the two methods are used. The second chance method, but the act of cheating is downplayed and is secondary to the evaluation of the student. The second method, is the stance no cheating allow, and consequences are left up to the teacher for the most part, using a guideline of possible consequences. Call it hiding in behind the mask, of pretending to be against cheating to the public, and in reality the act of cheating is downplayed for many students. In the latter method, the privacy act comes into play, to prevent the public from knowing the actual consequences of cheaters. In both cases, the cheaters are never track, as well as other undesirable behaviour. Who tracks it? The outsiders, and it has been reported that cheating has been increasing steadily since the 90s, in all areas of society and of course the schools. Would certainly like to know the consequences of bad behaviour, and the data, to see if the expenditures of money being spent on new policies, are actually reducing bad behaviour or increasing bad behaviour.
Cheating is a direct result of raising the stakes in education. When tests can determine your future, people will cheat.
I love it when people say “Kidder does not represent the views of parents” LOL, no she does not represent your views out there in NL Nancy.
Who DOES represent the views of parents? The government I guess. They won the election. The combination of Liberal 36% + NDP 23% around 60% for a progressive view and about 35% for the Tories who wanted phonics, not too popular I guess and union bashing.
Seemes like union bashing is not that popular.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/world/breakingnews/ohio-collective-bargaining-law-defeated-in-blow-to-gop-governor-victory-for-unions-133501498.html
Had a good chuckle Doug. Cheating is ok, as long as the person has a good reason to cheat. I wonder if the all the fraud cases out there, could use that line when it comes to court. I suspect highly, it is used as an excuse for the cheaters. I also suspect, if a student are given the correct tools and knowledge, having a test would be as easy as eating a piece of cake. However, when the education system does not supply the correct tools, and teaching, first it slams the doors on future opportunities, and makes it very difficult to pass a test. The public education does that with the students who have learning difficulties. Rather sad to see students cheat on a test that is composed of basic knowledge and is part of the foundation needed to learn advance knowledge. What is ever sadder, is when primary students are faced with the annual reading assessments, and the students who struggle in reading, are given the reading material in advance to learn it, so they too can pass the reading test.
The reading levels would be a lot lower, if not for this little practice of handing out reading material in advance. Struggling readers, a well known fact, is reading material that they have never seen before, it does become evident that they are struggling in reading. I call it cheating, and the educrats call it giving a helping hand to a struggling student. I call it some nerve and than use it as the reason why your child should not have SE services for reading. How many children learn to read by memorizing the words? Too many is my guess. How many children learn how to cheat on the doorsteps of the schools? I could not hazard a guess at that one, but even my own child knew it was wrong, to receive material ahead of time, in the primary grades assessments.
P.S. Doug – Tell P4E to stop advertising themselves as a voice for Canadian Education. As well as going coast to coast on speaking engagements well attended by the unionists.
What is ever sadder, is when primary students are faced with the annual reading assessments, and the students who struggle in reading, are given the reading material in advance to learn it, so they too can pass the reading test.
So that’s what they do in NL, is it? Such a practice is absolutely not allowed in Ontario. Many (not all) Ontario districts use the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) in the primary grades. The students are never allowed to see these booklets ahead of time, and alternative texts at the same level are available to prevent an artificial boost in the score from rereading a test booklet presented earlier (the DRA is administered 2 or 3 times per year). Other boards use PM Benchmarks, which is a similar assessment administered and scored the same way. So far as I know all Ontario districts use one or the other, although a new Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment may have got a toehold (it is also in the same genre).
These are not “high stakes” tests however, and there is no incentive for teachers to inflate the child’s score, as such would be readily apparent to the next teacher to assess the child in the fall. There is some variation in scoring the DRA however which is accounted for by individual interpretation of the scoring rubric itself, as also occurs in marking EQAO tests.
It’s always a serious cognitive error to generalize far beyond one’s own experience. There is much variation in practice.
You can attempt to put words in my mouth if you want Nancy but people can read.
“Cheating is a direct result of raising the stakes in education. When tests can determine your future, people will cheat. ”
Nobody said cheating is ok, just that it can be expected when stakes are high. Huge numbers of universities in the USA now refuse to use the SAT and ACT, in BC they refuse to look at their tests because they are unreliable and they are not as good as teachers marks at predicting future success.
Once again, Doug has a point.
One historical example, in the Stalinist era as we know from the Smolensk archives- captured by the Germans then transferred to the US
(Merle Fainsod, Smolensk Under Soviet Rule) the officials cheated on reporting their production quotas because if they did not meet them they would be shot.
There is a huge history in the US for a century about officials cheating if their
jobs were on the line.
I am not excusing it, just pointing out why is often happens.
So let’s get off this and off the second chances since that issue too has been researched and resolved.
Next topic, Paul.
This is done.
The practice is common, in the primary grades. The push to have students come to a certain level, that is considered a pass. From what I have experience, and other parents who have also experience it, are children who do not have severe troubles in learning how to read. But they do not meet the criteria of receiving extra help, like the readers who are having severe trouble. Furthermore, this set of students, and there is always 10 or so of them in a classroom, their strengths will always masked the learning weaknesses. Ergo, it is always their behaviour that is blame for acing in one area, and in another area bombing out in other areas.
What they do have in common, is the reading problems. The rushed to get them to grade level, only to see the following year dropped six months below. Solution, to eased the pressure on both sides, hand out the material in advance of the assessment. Pressure is probably coming from the principal, and through the upper levels of the system to pushed students from one grade level to the next. With the focus of standard testing at grade 3, 6 and grade 9, I can see teachers bending the rules to get a group of students help, that they should have had help in the previous grades. I can see teachers driven to cheat, and rationalized to themselves that it is not cheating. But what really takes the cake, is the rationalizing at the board level concerning students and their learning struggles. A double-edged sword, and where parents bear the scars from their double-edge swords. Some are lucky, and can avoid the mess by enrolling their children in private tutoring. It starts in and around grade 2, and for tutors it is one of their bread and butter business, is reading remediation..
People will cheat with or without pressure being exerted on them. For many different reasons, including profit. Think about the bridge that you cross, or the 32 storey building riding in the elevator. I don’t often think of it, if the cement is the right stuff to hold up the building or bridge, except when I hear on the news another bridge has fallen down. Than I think poor quality cement and profit. Probably the reason why the industry is heavily regulated, to prevent people from cheating on buying low-grade materials. Just like exam time at any university, and the rules that go with it. Or for that matter at the high school level for final exams. .
The trouble is cheating has been down graded in society, and there is no clear rules on cheating. In today’s society it is much easier to cheat without any consequences, just like it is to bully people verbally. It all depends who is doing the judging and how he views cheating. The earlier articles that I posted, has suggested cheating is the lost of public trust concerning our institutions, as well as the lack of clear moral standards in society as a whole. When I wrote the notes for my child classes, many parents including some at the board, called it a form of cheating, as well as making up mock tests for tests in subjects. In the latter, I was really good at predicting what will be on the tests, and usually my mock tests were very accurate, in matching the material on the real test. I don’t consider it cheating, but some do consider it cheating. They called it an unfair advantage, as well as teaching my child how to cheat. I soon learned to keep my mouth shut, and the teachers learned to look the other way. If anything, it give the teachers one less student to worry about, and her grades reflected it.
People also cheat because they know that they can and get away with it. They get away with it because there are no consequences effective enough to stop cheating.
If people in the education sector are cheating, isn’t it a silent admission that they aren’t able to do the work, pass the test, or do the assignment?
If an athlete cheats, he/she is suspended and/or stripped of awards. If criminals cheat they face arrest and jail time.
Cheats in politics lose elections – Adscam, Business cheats pay a price for their cheating also.
Want to see cheating in action today – The Occupy anyplace, anytime circus is a clear example of cheating the system and getting away with it.,
In education I’ve come to expect that cheating happens all the time and it’s not only on tests. It’s projects, and it occurs in the name of favouritism and homework not done, classes skipped.
No parent that I know would choose a school for their child that was known to accept cheating or a thwarting of standards. That may be good enough to Sheeple People but it’s not good enough for most….not even those independent educators John spoke of who don’t buckle to the union mantra.
Your far right politics is so obvious that we can’t hear anything else.
http://www.educationnews.org/k-12-schools/is-stardardized-testing-pressure-pushing-teachers-to-cheat/
As a parent I’m glad Mr. Myers does not speak for me. Dictating the end of a debate or intelectual exchange is anethema to a healty rapoire and further dialogue on any subject. There is a philisophical gap with that approach in my estimation.
However, cheating seems to be a factor many in the system would wish to overlook – since everyone is doing it -it must be OK? Or it has been resolved?
It seems to me this subject relates as much to the use of IT and social promotion as it does cheating.
Both of which should be responsibly challenged as evident from parents and educators on this blog.
Also as a parent and grandparent I ask for evidence.
I have no problem with condemning cheating, but also would wish we
– did our best to prevent it
– not confuse it with legitimate reasons for “2nd chances”
It does relate to IT
It does not relate to “social promotion”.
Interesting the evidence on the +ve effects of repeating a grade, ironically is not there.
It is the evidence of the subsequent effects of social promotion which should be of concern also – not just the evidence of repeating a grade. One would think this research is ongoing.
So also the evidence of a do – over generation and the requisite evaluation should consider the potential negative effects on the students future.
Legitimate reasons should not be confused with what qualifies as cheating.
Getting back to Paul’s allusion to “profound changes in student assessment,” this recent issue, “Better Evidence-Based Assessment” from Johns Hopkins is worth a read. The main authors are the heavy hitters in the field, including Grant Wiggan and James Popham. While oriented towards U.S. issues, it does shed light on some current emphases in Ontario: use of descriptive feedback with students, student self-assessment using success criteria, and formative assessment to guide teaching, all of which are strongly supported in Hattie’s meta-analyses. These are priorities in all Ontario districts at present.
I need to reread the document closely but I thought it a good overview: http://www.bestevidence.org/word/better_spring_2011.pdf
I follow best evidence and the research is of high quality.
Social promotion is clear- however unfortunate that it- the lesser of two evils.
We need to do a MIUCH BETTER JOB
of DIAGNOSTIC ASSESSMENT- especially in literacy
and
better remediation, especially in literacy
Here, I agree with the SQE folks, but I base it on evidence
So what can be done in these areas?
“We need to do a MUCH BETTER JOB
of DIAGNOSTIC ASSESSMENT- especially in literacy
and
better remediation, especially in literacy”
Very true, according to other studies, but in the grades from K to 6. It becomes a very difficult task after that and especially in high school. I also read in the Ontario legislative records, in 1994, the call for doing a much better job in diagnostic assessment and remediation. Read earlier records, and other reports going as far back to the late 50s, discussing the same problems, As one goes up to the present, the problems are the same, but the solutions differ from one decade to the next.
As a parent, no child should go through major difficulties in grades 1 to 6, struggling in the 3 Rs, especially in this day and age, with all the advancements being made. In my eyes, it does not take a battery of tests to observe that a child is having difficulty in some aspect or all of the 3 Rs. And probably is the reason why the kid is acting up because he can’t do the fractions because he doesn’t have automatic recall of the multiplication tables. Another factor is, what information is being passed along as students go from one grade to the next. The academic strengths and weaknesses, and the other cognitive developments if they are developing slowly. The latter, does the kid know his left from the right, read an analog clock, or even tie a shoelace, to placement of pen in the hand. I always dreaded the back to school time, because I had to start the whole process from scratch, to inform the teacher(s). High school is better, but only dealing with small populated high schools.
As for cheating, below is a youtube video by a teacher. Good one, and you should be drawn in like I was.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe6CJ4YDw7w&feature=related .
Good, Once again Nancy shines an unpleasant but necessary light on assessment.
Could it be the battery of tests justify the lesser of two evils?
The corporate reform movement is really down on what they call ‘social promotion’ but all the research says that the kids who are retained at grade level (flunked) do worse from then on compared to the kids who receive ‘social promotion’.
Somehow research just bounces off the Corporate Education Reform Movement. Don’t try to dazzle us with the facts, out mind is made up.
Amazing that once again I agree with Doug though I am not sure this is a “Corporate Education Reform Movement” thing.
I would never think that Corporate is monolithic or by definition evil.
I just know what research and experience says.
The kids that flunk DO do worse.
When I began teaching in the early 70s when we had “standards”
ROTFLMAO
I was told not to give final marks between 46-50.
Later I learned the psychometric reasons why- measurement error.
If they do not meet the standard then do what you must,
but
if they are so close . .
can you truly defend a 49%?
the answer is NO.
John,
Here’s a little background on the Corporate Education Reform agenda:
http://www.thelittleeducationreport.com/Timeto.html
I just notice this this after all these years.
“I then passed out the academic protocols sheets and told my students that these would be their “cheat sheets”.
http://www.adlit.org/article/19237/
What I would call helpers, often called by one and all, cheat sheets. Perhaps, calling the aids to learning, cheat sheets make make it all that much more acceptable to cheat in a test?
Our goal is to help all students do the best they can.
How best to do that?
Carrot or stick?
Hope or doubt?
Capitalism may not be perfect but so fat it seems better than the alternative, rather like . . . democracy.
Remember, the original request in this thread was
research.
Was fat Freudian? LOL.
I agree, Social Democracy is a left wing form of capitalist democracy.
Student cheating used to be considered a clear-cut matter until moral relativism began creeping into the educational world. A simple scan of the published research on deterring student cheating turns up some interesting commentaries.
Some of the recent research attempts to blame the explosion of cheating and plagiarism on increased academic competition for university admission and on “high stakes” standardized testing.
One of the most troubling professional articles comes from Alfie Kohn (Phi Delta Kappan, October 2007), and is entitled “Who’s Cheating Whom?”
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/cheating.htm
Alfie Kohn’s take on student cheating is, in my estimation, symptomatic of the root problem. With student cheating reaching epidemic proportions, Kohn looks to spread the responsibility around…suggesting that there are no hard and fast rules and, besides, students are only cheating themselves.
After ridding many North American schools of homework, Kohn seems determined to muddy the waters on student cheating!
Some Canadian universities continue to be clear-cut when it comes to instances of student cheating, especially on exams and term papers.
McGill University’s website has a post for faculty entitled “Prevent cheating on exams.” It’s designed to “reduce cheating on multiple-choice and midterm examinations.”
Faculty members are given clear instructions: “Draw your students’ attention to the sections of the Handbook on Student Rights and Responsibilities that concern academic offences (Chap. 6, Section III, Articles 15-19) and possible consequences for committing them (Articles 55 and 57). There is less cheating in institutions in which students are aware of official policies.”
http://www.mcgill.ca/students/srr/honest/staff/exam/
With Canadian school boards redefining “cheating” and eliminating any hint of “failure,” it could get tougher for McGill and other universities in their efforts to defend academic integrity as a core value in education.
There is an element in our society that is determined to make education “harder” Guy Giarno used to call it more rigorous. To many of us, that element is attempting to keep the benefits of higher education to themselves in a selfish attemp to preserve their own value. If there are fewer doctors, lawyers professors engineers ….. then the value of each one goes up.
There is another element in our society, a more democratic one, that is attempting to spread the benefits of education as far and wide and fast as it possibly can on the grounds that the more widespread higher education becomes, the greater the level of human capital, the greater the level of equity and the greater the overall human happiness.
Whenever anyone attempts to make school more rigorous, (exit testing from HS…) I suspect the former motive. There is a great fear amongst the educated conservative element that all of their degrees will be “watered down” by their degree level becoming ‘common’. You can even see this amongst teachers.
I have campaigned for many years for a catagory in contracts that would strongly recognize second and third degrees with a premium. This would be a grandfathered clause that would only apply to new hires. There is strong opposition because many people with a BA degree and no intention to upgrade, do not want to encourage ‘others’ to get higher degrees. Sad.
Some will try to say, “highly educated teachers are not necessary”. There is a one word answer to those know-nothings. Finland.
Typically “one word answers” aren’t of much use. Most kids who try that thinking would fail, right 😉
Always pretty self-serving when members of a profession create barriers to limit supply so as to increase their “value”…
Alfie Kohn, a dangerous jackass according to one education blog. And is one of the more endearing names given to him, especially if one has to go through the ordeal of reading one of his books or papers, filled with contradictory statements, logic is not his kingdom, nor is he beneath twisting the truth to suit his inner urges of profit, living off the avails of the fault lines of the education system.
“Too bad Alfie didn’t delve into the merits of this research, because he would have gotten bitch-slapped as the know-nothing poser that he is. Of course, practice and time on task are important for learning any human endeavor, including academic learning. Here’s a good article by cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham discussing the research and explaining why practice is important. Willingham points out that to become skillful at something, such as at reading or math, you must acquire automaticity in many related skills. And guess how you build automaticity? Lots of practice.”
http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/2006/08/alfie-kohn-dangerous-jackass.html
Anyone would have to have the patience of a saint to endured Alfie Kohn for 5 minutes, but the conferences for teachers, are clamouring for the words of Alfie, and according to a great many critics, has the voice of Sylvester the Cat.
” “Perceived likelihood of cheating was uniformly relatively high . . . when a teacher’s pedagogy was portrayed as poor.”[6] To put this point positively, cheating is relatively rare in classrooms where the learning is genuinely engaging and meaningful to students and where a commitment to exploring significant ideas hasn’t been eclipsed by a single-minded emphasis on “rigor.” The same is true in “democratic classes where [students’] opinions are respected and welcomed.”[7] ”
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/cheating.htm
Kohn is not only determined to muddy the waters in areas of cheating, but is marching to the drums of no grades and no homework. If he has his way, all children would be looking at the clouds, to determined their learning needs, and the last thing kids would not do, is to cheat. Take away the competitiveness, the hard work, and replaced it with stuff of doing your own thing, and who cares if children do not know how to determine their own needs, because they have no experience to guide them, Worse yet knowledge, including the foundation knowledge becomes dogma and ideology. Pretty soon, all children begin to think through the lens of the dogma and ideology when learning new knowledge. Dismissing a book, because the font text is part of the old established way of the serfs and kings. Having teachers to guide them, and point out the correct way viewing through the lens of dogma and ideology. There would be no need to cheat, since every response would be a correct answer.
Thus, Doug and the advocates will stepped in to provide the means for the elite group of master teachers to guide the teachers with ordinary BAs. After all the master teachers will be the only ones to provide the lessons to the lesser counterparts, on how to teach, as well as providing the tips when students no longer has the urge to learn and wish to drop-out and drop-in on other types of schooling, that paves the way to actually opening up the doors of their futures.
“Combating Cheating with Transparent Reporting ”
http://dianeduff.blogspot.com/2011/11/combating-cheating-with-transparent.html
“Diane Duff is a respected educator and educational consultant who is renowned for developing sensible, solution-oriented strategies to support children’s academic success.
As a former principal, classroom teacher, and college teacher, Diane brings rich and varied experience and expertise to her work with students, families and educators.
Diane’s experience includes curriculum development; individualized programme planning; academic and literacy assessment and reporting for individual students and Montessori schools; and private school accreditation support.
As a teacher trainer, Diane offers workshops in literacy development and disability; programming for special needs students; operationalizing assessment results as curricular actions; and incorporating Ministry of Education curriculum standards into private and independent sector schools.”
I really do think she offers a lot of common sense, as well as sensible approaches. There should be more of Diane Duffs’ in the public education systems.
From her site, a link called the Cheating Culture.
http://www.cheatingculture.com/about/
“CheatingCulture.com seeks to expose cheating across American life and highlight ways to build a fairer, more ethical society. We define cheating as the violation of established rules or ethical principles for financial, professional, or academic gain. We do not focus attention on lies, infidelities, and scandals in the strictly personal sphere. Our main concern is cheating that involves the abuse of power and privilege, particularly by private sector actors, which results in losses or hardship for others. “
Can’t deal with a problem?
Make up more excuses and hide it.
Just when you thought that common sense was making a comeback in education, new evidence emerges of the continued existence of woolly-headed progressivism.
One of the best examples is Joe Bower’s “Grading Moratorium” initiative currently posted on his Blog:
http://www.joebower.org/p/grading-moratorium.html
Joe Bower is a great admirer of Alfie Kohn, judging from his glowing comments. “For the love of learning”, in his world view, precludes student accountability in the form of grades or marks.
Believe it or not, he is also a favourite of the Canadian Education Association brains trust and the EdCamp movement.
I took the time to investigate the achievement results for Joe Bower’s former school. Nothing to boast about, but I do know Bower’s instruction methods, would drive my kid around the bend. She would effectively not learned anything that would advance her progress. I also check out the newsletters and other things, and wonder if parents are satisfied with the progress of their students.
http://www.youblisher.com/p/64976-November-Newsletter-2010/
http://education.alberta.ca/apps/testing/ach/subjects.cfm
For social studies – 58 % were below acceptable standard
For science – 41.9 % were below acceptable standard
For math – 53.5 were below acceptable standard
For language arts – three set of figures – rather confusing to determined what matters
first set – 23.3 % below acceptable standard
second set – writing – 81.4 % above or at acceptable standard
reading – 88.4 % above or at acceptable standard
Results above were for grade 6.
Joe Bower does not believe in assigned homework, and it is apparently the kid’s fault for not being on task in doing the work at school, if a student does bring work home. Not at all impressed with Bower, and his teaching methods. And I wonder what is happening to the dyslexics in a classroom, where the instruction methods actively work against the dyslexic and his learning? More dumbed down work for them?
Lieing, cheating, plagiarism – it’s all good.
Can’t stifle Little Johnny’s creativity, dontcha know… though I fail to understand how plagiarism can be classified as being creative.
Good joke Paul-Alfie Kohn,the dean of Progressivism.
What conservatives do not understand – Instilling the love of learning is far more important than evaluation, ranking and grading and sorting children like eggs. People need to become unsupervisd learners.
What liberals do not understand – that without evaluation there is an incentive to work at far lower than your optimum level. There is no way for the teacher to understand how to help.
Sadly, there are reasons why our systems are not PURE liberal or PURE conservative (or PURE socialist) systems. The main one is that none of these works. Conservative education drives out creativity and innovation and equity while liberal education drives out basic foundational skills, and hard work. Many students end up “going nowhere at their own speed”
Students working “at their own speed” is the most damaging concept in education. It leads to ever widening gaps.
The education system we have basically represents a “truce” a peace treaty if you like between traditionalists and progressives, between right and left, between business and labour, between educators and parents, between usefullness and happiness, between creativity and basics.between human capital formation and equity.
Nobody is happy with it but nobody is suppose to be happy with it. It needs to serve many masters, not just you.
If the system is not “in your image” it is because there are many other people pulling it in exactly the opposite direction.
Students working “at their own speed” is the most damaging concept in education. It leads to ever widening gaps.
It’s rare that Doug echoes my hero, Zig Engelmann. I have the following Engelmann quotation printed out on my bulletin board at work:
from Siegfried Engelmann, Theory of Instruction: Principles and
Applications (1991), p. 376
“Perhaps the greatest impediment to intelligent instruction comes from
investigators who purport to be humanistic. Socio-linguists (e.g., Labov,
1972) and those espousing a natural learning or general-stimulation approach to learning, see the use of instructional technology as contrary to humanistic beliefs. A longstanding trend that dominates the post-Sputnik era tends to reduce the problems of instruction to understanding the culture and language of the learner, to feelings of empathy, and to telling the truth. If there is a guaranteed formula for failure, that is it.
Furthermore, it is probably no accident that this belief is prominent. It
serves an inept educational establishment by reassuring teachers and
administrators that there is no need to deal with the concrete realities of
the teaching failures that occur in nearly every school. The humanistic position conveniently views these failures as non-failures. The philosophy further assumes that those who deal with instruction on a technical level — not an amorphous one — are ignorant of “theory,” unenlightened about the facts of humans, and reactionaries concerned with suppression and manipulation of children rather than with growth and creativity.
This attitude is NOT humanistic, because it conveniently overlooks the basic fact that instruction IS manipulation, and instruction occurs through
communications. However, communications are presented and communications teach whether they are designed by intent or whether they are the product of accident. The humanist in the classroom does not have the luxury of “not teaching.” No matter what the teacher does, a model will be presented; the behavior of the teacher will suggest riles about the relative importance of particular material. The TEACHER is responsible for achieving student outcomes.
If the teacher permits the children to progress “at their own rate” and “in
their own style,” some children may demonstrate slow rates and poor styles. In that end, a self-fulfilling prophecy is realized. Some children will
indeed “prove” that they are slow, and the teacher will believe — out of
ignorance, not humanity — that these children would have been slow no
matter what type of instruction had been provided. From our perspective,
many classroom demonstrations provided by people who express great concern for humanity are no more humane than the practice of using leeches to bleed diseased patients.
If we are humanists, we begin with the obvious fact that the children we
work with are perfectly capable of learning anything that we have to teach.
We further recognize that we should be able to engineer the learning so
that it is reinforcing — perhaps not “fun” but challenging and engaging.
We then proceed to DO it, not to continue talking about it. We try to control those variables that are potentially within our control so that they facilitate learning. We train the teacher, design the program, work out a reasonable daily schedule, and LEAVE NOTHING TO CHANCE. We monitor and we respond quickly to problems. We respond quickly and
effectively because we consider the problems moral and we conceive of
ourselves as providing a uniquely important function — particularly for
those children who would most certainly fail without our concerted help.
We function as advocates for the children, with the understanding that if we fail, the children will be seriously pre-empted from doing things with their lives, such as having important career options and achieving some potential values for society. We should respond to inadequate teaching as we would to problems of physical abuse. Just as our sense of humanity would not permit us to allow child abuse in the physical sense, we should not tolerate it in the cognitive setting. We should be intolerant, because we KNOW what can be achieved if children are taught appropriately. We know that the intellectual crippling of children is caused overwhelmingly by faulty instruction — not by faulty children.
Because of these convictions, we have little tolerance for traditional
educational establishments. We feel that they must be changed so they
achieve the goals of actually helping all children.
This call for humanity can be expressed on two levels. On that of society:
Let’s stop wasting incredible human potential through unenlightened
practices and theories. On the level of children: Let’s recognize the
incredible potential for being intelligent and creative possessed by even
the least impressive children, and with unyielding passion, let’s pursue the
goal of assuring that this potential becomes reality.”
Hear, hear.
Doug, wouldn’t you say that the public education has an imbalance of progressive methods, upheld by the Joe Bowers of this world, and hijacking the schools.
What is really going on? Here’s an interesting new development:
“Canada’s national robotic competition has been called off because of a dying interest in building robots, according to the event’s president. Steve Jones said attendance to this weekend’s competition, which was scheduled to take place in Toronto at the Ontario Science Centre, was going to be down to half its normal number.
“Kids aren’t interested what’s inside the robot, what’s inside the box, what’s inside the IT chip,” said Jones, who heads the Canadian National Robot Games.”
Wouldn’t you say, that the above is one of the results when instruction, curriculum, and teaching practices are not in sync with what is good for the students? In this article, it claims that children are no long interested in building things. How convenient to make that claim, using the instant gratification reason, and instead of looking at the schools and the practices that teaches nothing about building things and the skills and set of knowledge needed to build things. Keep in mind, computer programming, and other such knowledge sets, few schools have this type of curriculum in the elementary schools, to create the interest for students in the high school years. The kids have not change, but the interests of the adults within the education have changed dramatically.
Agreeing with Doug is getting be a habit.
Grades are not going away soon so what can we do, using research to inform us, to help students do better?
I have in previous posts, cited sources that people can check. We could even look at some statistical analyses of data in a whole series of quantitative studies around these issues, but been there and done that.
– second chances can work powerfully well
– cheating is bad
– we can do things to remove some of the temptations to cheat
Using terms like “left”, “right”, “conservative” etc. that have been around more up to and beyond 2 centuries
– reduce discussion to name calling
– may not fit anymore as Doug suggests;
e.g.,
Standardized tests were originally regarded as a “progressive” measure.
Public education was introduced in many countries by “conservative” governments
The excuses for failure are coming fast and furious now.
Mr.Myers,we don`t care that you agree with Doug,do you care that I agree with TDSB?
I am afraid the pupose of these education blogs are to further the objectives of the Dougs of the world.
I don’t agree that the system is too progressive, in fact John is correct about some shifts. “Working at your own speed” was a lib-progressive attitude from the 1960’s that has been recently picked up by traditionalists who would like to use technology and Kahn Acadamy approaches to bypass teachers. You are tying your rowboat to the Titanic.
Testing is going nowhere. As Jerry Brown says in California, more speedometers and tachometers on a junker will not help anybody. Charters have done so badly that advocates now say “look at successful charters” as opposed to the whole lot. Fine so long as you are only comparing to successful public schools. There is no value added in charters that is not easily attributed to longer days/years and creaming.
What then for the Corporate Reform movement? Are we to believe that phonics will close the rich-poor gap? Be serious.
We have out there in the world, 2 successful models driving PISA, style results – Korea and Finland.
Korean formula = high respect for teachers, long hours/years, cram schools at night so late the gov’t had to legislate 10:30 closing times.
Finland Formula = high respect for teachers, MA at least one for every teacher. Teachers have FAR less in-class time than American and Canadian teachers and far more PREP time.
Did you notice the “high respect for teachers” in both models?
To be quite frank, I don’t see legislation in Canada to go the distance modelling either of these systems. Therefore as a country that is always in the top 5 and #1 in the English speaking world, I expect ELP-ECE and a long slow upgrade to the cadre of teachers, perhaps smaller classes in provinces that have not lowered them.
Don Drummond is about to tell McGuinty you cannot raise expenditure overall more than 1% for many years into the future. With health expected to go up 2-3% and already 40% of overall this probably means a return to the ‘school wars’ as parents demand schools stay open, teachers demand 2-3% raises, text books and technology demands its share, old schools fall apart, new areas are in portables.
Educational austerity means a war over the resources. With a one seat minority Mr McGuinty is in a hot seat in education. Laurel Broten is probably too weak for the task but who would want to be Dr No?
Start cutting your green ribbons.
Cheating is learning.
Sure it is.
War over resourses?
Today, educational austerity means anything but the educrats go.
If you do not approve of charter schools – so be it. But don’t complain about the cuts (ie NS) or the modest 1% increase allocated to keeping the bureaucracy solvent at the expense of students.
Doug, do you advise Drummond?
A slipery slope when progressivism can now hear “nearer my God to thee” as the ship goes down.
It’s quite simple – parents are suspicious of and generally do not want the school their child goes to – to pardon cheating.
“The teacher is responsible for student outcomes” (TDSB) makes perfect sense to me.
thank-you Steven! Well said.
“The teacher is responsible for student outcomes” (TDSB) makes perfect sense to me.
____________________________________________________
It would make sense if they weren’t micro-managed. As it is now, we cannot blame the teachers when it is the educrats who wield the power and tell them what to do, when to do it and how to do it.
…which is why teachers need to try to assess and understand the diversity of their students skills. How else can they do this, but to observe with responsible evaluation their students progress against sensible standards?
It is always helpful in a game to know the rules ahead of time.
It is always helpful in a game to know the rules ahead of time.
_________________________________________________
The only rule is “do as your told and if it doesn’t work it’s your fault”.
NOBODY condones cheating.
Teachers just love to be told how to do their jobs by non-teachers who don’t have any idea what they are talking about. If you have not done it for a living, you really do not know.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/a-primer-on-corporate-school-reform/2011/10/26/gIQAyWrUKM_blog.html?wprss=answer-sheet
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/5-catchiest-and-most-annoying-reform-phrases/2011/11/10/gIQAqH3t9M_blog.html?wprss=answer-sheet
And your solution Doug? More of the same progressive stuff, more fun and games, no grades, and just grading at the end of the year advocates, all based on observations of said students. Tests don’t measure anything, it is all about the motivation, and the only way to learn. Tests just demotivates kids. If I had wanted to send my child to study mud puddles, I could have kept it home, since she already knew everything about mud puddles and what creatures lurk in the said puddles. I would rather have teachers that are concern with the stuff that a child is going to need in the short-term future as well as long into the future. Somehow learning how to measure 50 different ways, or adding two numbers 20 different ways is not going to do it, unless the goal is to have very confused students.
Well it certainly shows that those within the public education system, condones cheating, or at the very least, have many prepared statements from the brain storming sessions, to anticipate the public’s and parents negative statements. If anything, the education system has a great PR model to counteract any dissing from the peanut gallery. So why the comment, on people who are not teachers, telling teachers how to do their job? You would have a tough time with me, because I am no longer shy when I think the teacher is erring in some way. Does not happen much, but where it does is in the lousy text books. No wonder kids are driven to cheat, I already in the last few weeks have collected 25 questions found in math, physics and chemistry where 2 + 2 = 5. Actually, it is the wording, and I sent the questions as they come along to real experts, who sends the goods. Poorly written, and no wonder employers complain about not being to handle the simple day to day stuff, where one may need a bit of chemistry and physics. A couple of weeks, my child work 4 to 5 hours on one question, and finally surrenders the assignment to me. Got into another fight with her, on what the problem was. I said need to find final velocity, she said initial velocity. The conversation turned into a cat fight, but I was still left with the physics problem in my hand. It turned out I was correct, and gleefully shown my child, the e-mail. Her being a teenager, turned all snotty, shrugged her shoulders and went to her room. Sometime during the night, she retrieved the printed e-mail, and copy it to her assignment. In addition to making a note on the side bar, the problem should have read initial velocity and not final velocity. The only bright side to this, when it comes to the public exam in physics next year, she will never forget the how-tos concerning physics problems with 2 to 3 missing variables. As for the teacher, he conceded the problem was worded wrong, but also congratulated her for doing grade 12 work. Than he asked her, ‘Now tell me why you can do all the hard complicated stuff, but when it comes to the easy stuff, you can’t do it?’. She mumbles,”I don’t know”. His response, see you at the physics tutorial, and we are going to fix it.
It is what teachers should be doing, and by the way it is driving teachers crazy why she can’t get the easy stuff, but is so advance in her thinking when it comes to the complicated stuff. Teachers around her don’t mind parents telling them that they might be straying when it comes to their child, or making a suggestion or two to the teachers. ,Nor are the teachers shy about doing the same thing, when it comes to helping their kids at home with their homework. Two-way conversations are always the best, and not the one-way conversations that is for the most part the norm. in our schools. Schools miss out on a lot of opportunities that parents may have some of the best practices that outshines the school’s practices. And one of them, the many second chances has to go the way of the do-do bird, because in most homes, cheating is not tolerated. Why should it be tolerated in our schools?
Teachers just love to be told how to do their jobs by non-teachers who don’t have any idea what they are talking about.
_____________________________________________________
So much better to be told what to do by former teachers who couldn’t wait to get out of the classroom to become educrats.
Hmmm…
It follows, then that an ex-teacher who has never been a pharmacist, engineer, and so forth, can’t credibly compare the workloads, education,salary, etc?
Yet Doug routinely points to other professions as evidence that teachers should be paid more, have more education than…, and so forth.
Using the “if you’ve never done it” you just don’t know”is a pretty limiting requirement.
Similar education = similar remuneration.
Big piece in the Globe about the rapid advance of China in education. One of the reasons? Rapid increases in teachers wages.
High teacher wages attracts the best to teach. Low teacher wages repels the best from teaching. It is a simple matter really, there is a free market in hiring teachers.
OSSTF publishes the wages and benefits of each board in Ontario and hands it out to teachers college students. Boards just hate that but also hate being near the bottom because they know the ones that pay the most will attract the better candidates.
Northern Ontario has to pay a premium to get teachers to work there.
“Rapid increases in teachers wages”? In China?
Pretty hard to make much of that unless we know what teacher wages were to begin with, right? It may well be that teachers weren’ well compensated to begin with and now they’re playing catchup, which isn’t the case here. Could be that the supply of teachers or those willing to do it was low, which isn’t the case here.
As to salaries here I’d love to see the range between boards at the low end of the scale and those at the top 😉
The one thing we’re not short of in Ontario are folks who’d dearly love the opportunity to teach, even at the absurdly low wages they’d have to accept ‘)
As to those “that pay the most” attracting the “best candidates” anyone trying to get a permanent position in most of Ontario will tell you that there’s not much room to choose when the pool of qualified canidates far outstrips the openings.
You should know this stuff.
Folks might also want to read the long standing work of two researchers who study and compare different professions.
Lee Shulman,originally from Stanford
Dan Lortie, of Québec ancestry from U of Chicago.
Once again, not the subject of the thread and the plea for evidence not stereotyping or name-calling.
All too often,
to the true believer, no evidence is needed
to the skeptic, no evidence is ever enough
Who are you two kidding-Bernard Shapiro would agree with me here-nobody ignores research better than the Education field which makes it such an unprofessional field-daily excuses for running the field on opinion.
You need to professionalize,and that means getting rid of Unions-Doctors and lawyers which you keep referring to don`t have unions.
http://www.nichd.nih.gov/reading.cfm
Did I miss something?
Rereading my last post I made no mention of unions.
For the record teachers “unions” have a mixed reputation and record. I think Doug has done a nice job of describing why they exist and why teachers support them- better than the alternative.
Ladies and gentlemen, back to the thread or start a new one.
I am doing a content analysis of the content on this thread, part of a larger project on online learning and dialogue- the data so far leads me to a disappointing conclusion.
<> too bad
Educhatter must be striking the right chords with the establishment when a content analysis related to learning and dialogue, is being surveyed by means of this blog.
If the subsequent data is disappointing to some, it may be because it is effective in its critical analysis of the bureaucracy and public policy – even contentious at times.
Relating to issues generally left to in house dialogue and study, parents and educators are now sharing openly opinions, articles, and research pertaining to public education and it’s future.
I see that as something positive.
Ever hear of the Ontario Medical Association, OMA the doctors union and the most pwerful union in Ontario?
Ever hear of the Law Society of Upper Canada, the lawyers union and the second most powerful union in Ontario? These are not “professional associations” any more than teachers’ federations are. They negotiate with government, set prices, set work rules. Unions only wish they had this power.
Let me see, research says testing no use but we have it.
Research says charters no better than PSs but people push them.
Research says merit pay a total loser but reformers still try.
Research says ECE pays huge dividends but reformers disparage.
Research says small classes really help but reformers are reluctant.
Research shows more unionized jurisdictions have better results than non union states.
Who was it again that opposed research?
I suspect you’d need to know far more about the “research” to determine the value
Consider:
On the issue of “small class size” you’d need to know if they’re comparing significantly different sized classes, say, 25 versus 15 or are they comparing classes of, say, 23 to 21?
I suspect minor differences in the class sizes would have very minimal impacts on outcomes.
As always the devil is in the details.
You suspect a lot John but you don’t seem very familiar with the research. Start with the STAR research that involved the entire state of Tennessee. There are a huge number of studies. BTW who is talking about small cuts in class size. I am talking about big ones.
When BIG cuts are contemplated the reform movement cries “how can we afford it?” The argument from progressives has always been, as it is with ECE, it is cheaper to do it than to not do it beause:
A-Productivity goes up
B- social costs come down A+B is greater than C (the cost of the reform)
Keep on dreaming in technical-colour that medical and law societies are unions. Wonder if the lawyer slugging away in his one man operation, and a family doctor in his one man operation feel the same way.
The brass always goes into standby mode when cuts are made, and only move to action, when their benefits and cozy arrangements are threaten. Like the latest union, gearing up for action to protect a teacher from the jaws of the public, who would like to see action on a teacher who tape a student to his desk. Apparently it was okay, because the student is special needs. After all, special needs students do get in the way of the work day, and probably is up for discussion in the next union contract to have the right to taped students to their desks.
Now tell me, why talk about this, since it is way off topic, and cheating policies is one policy that can’t be put into contracts, like taping students to the desk, or canceling recess. Cheating, and many other policies like it, are the stuff that unions go into standby mode . To discuss cheating policies of a typical education system in a silo, is rather foolish, when the cheating policies are directly connected to the other issues that makes it possible, for lax cheating policies and other policies that become effective tools from within the education system to advance their own self-serving agendas and goals, that are not in the best interests of the students, nor the public’s pocketbooks.
And do so, without being held accountable and a rather large vault of excuse cards, to lay blame on when failure is obvious to the public. At least the lawyers and health professionals are accountable for their actions, especially the bad outcomes. Cheating in their work of line, may lead and often do lead to very bad outcomes for their clients or patients.
Keep in mind that Tennessee is one of those redneck southern states you claim are educational backwaters and entirely different from Canada.
As to big cuts in class size I ‘d imagine any employee would love a massive cut in workload and claim it’d lead to better outcomes. The key is to determine what is a fair and reasonable workload for teachers, or any other worker; sorta like measuring what “productivity” even means. As to “social costs” coming down it becomes rather hard to even know what that means. I’d imagine kids in a class of 24 are no less drains on society than those in a class of 20.
I suspect you’re confusing class size with homelife, economic issues in the family and so on.
But then we’ve already covered this.
http://www.library.ca.gov/crb/clssz/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/7-class-size-myths—-and-the-truth/2010/12/20/ABhnZuF_blog.html
John L
I’d imagine kids in a class of 24 are no less drains on society than those in a class of 20.
You would be totally wrong about that John and it is your “imagine” word again. You need to actually look at the research not just use your right wing instincts which are invariably incorrect.
Class size is not for the teacher it is for the student which is why it is soooo popular with parents. Check the Washington Post link. That ought to clear things up for you. Parents across Ontario cheered when McGuinty lowered primary class size as they did for his ELP plan. Without both, I doubt he would have been re-elected.
Nancy, Everybody knows the OMA in particular and the LSUC as well as the Law Union are the unions of these professionals. Please don’t make yourself seem foolish by speaking against it.
You have to love all the heavy duty reform types south of the border with their kids in private schools with small classes and enriched curriculum and experienced heavily qualified teachers who say none of the above are important in education.
Read the Wash Post article. It destroys the right wing myths about class size.
Class size is not for the teacher it is for the student.
———————————————————————————————–
Class size is also for the teacher.
Imediate feedback – which is so important can’t be achieved in elementary classes of 30 to 34 students.
This is the result of urbanization and consolidation subjectified by Doug – who now espouses smaller classes.
Nancy from the OMA web site
https://www.oma.org/Benefits/Pages/default.aspx
Class size is also for the teacher.
Imediate feedback – which is so important can’t be achieved in elementary classes of 30 to 34 students.
This is the result of urbanization and consolidation subjectified by Doug – who now espouses smaller classes.
Of course when the teacher can do a better job the student benefits. I have always supported smaller classes. It has the interesting side benefit of keeping small schools open.
Teachers working conditions ARE students learning conditions.
Conservatives become enraged when they hear parents demanding smaller classes. To them it is just more tax money. They know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Conservatives become enraged when they hear parents demanding smaller classes.
————————————————————————————————
I must admit Doug – that one takes the cake!
So much for common assesment.
Are “elementary classes of 30-34” the norm?
According to Dalton McGuinty’s election campaign well over 80% of the junior grades have 23 kids so either he’s playing games or you are.
As to “Teachers working conditions” being “students learning conditions”
that becomes an issue mostly when some, certainly not all, teachers take out their unhappiness with things on their kids. There are all sorts of things impacting on teachers which would have absolutely no importance to kids unless teachers use them as bargainning chips. Thankfully the vast majority of teachers don’t engage in such behaviour.
As to Doug’s assertion that the job of the teacher union is to defend teachers he’s absolutely correct. Unions will ALWAYS put the interests of their members first. That being the case there are areas, at least for unions, where the best interests of their clients will be secondary.
I can think of a few classes right in my son’s school of 32 students each. If this is an anomaly in NS, then there is becoming more and more of them.
Nancy, I think you may have noticed that the NL teachers’ union was the very first organization to jump on the cheating story and denounce the 2nd chance policy.
Lucky for us we have strong teachers’ unions to speak up and push back on issues like this.
There is always someone who says “why did the teachers union defend a teacher that did XYZ?” Because it is their job to defend the person because they paid for a defence. If it goes to court the teachers’ union pays for the lawyer as well. Our entire system is built on “innocent until proven guilty”.
Doug,I think the early years are only important if the instruction is valuable and based on what works.
If the instruction is based on research and it`s an enriching experience that advances children`s success in the following grades,great,if not,it is glorified babysitting and an appeasement for the Teachers Unions-we know how and why Dalton got in for a 3rd term..Education Premier-more like kiss the behind of the Unions Premier.
All day SK is a billion dollar undertaking that will sink the have not promise even further and Charles Pascal`s recommendations for curriculum-are they based on the vast amount of research we know works and the tests that find kids with problems early?No,the whole system is based on the flawed myth that learning is developmental-Piaget`s theory-which we now know is wrong.We need to teach.Do the right things early,test early,intervene accutely and specifically and then you have Finland-do we have that,absolutely not.
Do we continue to pay through the nose for teachers in a system with no accountability for results by grade 3 that show most children are learning?No,even with a test,the excuses are rampant.Even with a 45% failure,just watch the spin.
Does the Union pay for the PR firms?
Conservative parents become enraged with smaller classes-ridiculous!
Medical doctors and lawyer associations are not unions. Far from it, but with professions with certain set of high skills, they are in a position to employed some of the same tactics and hardball, as unions do who collect mandatory dues from their members. When did anyone see lawyers and doctors who operate their own practices, holding picket signs? Not in my life time so far, but it is this false impression that some within government would like the public to have, that all professions of high skills, working public or private practice, belong to a union.
False impressions, such as small classes will be the ticket to end all failure by students. I suspect, that small classes are easier to handle for teachers, to meet the demands that is put on them by the upper levels of the system. As John states, ” There are all sorts of things impacting on teachers which would have absolutely no importance to kids unless teachers use them as bargaining chips. Thankfully the vast majority of teachers don’t engage in such behaviour.” On a side note, I have been reading about optimal distance, and how it can impact learning. Interesting, however most of the research in Canada has been buried, especially in areas of learning to read, and teaching students. Which brings me to another false impression that the public has, the instruction method does not matter, but the behaviour of the learner matters. Paiget’s theory rears its ugly head, in small, medium or large classes, it is always the behaviour of the child, and development of the child, but never the instruction methods, and other external factors that are not readily seen or easily observed in the classroom.
As for NL teachers’ union, yeah first one to let the public to know, but it took them two years to informed the public. Political opportunism at its best, and too late to stopped the steamroller of second chances. In two boards now, and no doubt be in the other two boards in the fall. It is up to the individual teachers now, but without the union brass on board, second chances will steamrolled over the former policies of zeroes and reduced grading on miss assignments. Par for the course, considering it is a union willing to sacrifice students for the good of the union.
Another false impression that is being constantly messaging out to the public, is the individual members of the public, are making decisions in their day to day lives, through the lens of their political beliefs and values. The norm is making decisions on what is the best interests of the individuals, no matter their political beliefs and values. “Conservatives become enraged when they hear parents demanding smaller classes. “, is a typical message coming from groups of individuals, such as unions to put out the false impression, that the public holds the value of small classes and tarring a political party by the false impression of they are against small classes. Much like the first message of second chances from the union, where the school board is tarred and feathered, and the union appears to be the good guys. But are they, when a week later, it is determined that the union knew about it for two years, at another school board, but chose to remain silent until now, even though they had plenty of opportunities to raise the issue over the two year period, including the times when the selected union members where working cooperatively with board staff, to rework the new policy.
Nothing has change for the betterment of the students, except in one area that my youngest has pointed out. The miss assignments, will have a NA beside it, and of a result will no longer be counted when determining a grade. Instead of 10 evaluations, a student may have only 8 evaluations.. So a student who did not hand in two assignments, got caught cheating, did a rewrite, could potentially received a grade of 63 percent, compared to a student who did all the work and did not cheat to their average of 65 %. Under the old system, the zeroes would work against all students, and a student with a 63 percent their final grade would nose dived to a 50.5 percent, since both students would be based on 10 evaluations. I have noted that zeroes, even when I went to school, to be a motivating factor not to received a zero on any assessment. Zeroes can take a person who is scoring 80s to 90s down to the seventies for final grades.
Now students, can work less, and effort is no longer rewarded for students who complete their assignments on time and do not cheat. Second chances and the rest of the reworked policy, is just another policy to avoid the real problems of students and their weaker levels in the foundation of the 3 Rs, as well as the practices that are no longer being taught such as note taking, effective studying practices. Second chances gives a student a way out, without having to deal with the consequences of their actions, as it does give the education system a way out, where the system no longer has to deal with the fallout of low achievement. With the new system in place, the final grades of students will rise 10 percentage points in some schools, depending on the percentage of students who for the most part do not hand in their assignments on time, or cheat on a regular basis. For the school boards, it is a win-win situation, and tweaking the policy is done without a cost imposed on the board. The costs are borne on the students and payment is extracted in their futures in so many different ways.
“Giving student cheaters a second chance is symptomatic of profound changes now underway in student assessment policy. Where is the educational research to support the student evaluation theories being espoused by Damian Cooper and his cohorts? Does separating completely student achievement from student behaviour in the evaluation process make any real sense — and what are the likely consequences? Should student cheaters be pardoned in our schools? Taking the larger view, is all of this threatening to produce what might be called a “do-over” generation?”
Knowing we have diverted,back to the subject at hand…
I am conflicted.
I do assessments on student learning every time I see students that fail.That is what I am hired for.
What I find out is they`re years and years behind.Sadly,cheating has become a survival strategy.
What is tragic,99 per cent of the tests sold don`t test the core deficits-so-the teacher never knows what`s really wrong.If she or he is given those tools,they proceed to fix the problem after training.
If the students are cheaters at the core-the results should be zero tolerance.
It`s complicated-
If teaching K-3 is so weak to send them to the curriculum years without proper preparation,we,they and their parents are in a very scary zone for years to come.
now here`s a great idea-
Canada`s Unions do such a good job concealing the truth,we never get stories like this-we get make nice stories…
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/11/14/david-cameron-hidden-crisis-failing-schools_n_1091798.html?ref=canada&ir=Canada
““Why should we put up with a school content to let a child sit at the back of the class, swapping Facebook updates? Or one where pupils and staff count down the hours to the end of term without ever asking why B grades can’t be turned into As. Britain can’t let weak schools smother children’s potential”, Cameron writes in the Daily Telegraph.”
A major complaint of parents, who often do not have the skills and abilities or even the means but to accept whatever comes down the pipeline of the education systems. Just asked the question to anyone within the education system, why isn’t the focus on taking C students, and making them become B students, or B students into A students. Responses will be a boat load of excuses, and blame is all directed at the external factors, but never at the school. League tables, would certainly be refreshing to see in Canada in so many ways.
By the way Doug, the OMA allowing to negotiate the fee schedule, is very much like the same basis as an employee negotiating their salary based on their commission sales or based on their work and their set of skills. Happens a lot in places without unions, where two employees both with the same set of skills, one is paid more than the other employee. It still does not mean that the OMA is a union, or the group of employees are acting like a union, and therefore is a union. Much like the false impression left with the public that teachers are the only ones that hold the set of skills necessary to teach child, and to reach their full potential. Reaching the full potential of students, is now reaching a 50 percent or higher, and call it a day once 50 percent is reach for every student.
A sad and obvious attempt to shift the blame from a failing government to someone else ‘on the cheap’. Pathetic. League table (list of every school in UK by test scores) have accomplished nothing after many years because after a while people ignore test scores. The prices of houses have already discounted the scores.
The UK is a dismal failure in PISA-TIMMS.
Canada on the other hand, always close to the top.
Nancy the OMA is the doctor’s union. They “negotiate” the fee schedule with the government.
Giving student cheaters a second chance is symptomatic of profound changes now underway in student assessment policy.
The unions are in total agreement with that Jo Anne.
If that was true Doug, the unions are in total agreement, why do we only hear from unions after the dirty deed is done? On another note, in England the teachers unions are using their full power and energies on the elimination of tests testing for the core strengths and deficits in reading of the primary students. Some have gone even further, to state that this type of testing, can be considered standard testing and high-stakes testing. Foolish really, because the tests are designed to uncover deficits in reading, as well as the strengths. Perhaps the teachers’ unions do not want it uncovered that anywhere between 40 to 60 percents of students have deficits in their reading or perhaps the union still has not figure a way to put remediation of core deficits into the contracts. I think it is the latter, and is probably the reason why in North American, in a typical primary class, only about 5 percent of the students are tested for core deficits in reading, and only the students who are showing obvious observable signs are tested. The day that all students will be tested for reading and writing deficits, will be the day when the unions have it in their contracts, and be paid accordingly to look after their remediation of students.
It took me years, to convince those who are working within the education system, that the problems of my child, lie within the foundation of the 3 Rs, and not her knowledge base. I also pointed out, that it applies to all students, and not just the kind that has dyslexia or a LD problem. If students have problems, and are not look after right away away, students will resort to strategies that schools will frown upon, when teaching training and instruction does not mesh with the students as a whole, and the individual level.
Not only cheating, but other strategies that cannot be easily detected by the teacher, giving the impression that the student is doing well and is in need of no urgent help. What to do with students who are memorizing words, and are quite adept at it, until the day comes when they are no longer capable of memorizing another 100 words? Prevent it from happening in the first place, by testing for core deficits, and than there would be no reason for a child to make use of strategies that hides the deficit from the adults, but allows the students to keep up with the classroom on the knowledge base. If it was just knowledge that students were being tested on, there would not be a problem. But knowledge of students is very much dependent on their strengths and the weaknesses of the reading, writing and expressive speech skills of the students. Testing for core deficits and strengths, are not the kind of tests students can cheat on. Knowledge of facts is not required, and will show the deficits and strengths clearly, without reference to behaviour of the students and knowledge base of students.
As Joanne has stated, it is complicated and the complications of addressing students’ low achievement through a change in policy by changing the rules, without changing the practices and training of teachers, is to repeat the same outcomes in cycles over and over again. The second chances policies, will not stemmed the cheating, except to accept cheating in certain parameters, as well as expanding the cheating list, what is tolerated and what is not. Outright cheating will be tolerated, and under the same category as some within the education system still see parents who are helping their children in doing their homework and assignments , is tolerated but is still frown by some within the education system.
We are talking about cheating – the unions oppose it totally.
Standarized testing the unions also oppose it totally because it has nothing whatsoever to do with school improvement which has been demonstrated repeatedly.
Testing is no help whatsoever because teachers do not receive a detailed analysis of the strengths and weakness’ of individual students and they don’t even get a score until the year is almost over. Late in the year they get a number. Big help.
Ask any teacher, testing is useless.
Seems that Ohio voters like unions a lot more than the governor thought!
http://www.educationnews.org/education-policy-and-politics/ohio-rejects-issue-2-as-republicans-accept-defeat/
Jo Anne and Nancy love research based policy so they will love this.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/research-doesnt-back-up-key-ed-reforms/2011/11/12/gIQAPRoWFN_blog.html
you call that research-what a joke!
This statement of Doug`s should send a shrill fear pain into every parent`s heart-it also speaks to the patheticness of the B.ED Training.
”
Testing is no help whatsoever because teachers do not receive a detailed analysis of the strengths and weakness’ of individual students and they don’t even get a score until the year is almost over. Late in the year they get a number. Big help.
Ask any teacher, testing is useless.”
no parent I know would pay him much attention at all Jo-Anne. They see through the spin and are onto it in a big way.
Doug’s not where the future of education lies. That rests with how well parents and individual teachers can work past the long arm of the educrats and get the job done despite them.
The future of education lies with parents being aware of where a school of their choice stands on the issue of cheating and second chances and having the ability to choose that school…,.or not.
What is the policy and consequence for cheating at the VIP Academy?
Sure Doug, unions speak of being against cheating, but their actions are quite different from their speaking voice.
Standardized testing, unions speak of being against cheating, but their actions are quite different from their speaking voice.
Below comments of Doug, speaks volumes on the training of teachers, and confirms my many experiences that teachers have weak training on the academic strengths and weaknesses of children.
“Testing is no help whatsoever because teachers do not receive a detailed analysis of the strengths and weakness’ of individual students and they don’t even get a score until the year is almost over. Late in the year they get a number. Big help. ”
Plenty of assessments out their that will determines the strengths and weaknesses of students. I did them myself, when I was younger, and there was not a single teacher that I had, grade school and high school, that did not know my academic strengths and weaknesses. But over the years, especially since the 90s, fewer and fewer teachers know the benefits of assessments that measures and unmasks the academic strengths and weaknesses of students. And on the flipped side, Doug’s comments infers that teaching are waiting for a detailed analysis of strengths and weaknesses from somewhere? The school board staff perhaps? It has been my experience they are the last people to know anything about an individual students, when their only looking at numbers, on unit tests, assignments, and other evaluations, and than make great leaps that this student is strong in science or this student is average in science. How would they know,perhaps the work is too easy for the student, and is scoring consistent 100s, or always in the 90s? Just looking at the numbers does not tell the strengths and weaknesses of students, but inferences can be determined by looking at the numbers, and confirmation of the strengths and weaknesses can be determined by other assessments that test for the strengths and weaknesses.
It is not complicated to sort out the students who will be getting into academic troubles, within the first few weeks of school. But when schools have to wait around for final grading, to determine strengths and weaknesses as the reason to take future actions, that is a system that is working for the adults within the system, and against the students. And the reason for long waiting lists for assessments within the SE departments, students cheating, copying other work, and other avoidance behaviour, so students can get back to what they like doing, and do it well.
My youngest was very good at the things that the board claim she was NOT very good at. The exact opposite of what I was stating, she was very good and even talented in some areas, but her reading and writing difficulties was impeding her strengths from blossoming. Even when the assessments were done, they still insist her strengths were her weaknesses, and therefore no amount of remediation in the 3 Rs would actual make any impact on weaknesses, since reading and writing was not her problem. Anybody, with a set of eyes, and ears, would state she has a problem with reading and writing, and not her knowledge based. Her work of the early days, are actually painful to see, especially when it was always the inability to expressed oneself in clear and legible of the written language. .
What is the policy and consequence for cheating at the VIP Academy?
One warning since they are shifting from an Asian culture with a different perspective. Second time repeat course or get kicked out. This is what I recommend for all.
Parents in Toronto have been choosing their public school 35 years. Makes little difference. Private schools with public money? Not happening.
“This statement of Doug`s , , , speaks to the patheticness of the B.ED Training”
I teach test design and scoring in teacher ed.
Let’s stop labelling, please.
Well tell me John, a child sitting in a SE math class for two years, average grade is at the 97 percent mark, for two years straight in a row. Now tell me what is the strengths and weaknesses of that child? Next tell me what are the usual responses for any school anywhere in Canada, on their strengths and weaknesses of this child, concerning math?
It is not trick questions I have posed, but a prefect example of how the education assessments and evaluations are designed to masked the true weaknesses, and emphasized the strengths in terms of knowledge. Rather easy to do in a SE math class, that for the most part are doing work two grade levels below. It is why, you will always find a couple of the whiz kids in SE classes, and are used as part of the spin regarding SE services and delivery of education.
Now my next set of questions, is the SE math student has been kicked up to a regular grade 6 class, with two sets of information. The evaluations given throughout the last two years, where final grades are 97 percent, and the board staff expertise in prediction, that the best the child can do is to maintain a 60 percents, if the child works hard. Now tell me, what would a teacher do with two sets of conflicting information?
What would a teacher do with two sets of conflicting information, with the additional information on no accommodations for this child?
What would a teacher do with the two sets of conflicting information, no accommodations and no access to the hard copy of the psycho-educational assessments of the student?
What would a teacher do with the two sets of conflicting information, no accommodations, no access to the psycho-educational assessments of the student, and new evidence of the last three math unit tests, scoring a 82 percent, 92 percent and a 84 percent respectively?
Final question, what would a teacher do, if a parent supplied the missing information, as well as additional information regarding the intensive tutoring taking place at the home environment, that would indeed answered all the questions that a teacher may have and/or have arisen in the first half of the school year?
If there is one thing that the public education excel in, is the labeling of students which is well taught at the education faculties. When conflicting information arises about students, the norm is the teachers will fall back on their training, labeled the student, but never the remediation needed to reach their full potential. One of the biggest reasons, is that teachers are not taught the correct knowledge at the teachers’ colleges, and the solutions are often based on a philosophy, but not on the actual science based on the research.
Joanne’s statement, ““This statement of Doug`s , , , speaks to the patheticness of the B.ED Training”
I agree with it, but I had to look up patheticness first.
Nounpatheticness (uncountable)
1.The state or quality of being pathetic.
[edit] Synonymspathos
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/patheticness
A new word, that is not in the current dictionaries.
A few teachers would agree with me on that one, in the local area. If I had not moved to re-teach and tutored my child, she would not be sitting in an advance math class, let alone taking academic English in grade 11. Suffice to say, my child was a recipient of public tax dollars that was spent wastefully by the education authorities, having her sit in an SE class for two years, getting a 97 percent. It is either the pathetic teacher training that is at fault or the darker reason of using students to create the optimum conditions to obtain increase funding? So which is it?
The word teacher is a label.
So is bureaucrat, educrat, advisor, consultant, specialist, designer, artist, progressive, regressive, evangelist, rock star, liberal, conservative, social democrat…..
and cheater.
A label to classify is one thing, but to labeled an individual student with the intentions of attaching the unseen whistles, and warning lights, to warn the adults this student is a threat to your well being, and should be told constantly that they are not good students, spewing out quick neon lighting of short bursts, adjectives to describe the condition.
Steven, the above is the voice of my youngest who came home as angry as a hoard of hornets barreling down on the first creature they see. Angry, because throughout the day, while she sold the tickets at the booth, give out correct change, and did it all in her head, about one a hour, an adult came up to her and question her ability to think, and why would anyone leave her in a position to do something she was not capable of doing? Blame that on the labels, that should come with warning for parents, who have children that need the label to get the help. What schools don’t tell the students or the parents for that matter, is enduring the comments of people who think it is okay to seen others through the labels, and in my child’s case, DUMB, SLOW and whatever adjectives of the first two words.
What can you call it, under the law? Not racist, not sexist, not really a bigot? But lucky thing, my youngest has me for her mother, and she is well trained in some great come back lines, and to watch for opportunities to put them in their place. And that she did, done with as much grace and civility, until she came home, to blow up in the privacy of her home.
It is not the labels but what lies behind the labels, to have staying power among the community that always radiates toxic fumes for passerbys to pick up and feed off the negative connotations of the labeling. It is why, when she does finally graduate, reaches her goals although many think it cannot be done, there will be a surprise in the mail for all who called her names, did not believe in her, inviting them to her graduation after 8 years of post-secondary, and it will be pay back time. There will be some upset people who will have their feathers ruffled, but well worth it. In the hope that they might reflect on their actions, and learned a thing or two about learning. Another set of invitations, are for the people who supported her, which will include most of the teachers she had, but absolutely no one at the board level.
Label to classify? What would John Ralston Saul have done in his lectures on “corporatists” – refer to them as nice guys when describing their impact on contemporary society?
No one needs to be a grammar cop here.
Being critical of education policy is another matter.
I’m not referring to the labeling of children at all.
“labels” are exactly what the system does best. It’s their claim to fame so to speak. Consider it discussion in the language that we parents have learned best from our experiences alongside our kids as they made there way through the public education system THICK with labels.
Do you train teachers to test for absent or weaK phonological awareness?
Teachers need to know this-this is confirmed science!
Once they learn it,they can convey it to students.If teacher`s college taught them their phonemes as well as the pictures the phonemes make.
At a conference in the U.S. the team of the NICHD said we were 15 years behind in implementing confirmed research-it is now 2011-barely a step forward in Canada.We are still letting those kids rot and we hide behind labels-what we should be doing is delivering instruction that saves them.
The public education system likes to hide behind labels in order to facillitate the growth of the bureaucracy. This is why parents get frustrated when edubabble is used in report cards, pseudo – community inclusion programming, school board policy, centralization …
The fact that we went from a “School Closure” process to a “School Utilization” process speaks volumes as to why labels should come with warnings.
Debate over what qualifies as cheating will be moot when testing is no longer applicable – unfortunatly, that seems the direction the public system is heading towards.
Nobody in their right mind makes policy decisions from anecdotes especially from an interested party.
Evidence by anecdote should be considered, but as has been noted, you can’t make policies on that basis. The challenge is to make policy that
– meets easily the needs of the may
while providing opportunities for individuals to benefit.
Not easy
– not easy in medicine, law, agriculture, or teaching.
Can we do better? yes.
Must we? Of course
Will it be easy? no
One key to sort out the research
hire better school principals
since they set the tone for their school.
Not the only factor behind student success, but easier to work with.
For example, admin
– set school tone
– hire good teachers
– help teachers get better
Nancy has suggested another thread to pursue.
Many stories about schools
and other institutions
stand out because they speak of injustice done to individuals
– patients, clients, seniors, accused, students
While these cannot be the basis of major policy
– unless they represent large numbers of people which they sometimes may-
they ought to be addressed.
A useful thread might be to explore and learn from examples in which parents who feel their kids have been ripped off by the system- and it does happen-
got a measure of justice.
And
how to help parents who are immigrant and/or who work all the time in jobs to support the family (part of my childhood story) learn what they need to learn to support their students
and
if individual stories represent a larger reality
how does this get addressed in policy.
The one shining example I know is the development of inclusive special education policies throughout Canada and the US
largely begun by parents spurred on by the civil and female rights movements in the 1960s and 1970s.
Yes it took more than a decade, but in the end it was successful.
One direction- better schools with teachers working closely with community and with school support staff.
It really does take a village to educate a child.
That is very true about principals and their knowledge base. But here again, and noted, often decisions are made on the political spectrum and not on the welfare of the students. What is good for the principal and the school, to keep the school board off their backs. Works rather effective for parents, who are not getting satisfaction at the school level, by bypassing the school board, and ring the ministry or state it in writing is even better. The only way that I succeeded to change the school’s practices concerning my child. Quite content to defend their practices, even though other evidence suggests it was hindering my child’s education, as well as learning how to be a slacker.
Now the questions I posed, the answers was based on how complicated it is and the complexity of the decisions being made for students and their assessments. How difficult is the job, when crucial information is missing from the student’s file, that would not only increase their understanding of the said student, but also create the conditions to probe for new knowledge that is lacking to understand the new material. I am not sure what you mean by anecdote, but a psycho-educational assessment is far from being anecdotal in its nature. Rather it gives a detailed report on the strengths and weaknesses of a student, and how the strengths and weaknesses interplay with one another, masking each other, and points to the direction to remediate the weaknesses. Teachers are not well verse on how to read a psycho-educational assessment, unless one went to the same school of hard knocks that I went to, and took approximately 12 hours learning all about them. The information within the psycho-educational reports are far more valuable to a teacher into acquiring a deeper understanding when it comes to evaluation of a student’s work. What has been often thought of poor work, is really the core deficits impacting the student’s work, and not a deficit in their character.
The price of a psycho-educational assessment runs anywhere between $2500 to $4000 for one assessment in the private market. Yet, the public education system and its policies, written or the unwritten rules chose to cherry picked the information from reports of many different types of assessment derive from the private sector to the more relaxed reports of students acquiring special skills such as the Saturday morning activities at a computer club or art class, and carries out the practice of only giving teachers, and this may include the principal giving them generalized information. I call it keeping the teachers in the dark, and it is another game the educrats plays well at. Not only that, the information contained within the psycho-educational assessment is kept hidden from the teachers who are the best people to take the information and make decisions that best fit the student’s learning needs, as well as to consider when evaluating the student; it is the expenditures of dollars spent on obtaining an assessment, and not using the assessment to create the optimal learning conditions for the child!
I only know too well the complexity dealing with my child who has the everyday garden variety LD, and what knowledge must be learned, Really tough starting at zero knowledge, compared to a teacher has and their acquired knowledge. But along the way, I discovered and concluded in so many different aspects, that the private agendas and self-serving interests of those within the public education system, are the ones that need to change, and not the cheating policies to second chances and no zeroes. Confirmed again today, where I listen to the CBC’s The Current program where Dorretta Wilson was a guest. Now the call is no report cards, in the far off la-la land of BC, that brought Canadians a hearing at the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court of Canada, on the Moore case, deciding for the most part, if the public education system only have to provide the desk and a place for the student, but not the remediation for their reading, writing and numeracy deficits. I wonder what Ontario is thinking, two book-end provinces trying to once again to change the landscape without much thought on the implications of policies. Will Ontario join the pack, and come up with something more drastic, or will they grab the suggestion of the educrat, a former teacher, a former superintendent, and currently a consultant for the BC public education system, to have parents take notes when talking to the teachers and what the teachers advises the parents to do. I had to laugh at that one, when I am taking notes it is usually to note things and make the teacher signed it, so the teacher could not come back later, and said they said no such thing. As for advice from the teachers in the early day, there is only so many different ways of saying how polite and the other character traits of what makes a good student, but only one way of stating if a student has the comprehension skills, and the other skills to do grade 3 work with some ease and might do more to explain the low achievement , since the teacher is lacking vital information to make an informed evaluation of the students. Ditto for the second chances and no zeroes policy, where no kid will admit to cheating because they can’t comprehend the text, or are poor readers or have to cheat, because they cannot expressed themselves in writing. Although, I have only seen top students cheat, but I am sure the low achievers do their fair share of cheating at some stage in their schooling.
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2011/11/14/whither-report-cards-in-bc/
Also,it`s not just students that cheat-
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/story/2010/09/21/ontario-schools-standardized-testing-eqao.html
You’re right of course Jo-Anne, and I also believe that “cheating” doesn’t have to be exhibited in the area of testing or measurement either. Cheating can come in the form of manipulating those labels John dislikes so much – just ask any parent who has come up against a system about how when the system turns its back on complaint – doesn’t matter what the issue – let’s say bullying, that THAT isn’t cheating a student?
Cheating? Passing a student to the next grade when that student isn’t ready. Cheating the student.
Making the assumption that a standard yearly curriculum has been taught….when it hasn’t. Cheating the student. Sadly it’s usually the teacher in the next grade that’s cheated in this case as well as the student.
Asking parents to pay for curriculum material? Cheating in Ontario..shouldn’t be happening any more.
There are lots of ways to cheat the system, if it’s allowed that is.
Nancy`s recent posting is I hope going to be a new topic.
I call it the turf wars and passing the buck.
Disciplines and separate funding in the public school board sector-Psychology-Speech Pathology and Teaching.
That`s why kids stay stuck-the label gets educators off the hook-now there is a label for student failure.The first two mention get paid to test and label-and paid for that-and write lovely cut and paste reports that get filed and the school gets more money-the kid is now in” special ed”.
John Myers says that inclusion is a sympathetic policy-do you think a diagnosis of any kind without active intervention is sympathetic?
There is a dark hole for students and their parents after the label is hung and a whole machination that exists to sift money to and to justify.
exactly right Joanne!
I said that inclusion is a “shining example” of what happens when parents lobby for change.
the phrase “sympathetic policy” does not appear in my post
Inclusion is a road on the way to hell, paved on good intentions. Some of the LD parents would suggest, and it is a line not of my making, but other LD parents. Our own Canadian LD university students can also say a lot of things that inclusion is not. It certainly doesn’t lived up to its billing, of the literature coming from the public education files. It does cheat students from reaching their full potential, no matter who the student is. It really does a number on the students who are the high achievers, who end up becoming the peer mentors for less capable students, instead of being allow to advance in their studies. I wonder what the educrats think, if the conversations of kids outside of the classroom were recorded? All the good intentions is paving the way to a society that is intolerant of others and their differences. Try telling that to the blob, who is more intent to eschew the differences, and celebrate the commonality of people. Cheating the students that the differences is what makes each human being unique, and the commonality of people is to share the differences. it was real tough to teach my child in the environment of an inclusive classroom, that treasures commonality and eschews differences.
At the same time, the labels are applied, and everyone pretends they do not see the labels, except the children always sees the labels. One of the things my youngest is looking forward to, after grade 12, an escape from the labels. that their peers see so readily, compared to the adults within the education system.
As for the CBC article, on teachers cheating on the EQAO, the teachers are suspended with a harsher penalty as the whistle blowers are, compared to teachers conducting themselves in less than moral ways, that some might say borders on being abusive. No suspension, just a change in schools, and of course keeping the parents in the dark. I was looking at the comments posted on the CBC article, and I wonder if any of the blob actually reads the comments, and the cries that lay behind the words. Parents are not happy campers, and have duly noted the hypocrisy of the public education system. As well as the end results, cheating the students from reaching their full potential, as the EQAO testing and other like testing, the hard copies are another set of missing information, that would dramatically put meaning into the dry numbers of the individual students, for the teachers. Meaning, that leads to timely changes of practices to benefit the students. If the hard copies of EQAO and CRTs, were in each student file, as well as a hard copy to the parents, the deep conversations taking place between parents and teachers would be happening on the state of the 3 Rs.
As well as questions, questioning the curriculum and outcomes. In one comment, ” For a child in Grade 3 what would be the purpose of understanding Venn Diagrams?
Yes, they teach abstract thinking and yes they do teach data management and logic.
With all of the issues we have in our educational system concerning children who can’t think critically and can’t add two numbers without the use of a calculator, is it really important to spend time doing Venn diagrams. There are many better ways of teaching the same topic.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/story/2010/09/21/ontario-schools-standardized-testing-eqao.html
Cheating the students of the solid foundation that is crucial to think in the abstract, logically, and critical thinking. As for Venn diagrams, I could said lots about the usefulness of Venn diagrams in math, when a number line does wonders, as well as to learn strategies that will keep the student on target for years to come in math. Why venn diagrams is a topic on the EQAO, is beyond me, but I am sure the blob had prepared statements in advance, to ward off the attacks of the few that dare to question them.
Nancy do you know the meaning of SCREED?
Of course I do, but it would be nice to see the reasons why you think that, as well as to discussed the issues, rather than name calling. The cheating policy has to go, as well as other policies that end up cheating the students from reaching their full potential.
A dream of mine, that I will no longer see high school teachers teaching the in and outs of the mechanics of writing, that should have been taught in grade school. When the education system fails to ensure that all students have the skills, the tools and the knowledge needed to do the next level, so teachers that come after, has an easier job tending to the learning needs of their students. One thing, that I do know Doug, teachers are very thankful and grateful, despite all the difficulties that I had, to bring my youngest up to snuff, and the foundation skills as well to a level, to where the teachers can clearly see the weaknesses and strengths of my youngest child, and work towards improving both. An ongoing project, and these days I am mostly the cheerleader, and taking care of the little things that really matter when it comes to achievement of my child. And it is not the SEC factors at all, and in my opinion are secondary to the school, its environment and the policies.
The Unions and the state of public education in BC-Globe and Mail today
“That is, until the government comes to its senses and caves in to the union’s demands, which some have estimated could cost the province well north of $2-billion. Good luck with that one.
Right now, however, the focus is on report cards because it’s that time of year when students and parents would usually be seeing the first meaningful one. Because of provincial statutory obligations, schools have been ordered to
send them home even if they’re mostly empty. Union president Susan Lambert, meantime, has made it clear she feels report cards are not essential and, ultimately, a waste of a teacher’s time.
I couldn’t disagree more.
I understand that many teachers hate filling out report cards. And that many of them question the use of vague, mundane and often meaningless language (“Geoffrey is performing above the widely held expectations for a boy his age”). And yes, there are poorly designed report cards still being used in some public school systems. But I would argue that even ones that simply contain a child’s grades are still valuable.”
there is more…
Our “Do Over” Education Watch was re-awakened on May 31, 2012 with breaking news out of Edmonton, Alberta.
Veteran Edmonton Physics teacher Lynden Dorval was suspended for defending academic standards. Giving zeros for failing to submit work was once accepted student evaluation practice, but no more under the current “do over” system.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/offbeat/story/2012/05/31/edmonton-teacher-zeros-sheppard.html
For two years, he’s been resisting the new Edmonton school system evaluation system that separates academic achievement from behaviour when it comes to evaluation. In other words, failing to submit work or skipping class projects is now routinely “written off” by teachers.
Doesn’t anyone in the Edmonton public system worry about the declining productivity levels of graduates? Do they ever talk to employers?
With 35 years of teaching experience, he simply could not accept the “dumbing down” of high school education. He’s already become a hero to many across Canada.
Awesome post and comments. The cheating and no zeros bit is just significantly hitting our board starting in September 2013. I’ve written more recently here, here, and here.
[…] system Student Evaluation policy remains a total mystery to most parents and to tuned-in high school students. Over the past two decades, provincial […]