The line is so familiar that it practically rings in my ears: “I’m a teacher and we are not allowed to have opinions.” Over the past couple of years, bumping into regular teachers while walking down the street, signing books at Chapters Bookstore, or standing in a check-out line, I hear that same refrain. Our K-12 provincial school systems all purport to encourage students to ask higher-order questions, to act creatively (out of the box), and, at times, to think critically. Why – I wonder — does that not extend to their teachers ?
CBC Radio’s Maritime Magazine series, “Mind the Gap,” hosted by Pauline Dakin, was one recent attempt to discover what teachers really think about the state of the Canadian public education system. A January 29, 2012 segment entitled “Teachers Edition” provided a rare glimpse into the real, unvarnished opinions of two rather brave Nova Scotia teachers. The show followed two previous segments, including one featuring top education bureaucrats Carole Olsen (Halifax Regional School Board) and Karen Branscombe (Moncton School District). http://www.cbc.ca/maritimemagazine/mind-the-gap/2012/01/27/mind-the-gap—teachers-edition/
One of the two teachers, Margaret Coady, a 31-year veteran teaching at Bayview Education Centre, Port Hood, NS, broke with convention. When asked to respond to the Chief Superintendents’ session on “Closing the Gap” in student learning, Marg did not mince any words: “Real teachers do not have time for such verbiage.”
Over the next half-hour, Marg Coady and another forthright teacher from the Halifax Regional Board opened-up and began “talking out of school.” Both teachers confirmed that a serious gap exists between the policy-makers and classroom teachers. New teachers, they reported, feel tremendous pressure to “push them all through and to meet the outcomes.” Their sage advice: close the door, forget the mandates and “trust yourself as an educator.”
Cutting through the usual “EduSpeak,” Marg Coady offered a few priceless gems: “There’s so much to cover that it’s become watered down.” “We see a lot of social advancement.” “There is not an inclination to see that children complete their homework.” “The one-size-fits-all approach won’t work because all kids are different.” “What I’d like to see is more autonomy(for teachers) in the classroom.” “We need honest assessments (of how we are performing).”
What can be done to fix the situation? Believe it or not, Marg was courageous enough to actually answer the question. “We have to erase the degrees of separation between parents, boards, unions, and students.” “Teachers live in hermetically-sealed (environments). Sometimes I feel that they do not even know who is minding the store.”
Such honesty, openness, and candour are all-too-rare in the surprisingly closed world of Canadian public education. Our provincial and territorial K-12 school systems have an estimated 360,000 teachers (2005), certified by faculties of education and entrusted with the education of our nation’s children. Among this class of professionals, it might be reasonable to expect hearing a multitude of different voices on the most critical issues in education.
Stepping outside the box is not without its risks. Most school boards remain very hierarchical and climbing up the ladder, from probationary teacher to principal to superintendent too often means mastering the “edubabble,” looking the other way, and giving up your opinions. Careerists know that the surest way of plateauing is by speaking your mind outside of the staff room. Voicing views counter to the teachers’ union is career-ending for most teachers. Over three decades, I can cite dozens of personal examples, many of whom ended-up being outstanding teachers in independent schools.
Sincere, well-intentioned public school educators like Toronto’s Stephen Hurley are to be commended for trying to open a few doors and cross the Hadrian’s Wall of education. His Blog, Teaching Out Loud, is a bright spot on the horizon and Stephen actually talks to education reformers of a different stripe. After 27 years in education, he’s becoming more conscious of the “degrees of separation” and is venturing outside the “echo chamber.” http://teachingoutloud.org/
Today, while preparing this post, Stephen Hurley’s latest offering appeared and I experienced a kind of epiphany – We were both addressing the same issue, each safely ensconced in our own educational silos. Each of us was reaching across the divide, attempting to incite a little cross-boundary discussion of educational matters. On his Blog, Teaching Out Loud, he not only acknowledged the existence of the Society for Quality Education, he conceded that jumping into the”shark infested waters” of the SQE Blog might have had some beneficial effects. That’s a start! Perhaps more voyeuristic, risk-taking educators will follow.
Talking across the divide is absolutely critical to finding solutions to the challenges facing 21st century public education. Looking southward, we can see a tragic example of an “Education War” where the combatants have a take-no-prisoners philosophy to the detriment of students, families, and schools. Having said that, the policy divide here is significant and we have a tendency to simply paper over the cracks and to pretend that a broad public consensus favours the golden mean or the status quo.
The terms of engagement are critical to pursuing a rapproachement. Peter Brimelow’s 2003 book, The Worm in the Apple, might be a good place to start because he actually addresses this issue, pointing out that the core interests of teachers and unions can be radically different than those of parents and students. http://www.harpercollins.com/browseinside/index.aspx?isbn13=9780060096625
When the ice is broken, that discussion will have to tackle the major conundrum that tends to derail such diplomatic initiatives. Simply pouring more money into the system without any checks-and-balances is a non-starter. Getting down to brass tacks will lead us inevitably to a serious discussion of five fundamental matters: the role of achievement testing in assuring quality; giving parents more freedom in choosing schools; reforming salary scales to recognize meritorious teaching; removing principals (and superintendents) from the teachers’ union; and recognizing teaching as an essential service with free collective bargaining leading to arbitration or “final offer selection” Getting to Yes will involve a little positional bargaining and actually confronting the familiar stumbling blocks. http://www.aims.ca/site/media/aims/TakeBack.pdf
Why are the vast majority of Canadian teachers so reluctant to speak out of school ? What explains the “group think” afflicting the official voices of public education? What has happened to muffle or silence dissenting voices? Most importantly, how can we seize the opportunity afforded by recent overtures?
Why are teachers so reluctant to speak out of school?
There’s a culture of fear woven through out the system from the top on down and back up again.
Likely drilled in to new teachers beginning with the 2 week “what your union can do for you” introduction to the teaching faculty.
Individual teachers need to be supported from both the outside and inside for speaking up.
The teacher union “zealots”(not my word) make darn sure that individual teachers remain thankful for all they have been given and equally labelled if they chose to speak out.
I think in a school board environment they are afraid to lose their jobs.In privacy,they tell us what goes on and they`re not allowed to veer from the MOE mandates or school board mandates.
In independent schools,private,First Nations,they speak openly.There is no union and they are allowed to speak and think freely.
My field of passion as everyone who reads SQE and Educhatter knows is teaching teachers how to teach 95% of students to read,spell and write by training teachers how to do it.
They embrace you and then speak about how they only knew conflicting theories and no one told them about the conclusive research and “how to do it”.
They will state that by grade 5,there are so many levels in one classroom for literacy,math,writing that it becomes a depressing place,daily torture,to meet the demands of the curriculum.
I agree,Stephen Hurley is more open than he was a few months ago and the music analogy of scaffolded learning is starting to evoke some possibilities he hadn`t otherwise considered.
I hope teachers blog anonymously on your posting.
I`m going to see if some educators I know will contribute.
One more thing,had we listened to the teachers,even such a famous one as Jen Chall from Harvard,we would have known that whole language was a disaster 30 years ago.
That`s a perfect example of how teachers are not asked if chosen curriculums are effective for their students.
Same with math,so many have been so upset for years with the lack of arithmetic in the first three grades that catapults into math illiteracy in the years that follow.
Your comment about private school teachers “feeling free to speak openly” is absolutely false. Many private school teachers feel much more afraid to speak their mind because of the fear of being fired, or being demonized by parents. The union is not to blame for this particular issue, unfortunately, as the fear of speaking out generally comes from above, rather than from our colleagues. Obviously this issue varies on a school by school basis.
However, we also feel some significant peer pressure (whether unionised or not) to not speak out when we see our colleagues using inappropriate techniques or behaving badly with our students. Just like the child in the class who won’t snitch on their classmates, teachers feel a similar obligation to their peers. It’s part of the reason why we are “mandated” reporters of child abuse rather than “recommended” reporters.
The most important part (in my opinion) of both Paul and Stephen’s posts is that we need to be more willing to speak to people who are likely to disagree with us. We need to find some of the common ground between the progressive educators and the more traditionalist educators, so that we can actually talk to each other about education again. When you discard someone else’s insight into education simply because you do not agree with their ideology, it is really a shame.
are you speaking as a private school teacher dwees. Some clarification please.
I know many a private school educators who are actually consulted by their administration and are fully aware of what they’re buying into when they accept employment at such a facility.
Same too with parents who choose private education. Actually the fact that teachers can be fired from private schools makes them attractive to some.
I think there’s a very distinct difference between teachers tattletaling on each other and offering constructive systemic criticism. Why stop at methods and instructional techniques? I think teachers would have lots of support if they felt safe and secure enough in their jobs to offer comment and speak out against/for their systems and their administrations.
You do know that teachers do talk to parents about these things on the Q.T. right?
I am speaking as a private school teacher. I feel comfortable speaking against the grain of my administration (at least occasionally) and disagreeing with my colleagues, but I have spoken to many private school teachers who feel absolutely constrained by their administration (or the parents of their school) as to what they can speak about. Many private school teachers are terrified of being victimized by the parents of the school, and so make an effort to say nothing controversial.
You are one of those educators, David, who does operate in both educational worlds. Your international teaching experience gives you an even wider range of perspective.
Your comment about teachers being constrained in Canadian independent schools surprised me. Front rank independent schools provide teachers with great scope and respect their autonomy, recognizing that most of them chose independent education for the freedom to teach without specific compliance mandates. It’s both a strength and a weakness of the independent schools.
Some of the third tier schools and for-profits are run like fiefdoms, where teachers do live in fear of losing their jobs. I’ve seen that too over a career spanning three decades. Single proprietorship, private venture schools do tend to be that way.
You are, in that sense, accurate in your assessment when one looks at the totality of the private sector in education.
What I was referring to was the large cohort of public school teachers serving in happy exile. As one of my former colleagues once put it: “We’re enjoying ourselves even though we know we inhabit an expensive parlour car on a railway siding.”
I think there is a “fear” factor here. From issues of online learning, teacher assessment, unions, to school boards and school closures, teachers remain the “quietest”. I would go even futher in saying teacher’s spouses also clam up on issues when the fear of reprisal is indirectly apparent. Like a virus it spreads throughout a community with speed and effectiveness. Dissent comes with a price if one is employed in public education. There are exceptions, but not many. Michael Zwagstra was a breath of fresh air for parents.
If one were to truely analyse education from the perspective of power and control, which many of these facinating blogs have done, one would have every right to question the service of education to our youth, not to mention the loss of potential for teachers in the classroom.
Sure teachers are conspicuous by their absence on issues, but can we blame them?
In the accommodation reviews that I’ve followed here in Ontario Steven, school communities are told that teachers may not speak up on the issues of closure…..at least not in a public forum.
In Ontario what usually happens is that the board admin. that’s charged with conducting an accommodation review will meet with teachers privately.
Too bad too because they are very much a part of our small/rural communities and often have their profession issues to consider and also have their own kids in our schools, so have parental issues also.
It’s not only at the local level that teachers are required to remain silent. I recall being invited to several consultations. One in particular that was conducted on Safe Schools. Among the group were many stakeholder groups representing parents, community organizations, principals, school boards and teachers. All contributed to the discussion that day except for the teachers who, when they had a chance to be at the same table as all of the others and share their viewpoints told us all that they were there in protest and would say nothing.
In private schools, David..(at least) teachers are consulted.
On Ideological difference: Please-ideology is everything-just like recipes for risottos and souffles fail or succeed…So do do the right or wrong ideologies that (that may)corrupt generations with flawed thinking and brainwashing (Take, for example, the difference between Ken Goodman and Keith Stanovich), (Edited for clarity)
At the top of most boards there is a philosophical consensus regarding education. Underlings that speak out to the press or at public meetings will still have a job but it is a career limiting move for sure. At least they have a union to protect them. Can you imagine a teacher from Upper Canada College going to the press and saying that UCC actually is delivering inferiour education for whatever reason? They would be out before sundown. The idea that their is free speech in private schools is a joke.
Even among the management team at boards I have seen “jr” admin offer an opinion and been told the next day in the office of senior admin that “the opinion of the senior admin at a meeting IS the opinion of administration. If you don’t like that we can arrange for you to be a classroom teacher once again”
The union itself does not gag members it simply reminds anyone outside the union that teachers who voice a contrary opinion spaek for themselves but the official voice of teaching is the people with “a mandate” to speak on behalf of the collective. Teachers themselves sometimes shun the outspoken anti-union teacher like the Amish. They are often junior and don’t yet understand that in every round of bargaining, management tables clauses to make their life miserable “more minutes teaching, larger classes, more coverage for absent teachers” and the union tables clauses to make their life better, such as the opposite of those listed. They soon catch on that the union is not “someone else” the union is them. Management is the group to fear. The union is often called in to “defend” the free speech rights of the members.
Paul some of those ideas are a total anathema to teachers, “essential services” in nonsense. Essential service was created to cover areas where real “physical” harm could take place, police, fire ambulance etc. Various shades of right wingers now want to include “inconveniences” transporttion, TTC Air Canada, etc. If Life and Limb is not at stake there is no essential service. Final offer selection does not work any better than any other system. Totally wide open free collective bargaining is the only way to do collective bargaining. Fetters simply cause distortions.
You can see where achievement tests are going with Allison redford in Alberta and Jerry Brown in California wanting to phase them out as useless. NCLB is a totally test driven reform that is the joke of the USA and its creators now have egg all over their faces.
The best way to recognize excellent teaching is with promotions but the same mentality that proposes them wants to flatten the pyramid. Merit Pay is the useless idea that won’t die no matter how many times it is totally discredited. See Larry Cuban for its history of failure. See the Vanderbilt study. The system cannot afford the kind of money it takes to motivate teachers beyond their present work load. Bloomberg tried it in NYC, another failure.
Personally I never understand why, as each and every reform from the right is tried and fails to move the yard sticks even one centimeter, the philosophy itself is never reviewed.
If we actually want a high quality education system in Canada that radically increases our human capital, creates much higher level of equity and human happiness then there is no place for standardized testing, private schools, merit pay, infringements on free collective bargaining, too much choice at the expense of equity, religion, or old fashioned fuddy duddy ideas in curriculum and pedagogy.
They are all barriers to excellence.
You make no mention of Albert Shanker, Doug. Yet he took risks and spoke out with rare conviction. Today’s teacher union leaders pale in comparison. You know, full well, that Shanker was the Michail Gorbachev of American teacher unionism. It’s an absolute tragedy that the current leadership has renounced his legacy. My guess is that CTF presidents like Mary Lou Donnelly and her progeny and possibly the CEA’s Ron Canuel have never heard of him.
You are a master at raising red herrings. Let me ask you this – Why – in 18 years at UCC – did I never witness anyone being censured for anything controversial said in the public realm? You may have forgotten that Stephen Leacock, Robertson Davies, Stanley B. Ryerson, Dan Heap, Michael Wilson, and Brendan Fraser all went to that school. What other school would allow all of the graduating class a two-minute leaving class Assembly speech without any real restrictions? Faculty members who spoke out were revered and, as Vice Principal, provided me with my biggest challenges. It was, without doubt, the freest and most open forum of expression anywhere in education. Look elsewhere for an example of an institution of mealy-mouthed inhabitants!
You, of all people, should know who really cares about improving public education. None of us are paid to advocate reforms, nor are you. The real problem lies elsewhere — with people who do not even believe the nonsense they are spouting. Most of the airtime in education is filled by such people and rank-and-file teachers know it– That’s why they tune-out most staff meetings and PD in-service days. The Ed Camp Movement has it half-right. Sooner or later, the brighter ones, like Stephen Hurley, will realize that substance,content, and effective schools do matter in education.
Terrific post Paul. One thing we’ve forgotten about your original post is that you used the term “Muffled Voices” when referring to teachers. That, to me indicates that, in fact, teachers ARE saying something to someone but that either we can’t hear it or they’re being ignored by those who they’re whispering to.
Parents know it too. They have that in common with those muffle-voiced educators.
We need more teachers like Stephen Hurley who are willing to self-examine because they care.
A teacher in the public system can’t criticize a peer because they could be grieved. Fear is a bad motivator.
Why not surprise Stephen Hurley by posting on his Blog? Just to show that we are open to the possibility of free discussion…
He’s looking to Get Outside the Box, so why not respond to the invitation? Consider this overture:
“Although SQE advocates positions and perspectives on public education that don’t often resonate with the way I think, I visit because it allows me to have my own views challenged by being exposed to the strong opinions of others. I’m not going to go as far as saying that the SQE perspective is unbiased and completely open. As a matter of fact, there are times when I feel like I’m walking into a brick wall. But, I’m sure that SQE members could (and do) say the same thing about my thinking.
But brick walls almost always cause me to stop, examine my own ideas a little more carefully, consider the assumptions that ground those ideas, and move forward. I’m not about to take out membership in the SQE organization, but I am about to suggest that you may want to wander over and take a look at some alternative perspectives. For some, the water may seem a little chilly at first, but others may feel immediately at home.”
Read on at: http://teachingoutloud.org/
Comment:
So far, it’s an echo chamber of one because the school bell does not ring for another few hours. Give him credit, he cares enough to post thoughtful commentaries outside of school hours. Besides, even Aunt Malkin and the indefatigable Doretta seem to know when to take a rest from the modern day equivalent of the Thousand Years War.( Smile)
The idea that one is free to criticize a private school, not as a student but as a member of the staff, well I will just ask people to think about it. I don’t think they would last 10 minutes.
There is no will on behalf of teachers’ unions to change because they see no need to change whatsoever. BTW most of the big provincial teachers unions think CTF is a hole in the doughnut especially since Heather-jane left. Many are not members.
I outlined the non-starters such as FOS, testing, merit pay etc. There are some small forms of merit pay that seem reasonable to progressives. One would be isolation pay, paying a premium to get good teachers to reserve schools, another would be pay for EC activities, a third might be a premuium for very low achieving schools. Still, they need to be NEGOTIATED, not imposed.
I think the reform movement believes there is this seething mass of conservative teachers dying to break free of the union and the boards and denounce both for a laundry list of conservative grievances. Nothing could be further from the truth. They do believe that some things boards, and MOE to are insane but that would include EQAO testing, highly prescriptive curriculum “Overall Expectations and specific expectations”. Fullan promised through McGuinty, “pressure and support” teachers would say “lots of pressure where is the support.”
Classroom teahers themselves, never mind the union, support the kinds of progressive reforms I have laid out many times, – smaller classes, ELP, no testing, more resources.
When PS teachers look at the reform agenda there is literally nothing in there that attracts any support.
Can Canada do better than today? Yes somewhat. How? Ape Finland.
Why Are Teachers So Reluctant to Speak out of School?
_________________________________________________
Fear.
Issues arise from time to time but most of the speaking out they have to do is brought first to the union meeting. If it is a school matter the local school union president speaks for the staff. If it is a board wide issue the district leader speaks for the members. if it is a province wide issue the provincial president speaks for the members. The union handles most of this.
This means the member can speak out fearlessly.
That sounds more like damage control to me – opinions filtered by interpretation, practices and union valuation. Subject to spokespeople intent on maintaining their Blob.
Sorry Doug, but fear is a big factor.
On progressive issues the union generally agrees. On “reform” reactionary issues any member would have difficulty getting support because few agree. There are only a tiny tiny group of anti union members. Some tried to start a group under Lou d’Amour after a big strike thewy didn’t agree with. Most just call them “the scabs”.
“On progressive issues the union generally agrees.”
Doug
———————————————————————————————–
Career gouging.
Teachers don’t speak out because thy are supressed by the system.
it’s not damage control as much as indoctrination Steven. Maybe both.
Fear drives silence in education, silence is often misunderstood for agreement.
The only teachers who go to union meetings are the union representatives. How can the members speak out fearlessly when they aren’t even there!
There is a union meeting in every school after the staff meeting. It has about 99 percent attendance school issues are brought there. If the rest of the staff does not agree it goes nowhere. If they do agee it goes to the district. And so on to the provincial level.
BTW a grivance is a violation of the CA. Not just some irritation.
1. Career suicide
2. Already public negative image of teachers
3. Taught to sugarcoat realities
4.Fear of inadvertently breaking the confidentially policy.
5. No control over policy but to follow it
thanks babs.
I think that if teachers began to speak out you’d find a VERY supportive public behind you.
Parents and muffled teachers have lots in common.
“The teacher union “zealots”(not my word) make darn sure that individual teachers remain thankful for all they have been given and equally labelled if they chose to speak out.”
The union does not support new teachers. Until a teacher has passed his/her probationary contract, the union cannot help them even though they collect dues. A teacher who is rejected on probation cannot “grieve” the decision. That means that a teacher who is rejected on probation has no union support. Blaming the union for the silence of new teachers is a red herring. The school board can choose not to renew the contract of an incompetent teacher or of an exceptionally good teacher and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
The union does not silence new teachers. Fear of losing one’s job is the culprit.
“I am a teacher, and we are not allow to have opinions”
“I am a parent, and we are not allow to have opinions, or teach our children differently.”
” I am the local expert in all things technology, yet I am not allow to passed my knowledge to the children inside the red brick school house.”
After reading, it got me thinking about six degrees of separation, pseudo-relationships and patterns. Odd collection sifting inside my mind, being tossed about, but knowing my mind and the nightmare experience I have had dealing with an education system who pays no mind to the early struggles in the 3 Rs, I had to pay attention to it.
Six Degrees of Separation:
“Documentary unfolding the science behind the idea of six degrees of separation. Originally thought to be an urban myth, it now appears that anyone on the planet can be connected in just a few steps of association. Six degrees of separation is also at the heart of a major scientific breakthrough; that there might be a law which nature uses to organize itself and that now promises to solve some of its deepest mysteries.”
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/six-degrees-of-separation/
I am afraid the education network is an unhealthy system, and if the education system was part of nature, Mother Nature would have long ago destroy the parts that was causing an unset in her balance. Nature always strives for balance, in the same way the patterns of Mother Nature, is also found in the networks. Within the network of the education system, many different hubs. The hub of learning, of teaching, and many sub-systems of hubs within hubs. However, there is no balance within the hubs and throughout the public education system. The education system network, is one sick puppy.
Network theory defined by a paper from the OECD. Pretty graphs, to get the gist, and how network math theory has the potential to transformed sick puppies into healthy puppies, but first the diagnostic on the sick puppy, that is designed to shut down opinion, and anyone that is not acting and behaving in the approved protocols of the hubs and the sub-systems connecting to the main hubs.
Click to access 41858618.pdf
The theory of networks, is present in the education system, but the problem is, it is a waste of time, when the random events that occurs in all networks are ignored for the most part. Random events such as a parent walking into a parent-teacher interview, debating on the merits of the current math curriculum that should have been tossed out a long time ago. Or the random event of a school ignoring the daily verbal bullying of a student. So all the good stuff being done at the present time such as learning networks, the wads of funding necessary is a complete waste of time and effort, when the public education system is designed to shut down diverse opinion, by threatening to shut down the social networks. Teachers do not want to speak out, for good reason, nor do parents want to speak out for good reasons. How many parents are banned from the school premises and what are the reasons. As a parent, I made sure I never raise my voice, smile while I was seething in anger why the school board kept denying education services in remediation of the 3 Rs.
In one paper, exploring the social networks of the education system, as in other papers I have read, parents play an important role in the education system. Applying network theory, parents may be the most important hub, but as it stands now, are virtually ignored.
” There are several important differences in actant roles, and the most interesting one appears to be in regards to the role of the parents.”
Click to access using-actor-network-theory.pdf
Another way that network theory is being applied, “I’m particularly interested in ways to make use of the collective intelligence of the crowd – design methods and algorithms that can make crowd wisdom a more likely outcome than mob stupidity, in ways that help people to learn. The combined wisdom of most crowds is probably greater than that of most teachers, but it’s quite hard to tap into that effectively. ”
http://jondron.athabascau.ca/research/research.html
The link above, has articles of interest connecting network theory into working models.
Back to the random events, six degrees of separation, it is no accident that random events such as standard testing, merit pay, small classes, and the list goes on are not so random to begin with. The random events can be predicted, but the nature of the random events are determined to maintained the unbalance or to seek a balance, like Mother Nature.
Doug seeks to maintain the unbalance within the education system, and at the same time, has the opportunity to reinforce the messages of the unions. The teachers in the CBC interview, are seeking out balance, by bringing new information, that was only previously discussed behind closed doors. I bet Doug doesn’t like it, and a good many unionists would not like it. Mind the Gap, is an interesting title, because there is a numerous research articles on the achievement gap with direct connections to the network theory. And it is apparent, that the two teachers in the CBC article are very concerned about the gap, that they are willing to speak out about it, in a playing field that is riddled with land mines, of those who work within the education systems.
“We should be thinking from the ground up. That’s different from changing everything. However, we first have to understand how we got the education system that we now have. Teachers are wonderful, and there are hundreds of thousands of them who are creative and terrific, but they are operating in a system that is completely out of time. It is a system designed to produce industrial workers.”
http://www.edutopia.org/alvin-toffler-school-reform
The above quote is another random event from Alvin Toffler, and is an event that within the six degrees of separation, and scares the pants off the would be seekers of maintaining the status-quo in the education system. After all, they cannot instil fear like the education system does with parents and teachers, or shut down Alvin Toffler.
Stephen Hurley is another random event, talking about uncomfortable issues on his blog, directed at his colleagues, and I sure love the direction that he is taking on evaluation and assessments of students. Or his thoughts on, “I’m now convinced that schools are the final frontier for the type of transformational change that understands, accounts for and builds environments that truly resonate with the way that children develop and learn.”
http://teachingoutloud.org/
The network theory, and its math will play a big role in the transformational change that accounts for the way children develop and learn. It is in the data streams,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,thanks largely to another random event, the invention of the desk top computer.
“Why are the vast majority of Canadian teachers so reluctant to speak out of school ? ”
For good reason, apparently individual teachers do not have the full benefits and rights to expressed themselves in the classroom, in the public forum, and especially in areas of instruction and curriculum material.
The Morin case out of PEI, has more or less put teachers not eager to follow another teacher who lost his job, and unions that represent teachers are not at eager to take on the fight of increasing rights of teachers inside and outside of the classroom.
http://concordia.academia.edu/DavidWaddington/Papers/538050/A_Right_to_Speak_Out_The_Morin_Case_and_its_Implications_for_Teachers_Free_Expression
Doug writes, “It has about 99 percent attendance school issues are brought there. If the rest of the staff does not agree it goes nowhere. If they do agee it goes to the district. And so on to the provincial level.”
Another obstacle for teachers to speak out of turn, is the process. How many issues make it pass the school’s door, if it needs a majority of the school’s teachers to agree? One doesn’t have to wonder why issues dealing with students educational needs, doesn’t even make it to the union’s headquarters, when there is active suppression of limited the rights of teachers, students and parents. No doubt, to ensure the collective agreements becomes the vehicle to control the rights of the individual teachers, the students and parents. Tossed in the bureaucratic regime of the education system, which puts the teachers in a cage, but unlocked. If a teacher decides to step out of the cage, it will be at their peril.
” “She’s just not applying herself.” “He needs to pay attention in class.”
http://www.canadianparents.com/article/learning-to-read-e-one-vowel-at-a-time
The author contends two most common statements by teachers. I would say, part and parcel for primary and junior teachers. Political correctness to the extreme? Or is it teachers working the system, to prevent the backlash and repercussions if the teacher told the truth to the parents, about an education system preventing remediation, and more importantly to have a job the next day.
As John Ralston Saul concluded in his essay, ” We must turn away from the mediocre and tired management theories of efficiency through economies of scale. We must particularly beware of their latest manifestation which preaches training rather than education. We need more than ever to look at the public education system as the primary tool we have to ensure that children are able
to grow up to become citizens.”
Click to access In%20Defence%20of%20Public%20Education%20-%20John%20Ralston%20Saul%5B1%5D.pdf
Saul writes to defend the public education system, but not to speak of it in glowing terms that is so common among the stakeholders. He attacks the education system model, that prevents the education of children, and at the end hurts democracy. “Let me point out something which is difficult to accept for many people who are themselves devoted to managing—
and managing well—classes, schools and the school system. Managerialism encourages and rewards agreement among professionals. It admires discretion and conformity, it encourages us all to believe that through detailed work, we can rectify enormous problems.”
” “We have to erase the degrees of separation between parents, boards, unions, and students.” “Teachers live in hermetically-sealed (environments). Sometimes I feel that they do not even know who is minding the store.”
The hermetically-sealed classroom environments are the creation of the stakeholders, who are always seeking out conformity of the individual teachers to do their bidding, and not the bidding of their students’ education. So, in the end, the students only received the minimum basic education required by law, and teachers are forced to pushed the students through, and meet the outcomes and dictates of the other stakeholders.
The union does support new teachers however probationary contracts are a realit and the principal does have the odd prerogative.
A “gievance” is a violation of the contract not anything else. A member or union rep must be able to site the page and clause # of the clause violated by management in order to have a grievance move forward. The vast majority of these are failure to follow a seniority provision, failure to grant a moving day, or demands that work be done not part of the contract. Probationary periods are part of the contract. Anything not covered in the contract is a management right. They also need to meet a “past practice’ standard and follow all laws of health and safety for example.
I represented hundreds of teachers in these matters. The first thing we tell the member is, if you think the principal is asking you to do something unreasonable, ask them to put it in writing and sign it. The matter often ends there as principals are lothe to put commands in writing. I have seen teachers ordered to shovel snow, ordered to clear marks off the washroom wall, ordered to run EC activities, ordered to attend evening events that had nothing to do with them. The list od absurd demands could fill a book. As soon as they were asked to put it in writing the issue came to an end. Anything the principal refuses to put in writing can be ignored.
A teacher who is fired must be fired for “just cause” not just cause the admin does not like him/her. There must be a series of visits and opportunities to improve with support. If all of the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed then the teacher can be fired and many are fired every year. When I was a trustee on the TBE, 1/4 of the size of the TDSB today, about 15-20 teachers would be fired per year. In my anecdotal opinion it seemed the biggest reason was for failure to show up at work.
Andrew is correct the union does not silence new teachers but they would be a dumb as a bag of hammers to stir the pot while they are on probation.
Once again, the “corporate reform movement” wrongly feels there is this seething mass of teacher supporters for their cause stiffled by the blob.
It just ain’t so, especially since certain prominent members of the movement never pass up an opportunity to attack teachers’ pensions, benefits, wages or working conditions.
Yes any fool can find some anti union teachers amongst the 120 000 Ontario teachers as you can in the CAW or CUPE or any other union.
I will remind you that former premier Bill Vander Zalm in BC made membership in BCTF totally voluntary. Within 3 months BCTF had resigned 95% of the members. This would happen in any province.
Babs thinks there is #2 an already negative view of teachers.
This only exists within a small circle of ideologues and some parents who blame the school for their child’s failure to thrive. I always want to ask them if the teacher caused your child to fall behind, how do you account for all the kids in her/his class who did well?
My child does generally well and has been lucky to have had good teachers. But there is genuine struggle – don’t kid yourself. But I can recall several times when the inference from the teacher, is that it would be more effective if a parent spoke out rather than the teacher on education issues. Silence can be deafening.
The issue is about teachers not speaking out, the suppression of open and honest opinion, and a stiffling system – not parent baiting. That’s an old trick Doug we’re onto by now.
You’re right Steven.
“The first thing we tell the member is, if you think the principal is asking you to do something unreasonable, ask them to put it in writing and sign it. The matter often ends there as principals are lothe to put commands in writing.”
Doug, it is standard procedure to have it in writing, for legal purposes, as well as the paper trail. Principals, and the upper crust of the school board, are loath to put anything in writing for excuses, stating their excuses to parents as the reason why they are denying education services, or asking parents to do something, that they are not willing to do. .
Trouble with the public education system, is that the legal rights of the individual teachers, students and parents are being placed secondary to the needs of the other education system. Or in my last post, Saul stated, “Let me point out something which is difficult to accept for many people who are themselves devoted to managing— and managing well—classes, schools and the school system. Managerialism encourages and rewards agreement among professionals. It admires discretion and conformity, it encourages us all to believe that through detailed work, we can rectify enormous problems.”
Unions have done little to advance the individual rights of teachers, because it would also mean to address the rights of the students and parents. Do not confuse the individual rights of persons, to the collective rights of a union contract. Teachers feel forbidden to cross the line, exercising their individual rights in the classroom, in the same way a parent feels forbidden to exercise their legal rights, because of the oppressive power and influence of the models of managerialism and other such beasts, that forces conformity even when it crosses the legal rights of the individual players.
Once, I started to asked the school and the school board to put in writing, on verbal statements made that I thought infringes my child’s rights as well as my rights – to this day I have never received anything in writing, but my letters requesting a written response, are on file, in the event that the school board denies the statements made to me.
Can teachers exercised their individual rights, over the contract agreements and other conditions imposed on them to limit their actions and behaviours as they carry out the work of an educator? So far the verdict is not in, and unions have done little to improved the ability of teachers exercising their individual rights, even if it opposes the BLOB. Autonomy and freedom of expression in the classroom of individual teachers are the more common ones that unions do little to fight for the individual rights of teachers. The PEI Morin court case is an example, but there is many more that never makes the news, let alone to a court of law. All conducted under the cover of the BLOB, and their many agendas and interests of the stakeholders.
How many teachers have been disciplined for speaking out against the union and what were the consequences. Any statistics on that? Maybe THAT’s the place to start.
It’s been said that it’s impossible to terminate a teacher in most circumstances but what about speaking up?
It may be impossible to terminate a teacher once he/she has a permanent contract but probationary teachers can be terminated with no defence provided by the union or the law.
Don’t know the numbers, but the system is set up to treat the whistle blowers inside the schools, school boards and the unions much more harshly than than a teacher that has committed a criminal offence.
In SQE, “One teacher the College did identify was a teacher whose only crime was to break their secrecy rules. James Black, a teacher and former discipline committee member, was publicly named by the College and suspended for two years because the College suspected he leaked information to the media. The committee suspected (but could not prove) that Black gave information to a CTV reporter in 2006 who was probing the College’s practice of allowing teachers convicted of sex crimes to be reinstated after their licence was revoked. The College claims Black leaked information to CTV News about a teacher convicted of sexual exploitation in 1990, who was jailed 15 months and later sought reinstatement.
“In 2009, the committee fined its former member, Black, $1,000, and suspended him for two years. The College ruled that Black was guilty of a serious ‘breach of confidentiality’ which ‘may have damaged the professional image of the College and its members. The need for a strong general deterrent is imperative in this matter.’
“Black, reached by the Star, said he could not comment on his case. The teacher in the case that led to Black’s suspension, Rodney Palmer, was suspended in 1991 and reinstated in 2003 in a closed-door hearing. He taught for a time east of Toronto, then retired.”
http://www.societyforqualityeducation.org/index.php/blog/read/protecting-bad-teachers-from-the-public/
In the Star series of the teachers and the Ontario Teachers’ College, a typical response to defend the status-quo by teachers, “I am deeply saddened that you continue to report on how ‘children’ always seem to be the ‘victim’. What you have forgotten about in your desire to defame the the teaching profession, is the reporting of warm, caring, gentle and innocent teachers’ such as myself, who have been harmed and bullied, accusations falsely brought about, humiliated by rumors, and disgraced by a system which parents seem to have all the rights and freedoms to ‘break’ a teacher’s career. We are victims too, but are hushed and told to keep quiet. Who are our advocates? Do we have any rights? Apparently not. We never seem to see a parent or someone who has harmed us, in the newspaper fullpage and with photos about having negatively harmed an educator. How come? Because it doesn’t garner enough excitement or copies sold.”
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters/article/1065988–more-reaction-to-teachers-series
The same thing happen in NL, when the union leadership, as well as a few parents gang up on a parent, who decided to publicly air the event of the teacher using air freshener to eliminate the odour of fried fish on her son, and his clothing. What ever happened to a courtesy of a phone call, asking the parent for permission to do so? How dare the parent aired their dirty laundry in the open public forum, and had the gall to disclosed her name to one and all. Likewise, how dare a teacher speak publicly about the dirty laundry of the unions, schools and school boards. Probably the reason why, one never hears a teacher stating publicly, the underlying reasons why SE students are not served well by an education system. To do so, would inform parents the dirty laundry within the system.
Members are disciplined for not taking part in collective action (strikes for example). The primary discipline is that we publish their names in the union bulletin.
The following people did not support the strike in the TDSB. I’m sure they will be happy to receive the benefits of those who sacrificed during the strike to achieve the new collective agreesment.
Joe Brown Purple school
Mary Smith Green school
Fred Jones Red school
and so on.
Simply speaking against the union means everybody will think you are either stupid, selfish or highly ideological. You will be thought of a part of a small tribe of malcontents.
And they are shunned and punished for not taking part in illegal wildcat walkouts too. I know of three teachers whose lives were made miserable by their union because they refused to take part in a two-week wildcat strike, the so called “days of action’ back in the 1990s in Ontario.
It got so bad, they had to leave the school. Our local school lost three excellent teachers because they were essentially ‘bullied’ by their local union shop. Fear?? You bet.
Those who say it is impossible to terminate a teacher are dead wrong. Many are terminated every year. Is it difficult and time consuming? Yes it is called due process.
Hi Paul,
Thank you for writing this post which happens to be very timely. In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, we have formed an advocacy group, WISE Math, to work for changes in math education. We have been very vocal in the local media and teachers have been following this. One of the things that I’ve found most shocking is the number of letters we’ve received from teachers who agree with us (and know much more about what is going on in the system and want to tell us about it) but are afraid to speak out publicly. I’ve found many of these very disturbing and I’m disappointed that teachers feel that they cannot speak out. I realize that teachers are not receiving appropriate support in many divisions. They are afraid of administration and of the school boards and this certainly hinders their ability to teach their students in ways that work for them. I would like to share excerpts from one of those letters here and I hope that is alright. This letter was sent to me anonymously, with no return address:
Dear Professor Stokke,
I am an elementary school teacher. Upon reading the results of the Pan-Canadian Assessment [in Manitoba], I can honestly say I am not surprised. Disappointed, of course, since what I feel is occurring to our students within our public schools is almost ‘criminal’.
The difficulty which faces me every single day is that I am prevented from teaching the basic skills to my students. ….I face challenges from the mathematical department in our school division as well as from the administrators from within our school. It is discouraged to teach students the foundations of math. Math worksheets and drills are frowned upon. Written tests are a definite no-no. … Marks on report cards are not to be less than 50%; in fact low grades in any subject area are not encouraged/permitted and frequently are forced to be changed before the reports are sent home to the parents. Accountability in teaching is becoming highly questionable.
Without a doubt, I can state that the academic skills in Mathematics and Language Arts are deteriorating.
Professor Stokke, I know that there are many teachers who feel as I do. Unfortunately, our hands are tied. Students are not being well-prepared for their future. Their knowledge in the core subjects is suffering and the long-term effects is something to be greatly concerned about. I personally and professionally find this unacceptable.
As much as I would prefer to sign my name and my school, I am not prepared for an additional fight with the administrator as well as the school board.
Sincerely,
A teacher
What a great post Anna. Thank-you for it.
I can say that there are many teachers who will speak quietly and often given the opportunity.
I remember as a parent leader in my community, teachers leaving me notes in my mail box about issues they could NOT discuss in public buy wanted to tell me about. I remember being really shocked in learning how some teachers were treated by others they worked with because they DID teach the basics. Unfortunately it wasn’t until the teacher left the school to teach at another local school that I found out. Had parents known………….
I also recall, as a member of a government task toured the province a few years ago that many teachers came to speak with us who said they came as independents and NOT representing a union. They just wanted to be heard on their own.
What really angers me about the letter that Anna shares with us is that teachers are afraid of the administration and of school boards. That should NEVER have happened, and need to be knocked down a few pegs.
According to the current law, unions have enjoyed free reign in disciplining their members. A list of links, compared to the rosier version of Doug’s last two posts.
UNION DEMOCRACY AND THE LAW IN CANADA
Discipline starts on page 21
Click to access jl_lynk.pdf
Unions shakedown members with intimidating fines and discipline
http://www.labourwatch.com/news/newsletters/issues/labourwatch5-3
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION – WHAT HARM IS THERE?
http://www.kuhnco.net/?action=d7_article_viewer_view_article&Join_ID=226495&template=news_article.htm7
There is probably a lot more, that is never published due to freedom of unions discipling their members under current law. A powerful way to silence the members into submission, as well as keeping union reps under the control of the union’s executive. Pity, it is only in Canada………whereas other unions in different countries do not enjoyed the same rights and freedom under the law.
Teacher union contracts are now a major public policy issue in many American states. The Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss has addressed it on her Answer Sheet Blog with a post written by Matthew Di Carlo, senior fellow at the non-profit Albert Shanker Institute, located in Washington, D.C.,
The Answer Sheet post (25/10/2010) presents the case that American states that are heavily unionized produce students who perform better on standardized tests. It echoes an earlier Harvard Education Review study from about 10 years ago.
Here is the full text of the post:
“For years, some people have been determined to blame teachers’ unions for all that ails public education in America. This issue has been around a long time (see here and here), but, given the tenor of the current debate, it seems to bear rehashing. According to this view, teachers unions negatively affect student achievement primarily through the mechanism of the collective bargaining agreement, or contract. These contracts are thought to include “harmful” provisions, such as seniority-based layoffs and unified salary schedules that give raises based on experience and education rather than performance.
But a fairly large proportion of public school teachers are not covered under legally binding contracts. In fact, there are some 10 states in which there are virtually no legally binding K-12 teacher contracts at all (there are none in AL, AZ, GA, MS, NC, SC, TX, and VA; there is only one district with a contract in LA, and two in AR). Districts in a few of these states have entered into what are called “meet and confer” agreements about salary, benefits, and other working conditions, but administrators have the right to break these agreements at will. For all intents and purposes, these states are largely free of many of the alleged “negative union effects.”
Here’s a simple proposition: If teacher union contracts are the main problem, then we should expect to see at least somewhat higher achievement outcomes in the 10 states where there are basically no binding contracts.
So, let’s take a quick look at how states with no contracts compare with the states that have them.
In states where there are binding contracts, there is some variation in coverage (the percentage of teachers covered under contracts). In most of them (34, plus Washington D.C.), districts are required to bargain with unionized teachers, and coverage in these states is very high. There are a few other states in which contracts are binding once they’re finished, but districts are not required to bargain (Louisiana also technically falls into this category, but since Katrina, there is only one contract in force). The results for these states are virtually identical to those for the bargaining states.
In the table below, using data from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), I present average scale scores for states that currently have binding teacher contracts and those that don’t. The averages are weighted by grade-level enrollment, and they include only public non-charter schools (since most charters in all states have no contracts).
Average 2009 NAEP Score By State Teacher Contract Laws
States with binding teacher contracts
4th grade: Math 240.0 Reading 220.7
8th grade: Math 282.1 Reading 263.7
States without binding teacher contracts
4th grade: Math 237.7 Reading 217.5
8th grade: Math 281.2 Reading 259.5
As the table shows, the states in which there are no teachers covered under binding agreements score lower than the states that have them. Moreover, even though they appear small, all but one of these (8th grade math) are rather large differences.
To give an idea of the size, I ranked each state (plus Washington D.C.) by order of its performance —its average score on each of the four NAEP exams – and then averaged the four ranks. The table below presents the average rank for the non-contract states.
Average Rank Across 4 NAEP Tests
Next to each state is its average rank
Virginia……. 16.6
Texas……… 27.3
N. Carolina.. 27.5
Georgia…….36.8
Arkansas…..38.9
S. Carolina…38.9
Arizona……..43.3
Alabama……45.5
Louisiana…..47.8
Mississippi…48.6
Out of these 10 states, only one (Virginia) has an average rank above the median, while four are in the bottom 10, and seven are in the bottom 15. These data make it very clear that states without binding teacher contracts are not doing better, and the majority are actually among the lowest performers in the nation.
In contrast, nine of the 10 states with the highest average ranks are high coverage states, including Massachusetts, which has the highest average score on all four tests.
If anything, it seems that the presence of teacher contracts in a state has a positive effect on achievement.
Now, some may object to this conclusion. They might argue that I can’t possibly say that teacher contracts alone caused the higher scores in these states. They might say that there are dozens of other observed and unobserved factors that influence achievement, such as state laws, lack of resources, income, parents’ education, and curriculum, and that these factors are responsible for the lower scores in the 10 non-contract states.
My response: Exactly.”
(Reprinted from The Answer Sheet)
Comment:
What do you think of Di Carlo’s central proposition? Does it have any relevance to our current discussion? ( Yes, I’m stirring it up again)
To Anna Stokke-thank you-so refreshing.
We have to do something about the smoke and mirrors.
This has been my finding as well-
One teacher from a large school board in Ontario said “we have never seen more L.D.”of course a great deal looks like L.D. but it`s flawed instruction that leads to something that looks like it much of the time.
Another is a psychologist from the Sudbury area who says with all the information on the internet,why are we forced to completely ignore it?
So many more,who can`t state their names.
I have made this point repeatedly. If there is ANY relationship between teachers unions and results at all it is a positive one.
Nancy, of course teachers can’t make anti-homosexual comments in public any more than Keegstra could make anti-Jewish comments. It is the law not the school board or the union. People need to reach the point that they substitute Jew or black or woman or disabled in every anti-homosexual stattement before they say it. It is protected by the charter and the HRC.
The Jagdish Badhuria case at the Supreme Court settled it. There is no “out of school” argument for teachers. They are accountable for what they say 24/7/365.
Try working for IBM and writing a letter to the Globe telling everyone you think Apple products are superior to IBM? Good luck with that.
Take a look at who sponsers Labour Watch OMG it is the employers. I’m shocked I tell you shocked.
If teachers actually were totally free to talk you would just hear a lot more about how bad the EQAO are, how impossible the provincial curriculum is, how big the classes still are, and how they are sick to death of outsiders opinions.
An instrument of enforcement (unions) does not necessarily make for better educational outcomes for our students – or the answering power of teachers or the curriculum. We just continue to see that the countervailing response from the Blob is to bend the will of the teachers when they may wish to speak openly and unencumbered by educratically conditioned agreements and so on…
Organizations have used this kind of power for centuries. Power and punishment. Public education seems somewhat unique in the sense there is not a lot of symetry -that is resistance on an equal level.
However, as cuts to education invariably extend throughout more provinces in Canada, changes may occur as a result. Cuts will put more stress on teachers and their unions, while the casualtiy is the classroom.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/61466-most-ns-school-boards-face-cuts
I would love to hear some teachers respond to the current funding formula in Nova Scotia.
Sure and disabilities of children are protected, but that is no guarantee that the stakeholders within the education system have trampled over the legal rights of students with disabilities and their education needs. Not only that, teachers, unions, and the other stakeholders feel much freer in describing children with disabilities in many different adjectives that impinges on their intelligence and learning abilities. How many different ways can a student with disabilities be called dumb inside the brick school house? Countless, but it is not considered hate speech, but it an indictment and the hypocrisy of the stakeholders within the education system, to continued to reinforced the misconceptions of students with the invisible learning disabilities, to avoid the education needs of students with learning and cognitive deficits. The Supreme Court of Canada, is not hearing the Moore case, to showcase the public education system in a favourable light. The Moore case is the biggest indictment of the education system, showcasing the second-tier and third-tier quality of education for students with disabilities. Can’t wait for the ruling, than the provincial education systems will have to deal with the parents, who had to watch their children with disabilities endured the discrimination that is directed at their children.
http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca/case-dossier/cms-sgd/dock-regi-eng.aspx?cas=34040
Individual teachers must also remain quiet on students with invisible disabilities that impacts learning in the classroom.In the same way in the post from WISE, a teacher writes, “The difficulty which faces me every single day is that I am prevented from teaching the basic skills to my students. ….I face challenges from the mathematical department in our school division as well as from the administrators from within our school. It is discouraged to teach students the foundations of math. Math worksheets and drills are frowned upon. Written tests are a definite no-no. … Marks on report cards are not to be less than 50%; in fact low grades in any subject area are not encouraged/permitted and frequently are forced to be changed before the reports are sent home to the parents. Accountability in teaching is becoming highly questionable.
Without a doubt, I can state that the academic skills in Mathematics and Language Arts are deteriorating.”
Without a doubt, a teacher risks her teaching position if they choose to use their freedom of expression on instruction and curriculum. They are told to
shut up, and what Catherine has stated, the fears that teachers have, to freely expressed themselves.inside and outside the school walls.
As for Paul’s post, comparing apples to oranges, and as I know stats can always be manipulated to show anything can be positive. In Canada, private union membership is now down to 17 percent, and where is the public sector at? At 75 % of the public sector belongs to an union, and with that comes with gold plated pensions, benefits, compliments of the taxpayers. As taxpayers we are not even even entitled to hold the education system to account, not the parent on his or her lonely vigil of seeking access to special education services, Nor the teacher’s lonely vigil of finding ways around the system, to aid a child in a better quality of education than what is being received. The union ensures that teachers are only accountable to themselves, but that is in the contracts, because at the end no one within the education system, can be held accountable legally for low achievement, The contracts must be met first, before the students needs are met first. But first the other stakeholders must be met first, and places the students, parents and the individual teachers at the bottom and are used as the handy excuses when the education policies fails the students.
The public education system is a public entity, funded by taxpayers monies – a monopoly beast that refuses to abide and respect the rights of the individuals within the education system and outside of the system. Give a monopoly an inch, they take ten miles even if it runs roughshod over others, to ensure the best interests of the monopoly remains front and center. It forces teachers to remain anonymous, as well as being silenced by the powerful forces within.
Shame on you, using IBM or Apple. At least a person can retained their individual rights, personal beliefs in a multi-national corporation, but unlikely in the monopoly called a public education system. Inserting one’s rights may be dangerous to retaining a job in the public education system,
My theory or a working theory, that both United States and Canada have education systems based on the minimum legal requirements of a basic education. So what is a basic education based on the legal parameters?
The opportunities, a desk, a set of books, but not the tools and the quality of tools needed to access the opportunities and the books. Within that legal framework, it permits the stakeholders within to work for the agendas and best interests of the adults, and none of the interests and agendas have no attention to raised the minimum legal requirements to a higher threshold.
Our friend Tom Whitby in Long Island, NY, has just weighed in with a great post in defense of Teachers as Professionals. He’s passionate about teaching and teachers and contends that all should not be judged by the “bad apples” in the profession.
For the full post, see:
http://tomwhitby.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/teaching-isnt-really-a-profession/
Whether you agree with him or not, you will find his last two paragraphs stimulating because he has the courage to stand up and be counted instead of scurrying for shelter in the rain.
What is your experience with this group Paul?
http://www.turnexchange.net/blog.html
The AFT American Federation of Teachers AFL-CIO calls itself
“A Union of Teachers”
BTW the Ontario Medica Association OMA (Not to be confused with the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the doctors professional body) but the OMA AKA the doctors’ union is about to enter NEGOTIATIONS with the province on the new fee schedule but I’m sure any doctor in the OMA could not be a professional.
Oooops the AFT calls itself “A Union of Professionals”
TURN has been around for 17 years. I actually met Adam Urbanski the former Rochester AFT President. TURN believes that the AFT and NEA ought to devote more time to curriculum and pedagogy and that the union is too focussed on collective bargaining. There is no real tension between the 2. The AFT and other progressive groups give TURN money for their activities.
This tension exists WITHIN most teachers unions. The leaders are solid progressives none of whom support the corporate reform model. They do advocate more dialogue and mutual support between progressives in the union, administration, universities, teacher training institutions etc.
Many would like to give curriculum and pedagogy more time within unions including me but I have seen how they work and the day to day demands of collective bargaining, contract maintenance, grievances, and so on leaves little time for this.
Good example is the OSSTF staff of 28 professionals
18 Collective bargaining and related
5 Political Action and Communications
4 Education Services (Curriculum and Program oriented)
1 Pension
Thanks for drawing our attention to TURN and for providing a little background. To be honest, I don’t know much about them because they surfaced during my “happy period of exile” in Quebec.
With the recent rise of Educators for Excellence (E4E), I think we should be more careful in generalizing about the common front of teacher unionism. It’s got to be healthy to have differences of opinion within union ranks.
I’m sorry to hear, Doug, that the OSSTF Professional Development program has withered in recent years. I always found their Resource Booklets extremely valuable, especially the early work on Grading and Evaluation and the fine Handbook on the Role of a Department Head in a Secondary School.
I see subtle but important differences between provincial Teacher Federations and Teacher Unions in Canada. The OSSTF and the BCTF do far more Professional Development research than the provincial teacher unions.
I’m not impressed at all with the Nova Scotia Teachers Union. They delegate most of the PD to the province’s various Teaching Subject Associations. All the NSTU seems to do is to lobby for more funding, negotiate the contract, guard the entitlements, and produce teacher workload reports.
All provincial Teacher Unions are not completely alike.
[…] started framing (!) our conversations in terms of agriculture, ecosystems, networks (as Nancy does here), exploration or relationships. What elements of these concepts could help to shift our thinking or […]
What an interesting discussion. Just last week, I was writing about the “other side” of this question. Why aren’t more teachers at the table when it comes to policy-making?
http://www.cea-ace.ca/blog/stephen-hurley/2012/02/6/out-sight-out-mind
I believe that if more opportunities are created that allow for teachers, administrators, parents and legislators to connect in real ways, some of the trust that has been lost within the system might be rebuilt.
All of the “reasons” cited here for the voices of individual teachers being muffled are valid. But I’m not sure that if we’ll ever to get to the “one reason”. I tend to hang out with educators that have strong opinions, but many of those opinions don’t make it past the door of the pub.
Why not? Fear? Perhaps. I think that fear plays into the lives of teachers at all levels of the system. I’m not sure whether they are afraid of the repercussions, or just afraid that their intuitive sense of things might get laughed down.
Apathy on the part of some might be a factor.
A lack of imagination as to how to get their message communicated is probably a factor for some. Who am I going to tell is a common reason that I hear.
I think that we have to admit that there a good number of teachers that enter the profession because they like what it has to offer. While they may feel uncomfortable about some of things that they discover about the profession when they get settled, it may be that these aren’t as important as the larger benefits offered by the profession. (These are the benefits often cited by critics of public, unionized education)
I think, though, that the reason that is resonating most with me these days has to do with the story that I relate at the beginning of the CEA piece mentioned above. We’re just not used to being asked. We are spoken to, spoken about and spoken for, but seldom spoken with. And I think that this has created a culture where teachers don’t even think to speak out. Nor do they have a lot of time to do so. Sounds a little silly, doesn’t it? But I think that life in many schools has become so isolated from the workings of the larger system, that all teachers have time to do is their immediate job.
There will always be some that go out on a limb and learn to raise their voices. That’s true of any organization. The rest may need to be intentionally drawn in to the conversation.
My initial thoughts…
More opportunities to connect? No wonder parents and teachers become jaded.
Here is the reason why it has reached this point. Centralization which continues to disenfranchise teachers and parents from the community of public education.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/62625-putting-kids-agendas
And here is the proof.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/62686-education-costs-more-delivers-less-says-report
So how would connecting more cause one to become jaded. I think that centralization is key to the sense of disconnect. I also think that parents and teachers are not only less connected in the “community of public education”, but also in the community in general.
When I began teaching, there were activities designed to bring parents and teachers together, not only “socially” but around school vision as well. I’m not sensing that any more.
Your point about centralization is excellent; so much gets delivered to schools and community as “done deals” and “best practice”, thus closing the door on any conversations that might allow us to work things out in our local contexts.
No, connecting does not cause one to become jaded. It is a question of why opportunities are negligable and why there can’t be more inclusion to solve inadequate policies. This is where teachers, parents – even whole communities face numerous road blocks and may become jaded.
I agree with all of your points.
Why then Stephen H. did so many teachers and unions fight the evolution of effective School Councils as strongly as they did….and are continuing to do in Ontario?
School Councils were an attempt to bring all of those factions you speak of together to discuss issues important to their community and school.
Seems to me that there was MUCH done from inside “the blob” to prevent school councils, WHICH included teachers to be the catalyst for exactly the discussion you now with to create among all.
I recall meetings of our school council where teachers who attended told us that they couldn’t speak up or offer an opinion…so they were essentially a bum in a seat. I DO also remember a couple of teachers who DID speak up against some things going on in the school and earning the wrath of the principal later.
The doors were opened wide by Dave Cooke and then the Harris gov’t afterward. Now our taxdollars are going to pay parents to become engaged in these groups.
Had more effort been made toward the effectiveness of school councils it just may have been a start at getting teachers a voice alongside those others in their school community.
Parents and individual classroom teachers share MUCH of the frustrations with their admin., their unions and their circumstances. The potential of a mutual support network between the two is a most valuable relationship.
I always advised parents to develop good relationships with three people in their school. Their child’s teacher, the school secretary and the custodian because those three combined know more about what’s really going on in our schools than do board admin. or gov’t policy wonks.
I don’t know any teachers who fought the School Council move. I’m not saying that there weren’t any, but I just don’t know them. I’ve always been a member of our parent council, even when they were called different things.
Now, as my oldest enters the system, I’m a voting member, but as a parent.
I do have to say that I have never been happy about the level of conversation that goes on at these meetings. I think that we can move past pizza days and dance-a-thons.
At the last PC meeting here, I suggested that some of the money being spent on improving math instruction at the school be spent on engaging parents in the process of learning about and communicating with their children about same. I was told that the Ministry money couldn’t be used for this purpose.
I’m waiting to hear back from the Ministry, but I am also proposing to our PC chair and principal that a subcommittee on curriculum and learning be formed. I think that parents would love to talk about more than whether our pizza is compliant!
Any advice?
Catherine how very true and sage advice for parents – “I always advised parents to develop good relationships with three people in their school. Their child’s teacher, the school secretary and the custodian because those three combined know more about what’s really going on in our schools than do board admin. or gov’t policy wonks.”
Stephen, wearing the blinders? Do you actually think parents are welcomed in the education system? What was your reason for not speaking up at the school councils meetings about the level of conversation, rising it about the fundraising activities?
Parents are actively discourage not to talk about curriculum and instruction. To do so, the heavy hand of the system will come crushing down unto the poor parent, who dares to questioned the two sacred cows. As Catherine has stated, and in my words, school councils are nothing more than another vehicle to advance the goals and agendas within the education system.
In your suggestion, ” I suggested that some of the money being spent on improving math instruction at the school be spent on engaging parents in the process of learning about and communicating with their children about same. I was told that the Ministry money couldn’t be used for this purpose.”
Learning about and communicating with their children, is language that is coded, to get parents to commit themselves to work for the goals and agendas within the education system, and not what is in their best interests or their children;s interests. The collective wisdom of the parents, and the gathering and exchange of the collective wisdom of parents, represents a threat to the policy wonks and private agendas within..
Moving beyond pizza days, will require the acknowledgement of the heavy hand from above, when a parent council decides to expand their reach into curriculum and instruction. Just do it, and don’t bother to asked for permission from the powers to be. At the very worst, the heavy hand will have the whole school council remove, but if they did not, the school board will have a PR nightmare, and the parents will have another forum that reaches beyond the school environment. ,
I often want to ask conservatives that decry the centralization of the system, who amalgamated the boards in Ontario?
a) McGuinty
b) Rae
c) Harris
I rest my case.
Another red herring, Doug, and Ontario-centric as well..
Who says Mike Harris’ Common Sense Revolution didn’t have its flaws? It’s a mixed legacy.
And why focus solely on Ontario when there are other provincial examples that never get discussed?
How about a pop quiz? What do Mike Harris, Frank McKenna and John Savage have in common? And do party labels have any relevance in Canadian public education reform?
I rest my case.
Thank-you Paul.
I used the Ontario issue around school councils knowing that others here from other provinces have them as well.
Perhaps the efforts in other provinces will have been met with some hope rather than the undermining of councils here in Ontario by those who were intent on sticking a political stick in to the spokes.
Starting small and starting local with school councils could have worked in Ontario. There was no will on the part of “the blob” for that to happen.
If anything education in Ontario is more centralized than ever over the last eight years. School boards are increasingly more irrelevant. Most current decision-making on funding, spending, collective agreements, curriculum, etc. are made by the Min of Ed. School boards pick the bus company.
Let me guess–they were three fiscally tough premiers of different political stripes?
Stephen, you wrote in the CEA blog, “I would like to see more folks from various ministries, faculties of education and district offices spend more time in our schools, and in our classrooms. And I’m not talking about a quick walk through prior to a PR announcement, photo opportunity or graduation ceremony. I’m talking about losing the jacket and tie and coming in to work with real live teachers and real live kids in a real live school..”
http://www.cea-ace.ca/blog/stephen-hurley/2012/02/6/out-sight-out-mind
The present cultural environment does not allow the silos of public education system to have ‘get-together’ sessions. In fact the structure of education, the design of the education, precludes any discussions, get-togethers , frank discussions on the outcomes of education policies. The upper levels of the education system all work and aspired to the goals, the processes to reach the goals, and outcomes are ignored. More importantly the individual teachers, students and parents as separate silos, are encouraged to remain in our separate silos, marching to the overall goals of an education system, demanding us to enjoy the processes, and ignore the outcomes.
I have over the years posed the very same questions to what I call the educrats, dictating policy, implementing policy and stressing the processes, over outcomes. Outcomes don’t matter to them nor the realities of the teachers, students and parents. It is the process, that matters to them, because every outcome can be predicted by the processes. It is stated so many multi-dimensional ways, the teachers, students and parents are lost in the processes, looking for quick fixes, the outcomes don’t matter. “Well, I see no problem, your child is meeting the expected outcomes.” Even though the child has failed every demand written test in language arts, in the last 6 years, if a parent pushes, the system will pushed back putting the parent into their silo, and the path of processes.
My question is, parents have the utmost difficulty in trying to find solutions for their children’s education, to increase their achievement. The system will push back, using their power and influence to send most parents scurrying back to their silos. It results in conversations among parents in the privacy of homes, and other chats over a cup of coffee, as well as going online chatting anonymously for most. As parents, the collective group are consciously aware, if we push back, the education system will pushed back with 3 times the force, sending most parents back to their respective silos, nursing their wounds for acting in the best interests of their children.
If the folks from the upper levels of the education system regularly visited the schools, would the teachers begin the long difficult task, of asking the hard questions of education policies that results in poor student outcomes, as well as harming their long-term futures? Would the teachers invite the visiting education official, to look upon the notebooks of students, and than asked the official if they think this student can actually used their notes for studying purposes?
I don’t think so, because the system will also pushed back unto the teachers, in the same way the system pushes back unto parents. It is not pleasant when the system pushes back, and teachers are not accustomed as parents are, when the system pushes back. Steven, post on the curse of centralization, is timely. “Charles Cirtwill, president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, calls these changes “small tweaks” meant to fix governance without addressing the fundamental problem as he sees it — communities lack true ownership of their schools.
Cirtwill co-authored a report that says governance problems were “being used as a smokescreen for further centralization.”
He calls the department’s approach paternalistic — more concerned with decorum, control and efficiency than with the quality of education offered in classrooms.
In fact, he said in an interview, those changes just served to further disenfranchise parents and teachers, widening the gap between the school and its community and those who make the decisions about how the school is run.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/62625-putting-kids-agendas
In the CEA blog, “It might be a little uncomfortable for everyone at the beginning, but I think that the insight and understanding that could be derived from this type of “contact” would have a great impact not only on the types of decisions and programs that are developed to move our systems of education forward, but also on the way that they are received on the ground. It’s easy to pretend that we know; its more difficult to prove that we understand.”
http://www.cea-ace.ca/blog/stephen-hurley/2012/02/6/out-sight-out-mind
Isn’t it time Stephen, to understand that teachers at the bottom level are in the same place as the students and parents are? Making contact, encouraging the upper crust to visit the schools , be prepared for push back and the consequences of a centralization education system, that likes to used their hammers and axes, rather than having frank, honest discussions. Firing school trustees boards, is an example of the heavy hand of centralization, and teachers as individuals, should learn to understand, their elected board members at union headquarters are quite adept using their heavy hand to members who speak out of turn and asking hard questions.
The difference is that Ontario is over 40% of Canada.
The TDSB is already bigger than New Brunswick.
NB and NS each less than 3% of Canada.
TDSB = 286 000 students
NS= 150 000
NB = 120 000
NB = NS = 270 000
If NB and NS were all in one board of education it would be smaller than TDSB
Ya we know Nancy, nobody cares but you.
Stephen you are an idealist. More power to you- the world needs more idealists but idealists can also be naive to the real materialist forces at play.
Major players want the system to be bent in their direction. This includes corporations, ideological groups, equity seeking groups, religious groups, pedagogically oriented groups, political parties, unions and federations, environmental groups and on and on.
The individual teacher, parent, student, bureaucrat, etc are bit players beyond the chorus except when they act through the heavy hitters.
Doug, guilty as charged, but making some local headway. I agree with,and appreciate, the drama analogy…
Couldn’t find a reply button right next to Nancy’s comments above:
Stephen, wearing the blinders? Do you actually think parents are welcomed in the education system? What was your reason for not speaking up at the school councils meetings about the level of conversation, rising it about the fundraising activities?
I do believe that parent councils are the greatest hope for our sense of voice. I’ve only been to three meetings this year, but I did raise two questions:
1) Could we frame an inquiry project involving parents using some of the ministry funds keyed to mathematics instruction
2) Did the committee have a subcommittee on curriculum matters.
I received the answers and have chosen to have the initial conversation with the council chair and the principal.
I’ll keep you posted.
In Ontario the proper term is School Councils Stephen. It’s a small but important point and one that gets over-looked and shouldn’t.
School Councils, while they consist of a majority of parents are inclusive to include a teacher and staff rep. a community member and a student where appropriate. That title includes ALL of those.
The very term “parent” council was used in the early days of the development of school councils in a critical and demeaning way by unions, administrators and yes even some parent groups who were NOT in support of them.
Through the first 10 years of school councils in Ontario they were widely thwarted….and let’s not confuse School Councils with other parent groups that set up in competition with them. They did and still do exist.
Terrific that you are on your child’s council and you’re moving discussion away from the usual fundraising and busy-type work too many principals and boards like to give hand down to councils…..all the while minimizing their worth as a great source of collaboration between true education partners at the local level.
Currently I find the practice of paying school councils with tax money to encourage engagement in education is truly a waste of money. Opening minds would be far cheaper.
I stand corrected on the name. Thanks for the clarification. I see where the difference is important.
Too many parents on school councils also haven’t done their part.
For example – very few know how to use the statutory powers that they have to get those kinds of discussions going that you want.
Why do you need MOE approval for what you’re asking? All you need is a majority of parents, a motion and a seconder to act.
By the way, the principal should be the facilitator of the school council not the engineer or power behind it.
Stephen, you got me thinking again, and my curiosity gene struck again.
First off, the research being done on parents and how they tick, what roles they play concerning their children’s education, is vast and numerous, especially within the education research centers.
Like this posting on the K to 12 Parental Portal, ” Parent responding to a blog posting about parent engagement describes the problem well:
We have great teacher’s (sic) that want to involve parent’s (sic) but are not sure how to go beyond the photo-copying, cutting out, washing desks kind of tasks. They would be willing to try but administration seems to throw roadblocks at every attempt. Offer to help with the website — no I’m sorry that’s a security risk. Help a teacher start a Blog — sorry blog’s (sic) are scary and blocked. Start a community parent’s ning (link added) — no school events, no pictures that may have been taken at the school, no teacher’s allowed to participate, no discussions regarding school (even thought it was an initiative that was community based they are still trying to control it).
My personal frustration level is at an all-time high. I want so desperately to be involved at my child’s school in a meaningful way, a way that I can share my interests and aptitudes but there is no place for me beyond the traditional parent roles (secretary, fund-raiser, parent council). How do I carve out my place — how do I quell the fears and work with administration in a productive way? I’m at a loss.”
http://portalguide.tech4learning.ca/node/6
The K to 12 Parental Portal is a creature of the upper crusts of the education ministry. I did not know it existed, and probably the majority of Ontario parents do not know it exists. I learned of through the Ontario document on Parent Involvement In Ontario Schools. As well as the Education Partnership Table and a Parent Involvement Centre.
Click to access ParentEng.pdf
http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/general/elemsec/partnership/creating.html
http://www.parentinvolvement.ca/
I can see why you might think that parent councils is one of the keys to give voice to parents, but take note, the vast amount of literature and research on parents involving the K to 12 education system, is to manipulate parents to act and advance of the goals of the stakeholders within. Parental engagement will not happen, at least the real good stuff, when the system puts up road blocks on everything that works against the positive image and best interests of the stakeholders within the education system. Nor is parental engagement about engaging parents, but a recruitment drive to locate parents who are willing to work co-operatively and commit themselves to the goals of the education system, and become the key players to filter education information to parents.
Below a typical example of communication to parents about the math curriculum.
“Here are some of the ways you can help your child be successful in learning math.
Look at the curriculum. Copies are available in your child’s school. You can also request your free copy by calling the Ministry of Education and Training, 416-326-5300 or 1-800-668-9938, or on the internet, http://www.edu.gov.on.ca.
Your school also has many other resources about math education.
The Peel board has done presentations to many parent groups about the new math curriculum. Talk to your principal if you wish a presentation at your school.
Speak with your child’s teacher about what is happening in your child’s math class and how you can help at home. Visit your child’s class to see today’s math classroom in action.
Encourage your children to talk about what they are learning in math and how they solve math problems. Look for applications of math at home – everything from measuring ingredients for a recipe to comparative price shopping at the mall.
Your feelings about how well you did in math when you were a student may influence your child. Keep a positive attitude about your child’s ability to succeed in math – emphasize to your child that success in math comes from “hard work” rather than from “being smart.”
http://www.peel.edu.on.ca/parents/facts/mathcurr.htm
I would love to know the number of parents walking out, or voicing their opinion -positive or negative at the presentations. Or the number turning out at the presentations? As Catherine complete waste of time, effort and money when the ever present road blocks to true parental involvement and empowerment of parents. What is even more galling, is the parent math classes taking place across Canada and United States. Spend the afternoon learning and playing with fraction strips, just like your children does in the classroom, and make sure to bring $10.00 with you to pay for the refreshments and supplies. I wonder what happens if a parent did attend, and decided to take over the presentation, telling parents the knowledge that they need to get their kids through the math curriculum? Probably evicted, just like a few parents in the high rent district of Vancouver have in the past. Parents are not cheerleaders, but are the first teachers for the rest of their children’s lives.
“We argue that in order to move beyond the abstract level in working with parents in mathematics, educators and researchers must begin by interrogating deficit models of parenting (Henry, 1996; Vincent, 1996) and question prevailing assumptions about the necessary skills base for parents’ work with children in mathematics (Merttens, 1993).”
Click to access PME.pdf
Does any parent see themselves as deficits in parenting? I don’t.
A Ontario research paper, exploring parental engagement.
“Specifically, some critical studies draw our attention to protective and
school-centred structures of schooling that pathologize parents and keep them at a distance from the core functions of teaching and learning.
The ‘deficit’ model and the ‘partnership model are conflicting orientations each with quite different implications for parent involvement. While the demographics of family can create significant barriers to parent involvement, the power for change rests mostly with schools and teachers where institutional power lies. The exception to this assertion is parent political
activism.
Deficit models view parents and students from a clinical position of greater knowledge and professionalism. Schools that reach out, open their doors and implement practices of parental inclusion in part by adapting the school culture to more closely fit the surrounding community culture, on the other hand, are laying the organizational groundwork for meaningful, parent-teacher partnerships. Our review suggests that the deficit model is alive and well when it comes to inclusion of minority, single-parent and
low socioeconomic status families.”
Click to access moore99.pdf
The paper concludes: “These tensions have to be confronted openly and honestly, not ignored.
So back to my original question Stephen – Do you actually think parents are welcomed in the education system?
it doesn’t look good for the parental units, Nancy. I’m going to take some time to digest what you have written and the references that you have provided. This parent thing is new to me. It’s interesting to be sitting with a foot in both camps…
Thanks
In the parent files, there is a bit of research on the social relationships between parents, teachers and other staff. Keep in mind, parents who are are either teachers or other staff working within the education system, and people who have close ties with people who work within the education system, are known as people with high social status in the schools. They have insider knowledge, that no other parent has. Principals and other administrators are well-trained to select parents that are willing to adopt the status-quo.
I was really surprise on the large body of Canadian research on parental engagement, especially in the last 10 years or so. Another piece of the puzzle of where more education dollars are redirected away from the students, to study parents.
Steven is so correct – “Such a statement and attitude from a former Education minister reveals her intolerance with parents and their presence or role in the public education system. This is quite common these days.”
Parents are barely tolerated, and intolerance really presents itself behind close doors of meetings with parents and their children.
All the research in parents, also confirms shoddy treatment of parents, and a long list after that. That is within the education system, but outside of the education system, parents are treated with respect, no matter what social/economic sphere one comes from.
Principals are the same with SCs as they are with staff meetings. If they lose a vote (some Directors do this) they take it as a vote of no confidence in their leadership. Everybody gets obsessive about their feelings.
“Sometimes I think we should get rid of school boards and let teachers teach and tell parents what’s wrong with their kids”.
Jane Purves, NS Education Minister 1999 to 2002
———————————————————————————————-
Yes, these are the days of miracles and wonders.
I am really still trying to understand this quip.
Such a statement and attitude from a former Education minister reveals her intolerance with parents and their presence or role in the public education system. This is quite common these days.
Parents are preached to by the policy makers the wonders and miracles of new math, literacy, etc., (a new flavour every month) and yet told to butt out when the outcomes are less than acceptable. The avalanche of complaints about NS’s system right now is almost overwhelming and impossible to keep up with for the average person.
For a former top educrat, her statement belies the so called inclusionary objectives in her day for a democratic system of education. Another reason teachers do not generally speak out.
Her statement also speaks volumes about why the NDP are now having to cut the education budget in NS.
[…] has been some fascinating discussion on this over at Paul Bennett’s site this week, and it’s that conversation that has led me to ask some basic questions about […]
Here is a story of two retired teachers speaking out in Nova Scotia.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/63013-retired-teachers-ns-students-should-do-math
Retired teachers – where are you?
Governments can’t fire you, or take away your pension. Time to speak up, in the same manner like the two Nova Scotia teachers?
“Carson says private tutoring programs are backlogged with students looking for help in math, a clear indication that the curriculum — and how it is being taught — is a failure, more so than the students.
“It’s not unusual to see kids who struggle,” he said. “But when you are talking about 68 per cent of the student population struggling like this, the problem is much bigger than the kids.”
“”It is absolutely ridiculous,” she said. “When you’ve got all these kids who take hours to do five math questions — it is just unbelievable.”
Math should be taught “without using sticks and blocks and buttons,” she said, so that students learn how to think through the numbers in their minds without resorting to individual counting for every problem.
Greek has hosted international students in her home and says they find the math programs here a joke. She says parents trying to help their children are frustrated because they can’t understand the curriculum either.”
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/63013-retired-teachers-ns-students-should-do-math
And the Minister of Education, does not have time to speak to both teachers, and sends them packing to speak to a consultant.
Consultants another curse for teachers, students and parents. And they are pretty good at not only muffling the voices of teachers, but as well as students and parents.
How about working teachers, talking about the number of students taking private tutoring, the learning struggles due to poor curriculum design, and the other dictates raining down on teachers from the board and ministry, that prevents a teacher from using their training that benefits the students and their achievement?
Stephen – If the school council is compliant in that it has all of the partners at the table and all of them know how to use the statutory power given them and is at their disposal right this minute there is MUCH that can be accomplished.
School Councils were put in place for the purpose of improving education for children, AND they are the vehicle of accountability and communication for parents of that school. The Council, after what almost 12 years in existence should be the conduit for that school community. The principal the facilitator only. There was an companion piece to 612/00 the regs. governing school councils. It was reg. 613/00 and spelled out the role of principals in seeing that these groups got what they needed.
If there’s an interest on the part of the parents on the School Council to learn more about math instruction, methods etc. then guess what? Majority rules and a motion made, then seconded is all that’s needed to get that ball in motion. Put away your old notions of needing permission from MOE or even your school board to fill a need that parents raise.
How parents choose to participate in their schools and alongside their children as they experience their education is highly personal. Some parents who like fundraising can continue to do so, BUT, that is NOT what council were put in place to do. More parents have been turned off by ineffective school councils than you can imagine. Ministry, board and school admin. often contribute to that ineffectiveness.
I’ve known so many parents who are leaders and business owners in their communities who came to the School Council table ready and willing to learn all they could about methods, strategies and school operations, only to be disappointed by yet another training session on how to hold effective meetings. Ironically, one of the most important points about holding effective school council meetings for parents is to learn what it means to have statutory authority – YET that rarely gets any attention by the low-ranking board administrator charged with overseeing school councils.
I guess the fact that retired teachers seldom have any criticism and that school councils seldom raise issues dear to the hearts of reformers and there is no groundsweel of reform activity of any significance whatsoever in Canada can be taken as an endorsement of the system in that not much is wrong.
Did you ever for a moment consider the fact that you can’t get anywhere is a sign that the vast majority of parents believe thing are pretty much OK?
Silence, only indicates that people have not been asked Doug.
Much like the battered parents of the BC and the ongoing battle between the teachers’ unions and the government.
“B.C. teachers’ ‘dark day’ job action beyond the pale for some parents”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/bc-teachers-dark-day-job-action-beyond-the-pale-for-some-parents/article2318917/
In the comment section, 252 comments.
94 % of the comments – are against the actions of the teachers’ union – fed up
5 % of the comments – are for the teachers, and blames the parents, and the government
1 % of the comments – are neutral – that is offering solutions
Parents are indeed voicing their dissatisfaction, but not in places that registers with the stakeholders in the public education system.
you’re chasing shadows. Your comment doesn’t relate to any of the discussion we’re having with Stephen or Steven.
Doug, the Nova Scotia Council of School Board Unions disagrees with you. Seems things are not preety much ok and they want the parents help.
http://southshorenow.ca/archives/2012/021512/news/index033.php
Another area that teachers voices are muffled, are the equity policies, that in my opinion actually prevents teachers from carrying out their duties as teachers.
““The board isn’t operating with any transparency at all,” says parent Mitchell Levine. “There are so many contradictions in that document … it’s designed to confuse.” The trustees’ rationale has come down to that piece of edu-jargon all the rage in public school circles: “Equity,” roughly translated as “fairness.”
To the board, fairness means if not all students can access Baythorn’s program, none should. And without expanding it to other reaches of the board, it’s not a realistic option for most students living far away from its Thornhill home.
Trustees want to focus on creating solid, uniform programs at every local school and believe that “differentiated instruction,” should take care of individual learning differences.”
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/02/14/all-for-none-none-for-all?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=recommend-button&utm_campaign=All+for+none%2C+none+for+all
The equity policies do not practice the principles of fairness, but are policies that practices the right to discriminate. It makes the teachers the bad guys in the eyes of the parents, when the teachers have no choice but to dumbed down the work through differentiated instruction, because the students have weak foundation skills in the 3 Rs. In turned the students, which could be as high as 60 percent or more in a classroom, are prevented from accessing SE services for remediation of the 3 Rs, because they do not meet the criteria for access to SE services. It is justified by the school boards, and ministries of education that the equity threshold has been met, because no one in the class are receiving SE services for remediation of the 3 Rs. A cascading effect impacts the ability of the teachers to provide for the learning needs of their students, given the edicts from the boards and ministries preventing teachers from acting to provide for their students needs.
The boards and ministries of education justifies it, if all of the students cannot access an education service in the classroom, than none should be able to access an education service. Teachers may closed their doors, but they do run the risk of not having a job in the following year, when they attempt to provide for the true learning needs of their students. When equity policies are based on the line of education resources and services, nobody wins at the bottom levels of the teachers, students and parents.
Teachers are at high risked in losing their jobs, if they dare to speak publicly on equity policies of the education system. Like the retired teacher in Nova Scotia, “Carson has been retired from classroom teaching since 2002. He says he lost an Education Department summer program job immediately after the last time he spoke out against the department a few years ago.”
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/63013-retired-teachers-ns-students-should-do-math
Nova Scotia is suffering urbanization like everywhere on Earth. The solution is “community schools” multi purpose buildings in the community of which the school gets first draw.
I agree – and to do that you must decentralize (I didn’t say privatize) the system which would allow more input from communities, teachers and parents. Then some responsible and unencumbered ideas could be implemented.
exactly. Empower local schools and councils, make elected trustees accountable and available to them, and allow those community schools that wish the option to opt out of dealing with their school boards.
Give the power BACK to local communities because they’re so varied from board to board and province to province.
Nancy,
The teachers go to school every day and teach the kids even though they are in a legal strike position. They could be out oon the bricks and the kids would get no school at all. If the boards don’t like it they can order a lock out at any time. This is what work-to-rule looks like.
Does “decentralize” mean one school board per town or county or just more local autonomy for the school? What does it look like. To me as long as it is democratic and public everything else is up for discussion.
I fought “amalgamation” here under the Harris regime but they would not listen. The idea that one board, TDSB has more students than the entire Maritime provinces is absurd. It was to find “efficiencies”. None were found. It costs more than ever.
I would think autonomy would vary from province to province based on population, demographics etc.. More autonomy for schools would help commit the community to sustaining its school and attracting new families.
The town of Wolfville grew 14% in the last census. They happen to still have K-12 within 5 minutes all around. Lunenburg on the other has given up its high school and has approximately 5 to 6% of its population now under the age of 19, far below the provincial average. It is only holding its own as a retirement community now. The decline has been magnified as centralization evolved on the south shore. So much so the funding cuts (based on per student) are 2.1% this year.
The school boundaries in Nova Scotia are already under review on the South Shore. Decentralization would also mean a halt to massive capital expenditures on big box schools which are unaffordable and ussustainable, and irrational busing. Capital funds which could be spent far more wisely on existing schools.
Planning education in relationship to urban and rural development, and as you say, multi-purpose schools would go along way to opening up dialogue with the teachers in the community and tapping into their wealth of knowledge.
You’re making way too much sense Steven. The blob will never go for it because it is that blob that are most threatened by giving up of their own importance and authority.
Off topic but this needs to be known about “one of the best public education systems in the world” as alleged by a frequent poster of red herrings.
http://www.cbc.ca/ns/insidethenews/2012/02/math-is-hard-work.html
Not really off topic, because it speaks about the culture of silence within the public education system, when dealing with negative outcomes.
The public has no way of knowing if the school boards and the schools are dealing with low achievement. How does it affect teachers, and their teaching when no one is listening to them. Common sense is pouring over previous tests and hard copies of actual work of students to locate the learning deficits and gaps of students, than planned accordingly.
“Other boards are taking notice.
This year, for the first time, the Tri-County board is giving its grade 10 students district wide math exams. They will use the data in “brainstorming” sessions with teachers to revise how they teach the provincial curriculum. ”
However, changing the curriculum according to the results of the grade 10 exams, will still leave the individual gaps of students untouched. I think most teachers are aware of it, especially when the personal deficits of math knowledge and proficient basic arithmetic skills are the real culprit, with math curriculum at a close second.
Everyone within, agreeing to keep silent, and let the students become someone else’s problem in the next year.
If you look carefully at the international data, when it’s broken down on a regional and provincial level, there are definite parts of Canada which do better than others. Specifically, Ontario and Alberta are often cited as the top performers, but other provinces do well in some curriculum areas. It’s a little confounding because it’s difficult to point to one reason and say, “There’s the secret of our success. Now if only everybody could replicate that, we’d be flying.”
To your point, Nancy, Ontario has spent a good deal of time over the past decade doing just what you suggest. Teachers and administrators have spent hours and hours going over the gaps as indicated by provincial and local tests. Specific, targeted support has been provided to those schools that aren’t doing as well as expected. District-level strategic plans are built around these indicators of success and these are reviewed on an annual basis. Teachers are visited by support personnel from district and ministry levels, and “best practice” is on the lips of everyone at all levels of the organization. One district actually brought secretaries and caretakers in on the first day of school in order to let them know that they had a part to play in student success.
What concerns me is that the data is often collected and looked at from a distance. We talk about our “grade three students”, and our “grade six” students, but I’m afraid that some of the names and faces of individual students who are struggling sometimes get lost in our discussions. This is due for the most part, I believe, to the way that data is collected, reported and used once it is delivered to schools. I’m not saying that Brickcliff Public School doesn’t care about Josh Smith and how he does but there is a disturbing sense in which Josh Smith’s success, or lack of success, is seen as important primarily in the way that it affects the school’s data.
In reply to Stephen’s response below (no ‘reply’ button beside the comment). I agree that we need to pay more attention to the ‘outliers’ –schools that are performing above or below their expectations. It’s what the Fraser, AIMS, & C.D.Howe Inst. try to do.
Lower SES schools often do much better than their SES peers and High SES school ofter underperform based on expectations. What are those schools and the teaching staff within them doing to make the difference? THAT is was needs the magnifiying glass treatment.
Grade 12 math is very hard, even when taught perfectly by perfect teachers most people cannot do it well. This is where we hit the law of diminishing returns. I have a very high tested IQ, I am a good student I have a BA and an MA with A in every course. I could not do grade 13 Calculus in 1968 and I sure do not blame the teacher for that. I had reached my limit with math. Most people simply cannot do it period.
This dinky reason hardly diminishes Canada’s outstanding record overall. The onus is on the others who challenge the PISA results.
Which nations are better? Lets get specific reformers,m where are your models? Please don’t give me a on-off school somewhere. We are talking countries.
Ya we know Nancy, nobody cares everybody is incompetent, there is a conspiracy to keep us all stupid, ….. getting kinda old.
http://www.educationnews.org/international-uk/uk-students-struggle-with-university-level-math/
Diff country, same problem.
Not everybody can or even should do math beyond grade 10-11.
How are the math scores in Singapore? Finland?
What are they doing differently?
Perhaps they make damn sure that students get the basics before moving on to the next level.
great point Andrew.
Singapore is a totally artificial enclave. Finland of course does have a superior education system all around based on equity.
Somehow you non-professionals seem to think SAYING something is the same as MAKING IT HAPPEN. Making policy is a lot different than executing it.
None of you would last until 3:30 in a real classroom.
Click to access 46643496.pdf
Sure looks to me like Canada is a leading nation all around. Cities hardly count if they are not representitive of their whole country.
Asian nations spend far more time on task with math than western nations but don’t get much back for it. Almost all innovation still comes from the west.
With calculators and computers the ability to do calculation quickly and accurately with a pencil has less and less value.
Muffled teachers-
My view is simplistic.
The teachers are the heart of the education system,sure 20-30 percent are probably terrible at their jobs and they are protected from being fired-not a good thing.
The Union has provided job security,annual raises,pensions…
In spite,no one would really object,most of them are wonderful,well intenitioned and caring towards their students.
Why can`t they say,you made us use this new math book-it doesn`t work,the students are not learning.
Why can`t they say,that program you bought for all the schools for Language Arts,the children aren`t learning…they can`t read,or spell.
Why is there not action research and pilots prior to major installations,why don`t we consult a 5-10 teacher group who pilot a program,have meetings and say,is it working?
Would it not make sense to involve them?
Number 5 out of how many countries, you can count?
Korea massive tutorial system after supper, you want that?
Finland 4% child poverty rate.
I guess you can see that Canada is not just a world leader in reading but math and science as well.
Make sure you thank a teacher today.
Game, set, match.
Jo anne you are totally unqualified to say that 20-30 of teachers are doing a terrible job. You are getting worse that Nancy at wild anecdotal opinions.
Click to access 46643496.pdf
These PISA results say you are wrong about everything every day.
Doug,name one large work force where 20 percent of the staff is not less than mediocre?
That`s the norm-sadly,these teachers can`t be fired-shoot me if you will but it should be permissible to dismiss them.
MOST are committed to their kids-did you miss that.
Be realistic.
An unmuffled teacher!
http://www.ourkids.net/blog/michael-zwaagstra-speech-why-schools-are-failing-kids-by-not-failing-them-7364/
Doug – the foundation of arithmetic is the pathway to all advance mathematics.
To do well in algebra and geometry, one must have a firm foundation in arithmetic. In turn to do well in calculus, one must have a firm foundation and understanding of algebra and trig.
Arithmetic and mathematics have two two distinct definitions. For the most part the current K to 12 math curriculum . is mish-mash of advance mathematics theorem and arithmetic. “Arithmetic is simply the calculation/computational discipline. In terms of my particular interest in mathematical cognition, I consider arithmetic one of the building blocks necessary to mathematics.”
http://mathcogidiocy.blogspot.com/2005/10/mathematics-and-arithmetic.html
If there is gaps in students knowledge in arithmetic, the steeper the slope it for students to pass algebra. Ditto if there is gaps in algebra, the steeper the slope it for students to pass trig or calculus. Students who struggle with calculus, are students who have missing gaps in the arithmetic foundation and algebra foundation.
Lots of research on it Doug, including poor math curricuum, poor instruction as well as the reasons why high achieving students fails calculus. For the most part it is missing gaps and a shaky foundation in arithmetic.
Doug, the OECD numbers are only as good as the education stats that is being handed over by the education officials of each country. Many areas that the Canadian education system do not track, including private tutoring. Two billion dollar business and climbing each year, but nobody in the public education system is tracking such numbers. and nor are the public education systems tracking other such education numbers. Such as what Joanne had stated, it could be very well true, but the public will never know if the numbers are tracked and if they are, such numbers are never released to the public. In the same manner, the number of grade 12 graduates with low literacy and numeracy skills, which I have seen estimates of anywhere between 33 % to 45 percent of grade 12 graduates having low literacy and numeracy skills.
The top levels of the global educators, are not impressed with PISA. Never have been, because PISA does not measure readiness for post-secondary studies and ready for the work force.
From a math professor: “At least three reasons for students’ failure:
(A) Arithmetic is about computation of specific numbers.
Algebra is about what is true in general for all numbers, all
whole numbers, all integers, etc.
Going from the specific to the general is a giant conceptual leap.
Students are not prepared by our curriculum for this leap.
(B) They don’t get the foundational skills needed for algebra.
(C) They are taught incorrect mathematics in algebra classes.
Garbage in, garbage out.
These are not independent statements. They are inter-related.”
Click to access C57Eugene_3.pdf
Ditto for the sciences, but that is another sorted tale of the public education system, and the mad methods of the upper crust in the education system.
From WISE – “We began this initiative because we are experts in mathematics and we care deeply about the education of Canadian children. Children who do not receive the strong education in math that they deserve may ultimately be excluded from many careers in trades, technology, science, engineering, business, and economics, to name a few. Our ultimate goal is to ensure that all children have the opportunity to achieve their potential in math so that they may enjoy lives free of innumeracy, may experience the beauty in math, and so that they may have a wide range of career opportunities.”
http://wisemath.org/
Catherine metioned earlier that we have to empower local schools and councils and make elected trustees accountable to those schools.
This would go a long way to lifting the gag order from teachers who are so essential to the core basics the public system currently lacks. Give the teachers some elbow room pertaining to public opinion on issues from curriculum and the larger review of program delivery and we may have a completely different pictue than we have now. A teacher should not have to be retired to be critical in a time of great public concern over the sustainability and improvement of our public education system.
I believe Stephen Hurley’s venture into the PC world of a sub committee on math and curriculum matters should be interesting and is totally valid.
Thanks Steven for getting this discussion back on track. How EVER did it go off the rails so quickly:-?
Personally Steven,school trustees can be terrifying.Many have no knowledge whatsoever of curriculum,pedagogy,practices that are effective or not and if empowered could make some fatal mistakes.
I have known some that are political animals,don`t really care about teachers,parents,schools and kids and use it as a stepping stone to enhance their CV and escalate on the political journey they envision.
Should they have an education background?
given that there exists very little prerequisite for who can run to be a trustee candidate Joanne, I would say that it’s up to the public and school communities to do a better job of selecting their trustees who represent them. An education background should NOT be necessary. Not at all.
When, as in Ontario the public and the trustees themselves allowed themselves to be swallowed up by the MOE blob they too now have a serious image problem.
IF, on the other hand, trustees their time in individual schools with their councils instead of mega-board meetings where very little gets accomplished they’d get back to their roots and maybe get back the trust they’ve lost.
Aren`t you being unrealistic?
That depends on what you mean by education background. Teacher credentials? An M.Ed? Own an education consulting business? We want to be careful to remain true to the spirit of being a public trustee. We wouldn’t want the position of trustee to only be open to those that are too close to the system that you’re trying to manage.
There is credence to the claim of special agendas with trustees. Plenty of evidence there.
But if the issue is improved training and knowledge of governance practices for trustees which do not include the fair representation of their constituents or community and schools (only to rubber stamp policy and not make inquiries into the integrity of data or methodology supplied to them), I would have to say we’re going back to square one and trust within the system deflates again.
Teacher input loses out – they clam up and students suffer.
We just go back to a buffer zone for the educrats and end up with the odd renagade board like the south shore in NS that was just served their walking papers.
The issue then becomes how much education would be needed for a trustee, and in what fields make the criteria sound and democratic – isn’t that the public’s decision?
In five years at the Lunenburg Academy I can say the local trustee was well educated but probably spent little time at the school. I’m not sure how well the trustee engaged with the teachers.
Steven,very well stated.
I know it is discouraging to try to get a model that will equalize power between student and administration.
I worked with two school boards in Alberta,public,they refer to their students and their parents as clients-
I believe there is a nugget there.
Improving training and knowledge for parents on governance practices as well as trustees would go a very long way also Steven.
There was a board in Ontario (can’t recall which one) that actually invited parents to attend PD events alongside the trustees.
Trustees in Ontario these days might as well be straight-jacketed into their new bureaucratic role. It’s the easy way out, but it also moves trustees further and further away from their communities.
Joanne,
Michael is certainly one person who has spoken his mind on this connected with schooling. Joe Bower in Alberta is another, even if his message is different in theme and intent.
The idea of standing against things like resource purchases is a difficult one. I know from first hand experience, having written a letter and had an interview with our associate director on the district-wide purchase of a math text back in the ’90’s. In this case, I felt that the idea of a single textbook program flew in the face of the current research in mathematics education. I argued that there were many of us who were building effective programs using a variety of resources, and the “kids were alright”. Unfortunately, it was the beginning of an intense period of central control from a district perspective. It was to be followed by the same type of control at a Ministry level.
I believe that, in a round-about sort of way, the move towards centralized decision-making has taken something out of the profession. Falling in line with the use of various resources, strategies that are considered “best practices” and even uniform approaches to lesson planning have removed a good deal of the creativity and innovation at the classroom level.
There is a generation of teachers coming into the profession that has never experienced the level of freedom that we did 20 years ago, and I think that this has also resulted in less of a sense of individual voice and the critical eye that was necessary when we were developing our own classroom programs, materials and, in some cases, approaches.
With regard to pilots and action-research: we still have them, but I’m not sure that we wait long enough to be able to make any useful claims about them. We rush to the implementation stage quickly, and then we’re on to rolling out the next bandwagon:
http://www.edutopia.org/educational-trends-bandwagons
I’m beginning to really dislike the term “best practices”. Not taking anything away from your comments to Joanne Stephen, but that phrase has been so over-used as to be meaningless in the greater scheme of education.
What would you consider a “best practice” and more importantly how does a “practice” become a “best practice”?
I agree and that is why I put it in quotation marks. I cringe everytime I hear the phrase, and many of my colleagues now look over at me whenever someone else uses it. One of the issues that I have with it is that it assumes that we’ve got everything figured out. It detracts from the complexity of the task of teaching. Simply taking someone what has been successful for someone else and implementing it in your own classroom seldom works.
Some temper the phrase a little by suggesting that there are “promising practices”…better…
Research based instruction is my word:)-Doug would say yawn,eyes rolling:).
Yes you make a good point Catherine. Sound, research-based, proven effective best-practice is how the term should be used.
Even the dreadful whole language practice was thought to be ‘best-practice’ at one time–best mistake more like!
Stephen,thank you.I see that the control is at the top.In a way,we are saying the same thing.
Catherine,best practice means getting excellent results by folLowing what empirical studies recommend in a particular subject.Certainly,when it comes to straight curriculum,grade 4 and up it`s the magic and personality the teacher brings to the delivery of the curriculum.
.
I`ve bored all of you to death with the research on Reading and yet,we don`t see our schools paying any heed,although many teachers complain behind closed doors.
Now there is the WISE Math movement,after years of watching children not learn arithmetic or foundational math so they can go on to attain higher order concepts,people are speaking up.
This has gone on for far too long but fear makes the teachers quiet.
yes “research based” would qualify things I suppose but for those students who have fallen through the cracks, or those parents who have been up against a glut of the blob in their education engagement would be hard-pressed to feel any “best practices” were evident.
It’s one of those eye-rolling terms, for sure.
The phrase “best practice” is not a teacher-generated one. I see it comes from the top of the organization and is designed to make sure that rank and file stay just that, “rank and file”. It limits creativity and innovation on the ground. After all, if it’s best, it’s best, right?
“I believe that, in a round-about sort of way, the move towards centralized decision-making has taken something out of the profession. Falling in line with the use of various resources, strategies that are considered “best practices” and even uniform approaches to lesson planning have removed a good deal of the creativity and innovation at the classroom level.”
As a parent, having children far apart, in the school system, in the 80s, the 90s and now the 21st century, I can attest to the quality of education dropping, as well as the freedom that has been lost to the teachers. My oldest child, I always got a phone call from the teacher inquiring if anything happen at home, because your child is a bit off today, and now in 21st century, teachers don’t have time to phone. A big difference between my oldest child and the youngest child. and the curse of centralization.
Joanne – no I’m not being unrealistic at all actually. It was a plank in a recent provincial election. Why not give local schools and their communities the option of continuing with a board or not? How about incentive to think outside of that box we’re so quickly to wish for but are quick to criticize?
New Zealand also stands as a clear example of how trustees can work more for local schools with their educational partners.
I apologize Catherine,I thought we were talking about teachers and how their voices and opinions are not considered;I am skeptical that school trustee change can improve what goes on in the schools,the problems in my view occur in the every day teaching and delivery of programs,professional development of teachers and ignoring what research tells us we should be doing.
The devil is in the details.I agree with you though on the fact that a relationship of trust and respect has to return to schools towards parents and children.
How did this eviscerate and why?
Is it centralization,Unions…?
A light bulb went off at some time over the last 20 years that given the new technology and international competition, there would be very few well paid jobs that did not require a good education. Parents became aware that ALL kids need to do well, something teachers had been saying for a long time. A competition for marks and university entrance ensued that by its nature could not take everyone. Those left out, particularly those with SE children became enraged because they now realized the future is somewhat bleak.
We have created what is known to some as the “hour glass” economy with two large groups, the educated in the top half and the undereducated in the bottom half with a very narrow middle. Everyone wants to be in the top half but only 40-50% can be allowed in. Parents are very angry if their kids are not in that group. They feel “they did everything they could” so it must be somebody else’s fault.
They lash out at the education system because if they cannot blame the teachers for the fate of their child then it is on them and they sure don’t accept that.
“I agree with you though on the fact that a relationship of trust and respect has to return to schools towards parents and children.
How did this eviscerate and why?
Is it centralization,Unions…?”
Reflecting back, when my oldest child was going to school – there was trust, respect and more importantly not treating parents as if they are children in adult clothing. But by the late 1980s, I observed small changes that had my antennas on alert, especially concerning administration changes and bureaucracy red tape. For example, it took 4 years to tell the pencil pushers my oldest child was up to date on her vaccinations. It follow me in two school board districts, with threats and fines both from the school districts and public heath departments. Every time, I thought I solved the problem, six months later I received another letter. I never did solve the problem, and the family doctors just told me to forget about it, and what is important is that your child has all the required vaccinations.
Increase consolidation and centralization began in the late 1980s, and by the year 2005, no matter what part of Canada one is from, education systems views parents as a group to mistrust, and therefore must be control. In 2005, a bus transportation problem, took six months to solve. Bureaucratic red tape? You bet it was, but bureaucratic red tape, is an effective road block to prevent parents seeking changes to bus stops. After I won the battle, I decided to drive my child to school, and one of the reasons out of many, was my child was being picked on by the bus driver. Today, about half of the parents drive their children to school, rather than having their children ride the bus. Due to all the petty regulations and rules, it does not take much to have children kicked off the bus. Laughing and talking could very well be the minor event, to have a child be removed from the bus. The bureaucratic red tape as well as the regulations and rules, sets the conditions in future cuts to transportation, in areas where children live 4 kms or less to the school.
In turned, the increase in parents taking their children to school, the increased demand of opening the doors earlier and another set of regulations, rules kicks in where the teachers’ union pokes its nose in, demanding the school must followed the contract agreements that are in place. Can’t have teachers supervising 10 minutes more, in their day, than what the contract has stated.
It is all about controlling the bottom players of the education system, to manipulate them into acting for the best interests of the public education system. Like Stephen states, ” I see it comes from the top of the organization and is designed to make sure that rank and file stay just that, “rank and file”. It limits creativity and innovation on the ground. After all, if it’s best, it’s best, right?” Resulting in students falling through the cracks, created by the top elite of the education system, and designed with purpose, to maintained the class structure.
Doug’s hour-glass analogy, is used often to defend the current education structure and system, and blaming the parents and the students and anything else to preserved the status-quo of the hour-glass and its percentages. Low literacy and numeracy levels, are very much part of it, to ensure that the class structure stays in place, and maintain the low levels of social mobility among the lower middle to low-income groups. Even OECD, admits that industrialized countries , it is standard policy to keep 50 percent or so at lower levels of literacy and numeracy. But OECD is alarmed at the climbing numbers in low literacy and numeracy. As well as the researchers investigating social mobility, and the road blocks and detours that are designed to keep students in their social-economic classes.
It leaves the individual teachers caught in the web of not their own making, and as Stephen states, it limits creativity and innovation at the school and classroom levels. The system prevents teachers acting to addressed the learning deficits of students, and for students who have deficits in the 3 Rs. The policy of limiting education services beyond the classroom, to students who are failing, only serves to reinforce lower standards and expectations to where a 50 percent grade is the high standard of the day. How many times have parents heard, but your child is passing, staring at the report card filled with Ds in the 3 Rs?
I sometimes get a kick out of conservatives who say “centralization and bureaucratization is killing local school-parent-teacher relationships. Then you say for Ontario, the biggest amalgamations were conducted by conservatives it seems well OK that is different?
“Even OECD, admits that industrialized countries , it is standard policy to keep 50 percent or so at lower levels of literacy and numeracy”
I would love to see a situation on that one. You make it sound like deliberate policy.
On the other hand, 7/10 of the new jobs expected to be created do not require university or college. Truck driver is a typical category set to grow. .
Surely you realize, by now, that education reformers (whom you label “conservatives”) are a varied lot, not the least bit monolithic in their thinking.
Watch the generalizations and labels, Doug. We might start tagging you as a “progressive” and paint you with a Deweyite brush. Even reformers know that defenders of the staus quo also come with different stripes.
And the Liberal and NDP governments, are great ones for increasing the bureaucracy, red tape, narrowing of criteria to access basic education and health services, and the creation of bottle necks that produces long waiting lists. Where now in Ontario or other provinces, the average wait for a child to be identified formally in the education system is a 5 year period.
As for the 7/10 jobs bit, you have that a bit backwards Doug. The 7 jobs that previously only required a grade 12 education or at the minimum a two year stint at the college level, now all of them requires a two year stint at the college level. It was the BLOB’s solution to the complaints from the private sector, that grade 12 graduates could not do simple numeracy, and writing tasks, such as producing a letter, with correct grammar and spelling. Now a two year certificate to work as a ‘girl Friday’ at the local fish plant.
Even though I am well-versed on accounting procedures, the candidate that will be hired over myself, will be the applicant with the two year certificate. People in the real world, know that receiving a grade 12 diploma holds no value at all, except the grade 12 diploma is the requirement to enter college and university, for jobs that once upon a time, only needed grade 12.
Truck driver set to grow? What planet are you living on? Check out the Drummond report for Ontario, Now there is reality in the report especially in public education sphere.
“The province funds nearly 98 per cent of education sector expenses. Over the past decade, provincial spending on elementary and secondary education has grown significantly despite declining student enrolment; one result has been a 56 per cent increase in per-pupil funding. This is not sustainable. The Commission believes the sector growth rate must be constrained to one per cent per year.
The government’s challenge is to restrain education spending while protecting the scholastic progress achieved. The education sector should stay the course on its agenda of three key goals: improving student achievement; closing student achievement gaps; and increasing confidence in the publicly funded education system.”
http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/reformcommission/chapters/summary.html
Now tell us about the tax increases you are clamouring for?
Asian nations spend far more time on task with math than western nations but don’t get much back for it. Almost all innovation still comes from the west.
_____________________________________________________
World’s fastest computer – China.
World’s fastest growing economies – China and India.
World’s biggest excuse makers in public education – Canada, US and UK.
PISA in 2005: Canada 5th in math
PISA in 2009: Canada 11th in math
Reflecting on PISA results in Mathematics: All I can say is, thank goodness for Quebec and Alberta! Without them, it would not be so pretty.
It must be the teachers in those advanced provinces!
Yes, and now Alberta is considering eliminating provincial testing–what a mistake.
Reading it is Ontario
Real actual countries 60 in total. Shanghai, Hong Kong are not countries they are the best 2 cities in China. Shanghai 80% go to university China 20%
Singapore a city state of Chinese carved out of Malasia, totally artificial.
Real nations
Reading Canada #3
Math #6
Science #4
Canada significantly above all European nations except Finland, USA Australia/NZ,
Higher than Canada Reading: Korea Finland
Higher than Canada Math : Korea, Finland Japan, Litchenstein, Switzerland
Higher than Canada Science; Korea, Finland, New Zealand, Japan.
Korea massive after school tutorial system
Finland 4% child poverty.
All Asian nations much more time on task in math.
Reformers cannot escape the fact that Canada is a leading nation in the world of education. If we had a 4% child poverty rate like Finland we would likely be #1 in the world in all areas.
Denial denial denial because it does not fit your political agenda.
Hmmmm…
The OECD results must be flawed if one has to constantly juggle numbers and definitions in order to validate one’s “opinion”… or is it the “opinion” that is flawed.
Well said Andrew. Ditto for Canada’s education stats, and if Alberta was removed – Canada would dropped accordingly. Not to mention, the population of Shanghai is at 22 million, and Hong Kong at 7.1 million. All packed in like sardines in a tin can…………..city states should be included, just based on the population count, and no room to expand, except up in the air.
Is Shanghai a nation? Hong Kong? Is Singapore a real nation?
Korea is for sure and Finland. Somehow almost everyone is the world’s education biosphere considers Canada to be a world leader doing almost everything right except a few Canadian fringe malcontents very few of whom have studied education from either a professional or academic perspective.
Nancy, 80% of Shanghai students go to university. 20% of Chinese students go to university. Get real.
Wrong Doug, 80 percent of the high income students go to university in Shanghai, and at the other end, the migrant workers students, rarely make it passed grade 7, before they are told to go out and make a living.
All helped along with the requirement of passing high stakes testing to move from the elementary to high school to university or college level. Only the very best makes it to university, and a large pocketbook is required to pay for the school fees.
Shame on you, your private school is an example of filling a niche for wealthy Chinese students, as well as other Asian students who did passed their national testing with high scores, but a low 90 is not good enough to enter the halls of their universities.
In China, less than 20 percent of the student population go to university, and the next 20 percent of the student population is at the college level. The remainder of the student population 60 percent have no choice but to leave in grade 7 or so, because most cannot afford the fees at the high school level, nor have the ability to pass the national testing to get into high school.
China has a population of 1.9 billion, and India over 2 billion, the economic policies of cheap labour, needs at least 60 percent of the population classified as general labour. Hence no need to educate 60 percent of the student population to a high school level.
OECD results say otherwise, Doug, whether you like it or not.
It simply is.
Ivory tower dwellers are frequently out of touch with reality and you’re no exception. The fact of the matter is that Canada, once a leader in public education is in serious decline, as evidenced by your own source documents. How far down we go before bottoming out is now the concern.
City states are nations within a nation, when the city states offers services and goods, that the rest of the population that resides outside of the city states, do not received, nor exists.
Besides, the individual teachers are not interested in PISA results, and more concern with what is going on in their classroom, and the achievement of their students. Some schools here and there across the country, are breaking new ground in trying to raise the individual achievement of their children. Stressing the foundational skills of the 3 Rs, working to improved them, so the students has a fighting chance to passed the public exams, with a decent grade.
By the way Doug, the few malcontents you claimed, check out P4E, and parents expressing they want choice. 2012 is shaping up to be really interesting, The malcontents that you speak of are the teachers, parents and students , where there is a growing consensus over key issues, and one of them is choice. The Drummond report, is pushing for more efficient delivery of education and giving parents choice.
Chignecto-Central school board improves math scores
CBC News Posted: Feb 15, 2012 8:51 PM AT
Last Updated: Feb 15, 2012 10:03 PM AT
The Chignecto-Central Regional School Board is boasting improved provincial math exam scores over last year, while students in other school boards are scoring poorly.
The provincial average is 52 per cent. Recently, all but one Grade 12 math student at the Shelburne High School ended up failing the provincial exam. The class average was 24 per cent.
And, according to the provincial Department of Education, 34 per cent of students in the Tri-County Regional School Board who took the Grade 12 math exam passed in the 2010-11 school year.
Four years ago, schools in the Chignecto-Central Regional School Board scored a dismal 26 per cent pass rate when it came to the provincial Grade 12 math exam.
Last year, they managed a 66 per cent pass rate — a significant jump.
Darlene MacKeen-Hudson, the board’s math co-ordinator, said one of the main things the board started doing was holding board-wide tests in Grade 10, then analyzing the results to find out where students needed help.
“We really want to see how they perform and how the pull together all the concepts they’ve learned in math. This exam is at the end of Grade 10 but it’s really speaking to what they’ve learned all the way through their education.”
Thomas Little said he was failing Grade 10 math last year at the Cobequid Educational Centre in Truro. This year he said he’s improved a lot.
“It’s a fresh start, new year, it feels great actually.”
His teacher, Jennifer Courish, also meets with other math teachers in the board to give and get feedback and share teaching approaches that work.
Last June, the school had a 95 per cent pass rate.
“The better I understand the topic, the better they’ll understand the topic,” Courish said.
Other boards are starting to implement the same approach to try to boost their sagging their math scores.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2012/02/15/ns-chignecto-central-regional-school-board-math-exam.html
Did we not do this one already. So some kids have trouble with grade 12 math. Big deal, nothing new there. Another kids has trouble in grade 10. I keep waiting for the news.
If you are waiting for the day when all kids will sail through to their PhD you will have a long wait.
Grade 12 math is a gate keeper. If you can’t do it stay away from math based subjects in post secondary.
Move on folks there is no news here.
Yes, and now Alberta is considering eliminating provincial testing–what a mistake.
You can see that Jerry Brown wants to phase it out in California. Redford PC premier says “we get no useful information from it.”
NCLB test based insanity is a joke in USA as everybody comes to see that testing does not seem to improve anything.
Testing was sold to the population by saying that poor performers would be so ashamed of their results that they would all work harder and improve results. Didn’t happen.
Back on track……..
Joanne wrote “The devil is in the details.I agree with you though on the fact that a relationship of trust and respect has to return to schools towards parents and children.
How did this eviscerate and why?
Is it centralization,Unions…?”
Good questions and ones that need to be thought about, which I did.
Trust gets lost between parents and the schools in many incremental ways that build up over the years. Here are some that might contribute to the feeling that the system has honed its defense against parents well over the years and rather than look at them as equal partners that could work with them to improve the system, many within the system make parents feel that they’re a necessary evil that comes with the job. It’s more of an attitude than anything else.
By no means do all educators, admin. or trustees do this but a few examples that I’ve heard from parents over many years of parent advocacy.
– how many times on the first day of school does a parent get a handbook laying out the expectations the school has of the student and parent, yet very few school handbooks include what parents and students can expect from the school (staff, teachers, principals).
– adults (parents) being made to sit in teeny tiny chairs during a parent-teacher conference that’s lower then the chair of the teacher/principal.
– the tendency of some within the schools to speak V-E-R-Y slowly to parents when in fact many parents can and do understand ideas expressed in the language of adults.
– the school loves parents for their money but not much else.
– the mixed message the school sends parents on ranking students and awarding excellence.
– Edubabble – designed to sound impressive, designed to placate. Parents are on to this.
– not telling the whole story.
– not following-up on things like IEPs from year to year so that the parent is always having to go in to make sure the new teacher for this year has read the file.
– when unions choose to strike instead of teach their students. Trust is lost. Even if the job action is justified, trust is lost.
– trust is lost in trustees when they’re invisible, except for photo ops. or to vote on closing a school.
– the effort to thwart school councils by those most threatened (board and MOE admin.)
There are many, many more, but hey this is about muzzled teachers not parents,
Actually, I think that this is about muffled voices, not muzzled. I think that the difference is really significant. Muffled voices–and I think that Andrew may have pointed this out before–are not necessarily silent. In fact, they can be spoken quite loudly but, because they are wrapped in a muffle, their sound is very faint, if heard at all. The muffle is the culprit, and not the lack of attempt to speak.
The muzzle, on the other hand, actually wires the mouth shut. (I don’t mean to sound pedantic…I just think that its an interesting “slip”?)
So, instead of asking why teachers don’t speak up, perhaps we should be asking what is deadening or muffling the sound of their voices?
The teachers federations will soon tell McGuinty, get rid of EQAO or we will not even discuss other cuts.
Parents,voters,won`t allow it.The deception must be obvious.
Every single field is accountable,every worker,with exams missing and report cards so vague,we absolutely need this!
You’re right Joanne. No surprise at all from Doug that he’s relying on union threats to government to move the union agenda.
It’s getting very old and I agree with you that taxpayers will no longer tolerate those greedy tactics.
So I guess the parents have no responsibility for the trust gap, right got it.
we trust you to educate our children. That’s what we believe in when we walk through that door when our kids are in Kindergarten.
The layers of trust fall off quickly when the system draws the lines in the sand from the inside out.
Too bad about the testing debate-it`s so direly needed.We have no transparency otherwise.
I know for a fact though that knowledge of analysis for reading and spelling proficiency as well as writing is more insightful than a score-the training at University so that teachers understand how to do this is missing on the planet,that`s why the testing is a black hole,but my goodness,we need to keep the system on it`s toes somehow,it`s all parents have.We need the scores.
We also need to look beyond them and remediate the processing difficulties.
It`s all extremely doable for 95% of students but when is the research going to show up at University?
And especially important for the 40% of the students who aren’t the ones who will learn to read in spite of what we do with them in schools. I agree that we need to look beyond the numbers or, better, behind them?
Yes Stephen,good to hear!
But I think that the debate needs to be reframed. The question is no longer “should we test” or “shouldn’t we test”. There are important questions to ask beyond this.
Agree Stephen.
Yes,we need to catch the kids very early that will struggle(easy with the right tests) and train the teachers to teach those kids in the methods that will arrest the problems very early and keep an eye on them till end of grade 3.
Caught early,most will do okay!
Sigh,if only we could be heard.And….why aren`t they listening?
Academic snobbery that personalizes and opines versus implementing the profound findings of the NICHD Research study.My opinion of course…
Stephen is correct, perhaps it is the voices are wrapped in muffle, their voices are faint.
My voice no matter how loud, must have been too faint for the decisions makers at the board level, to remediate my child’s reading and writing issues. Last week a two hour conversation with a person at the ministry of education, listening to my concerns of my 16 year old not meeting the requirements and criteria to have any accommodations for the public exam. Spurred on by other statements of school board staff saying that my child has no issues in reading but issues in writing.
A miracle walked into the high school this afternoon, from the school board and asked to speak to my 16 year old. The miracle came with knowledge of LD, and the learning problems that comes with it. Even more of a miracle, why high achieving LD students act the way they do, still maintained good grades but will have to work twice as hard as the average student to maintain the good grades, due to core problems in reading and writing. My 16 year old spent the afternoon with the little miracle who began the process of getting down to the bottom of my 16 year old’s core root problems in reading, and by extension in writing.
Sometimes the voices that are wrapped in muffle are heard, no matter how faint, And with some hope and a prayer, perhaps the criteria for accommodations may be rewrote, to include all dyslexics, including the ones who have good grades. And even better, a proper dressing down for the education policy wonks who creates criteria so narrowed, only a handful would qualified for the accommodations for public exams, even though all dyslexics from mild to severe, all core problems is in the 3 Rs, and not their knowledge.
For the first time, and it took 10 years, assessments that go beyond the usual assessments, to find out how well my child does read and write. And is my child proficient in her reading? I have no worries, it will be found that she is not a very good reader, and perhaps the little miracle that walk into the high school, may indeed addressed her reading problems, with intensive targeted reading remediation, that should have been received back in grade 1.
Sometimes faint voices are heard, but why does it take 10 years to be heard, even from the onset, that some students not all, are crying out for help in grade 1 in the form of slow, halted reading, and writing that can only be described as painful.
The little miracle that walked into the high school this afternoon, taught my 16 year old, there is a few adults kicking around in the public education system that truly understand, and have the skills to help my 16 year old, to improve on reading and writing. To my 16 year old, she has a smile on her face, and hope that she might just be able to licked her reading and writing problems, before she enters post-secondary.
After following this blog for a few days. Here are some observations. Many an opinion, many a critic, lots of experts, much research citing, media favorite, plenty of decision makers. Where does the teacher fit in? How can they be heard with many an opinion, many a critic, lots of experts, much research citing, media favorite, plenty of decision makers? Teachers have SHOUTED!!! Infact, teachers are not a quiet bunch. They tell the boards, they tell the adminstrators, they tell the unions. No one listens so they get back to doing what they do best teaching and caring for students because that is their number one priority.
Ps. I also stand behind 1-5 listed previously.
But Babs, it is all done behind close doors. Not only the public does not hear the voices of teachers, but the teachers have to deal with the fallout at the school level, and the teachers voices are once again muzzled and restricted on acting on behalf of their students and their learning needs.
In a way, the teachers voices are wrapped in muffle speaking to the upper levels, and are muzzled when it comes to the students, parents and the community.
Parents voices are never muzzled, but are always wrapped in muffle.
“Teachers have SHOUTED!!”
Really? How can we tell Babs? Let the public in on where they can see this and work to support those loud voiced teachers?
If the school boards are the problem why then do not teachers make that known? I’m pretty sure that parents would support a move to do something ABOUT them.
Just a few questions:
In Nova Scotia, is the public not aware of large class sizes and increase in number of combined classes? Is the public not aware that reading recovery, math mentors, literacy coordinators, support staff and teaching positions have been eliminated or significantly reduced? Is the public not aware that the curriculum contains too many outcomes? Is the public not aware that teachers teach students across a spectrum and must meet the individual needs and learning styles of each of those 27+ students with minimal support?
How much of the public has come on board with the kids not cut campaign? How much of the public has made phone calls to the minister of education? How much of the public demands and takes action for our students? How many parents accept that their child is in a combined class again? How many like that their child is only able to receive resource support 2 times a week? How many parents accept that there are 27 students in the class?
Teachers have unions to speak for them. Parents don’t.
Teachers have influence and power. Parents don’t.
Teachers have different concerns crossing the span of an education system. Parents concerns may indeed cross the span of an education system, depending on their children.
But parents are a loosely connected group, with little power and influence to change curriculum, instruction, waiting lists for education services, bullying programs, and the many other education concerns and services that teachers as a group or individuals also have concerns with.
However, individual teachers if they do speak out, without using the union’s mouth piece, they do risk their jobs, in speaking out for their students, and more so for the individual students. Parents are not aware of the minefields, because parents are not given the education information and knowledge that would help them to work for the best interests of their children.
The information and knowledge that is given to parents by the education system, are materials to ensure that parents work for the best interests of the stakeholders within the education system. The best interests of the stakeholders within the education system, have never worked on the behalf of the best interests of the students, except when it fits the best interests of the interests and agendas within the system.
And by the way, parents when they do take action, it is for their children for the most part, and not everyone else’s children. When parents do take action, on serious issues such as reading, writing, numeracy, bullying, and the many other day to day issues that impacts achievement, parents are met with the excuses of the public education system. The soft bigotry of low expectations versus the pseudo-high expectations of the public education system.
An education system, that aspires to have all students to reach a 50 percent and call it a day, because parents, students, and other SEC factors are such bad actors, who are unwilling to dance to the tunes of the stakeholders within the education system.
And why there is a court case in the Supreme Court of Canada being heard by the Supreme Court Judges, sorting out what constitutes a basic education. Apparently, learning to read, write and basic numeracy at proficient levels for all students, has never been on any provincial education system menu beyond lip service. If parents do take action, they are always given the excuses of the SEC factors, including intelligence and any other excuses that forces the parents to crawl back under the rocks.
The individual teachers, parents, and students are left to picked up the pieces, in a system that makes resources, training, remediation, into scarce resources, and in turn the parents, teachers and students are too busy protecting their turf. The union’s brass, makes gold from a model of scarce resources, at the expense of the students and the good of the wider society.
The teachers’ unions speak for the teachers. That is their purpose. Any individual teacher can say whatever they want. The federations are the collective voice of teachers.
The federations are speaking for themselves. Perhaps they should listen to the teachers for a change.
YES! Exactly Steven. That’s proven time and time again.
Did we not do this one already. So some kids have trouble with grade 12 math. Big deal, nothing new there. Another kids has trouble in grade 10. I keep waiting for the news.
If you are waiting for the day when all kids will sail through to their PhD you will have a long wait.
Grade 12 math is a gate keeper. If you can’t do it stay away from math based subjects in post secondary.
Move on folks there is no news here.
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Real world to ivory tower…
Testing showed where the weaknesses lay AND THEY WERE ABLE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
Going from a 64% fail rate to a 66% pass rate tells me something that the willfully deaf will never hear.
The federations are speaking for themselves. Perhaps they should listen to the teachers for a change.
You may not like the answers but the teachers run open forums, focus groups internal polls, conventions elections, meetings local district, provincial and on and on. In fact that the unions spend most of their time listening to the teachers.
When the unions speak it is with the full throated support of their members. Every major move they make is first taken to hearings, discussions and votes.
You would actually have to BE a teacher to understand this.
The “reform” element amongst the teacher population would be far less than 5%.
You confuse the fact that you disagree with the teachers’ federations with the fact as you say they do not speak for their members. This would be a fatal mistake that politicians often make. We call it solidarity. In the end the only power the teachers have is their willingness to speak with one voice to boards, provincial governments and the community at large.
“In the end the only power the teachers have is their willingness to speak with one voice to boards, provincial governments and the community at large,”
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http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/63349-adequate-funding-vital-part-long-term-vision-education
I don’t think so Doug, this group does not seem to be connecting as one voice for the teachers. Sometimes different stripes (NDP) can mean cuts despite idiology.
Mr. Fleury never complained about the funding formula when there were budget increases despite declining enrolment. Now after all the new big box schools are constructed he complains about fuel, busing and maintenence costs.
Hold all the teacher forums you want, if you don’t listen to the advice and perspective of the teachers pertaining to program delivery, then eventually the system gets to top heavy.
nonsense!
The process to become part of the union voice is clear. School reps go to the meetings and take information back to their colleagues. Teachers can communicate with unions directly through phone calls to the unit offices, attendance at AGM’s where resolutions are debated and voted upon, elections completed and the business of the larger association enacted.
I used to go to AGM’s every year as a young teacher. I loved the process, although we were instructed carefully on how we were expected to vote on particular issues. I watched carefully how leadership would flit from unit president to unit president looking for support on resolutions that they were bringing forward. A very political and eye-opening experience. I’m not saying it was corrupt or wrong; it’s the way it works.
Doug is right; individual teachers don’t have much of a chance of getting the ear of the premier, but they do stand an excellent chance of being listened to by local union leaders and, just as important, by school district leadership. I have requested and received meetings with every director of education that I’ve served under. I’ve found that this has been a wonderful way of being heard, and listening to another perspective.
To go back to an earlier example, when I went in to see my associate director about the planned mass purchase of a math textbook program, one of the responses I received was, “Well, you’re the only one that seems concerned about this…no one else has come to talk to me.”
All this to say that while the union does speak on behalf of its membership, and that membership does have input into the process of making union policy, there are other avenues at the district level for teachers to be heard.
“Individual teachers don’t have much chance of getting the ear of the Premier.”
——————————————————————————————–
Why would that be?
But by speaking out publicly they sure would get the ear of the citizens and the local district, the way a few teachers here in Nova Scotia did this week (even if they were retired).
by what you share here Stephen that tells me that teachers themselves may be contributing to their own “muffling” of their voices.
It seems to me that making those voices heard by the Premier is the wrong target. It’s the public at each school community that would be best served by hearing those voices NOT the Premier.
I do not equate individual classroom teachers with their unions. I have been exposed to too many who just do the best they can in their own classrooms sometimes closing the door on the union- mantras and even not agreeing with the agenda 24/7.
I do believe that individual classroom teachers are just as entitled to those alternatives not only at district level but also at school community level…via those collective school councils, and even via one-to-one with parents of students.
Union executives live in that same ivory tower.
Union interest is so high in NS that most of those who are elected are elected by acclamation.
Now that’s activism for you. The membership is so active they don’t bother with the NSTU.
Mr. Fleury is there for the free food and booze, methinks.
” “Well, you’re the only one that seems concerned about this…no one else has come to talk to me.”
Stephen, a favourite line given to parents. One of the reasons why parent unions have taken off in United States. Parents grow weary of one sentence responses, to what the parent perceives as a problem. The best interests of the stakeholders must come first, before the petty concerns of an individual teacher or parent.
I went over to the ETFO site, curious about the talk on the Drummond report, among other things. Exploring your statement, “All this to say that while the union does speak on behalf of its membership, and that membership does have input into the process of making union policy, there are other avenues at the district level for teachers to be heard.”
Other avenues at the district level for teachers to be heard? Yes, but will you be listened to, and action taken? The public education system models, are designed to keep the stakeholders within their cages, with interconnected doors leading to the other stakeholders. Teachers are not trapped, but they are trapped to follow the protocols that are in placed, and more so when teachers act against the perceived interests of the stakeholders. The stakeholders within the education system, agreed by consensus, in advance on what issues and policies will take priority over other issues and policies. The heavy use of consensus theory.is problematic within the public education, and actively prevents change, innovation, and creative problem solving at the bottom rungs of the public education system.
“Consensus theory[1] is a social theory that holds that a particular political or economic system is a fair system, and that social change should take place within the social institutions provided by it. Consensus theory contrasts sharply with conflict theory, which holds that social change is only achieved through conflict.
Under consensus theory the absence of conflict is seen as the equilibrium state of society and that there is a general or widespread agreement among all members of a particular society about norms, values, rules and regulations. Consensus theory is concerned with the maintenance or continuation of social order in society.
The consensus theory serves as a sociological argument for the furtherance and preservation of the status quo. It is antagonistic to the conflict theory, which, serves as a sociological argument for modifying the status quo or for its total reversal. In consensus theory, the rules are seen as integrative, and whoever doesn’t respect them is a deviant person. Under conflict theory, the rules are seen as coercive, and who transgresses them is considered oppressive and wrong.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_theory
” “Well, you’re the only one that seems concerned about this…no one else has come to talk to me.” – is a typical response to fend off attempts that threatens the status-quo, and on going education initiatives and interests of the stakeholders within the education system.
Individual teachers are caught in the same trap as parents, except parents have a bit more freedom than teachers, who are trapped to follow the protocols , values and norms of the stakeholders. Through consensus theory, the public education system beast, maintains a united front to the public, the sitting government, parents, and the students. that influences and urges the bit players to follow the values and norms of the stakeholders within the education system.
Reaction to the Drummond report from the stakeholders of the teachers’ unions and school boards is a mixed bag of protecting the core values and norms, and more importantly, trying to convince the public to preserved the status-quo and on-going initiatives of the union and school boards.
Individual teachers speaking behind close doors, only serves to maintain the united front built on consensus. If teachers truly want changes that would benefit the students that they work with every day, and be able to innovate beyond the prescribed methods, they need to do it publicly, in an open process that the public can see. Going behind close doors, only serves to maintain the mistrust , as well as increasing mistrust. Mistrust, a value that the education stakeholders pays lip service to, but do not act upon it, because it threatens the status-quo of the stakeholders.
,
““Well, you’re the only one that seems concerned about this…no one else has come to talk to me.”
Fist lesson from Parent Survival Guide 101 – it’s called divide and conquer Stephen. One parents learn to identify very early on. Parents do end up talking to each other and other teachers though to find out that usually, translation of “you’re the only one that’s concerned” is “I’m stalling to do something about your concern”.
Oh, and by the way, in our discussion about the potential of school councils. We neglected to include the fact that when the teacher unions have clause in their operations bylaws on just how individual teachers are to see their role within a school council – THAT is a “muffle in the making”.
After reading everything we can conclude that Education has become politics and if we care a darn about our kids we better get a second job and send them to private school because nobody gives a (%^&#.
It`s become a self serving organization,like all bureaucracies.
That`s why there`s such a decline in public school attendance,you get the
” wall”.
Education has not BECOME politics, educaion has always been politics.
The course I taught at York U “The Politics of Ontario Education 1945-2005” was a course on the fact that every change in education is, in fact political. York asked me to teach the course because too many education students were too confused about education and asked “why is it so political” why don’t they just do what is right? Sweet but very naive.
An American named Herb Kliebard does the best one off article on this. He points out the American public school is the way it is because of 140 years of political warfare between business and labour (labor) parents and teachers, farmers, small biz, Dewey vs Skinner, environmentalists, religions etc all attempting to shape the public school in their own image so generations would be raised bent a little to their POV.
The raging debate over Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” shown in schools is a very typical example. The gradual spread of gay positive POV regarding bullying is really drawing out people’s perspective.
The lumber industry offers schools free curriculum material about “the forest” that points out ‘clear cutting is OK’ The nuclear industry does the same thing.
Some Americans believe that teaching all the kindergarten kids to share is socialist.
Private schools are every bit as political as public schools. Jews for example have Jewish schools to represent conservative (political not religious) liberal and social democratic POV.
After the media, political people see the schools as the #2 way to shape political opinion. Naturally they all think this is perfectly fine because they believe they are correct and the other parties are misguided.
“Even reformers know that defenders of the staus quo also come with different stripes.”
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I hope you’re referring to zebras and tigers rather than skunks, Paul. 😉
Jo Anne there is not a “steep decline” in public school attendance. Way over 90% of families choose public schools including huge numbers of families who could easily afford private schools. You know full well that the primary reason for people seeking private schools is not academics but religion.
Without religion there would be almost no demand for public money for private schools.
Funny, I have never met a single educator who says “Me? I’m for the status quo.” Almost all educators want radical change in the system. The problem for the Corporate Reform types is that the radical change educators want involves much smaller classes, ELP, more resources, and so on.
No serious educators believe in testing or private school choice or merit pay or old tired ideas like those that have never worked in the past.Why would anyone believe they would work in the future?
I often wonder with policies like merit pay, how many times does a policy have to fail before people give up on it?
“No serious educators believe in testing or private school choice…”
———————————————————————————————–
As a parent that strikes me as blatent teacher bashing.
On a more positive note here is a look at some future objectives – a rural strategy and to expand learning times among other things
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/63512-kids-learning-first-potential-game-changer
not just teacher basing but effective “muffling”. I think we’re narrowing down our search for the source of the “muffles”.
good article by the way. You could white-out the references to Nova Scotia and replace it with Ontario and it would also be accurate. Nice job Paul.
” Almost all educators want radical change in the system. ”
Oh really? Radical theory based on social justice principals Doug? The kind the ignores outcomes of students, risking the futures of the would be students in adulthood, and and stressing teaching practices to affect social change of students, rather than ensuring that students have the skills and abilities to guide their own futures.
“. Our work is the ‘practice of freedom’ (Freire, 1976) not maintenance of the status quo, so therefore I suggest that in failing to be vigilant about changes in the political context we run the risk of developing practice that reinforces discrimination whilst still waving the banner of social justice. ”
http://www.infed.org/community/critical_community_development.htm
Merit pay emerge from the practice of radical education within the education system, that seeks to have student’s actions and behaviour to be evaluated on social and equity principles, rather than evaluating the students on measures of knowledge and progress of students. Gradeless report cards, is another example of radical education, as well as the dropping of essential foundation knowledge that is crucial for students to move to the higher knowledge with some ease. Merit pay, standard testing, is a reaction from the outside forces, to counteract the radical and social theories that are interwoven throughout the instruction and curriculum, based on political ideologies and dogma.
RADICAL EDUCATION THEORY – A SUMMARY
http://andyrobinsontheoryblog.blogspot.com/2004/11/radical-education-theory-summary.html
Good teaching is not radical. Good teaching is simply is, regardless if the individual holds a teachers’ certificate. But the radical theories that is obviously has a hold in the education system, are only seeking out change, that protects the status-quo of the education system. to continued to hold the power, influence and professionalism in all things education, and to block all reforms that threatens their power and expertise. Outcomes of students don’t matter a whole lot, for the advocates of radical education, who rather stress to implement social change on the backs of the students they serve. Made a little easier, when people are seen as victims of the political and social spheres.
I just put this up at SQE-
http://www.ednetinsight.com/news-alerts/world-headlines/c21-canada-to-host-21st-century-learning-summit.html
Look what you are up against,the Publishers and Universities working together.
Not to mention the ministry departments that approve the textbooks as well!
Doug: “No serious educators believe in testing…”
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Perhaps not the “serious (read delusional residents of the ivory towers) educators” but the successful educators apparently do, as clearly illustrated by the CBC report on the Chignecto-Central School Board.
Perfect retort Andrew.
You are trying hard Andrew to make something out of nothing. Hardly even news in NB let alone anywhere else. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
You are trying hard Andrew to make something out of nothing. Hardly even news in NB let alone anywhere else. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
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High IQ, eh?
“But by speaking out publicly they sure would get the ear of the citizens and the local district, the way a few teachers here in Nova Scotia did this week (even if they were retired).”
____________________________________________________
It’s pretty safe to speak out once retired.
When still actively teaching, however, it’s “Shut up or suffer the consequences”.
Agreed.
But the article still addressed the issue at hand and some of the punishment brought about when they did speak out while actively teaching.
Paul, getting back to the original subject of your posting, two other good books that look at teachers unions: Teachers’ Unions in Canada by Stephen B. Lawton et al. (1999), and The Teacher Unions by Myron Lieberman (1997) subtitled “How the NEA and the AFT Sabotage Reform and Hold Students, Parents, Teachers, and Taxpayers Hostage to Bureaucracy.”
I would first of all like to say that I am glad I stumbled upon this website as it is very informative. I am a Grade 9 math teacher in Manitoba with just under 20 years experience of public school experience.
I commend these teachers for saying what they feel. We are having plenty of problems with math education in Manitoba. I am seeing many students every year who do not have a basic foundation of math skills. These lack of skills is a result of the discovery approach being used to teach elementary math students. One of the approved textbooks in Manitoba is called “Math Makes Sense”. It is a terrible resource that is damaging the understanding of countless students.
I’ve spoken up at meetings with regards to my concerns, but it falls on deaf ears with administrators. They basically tell me to keep my opinions to myself. It is extremely frustrating.
I feel there are plenty of frustrated teachers. It’s too bad our opinions don’t matter, and the people who spend little time in classrooms tell us what they think is best.
Thanks Elise. Good for you for speaking up. When you say that you speak up “at meetings” what do you mean? Staff meetings or union meetings?
Who specifically tells you to keep your opinions to yourself – principal, other staff, union head? It’s important to know that because if we identify the source (s) I’m betting that it’s possible to work around them.
Individual class room teachers’ opinions should matter. Why wouldn’t a teacher union support that if they’re truly standing up for teachers?
But according to the ivory tower dwellers your voice counts and is listened to, Elise.
Stephen B. Lawton et al. (1999), and The Teacher Unions by Myron Lieberman (1997) subtitled “How the NEA and the AFT Sabotage Reform and Hold Students, Parents, Teachers, and Taxpayers Hostage to Bureaucracy.”
Of course they sabotage reform because all of the elements of the reform agenda are backwards retrograde steps. The only one missing is to put the kids back in the mines.
When your voice is the opposite of the majority in the union, there is no desire on behalf of the profession to amplify it. It is a little thing we call democracy.
Try standing up in parliament as a conservative and say Stephen Harper is wrong and we ought to go in a different direction. What do you think that members chances are for cabinet, committee chair, etc.
It is not your board it is their board.
“When your voice is the opposite of the majority in the union, there is no desire on behalf of the profession to amplify it. It is a little thing we call democracy. ”
BINGO! We’ve found the source of “keep your opinions to yourself”.
Perhaps new representation for teachers should be a choice for individual teachers? Why should the current unions be the only choice?
Elise,Bravo-
Did you see this?
That`s what happens,curricula that lacks research and effectiveness is marketed through publishers-the higher the sales,the more infection across the country in children`s learning.
My favorite researcher in the U.S. Dr.Reid Lyon says curriculum is like Penicillin,if it`s a bad batch everyone gets sick.
Babs,your recent post from 11 last night-about what`s going on in Nova Scotia classrooms states the horrific results of inclusion ideology and generalization-how horrible for caring teachers to watch and have to keep a muzzle on.Notice,I didn`t say muffle.
I have a friend who agrees with you-as does Peter Cowley from the Fraser Institute.He says”where`s the outrage?”
I googled Nova Scotia literacy scores last night-they`re appalling.You`d think they`d be concerned.I know better than to give lip service to that train of thought:(.
Time for a Federal intervention?
The meetings that I was referring to are basically PD sessions consisting of teachers, principals, and superintendents. Constructivism in math is strongly being pushed. I disagree with it, and am quickly marginalized because “research” shows that kids learn math best by coming up with their own solutions. There is no need to remember facts, there is no need to know how to do standard algorithms; students as young as Grade 1 in my division are encouraged to use calculators. I teach Grade 9, and know of the damage being done in younger grades.
Ideologues with their bogus theories who are looking to get rich have the most influence in public education. It seems that pension padding principals and superintendents jump into things much too quickly with the goal of looking trendy.
I would love it if my children’s teacher was you Elise. Even parents hate constructivist math, which they know all about thanks to the crying homework sessions they’ve had to endure with their kids as they try to struggle through that insane stuff.
I support you.
Perhaps new representation for teachers should be a choice for individual teachers? Why should the current unions be the only choice?
Good luck with that. Teachers can say whatever they want but individual speak for themselves. The union speaks for the profession.
The unions for teachers in Ontario are statutory. It is the law you must be it.
BC changed its law making it voluntary. BCTF signed up 90% in one month and 95% in 3 months.
5% are still out but quite aware they will get no protection if they get into trouble.
Jo Anne, there is zero chance for a federal intervention. Section 91 and 92 of BNA Act carried over to constitution.
Elise,we agree with you,those of us who know the emperor has no clothes.
The question is,how do we alarm the parents so the ‘clients”of the public education system start to participate and refute these bogus theories.
It`s truly incredible isn`t it?
We need teachers to speak the truth to parents, and not the excuses, But difficult to do, when teachers are both muzzled and muffled, and at risk for losing their job if they do speak out for students, that runs counter to the goals and agendas of the unions, trustees, board staff and the ministry of education.
One way of doing it, start speaking out anonymously on the forums of education that are not part of the public education establishment. I am sure 90 percent of teachers have a lot of criticism on current curriculum, instruction practices, as well as other education practices that harms students’ futures. One way of letting parents and the general public of what the individual teachers think, as well as starting conversations that opens up the secrets of the education system, and their stakeholders.
Doug,I know you`re a Union,political animal.
However,does Elises`s statement not concern you,why doesn`t the Union care about what and how Math is being taught-it should!
“I disagree with it, and am quickly marginalized because “research” shows that kids learn math best by coming up with their own solutions.”
Frequently incorrect solutions since they don’t UNDERSTAND how numbers work. That calculator prevents them from developing the necessary basic skills.
Doug,I know you`re a Union,political animal.
However,does Elises`s statement not concern you,why doesn`t the Union care about what and how Math is being taught-it should!
Unions work on the assumption that the universities pedagogical and curriculum departments are where curriculum is worked out, not math departments. When we believe the MOE is way off we express our opinions to them on behalf of the profession. The federation have curriculum and program depts but they are nt experts. They are more of a sounding board for MOE direction. If OSSTF and OECTA and ETFO all go in and say xyz policy is wrong headed we they will take a second look.
“When we believe the MOE is way off we express our opinions to them on behalf of the profession.”
——————————————————————————————–
But not on behalf of the teachers.
“I teach grade 9, and understand the damage being done in younger grades.”
Elsie
Time to listen to the teachers Doug.
again I say “BINGO” as to why teachers feel as muffled as they do because we have here an admission by the union man just who the unions are listening to and it’s not those teachers they represent.
And if so Doug, where has the union brass been on math curriculum?
The unions no more work to improve curriculum, than to work to improve raising the bar for students. To do so, represents a conflict of interest, as well as working against the best interests of the unions. Neither are the university curriculum departments, under the education faculties, are experts. Considering the math curriculum, loaded with ideologies and dogma, or as Elsie has puts it, “Ideologues with their bogus theories who are looking to get rich have the most influence in public education. It seems that pension padding principals and superintendents jump into things much too quickly with the goal of looking trendy.’
A major problem in math education is the lack of knowledge of elementary school teachers (not all of course, but a majority. Forcing teachers to teach “discovery” math allows teachers; math inabilities and knowledge to be hidden. This protects teachers, and of course, the union is all for it, even though it is doing unbelievable damage to students. Parents are being told that their children are doing fine in math, so why would they question math education. It’s hard to go against the provincial NDP government, union, and education faculties when they are all of one mind.
I am a math major. I am seeing more and more students come to Grade 9 and struggle with my course even though they had high grades in Grade 8 math. I teach a high level Grade 9 course and I feel it is my job to make the course challenging.
Many students in my class receive marks considerably lower than the marks the received in fluffy Grade 8 math. This causes the principal to breathe down my neck, and he questions my abilities. He wonders why, and when I tell him the truth, he doesn’t want to accept the fact that many of these students have received an inferior elementary math education. I have ask him many times to come to my room to observe me teaching, and he has not been in once. I have nothing to hide, and I am very confident in my ability to teach my class. he just tells me he wants marks to improve.
I am very tempted to dumb my course down so that marks are artificially inflated. I can’t stand the thought of doing that, but why would I want to take this constant harassment. I know many good math teachers who have gone that route. They feel they’ve sold their soul to the devil to appease administrators. they also know they are doing their students a great disservice. Also, these are not consumer/essential (low math) teachers; they are upper math/calculus teachers.
Anyways, that in a nutshell describe the frustrations of being a math teacher.
I think that deep subject knowledge is an issue in many different areas at elementary. We need to recognize that and ask why do we need specialists at the secondary level, but not at this most fundamental stage of learning.
But that may be a topic for another time! This thread is packed already!
“This protects teachers, and of course, the union is all for it, even though it is doing unbelievable damage to students. Parents are being told that their children are doing fine in math, so why would they question math education. It’s hard to go against the provincial NDP government, union, and education faculties when they are all of one mind.”
Elsie, you bet it is, just talk to some of the veteran parents out there. I started my lonely vigil back in 2001, and now the math curriculum is far more worse than what it was in 2001. Parents are easily dismissed, by the stakeholders on the line of many different excuses. For myself, I did not have the expertise, meaning letters behind my name, nor the qualifications to criticized curriculum. Meanwhile, I could had done circles and out performed teachers at the grade school level on deep understanding and knowledge. But alas, the powers to be even dismissed the pure mathematicians, the engineers, the accountants, the medical profession, the scientists, and the researchers.
Sometimes, I am tempted to write in when I see math videos published by the stakeholders, for the expressed purpose of questioning their knowledge background, that turns math from rational logical thought based on the laws of mathematics and arithmetic, to the opposite – irrational and illogical. But I don’t, because there too, they have their fanciful excuses and edubabble, and if not personal attacks on parents will be the next stage.
I was told my child was doing fine too, but it turned out at the end of grade 3, she was at less than a kindergarten understanding in number operations. As I have discovered, and many parents do at the high school level, the number of parents who have hired tutors or parents tutoring at home over the years has risen to levels well over 50 percent of a class, depending on parents knowledge and background. In the rural area that I live in, well over 75 percent of parents are tutoring at home for the math basics that are not being taught at home. Why do the powers to be, want to make math so difficult to understand?
I have no idea, but Math Makes Sense should be renamed as Math does not Make Sense. Parents are aware, but they have far less power and knowledge to go after the math curriculum and instruction, that would affect immediate changes to the math curriculum. Parents need the teachers, but the teachers are caught in a catch-22 – damn if they do and damn if they don’t, and is not of their own making.
And by the way, my child is now in the advance class of math, and if it was not for the home tutoring done at home, she would be sitting in basic math. Her firm foundation in arithmetic is keeping her steady and progressing through trig and calculus with some ease.
I teach grade 9, and understand the damage being done in younger grades.”
Elsie
Time to listen to the teachers Doug.
The problem is not Elise but whether Elise speaks for a majority of math teachers and the research not from math profs but from curriculum professionals.
Nobody knee jerks to rally behind every one off POV. You need both research ans huge numbers to move the needle.
It’s hard to go against the provincial NDP government, union, and education faculties when they are all of one mind.
Ever consider that they may just be correct and your job is to do what you are told.
Are you a teacher, Doug? Or are you just theorist?
If they think “they” are right, then why are standards so low? why are so many students struggling.
The problem is too many teachers are non-thinking and do what they are told believing every bit of biased research presented. Many teachers are sheep.
Take a look at a junior high reader form the 80s and one from today. Today’s Grade 8 reader would have been a Grade 6 level in the 80s.
Also, anyone who reads about educational research will realize that education researchers often start with what they WANT to end with. Public education is rotten and corrupt, no matter how you sugar coat it, Doug.
All of one mind?
Time for a reality check Doug. In Nova Scotia, they have never been so divided.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/editorials/64413-school-governance
I think the instructivist/constructivist debate is not what is at issue here. For me, the important thread that needs to be more of a focus when you talk about teacher voice is the ability to say to a principal/administrator, “I don’t feel qualified to teach this subject” and “I have reservations about this approach”. No one is going to do a good job at anything if they don’t have the skills to do the job, or if they don’t believe in the work that they are doing. In both cases, we just go through the motions and, in some cases, more harm than good is done.
My wife is Chinese grew up in Hong Kong. She points out that she had a math specialist teacher teach math to her beginning in grade one. The students stayed in the same classroom while the teachers rotated.
Her position is that the reason for any Asian superiority in math is time on task with specialists.
She is a principal with SO papers and an MEd in curriculum.
I think the instructivist/constructivist debate is not what is at issue here. For me, the important thread that needs to be more of a focus
This is a bogus debate at the best of times. most teachers are instructivist on even numbers days and constructivist on odd numbered days.
Probably right…why do you think that is?
Teachers eschew purist theories. They are very functionalist in their approach. Take learning to multiply. Most teachers will begin with constructivism piling up poker chips or something larning that 4 piles of 5 is the same as 5 piles of 4. After they have “discovered” these facts teachers are satisfied that students understand what multiplication actually is and the tables have all been “created”. When this process is completed, the litttle sons of guns will be drilled orally and on paper until their are no gaps in their mind. They can recite the tables in order but they can also answer random 8X7= questions out of context of tables with close to 100% accuracy.
Since when Doug? Last time I check, the memorization of the times table is not on the agenda, and at the very best it is learned up to the 5 times table.
In the Ontario curriculum documents up to the 7 times table.
But take a look yourself, and no one has to wonder why math achievement is low. Playing with buttons, blocks and calculators does wonders to make all students foundations shaky in math. What should take 10 minutes for homework, now takes two hours, in between the crying fits and frustrated parents.
Click to access math18curr.pdf
Of course the private tutors are enjoying the benefits of a poor curriculum, as well as the massive numbers of math consultants hired by school boards, to press on no matter the rising amount of front line teachers and parents that have concerns over the math curriculum. For that matter the reading and writing skills of their students or children.
Teachers eschew purist theories, because they are trained very well at the teachers faculties to eschew purist theories Doug! Take my example, place value is taught very poorly, and the curriculum does a poorer job.
In grade 6, homeschooling after school, I taught my child place value, among the other important math basics that are needed to understand algebra with some ease. Apparently, I was giving my child an unfair advantage or I was teaching her how to cheat. All mathematics based on the pure forms have been rejected within the public education systems, and in its place the math that makes no sense.
Now grade school math is not rocket science, but the teachers should be trained to teach math using the most efficient methods and hails from the pure mathematics branch. Funny thing, math professors outside of the education faculties are also pushing for changes in curriculum, where all students are taught using the methods of the pure mathematics branch.
The math that makes no sense, should be replace so teachers in the front line can actually explain the methods of pure math, and not the crazy illogical methods of math that makes no sense. Bonus, the majority if not all, can help their children at home constructively, because it does make sense.As well most parents if not all, have the knowledge and know-how in basic arithmetic.
What is happening to reform?
http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3756870
Is there a connection with the Canadian context?
sure there is.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/64346-schools-and-ships-nova-scotia-story
Yes Doug, and how many Hong Kong students make it to the high school level?
“Most China-watchers conclude that child labor is increasing, particularly in areas around Hong Kong. This deduction is based on a high dropout rate from school and the hasty expansion of foreign investment in export-oriented enterprises. There is indeed increasing evidence that school children are part of the required workforce.”
http://ihscslnews.org/view_article.php?id=57
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Hong_Kong
From where you wife comes from, the average working labourer doesn’t even have a chance for their children to even get a high school education. Not in the cards for them, when the elite of their country states otherwise, In the same manner and attitude you have on display, discounting Elsie’s concerns by stating that teachers must do what they are told. Very much the attitude that is on display for parents when they hear the excuses.
Or this post, “The problem is not Elsie but whether Elise speaks for a majority of math teachers and the research not from math profs but from curriculum professionals.”
Not only questioning the qualifications of Elsie, but also implying that only curriculum professionals with educator degrees are the experts in curriculum. Textbook publishers and second careers for retired teachers and would-be teachers that never had the luck to land a full-time teacher position,
Been there and done it, contacting them why the terrible math curriculum? Off the record, the responses are it has to follow the pedagogy. Next question, what do you do if your children are failing math. Two answers, private tutoring or I don’t worry about it, because I send my children to a private school.
As for the front line teachers, who are dealing with the realities and not some version of let us all pretend students are all middle class holding middle-class values, and there will be no more problems – the reality is the students’ education is at the expense of the agendas, interests, biases and belief systems of the so-called experts who hold an education degree. Teachers in the front lines have to make hard choices because they are force to dance to the tunes of the other stakeholders within the education system.
No wonder EdCamps are popular, at least they are getting respect there, compared to the formal PD days, where they are told to shut up in many different ways, and listen.
Did you look at the Math Makes Sense curriculum?
I read your article-
“The most optimistic possibility for what happens next is that reformers and their critics come to terms on a balanced agenda of some kind, perhaps in the area of early elementary education. ”
Casey Foundation research,as did Reading First by the way,stated the early years-till grade 3 were the foundation years,discovery learning and the inclusion policies just paint all over those years,test in grade 3 and don`t address the massive enhancement that could occur if we did things well at that stage.
Good math lesson,many teachers aren`t doing that,they have to do Math Makes Sense.The teachers aren`t allowed to teach the multiplication tables,didn`t you hear?Nor are they supposed to they teach addition,subtraction,fractions,division…
We’ve had this conversation before, Jo-anne. I think that K-3 needs to be totally re-imagined so that every students leaving grade 3 (if you still want to call it that) has a solid grasp of the foundations. And, once given this “elbow room” we can talk about what methods and strategies work best for which students. We need the space to deal with this important stage of development in a stronger way!
Stephen,you`re so right!:)
It’s amazing that, when you talk about early learning and the first years of school, there can be as many as 364 days of age difference between student A and student B as they enter JK, yet we offer them the same curriculum at the same time, and assess/evaluate progress according to the same set of expectations. IN what way does that reflect a knowledge of child development?
Stephen, I only know too well. Look at the stats for children born in June to December, in the primary grades to grade 6. The born in the last half of the year, are just catching up to the bottom of the first half, in grade 7. The foundations are weaker in the 3 Rs, and the students are always behind the eight ball, in catching up, and keeping up with their peers.
I notice it concerning my child whose birthday falls in the last half of the year, and when I put my education in statistical math courses to good use. Apparently it is typical, the children born in the last half of the year, there is more low achievers, more struggles in the 3 Rs and general learning.The chances of students whose birthdays fall in the last half of the year, in staying low achievers in high school is high.
There is research on it, and the conclusions are much different than the current situation of having all children being evaluated using the same methods and outcomes.
“We need the space to deal with this important stage of development in a stronger way!”
As a parent, I agree whole heartedly ,
You are right again-
Look at this article-re Discovery Math..http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003708118_rams16.html
Dr.Patrick Goff implored faculties to change the way they taught Reading as well-twenty five years ago,when California`s scores went down the tube and they`ve never recovered-you can`t get a Prof or Faculty to play ball if they doesn`t want to.
Sorry-Groff
I think that we continue to set up theories like bowling pins and take pleasure in knocking them down. I think that this happens on both sides of theoretical conversations.
I think that we need to start approaching our theoretical conversations with a different set of questions. One of the most important questions needs to be “Under what conditions will a ‘discovery’ approach to learning be effective”. Discovery learning does work; I’ve seen it work and I’ve experienced it in my own teaching. Not always, but I have had experiences where it has worked beautifully. But the conditions were right. The amount of time that we had to work was ideal. Resource availability was ideal. My knowledge as teacher was right for the job. There were other conditions. My point is that, under the right conditions, its an approach that can be effective.
Unfortunately, those conditions don’t exist on a regular basis in most schools.
Maria Montessori said-“let me teach you one way”..discovery is great AFTER foundational knowledge,otherwise we raise a nation of guessers.
As long as we don’t raise a nation of automotons…we don’t want to step on the natural curiosity and inquisitiveness that accompanies young children into the world.
But that is what happen to my child who was filled with curiosity of how the world work, and disappeared in the primary grades, because she thought she was too dumb for school. It took a long time to see the curiosity come back to life, to see glimpses of it in her teenage years, that harks back to her pre-school days. If it was not for the foundation, she would not only be a guesser but a passive being, accepting her fate that she was too dumb for school.
Going back to the CBC interview on the two teachers that spoke out. One of them, stated that kids don’t deliberately fail. Kids don’t deliberately set their sights to fail. But why do some within the education system, think primary children do just that? Do teachers wake up, thinking I am going to do a poor job? Why do some within the education system think teachers do just that, and justify the new micro-managing to decrease autonomy of teachers to lower levels?
There is a bit of research, on how the current education system and its design, teaches helplessness to students, and I have observed my own fair share concerning my child. More so, the added undermining of parents and their knowledge base. My child came home so many times that I have lost track, that I don’t know anything. Always a great method to ensure parents are fighting with their children, and not helping them to do their homework. And than they asked the parents to signed the homework. One of my little protests, passive as it was, I refused to signed the homework. I never did get a phone call, but other parents did.
Yes, Stephen that’s usually the retort a parent gets when they ask a teacher about the teaching of skills like teaching phonics or correcting spelling.
This kind of rather sensationalized response is just the kind of explanation that parents and students don’t want to hear.
I don’t play the piano, but I THINK I can, yet if you ask me to play you a song I couldn’t because I haven’t the basic skills to even begin, but I THINK I do.
No matter how much I THINK that I still can’t play a song.
Nancy,
You extrapolate FAR too much from your own family experiences.
That’s not for you to determine Doug, unless this has become your forum? This comment adds nothing to the discussion at hand.
Catherine, forgive me; I’m not sure that I understood your last response to me. If I have it right though, I think that balance is important. Those that decry a “skills-based” program imagine kids sitting at desks, spending their days filling in blanks, providing automatic responses to teacher prompts and doing the same thing all over again.
Folks that argue against activity based learning sometimes imagine kids running all over the classroom doing whatever they want, whenever they want and not really learning anything.
Both are extremes. Both have existed in the history of schools. My question, what is the “best stuff” that we can take from both to create learning environments that are both imaginative and provide students with some of the basic skills that they need to develop personally and progress through the system.
Stephen – It’s been my experience that when parents approach their child’s teacher and ask about skills based learning that the response to the parents is almost always the one you gave Joanne – we don’t want to stifle creativity or squelch learning.
Glad you didn’t use “best practices” 🙂
“Those that decry a “skills-based” program imagine kids sitting at desks, spending their days filling in blanks, providing automatic responses to teacher prompts and doing the same thing all over again.”
Do you know this for a fact Stephen, because the parents that I’ve worked with over the years might imagine this, but might also be looking for that balance…but never see it or experience it from educators.
I am so fortunate that one of my kids had a Grade One teacher that was a great believer in skills-based learning. Some of the day was spent memorizing and phonics instruction, and practice…..lots of practice. This teacher was the one every parent wanted their child to have in Grade One because we knew that at the end of the year those kids would be reading and doing basic math.
Luckily for us the Grade 2 teacher became a convert of the Grade One teacher’s methods (going against the principal and whole language mantra of the day) and continued with spelling dictation and mad minute math quizzes – one every day.
These two teachers left the school to go elsewhere I found out later because the pressure for them NOT to continue this way became too much. However the parents were more than satisfied and kept in touch with these two teachers to this day.
My next child, had a very different experience – same school, but instead of basic skills in phonics in Grade One they handed the kids Dreamwriter computers with spellcheck and asked them to get creative, knowing that the machine would correct their spelling and insisting as you did in your response to Joanne that getting them to correct spelling might dull their creative juices.
Uh, not in the least. In Grade three we and other parents started our own tutoring programs because these kids had no idea how to spell much of anything.
In Grade 8 I recall the parent/teacher interview that year when the teacher told us he was shocked how badly the kids spelling was. His comment to us was that he was tired of picking up and having to teach what the previous grades teachers didn’t.
Catherine, you’re right; I don’t know that this is way others think about this stuff. I’m kind of just going on some of the conversations I’ve had with my colleagues over the years. (Your stories are powerful)
But this whole conversation makes me think that we need to have some discussion about how those promoting various perspectives would “schedule” a day, let’s say, in Grade Two. What would that balance look like? I think that if we get into the specifics, then we might be able to understand what we’re all talking about.
For example, in a balanced (I know that’s a loaded term in some circles), how much time would be spent on math, language development, arts, etc. And what would that instructional time look like within each of the blocks?
What’s funny as I’m reading your response is that the “balanced” school day, so we were told when the administration jammed THAT whole thing down our throats, and the throats of school communities, was supposed to achieve that “balance” with more dedicated time to reading and math balanced off with time for fun and activity.
I’m assuming that by your posts and that of parents that if balance hasn’t been achieved (in Ontario at least) that the whole “balanced school day” idea hasn’t worked to achieve the balance that was sold as guaranteed?
LOL! The terms we use have become so loaded with meaning! In Ontario, I don’t think there was the same narrative of balance that you had where you are. Here, the roll-out (optional) had more to do with balancing schedules around nutritional breaks as opposed to lunch “hours”. It may have started as something else, but that is what it has become.
I`ll be brief-when school boards refuse to teach phonics and arithmetic they always say,”we believe in balance”.
Who says that phonics and arithmetic are rote learning,who says they need to sit in rows,they need to learn these things so they can read and spell and they need to learn arithmetic so they can do math.
It`s a massive public manipulation.
Go to a grade 8 class and look at the writing,spelling of a paragraph they are asked to originate from thought,you`ll be astounded,then come back to us Stephen.
It`s all right there.
Well, Jo-Anne, I’ve spent most of the past 3 decades in Grade 8 classrooms. It has been where I have lived and breathed most of my career!
One more thing,the sequence of instruction as told to us by the research is teach the phonemes…say how many sounds do you hear in a word,segment them with the kids,then tell them the pictures those sounds make(graphemes).
Then get them to blend them together to read,segment them to spell and practice the repeated readings to attain fluency,do it in an explicit organized systematic way-then have all the fun with vocab and comprehension you want-but don`t ask them to stuff all the words of the English dictionary in their memory.
Also,with e mail,spelling is absolutely a crucial skill,MORE THAN EVER-And,every employer is complaining that the kids out of University can`t spell or parse a sentence.
The evidence is everywhere.
Are you not astounded at how difficult it is for so many students to write a paragraph and story in an organized,well spelled grammatical manner-many many students are crashing in grade 9 as the work gets more difficult,they truly struggle with all the content and homework.
Their reading from syntax clues makes it extremely difficult-they are partial decoders and as Dr.Diane McGuiness says that makes for labor intensive reading and a need to re read repeatedly.
I don`t expect you to agree,we reached a deal last night on early intervention,I`m happy:)
Actually, Jo-ann, we reached that agreement about a year ago, if you recall! 🙂
Sure, once kids get to grade eight there are still quite a few that need assistance in reading and writing and math. Some have fallen through the cracks. Many are the ones that needed specific interventions when they were in Grade One. Seldom have I encountered a student who was doing well in grade one, though, that is not still doing well. Patterns of “struggle” are evident from early on and likely have not a whole lot to do with the strategies or approaches that we have used in subsequent years. Early and often! Early and often! I agree…
One of the realities is that grade eight teachers rarely speak to grade one teachers about pedagogy and curriculum…at least not from my experience!
Agreed,it shouldn`t be the grade 8 teacher`s issue.I feel the support needs to be SK -Grade 3,by grade 4 we should be looking at much more uniformed outcomes,if the early years were done right.
Thanks for chatting:).
Teachers get punished for “speaking out” in school as well. It would seem that the educrats have either forgotten or have never known much about teaching in the classroom.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/18/teacher-suspended-for-discussing-racial-epithet-in-class/
“She is a principal with SO papers and an MEd in curriculum.”
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Easy to be the boss when you own the company. It doesn’t indicate competence any more than it indicates incompetence.
Not only questioning the qualifications of Elsie, but also implying that only curriculum professionals with educator degrees are the experts in curriculum.
Of course they are who else. Math professors are not qualified to pronounce on HS math curriculum.
Just a reminder that Canadian students are amongst the WORLD’S BEST 15 year old readers and writers and in some catagories tied for the very best.(PISA). Given our poverty rate, one could easily conclude that Canada has the best schools in the world.
Experts in pedagogy practices, but not experts in knowledge, and what knowledge is essential for students.
Doug, basing your support on PISA alone, is not enough evidence to support your little theory on Canada being among the world’s best. And PISA itself, has been more or less taken over and the run the show by the top level educators of the participating countries, inserting constructivist questions as opposed to questions based on the knowledge and critical thinking required to move beyond the knowledge framework. Constructivist questions, that requires no specific background knowledge, and no correct answers on the students’ part. Getting brownie points for being creative, even though the answer is incorrect, which in the end inflates the overall ranking of PISA results. Ditto for the standardised testing of countries, and the self-serving agendas and interests that take over on the behalf of the stakeholders within. Parents in grade 4, are told by the school staff, and depending on the teachers, the hall of frame excuses, and the solutions of vagueness. Does that mean my child will improve in her writing and reading? Answers will vary but run along the same line that crosses engagement, interests of the child, and maybe tossed in accommodations to frame it, to masked the solution of dumbing it down. But a straight answer, no that is not in the cards for parents, and teachers are prevented from giving parents straight answers.
Experts in pedagogy practices, perhaps. But not experts in ensuring students obtain the need knowledge foundation and skills to be able to do advance work with some ease.
Below is a paper on inductive learning, to which is another variation of discovery learning. Hot topic is inductive learning in the education circles, and below is a paper, titled, The Many Faces of inductive Learning and Teaching. Check out table one, and note how neatly it falls in with the union’s objectives of small classes, increase prep time for teachers, and other objectives such as increase resources needed to practice the many different versions of discovery teaching and learning.
Click to access Inductive(JCST).pdf
Than open up the textbooks of disconnected facts, and somehow students with the help of the teachers to construct their own knowledge, and learn on their own what are the important elements to have a deep knowledge on, and the skills needed to support the process and gaining of deep knowledge. And yet, Doug and his advocates sings the song of PISA, the World’s Best Readers, and yet in reality how many students perform well under the discovery teaching and learning at any grades, without a firm grasp of the 3 Rs, and prior knowledge? They have no choice but to be creative, guess at the answer, and spend hours on a question, that should have taken no more than 15 minutes.
Doug has no choice, but to use PISA as their main piece of support, but why does he use PISA, to state only curriculum professionals, and not the front line teachers are allow to write curriculum. Funny thing Doug, front line teachers are developing their own curriculum and lessons, and selling them on the web. Some of it is quite good, and I have taken advantage of it from time to time. Some excellent study guides to be had, and personally I don’t care what part of the world it hails from, because good curriculum that is well organized in connecting base knowledge to higher knowledge, leads to higher achievement. At least it leads to higher achievement for my 16 year old, and I suspect for other students, since at the end of the day the students have to write exams, in order to move to the next level.
But that is not even on the agenda of the stakeholders within the education system.
Steven provided a link quite a few posts back – “But when it comes to guiding our schools, we seem to have many dreamers, theorizing on everything from long-term vision to long division, and too few doers to fix student problems, in real time, when they arise in the classroom.
Are we too harsh? Consider our story of the Shelburne Regional High Grade 12 math class that had seven teachers in one school year, part of our governance series’ focus on school boards this week. Only one student passed the provincial math exam, and the average mark for the class was 24 per cent.”
http://thechronicleherald.ca/editorials/64413-school-governance
Brushed off by the education system as isolated events, and in the same way as students needing remediation in the 3 Rs, are brushed off as isolated events, and always back by either using the PISA results or cherry picking other standard testing results, to prove to everyone that having 7 teachers in the course of one year is OK, because A) every student has good skills in the 3 Rs, and B) and if not, it is the fault of the students and not the education system.
Concluding remarks, “If that doesn’t happen, students need a champion to act quickly. It should be school boards. But if they’re too bureaucratic, maybe the answer is more authority for local school councils, as Charles Cirtwill of the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies advocates as a way of giving communities true ownership of schools. Whoever does it, the best educational dreams won’t come true unless there’s a doer minding the store down at Grade 12.”
Yawn.
Same old fruit salad.
Apples = oranges = turnips = liver.
A teaching degree doesn’t necessarily make a good teacher any more than a degree in economics has made Stephen Harper a good economist.
Steve Paikin’s The Agenda featured a full hour last night ( March 9, 2012) on “Ontario Teachers and the Age of Austerity.” With Permier Dalton McGuinty reversing field and promoting a salary freeze and an end to “sick day” banking, it made for a stimulating discussion.
Two of the panelists were Educhatter regulars, Doretta Wilson (Society for Quality Education) and Doug Little (The Little Education Report):
Here’s the link: http://ww3.tvo.org/video/174129/austerity-and-ontarios-teachers
It was great to see Doretta riding herd on Doug and reminded me so much of some of our memorable online skirmishes on Educhatter’s Blog. Sandwiched between Doug and Michael Decter, it was hard for Doretta to get a word in edgewise. When she did, those men sat up and took notice.
Great panel — without an Education Minister and paid mouthpieces spouting the usual “talking points.” It aired at 12 am AT and I made it to the end!