Seeing Maggie Gyllenhaal as a fiery young mother standing up for the kids in Won’t Back Down will be a shocker for many parents active in their local schools across Canada. Joining up with a passionate teacher, played by Viola Davis, to ‘Take Back the Schools’ would be a stretch of the imagination. While “parent power” is bubbling up in California and six other American states, active parents and school advisory groups in Canada’s provincial systems are either glorified “PTAs” or Parent Councils suffering from a “power outage.”
The feature film Won’t Back Down is being dismissed by prominent movie critics as a Hollywood melodrama with a strident, patently obvious message. The Globe and Mail’s fine critic, Liam Lacey, to his credit, recognized that it was far more than another Hollywood confection. One of America’s leading education policy wonks, Andrew J. Rotherham, writing in TIME Magazine, weighed in with a column entitled “Why the Education Movie Matters.” Bring out the popcorn — and take out a Kleenex –Parent Power has now gone mainstream.
With Don’t Back Down hitting the movie theatres, the time is ripe for a look at the state of parent activism and involvement in Canada’s provincial school systems. And, by sheer coincidence, the film’s release coincided with the appearance of the latest report on the health of School Advisory Councils, the 2012 People for Education review of Ontario’s School Councils. Each year, for the past 15 years, P4E has been issuing such reports, all pointing at the same deficiency — local Parent Councils revert back to fundraising when they are afforded little opportunity to do much of anything else.
Active parents supportive of their local public school are prime candidates for School Advisory Councils, especially in school districts where the Home and School Association is either weak or non-existent. Concerned parents with “agendas” are considered dangerous and discouraged from applying for such positions on School Councils normally guided or dominated by the principal or a trusted senior teacher. Such parent councils, created originally to promote parent involvement in policy matters, normally end up doing nothing of the sort and back organizing fundraising bake sales or, in Nova Scotia, hosting ice cream socials.
Parent Advisory Councils have proven very effective in keeping a core of parents in the inner circle, shielding principals from “parent power” types, and generating extra funds for school supplies. Where Home and School Association groups exist, principals generally favour the group that is the most inclined toward fundraising and the most politically intert of the two groups.
What’s really going on inside the schools? The Ontario case is the best documented example. Some 80 to 84% of over 720 school councils surveyed from 68 different Ontario school boards now do fundraising and spend over 70% of their time either raising money or organizing school events. They spend, on average, about 10% of their time working on School Improvement Plans, discussing educational standards, and ensuring local public accountability. Fewer than a dozen parents are actually involved on the Parent Council in the vast majority of public schools.
Since the abolition of the Ontario School Council in 2003-4, local school councils have fallen under the influence of the publicly-funded lobby group, People for Education. A Parent Voice in Education report in March 2005 completed the evisceration of any semblance of Parent Power in Ontario schools. Today “student learning” is the stated priority, but P4E under Annie Kidder is best known for promoting education spending and gutting Ontario’s testing and accountability programs. Most principals, for their part, resist parent involvement in curriculum and teaching, so discussion of “student learning” is very limited and constrained.
Parent Advisory Councils have, for the most part, served to muffle parent dissent and to channel active parents into school support activities. In the case of Ontario, “partnering” is definitely in and rocking the boat is decidedly out in the teacher-friendly world of People for Education. Looking across the country, school advisory groups are all over the map and remain, for some reason, under the de-facto umbrella of provincial Home and School Associations. Provincial school council organizations only exist in Manitoba, British Columbia , and Alberta.
Some provincial Education Departments go to great lengths to ensure that School Councils remain strictly “advisory” in law and in practice. Nova Scotia’s School Advisory Councils, under the Education Act (Section 22), play a very limited role described as “advises the principal on behalf of the school community, especially parents.” Two decades after their creation, some of the province’s 420 public schools still do not have functioning “school advisory councils.”
Parent involvement in Nova Scotia is a carefully managed domain. The “ground rules” established in March 2010 by the Nova Scotia Teachers Union make it clear that parents are expected to “contribute to the academic success of their children.” In many Halifax Regional School Board schools, SAC’s may exist, but so do Home and School groups, and the members of the SAC’s are not posted on public websites and accessible only through the school principals.
Parent in-service programs run by the Nova Scotia Federation of Home and School Associations accept and reinforce the “School Code of Conduct” setting out “duties” for parents that sound like those intended for a primary class. Raising your voice or being unpleasant on school grounds is “specifically forbidden” in that Code. All legitimate school reform groups with “political agendas” like Students First Nova Scotia , Save Community Schools, and Choice Words operate outside the lines and continue to be effectively marginalized by the core interests that control the system.
Will the feature film Won’t Back Down get a fair hearing and perhaps ring a few alarm bells here in Canada? Will concerned parents begin asking why School Advisory Councils are so weak and are inclined to attract parents best described as ” teachers pets”? How can public education lobby groups like People for Education get away with the duplicity of neutering parent councils, then fretting about why they still busy themselves with “bake sales’? Most importantly, how long will the Parent Power outage continue in K-12 Canadian education?
Paul this is a very good analysis of why school/parent councils were doomed to failure.
Many boards and committees at high schools, hospitals and other government run institutions are just a front for those with power – people on the committees have no power and feel “used” when administrations say their decisions were “board approved.”
There are lots of individual problems in the system, there always have been, but there are very few collective problems. Almost every problem resolves down to a waiting list for a program which, in the end is seen for what it is, a funding problem.
When Canadians are running the often acknowledged “world’s best system” it is kinda hard to get the blood up. There is no general sense of outrage in Canada.
In the USA, the radical underfunding of inner city schools in the obvious problem. The “burbs” have very few problems. In one famous upside down line from the movie Viola Davis’ character says “change the school- change the community.” Progressives believe the exact opposite “change the community- change the school.”
“World’s best system” , please! Our system has been in a steady decline since the introduction of the “core based” format in the early 1990’s and has gone progressively downhill from there. When school systems and administers use a circular governance system: complaint to principle, no action; complaint to local board-back to principle, no action; complaint to school board- back to local board-back to principle, no action; it is no wonder parents get discouraged. Effective change only results when parents push issues on legal grounds and are then made persona non grata in the schools. When our schools are the best in the world and our schools have zero tolerance for bullying then I will be satisfied to leave board governance alone. Until then a better more democratic and definitely a more parent friendly approach is needed. Our education system has no right to discourage nor deny a parent to be our children’s advocates and a vital part of their support system. School boards are missing an excellent opportunity to grow strong democratic societies by enforcing autocratic policies.
Marginalization is the Modus operandi for many public education strategies – parent activism voiced through SAC’s can be effectively silenced owing to the education act, and also through more indirect community forms of conditioned power. The old parent trouble maker card is worn and creased to this day by the establishment and its presence in the ‘local community’.
Provincial government and the lack of interconnection with municipal concerns contribute to the incongruity and exacerbate the overall problem with how parents play a role. The power outage is not just with the parents and SAC’s, but moves up the food chain to elected boards.
Even with a municipal election ferreting local incumbents out of their dens to campaign, and lend an ear to our concerns, I was flabbergasted to hear the remarks of one municipal candidate who came to my door, when I remarked my primary concern is to see public education : “modeled more toward the community’s needs, not the one size fits all model. Schools after all are the hub of a community and can influence our economic stability greatly”.
Candidate – Well, that’s not our concern, education is a provincial matter.
Me the voter – Gee, I would think education is the concern of all citizens in this community.
Candidate – Not really, the province controls public education.
Me the voter – and if the local school was put up for review and closure, would that not be a concern to you and all of the citizens in this community?
Candidate – that would be the purview of school boards and the province. Not me. My kids are grown and finished school
Me the voter – Gee, I see that you are seeking re election and I’m wondering did your council ever meet with the local school board rep. or the regional superintendent on education issues that effect our community?
Candidate – No, can’t recall if we did.
Me the voter – So what are your concerns if I may ask?
Candidate – I’m lobbying for a Leisure Centre.
Me the voter – sorry, I have 2 children and don’t have any time for leisure.
———————————————————————————————
I really think the parent power outage will continue until most relevant departments of our provincial government, and our municipal level as well, harness a more purposeful approach to community inclusion – that would require an end to protectionism.
The Parent Power Index of the American Center for Education Reform is very revealing in terms of which states are more receptive to parental choice and involvement in public education:
http://www.edreform.com/in-the-states/parent-power-index/
If Canada had a “Parent Power Index,” Alberta would likely rank first on the strength of its Charter Schools legislation and the School-based Management system in Edmonton. Which provinces would rank next in order of “parent power”? That’s debatable. Would Nova Scotia rank, as usual, in the middle or in the LQ? Perhaps SQE will take this on for us.
An excellent suggestion for SQE Paul. Something that would make the nation take notice I believe.
BC, Saskatchewan, The Territories, Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, then lump all the Maritime provinces together last. For more see: School Choices available across Canada at SQE: http://www.societyforqualityeducation.org/parents/canada-choices.html
SQE would be happy to accept funding for a Canadian Parent Power Map!
Perhaps Paul could advise SQE? Is it really a money issue or just perhaps trying to grown SQE’s message and perhaps have more that Doretta fronting the organization?
Part 1
Simply put, the by-laws, structure, governance of parent councils are designed to neutered parental involvement in the education system, to follow the dictates and power networks of the three main stakeholders – the teachers’ unions, the school board and the provincial education ministries. Parent power of the kind that is bubbling and brewing across United States, is held in check by the power brokers of the Canadian public education systems, and the provincial legislated education school acts
Within the legislated provincial education school acts, the provincial education systems are legally charged with, providing and delivery an education. No where in the education acts, are the public education system are legally charged with providing a quality education or will one find a clause defining what constitutes a quality education. Nor will one find a clause in the school acts, what constitutes a basic education. Education quality, curriculum, and all other aspects of education, is defined by the power brokers – the stakeholders of the unions, school boards and education ministries. The only legal duty of the public education brokers is to delivered a basic education to their populace.
Parent councils, have been rigged from the beginning to act and behave as mere conduits for the stakeholders of within the public education system.. In the United States, parents have been empowered by the federal and state laws enacted in the last 20 years, giving parents and students legal rights under the law, the power to insert their rights, to go after the very education quality issues such as curriculum, instructional practices, or best practices that the public education stakeholders have long held as their domain. Long held as their domain, as the experts and the best ones to deliver an education. The American IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), the No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and the the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), etc.), in part of other legislated acts to empower American parents. The American parent trigger laws, the latest in the evolution of a series of education acts, to wrestled political control from the stakeholders within the public education system models. In Canada, there is no legal legislation on the books for parents and students, and in fact as it stands now, the political and economic powers of the Canadian Education models across the country rests entirely in the hands of stakeholders within. Canadian parents, students, and the communities are in a legal limbo, where their rights, education quality, the delivery of education programs, and the parent councils, are only allowed to insert their rights, their concerns, their voices, through restricted protocols that are designed by the public education power brokers, to favour in all instances to maintain the public education stakeholders political, economic powers and more importantly to maintained their expertise in all things in education. Parents, students and the communities have only one legal recourse, to challenged the education power brokers in the legal court arena. Not many do, but many do challenged the operations and governance of the public education model, through the very protocols and vehicles (parent councils), to enact changes that favours the best interests of students in the individual schools, by wrestling on the political and economic lines. The stakeholders within the public education system, in the last 15 years or so are bound and bent to keep parents, and the public as compliant pets willing to become the political and economic causalities of the agendas, special interests, authority/power structures, being played within the public education model and between the various stakeholders within.
Part 2
Parent advisory councils, are just that as Paul has described, “ Parent Advisory Councils have proven very effective in keeping a core of parents in the inner circle, shielding principals from “parent power” types, and generating extra funds for school supplies. Where Home and School Association groups exist, principals generally favour the group that is the most inclined toward fundraising and the most politically intert of the two groups.” What happens when parent advisory councils move beyond fundraising, and cheerleaders of the public education system? “Trustees, on the other hand, say the committee is trying to operate outside its mandate.
“This is about a power struggle,” says Trustee John Del Grande of the committee, which was mandated by the province in 2005 to encourage parent involvement.
The battle came to a head at a committee meeting last week when Ann Andruchuk, the trustee representative that night, walked out after the parent group tabled a surprise report on barriers to parent involvement.
The report suggested trustees didn’t work within the law, that they were condescending to CPIC members, changed meeting dates on a “whim,” or had meeting conflicts that had the “appearance of a deliberate conspiracy to purposely disorient — or even derail — Toronto CPIC’s meeting.” It recommended that in order to create more welcoming schools, parents be involved in the selection process for vice-principals and principals.
Frustrated trustees, shocked by the report, voted secretly at a recent board meeting to contact the minister’s office for further advice, said a source.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/education/article/1262812–another-battle-brewing-at-toronto-catholic-board
I suspect, the only route is to challenged the trustees in a court of law. The trustees will not under any circumstances ceded a bit of power to parents, to where the parents would have a real say in the operations of a school.
Part 3
Parent councils, can be the perfect vehicle if they are legally empowered to act on the best interests of students, and more importantly the best interests of the individual students. On the Education Law Blog, a Canadian web site – a series of court challenges, being played out in real time.
http://educationlawblog.ca/tag/discrimination/
Would the court challenges be happening, if parent councils had the legal right, to be on the selection committee for principals or vice-principals. Nothing worse than a principal that decided, backed up by the school board to have policies and practices that promotes the soft bigotry of low expectations, the lowering of education achievement and progress of students, and all policies and practices to work at the behest of the working adults at the school and school board levels. All one has to do, is to look at the pathetic reasons by the administration of schools and school boards that are given to parents, the parent councils as to why the LD students should be given an education two grades below, their non-LD peers. Or the group of Christian parents and other concerned parents in Ontario, planning to take legal action on the curriculum. Rather ironic, when the political and economic powers within the public education system, will defend their education policies by stating in many different ways, that parents do not have the legal right to insert their rights under the human rights legislation and under the Canadian Constitution. “ The controversial anti-bullying legislation enacted through Bill 13 is now officially part of Ontario’s Education Act, but some Christian and Muslim parents continue to mistakenly use the law as a rallying point to raise wider objections about their children’s schooling.” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/in-ontario-family-values-and-competing-rights/article4570330/?utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_source=The%20Globe%20and%20Mail&utm_type=text&utm_content=TheGlobeandMail&utm_campaign=98040184
The public education system, the governing and legislation education acts in the provinces are out of step with the federal constitutional rights and the human rights legislation at both the federal and provincial levels. Try telling that to the teachers’ unions, who dances on the backs of the students to obtained favourable contract agreements at the expense of the students. Try telling that to school trustee councils who conduct secret meetings to change the by-laws and protocols on how parents can approach the school trustees. Trying telling that to school board consultants, who put out policies and practices without consultation of the schools, the parents and the students. I could go on, but the public education system and the stakeholders has a very warp view and attitudes towards parents and the students they supposedly have the best interests, holding the students/parents in high regard, until the parents/students begin to insert their rights under the Constitution and human rights legislation.
A few comments made by the news links above, by those within the public education system.
1. “ Frankly, its a conflict of interest. Parents are bias about their children–and so they should be. I would be weirded out if I met a parent who wasn’t. However, parents have their own agenda when it comes to education, they are not always objective about what is educationally important for their student. I think parents should be involved at the school level, but certainly not the board, level.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/education/article/1262812–another-battle-brewing-at-toronto-catholic-board
2. “Also, kids aren’t directly being hurt. If they are wanting to be involved in extracurriculars, have their parents get them involved. Parents can pay someone to do that. Teachers aren’t obligated to do that, yet they do to help FURTHER enrich the lives of students. The government has now trampled on their rights to bargain, not to get pay raises or more sick days…RIGHTS ARE BEING TAKEN AWAY”
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/education/article/1263576–amid-teacher-boycott-tdsb-finds-way-to-let-all-students-join-in-track-meet
3. “The one thing that is outside of the contract parameters are extra curricular activities, which are 100% purely voluntary, unpaid and purely at a teacher’s discretion! They cannot legally be forced ino a job description or contract without the Unions or teachers agreeing! The new forced contracts, without collective bargaining, will be thrown out by the Ontario Courts, as they were in Wisconsin!”
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/education/article/1261692–school-boards-group-try-to-clarify-the-role-of-teachers
My apologies to you Nancy but could you shorten your posts perhaps? As an Ontario parent the links are familiar to me because they’ve been posted a other educational forums and blogs. You needn’t go to the trouble.
Last time, I check the Educhatter blog is Canada wide. Parent councils across the country, have the same problems of becoming fundraising vehicles, rather than what they should be a place where parents can gather together to initiate change, improvements and reforms that benefits students on the school level, within the sub-groups of students and on the individual basis of students. The information that I have provided, although repeated on the few education blogs and organizations that are actively fighting for change in the Canadian context, are labeled as such by the public education establishment as enemies of the public education system. They dare to give voice to education issues that the provincial public education systems would like to keep quiet, and out of the public realm.
The public education system is a complex beast, like all enterprises in the pursuit of educating the youth. Thus, there is a need to repeat what the public education system will not do – provide parents, the students and the public with the information, knowledge and the power to work for the best interests of the students, and not for the best interests of the unions, the agendas set by the school board trustees, or the questionable curriculum outcomes set out by the ministry of education. In the same way, the public education systems across the country will not do, to provide quality information, knowledge that will empower parents to make good decisions on behalf of their children’s education and their futures. For that to happen, the stakeholders must cede part of their power and authority to the parents, and trust the parents that they know what is best for their children, the schools and their communities.
Part 4
Moving unto the heavily regulated regulation regimes governing Parent Councils, and by extension the activities of parents, their actions and behaviours.
In Newfoundland and Labrador – Starting on page 23, and can be found in other provincial parent councils, that effectively neuters parent councils – that is they are not permitted to act on the behalf of individual parent and students concerns. “ School council and sub-committee meetings are open to the public. School councils are not a forum to address individual teachers, parents, students or personal issues, therefore there is no need for closed meetings. Minutes provide an account of the school council discussions and decisions. It is essential an account of meetings be provided for the public record. School councils should convey by word and action to all stakeholders that they are approachable, accessible and accountable.” Further down, and at end – “Questions or disagreements about specific decisions by individual teachers or administrators are to be dealt with in normal parent-teacher or parent-administrators interactions. On the other hand, issues of a policy nature can be submitted to the chair and principal for placement on the agenda for discussion. For example, requesting a discussion about the discipline of a particular child is not permitted; however, requesting a discussion about the discipline policy of the school is permitted. This issue could be addressed in a school council’s Code of Ethics (see Appendix C)”
In the new updated version in Ontario – one has to go to the individual school boards. I selected the Upper Grand District School Board, but rest assured all school council policies and manuals has what the parent council cannot do. “ROLE OF SCHOOL COUNCILS
1. School Councils are advisory bodies which may make recommendations
to the school Principal or the Board on any matter excluding:
a) personnel matters and Collective Agreements;
b) the security of property;
c) the acquisition or disposal of a school site;
d) negotiations or litigation affecting the Board, and
e) individual student issues”
The legislation from the education acts down to the school boards to the individual schools virtually renders school councils as the local cheerleaders, compliant to all agendas and interests of the stakeholders within and eliminates the heart and concerns of parents. An issue of a general school practice where all students with low reading, writing and numeracy levels are educated at two grade levels below their peers, in the inclusive classroom. Won’t be on any parent council agenda. Nor will the latest bullying incident of an individual student, where a parent is banned. Nor will the curriculum instruction and content be discussed at a parent council meeting. Out of bounds, are most of the concerns and education issues that arises at the school level.
Part 5, is finished, in anticipation from those within the public education system, who will always defend themselves, on their legal authority, giving them the right to discriminate on who, when, where and how an education is delivered to the students. It is time to put some American radicalization to work in the Canadian provincial education system, start inserting our rights under the constitution, human rights legislation, and other legislation laws that put a stopped to the systemic discrimination of a public education model, that mocks their own clients, the students, and by extension the parents and the public.in the 21st century.
A very good summary of the co-opting of what could have been excellent vehicles for parents to lead their education communities Paul. The one error in your summary is in this “Since the abolition of the Ontario School Council in 2005,” The Ontario Parent Council was the overseeing body of school councils put in place by the NDP, carried on by the PCs and nixed by the Liberals. I don’t think that it was 2005. Earlier than that actually, but don’t go by what P4E suggests. They’re often wrong with their facts. I think it was actually within months of when McGuinty became Premier that the OPC was nixed.
You are quite correct about the Ontario Parent Council. The Public Voice in Education Report is dated March 2005 and refers to the Ontario Parent Council website being a source of information, That would suggest that the OPC was abandoned in 2003-04 when Dalton McGuinty came into office at Queen’s Park.
What actually happened? It looks to me that Annie Kidder and P4E captured the Education Premier and were adopted by Education Minister Gerard Kennedy as the “voice” of Ontario parents. Public funding then flowed freely to P4E to help them with their lobbying efforts. Having opposed the creation of school councils, Kidder ended-up in a position to convert them to new purposes — as local lobbying units for more education funding busying themselves “jawboning” with teachers about “student learning..” Over time, it simply rendered the PACs impotent.
Bang on there Paul. I guess they figured why oppose the very vehicle that will give you power and control? ;-0
Yes, that’s pretty much it, although I would disagree with Doretta and suggest that where the power of the individual parent is concerned Kidder and P4E have done little to achieve that. Handy tools for the system, rather than being accountable to parents/school councils was more like it.
It was actually the progressive Conservatives that gave P4E a seat at the stakeholder table.
What can I say, Dr. Bennett’s assessment of the status of School Advisory Councils in NS mirrors our experience in the Strait Region, with a slight exception. The SAC at Rev. H.J. MacDonald (Heatherton) School was very active and very vocal – although still limited, in law, as an advisory group, throughout the school review process the principal stepped to the side, despite the former Superintendent essentially directing him to “control” the parents.
And now that, at least until Justice Patrick Murray makes the final ruling on the fate of the school, Rev. H.J. MacDonald school is closed, parents from the former Rev. H.J. MacDonald SAC have scattered to a number of other schools within the Strait region … you can be sure that these active and vocal parents will push to establish and / or strengthen the “advising” that goes on within these schools.
Finally, I would suggest it is not all doom and gloom. Have any of you read last week’s Chronicle Herald article about the Minister of Education’s announcement to provide 45 teachers across the province to ensure P-3 classes stay at or below the 25 student / class cap?
In the article Ms. Jennex, the Minister of Education in NS, is quoted as having said: “In some cases, there might be some classes that will exceed that, but they will have done that with the approval of the school advisory council and the principal.”
http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/140630-ns-to-hire-45-new-elementary-teachers
So despite the Education Act’s restricting the role of SACs to that of an “advisory” body, in the case of class configuration and the enrolment cap, it seems the Minister has bestowed some degree of authority, noting that exceptions to the P-3 cap of 25 students requires “the approval of the school advisory council”. Now, the question is how many SACs across the province caught that directive and are willing to take a stand in situations where a particular school or school board attempts to exceed the cap … and will the Minister of Education honour her statement in the event of a dispute between the SAC and principal?
Somehow education “reformers” equate ‘parents’ with angry reform parents and happy parents or parents that prefer progressive reform like P4E a much larger group BTW, are written off and not considered “real parents” unless they support the testing, voucher, charter, privatization, union bashing, right wing agenda.
When you set up “parents” as in any way an oppositional force to teachers and admin, you are talking about a very very small slice of “parents”.
Perhaps you need a new label to describe what you mean. The most powerful parent in the largest province does not support the “reform agenda” so I assume she doesn’t count.
You throw the term “parents” around far to easily. Most parents do not support the reform agenda, not because they have not heard about it but because they know exactly what it is and reject it.
What they want is ADK-K-JK, smaller classes, more programs, more support staff, newer schools, more resources, shorter waiting lists and so on.
A field guide on how to spot a real education reformer:
Kidder has no power outside of the bubble of parents who lean left and largely in the centre of the universe – Toronto. P4E never got a foothold in the central-north of the province.
We figured out very early on that she was steering for the teachers and not really interested in what was good for parents…..or students.
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/26/wont_back_down_why_do_teachers_unions_hate_america/
Ah Doretta, there is nothing like a political purity test. They are very useful in making sure movements are very pure and so small they can eventually hold their meetings in a phone booth.
Bake sales aside, the tools of power are quite malleable. An SAC can be virtually powerless – according to the education act. However, when advocating for the closure of a school, their advisory capacity is significant – even if the understanding is that it goes against the sustainability of the community’s future. Any Superintendent that gets an SAC on board has a strong tool to use when debating issues with the school boards; that includes programming, hiring teachers or school closures.
Just like school boards they are a useful level for the educrats. When SAC’s get ‘active’ the protectionists come out of the wood work to bring them back in check.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-woestehoff/wont-back-down_b_1917343.html?utm_hp_ref=education
Cheery-picking and posting teacher-friendly pieces does not become you, Doug.
You might have missed Julie Woestehoff’s opening sentence: The audience loved “Won’t Back Down” in Chicago, where Julie is a self-described public school advocate. That’s what prompted her to post a piece pointing out the “Three Big Lies” in the film. Indeed, the same three “lies” that Randi Weingarten of the AFT has been ranting about.
So far, audiences have given “Won’t Back Down” a thumbs up, in spite of the hostile tone of the mostly liberal-left movie reviewers. When I saw the film on Saturday night a smallish crowd at Empire Theatres Bayers Lake (Halifax) applauded the movie at the end. I was not one of them, but saw the significance of it in a city like Halifax not known for embracing radical causes of any kind.
Won’t Back Down is a very powerful movie, part melodrama, part political cartoon. The very people that applauded Roger and Me, Super Size Me, and the Race to Nowhere are now exercised about “bias” and “propaganda” in the movie industry. Some of Won’t Back Down is brilliant in its insights. That’s what’s driving the defenders of the system crazy.
The American conversation about educational reform goes, in effect, like this: “In order to compete with countries like South Korea and Finland, we should completely ignore what they do in achieving superior education results, and indeed do the opposite. Instead of copying what works abroad, we should remodel our K-12 system along the lines suggested by libertarian theorists at the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, even though no successful foreign country today or in the past has ever based its educational system on anything remotely resembling what those market utopians propose.”
In the last generation, conservatives managed to drag the Overton Window away from reality because attacks on U.S. public education as a total nationwide failure (rather than merely a failure in some high-poverty neighborhoods) served the interests of two right-wing constituencies: libertarians, who know, without examining any data, thanks to Friedrich von Hayek and Ayn Rand, that all public services can be done better by markets if privatized, and Southern Protestant fundamentalists who want their fellow to subsidize their anti-Darwinist separatist subcultural schools, by means of tax-funded vouchers.
Why has this eccentric right-wing perspective been accepted so uncritically by so many otherwise thoughtful centrist Democrats and moderate Republicans? Answer: It’s cheaper and easier to blame public schools for most or all social problems than it is to solve the problems of poverty, unemployment and broken families.
I have no agenda of my own to propose, and I don’t think foreign models can be transplanted without modification to the U.S. My point is simply that there is a very discernible Overton Window in the national conversation about educational reform, and because of that, discussion of most of the policies actually used by successful countries is taboo. Inasmuch as grants, media attention, etc. depend on staying within the narrow current frame of debate, education experts might endanger their livelihoods by waving their hands and pointing to what actually works elsewhere in the world.
So if you follow the American debate about K-12 educational reform, don’t expect to look through a frame to see either America or the world as they really are. Instead, if you look through the Overton Window all you will see is a faded, mimeographed Cato policy paper from 30 years ago on the hypothetical wonders of school choice, taped to a brick wall in a dead-end alley.
Close
Michael Lind is the author of Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States and co-founder of the New America Foundation. More Michael Lind.
The fact that it is financed by a far right wing fundamentalist Christian crack pot coloured my view I suppose.
Unlike left-wing “crackpots” like George Soros?
http://the-american-catholic.com/2012/06/21/surprise-george-soros-funded-group-of-left-wing-catholics-attempting-to-sabotage-fortnight-for-freedom/
Quite the rant Doug, filled with ideologies, bias and propaganda. Paul mentions the movies in his last post, and I only heard of one – Roger and Me. Look up the trailers, and I can see why the other two never made it to the top. However, I can well imagine why my 17 year old say, the only good one is Roger and Me, where a person can learned how to approached the big wigs, the honchos in charge of policy. Nice skill to have for parents, especially dueling with the public education system, with their progressive ideologies and philosophies, that somehow their children will be learning through the mystical process called osmosis. Quite entertaining are the you-tube videos where parents confront the educrats and their beliefs in osmosis learning. But I have digress, the other two movies, I be better off watching Rick Mercer and his weekly rants. Just last week, he put out a column why people should be ranting more, especially at people who have the authority and decision making in either making your life a living hell or a blessed event. To which I came up with the idea, of the dilemma the public speech requirement is back on at our school, where all students must fulfilled that requirement. It was more or less taken off the English menu, in favour of writing improvement and other language skills, that does help most students to pass their English exams, and increase their odds of passing the public English exam in grade 12. What public speaking, does for the cause of writing improvement is beyond me, but at any rate I solve the problem for my 17 year old.
A rant on what else – the public education system, told in Rick Mercer speaking rant style, describing what the progressive education system has done for her. Sure to have everyone laughing so hard, they all will be, including the teachers be rolling on the ground laughing. especially the parts of the latest progressive fads that were imposed upon the students. Her very first speech, was on the school cafeteria food, that had everyone laughing, and she earned the highest grade average ever in the history of the school. But at last, the progressive ideologies and philosophies, would not allow her to compete in the next round, based on the dandy little ideology of progressive thought, that she did not have the stuff to complete due to her learning disabilities. I let that one go, but one can only call it discrimination. But her first public speech still lives on even in 2012 by others, who truly appreciates her sense of humor, and how my LD child points out the hypocrisy of adults, that surrounds children. Likewise she probably would point out the same about the movies, and probably only watch the Moore film. At least it would be entertaining, and she may learn a few things or two, on approaching people who are way above her in status.
But what I really need to asked you, how you made the giant leap that the mysterious forces of the right leanings, were taking over the Overton Window. To which I never heard of, until today, but below is the site.
http://www.mackinac.org/12887
It sure sounds to me, common sense no matter what political stripe one is talking about. Just asking, because the public education system in the last 50 years have button up their hatches to all education practices and policies that does not live, breathe and act in progressive ideologies and philosophies. So how can one accuse that it is the mysterious forces hijacking the public education system, without admitting that the progressive public education with all its progressive ideologies welcome them by opening up the front doors?
We could use a few more good men and women, to raise a little hell in the public education systems, in much the same way that the movie of Won’t Back Down does in showing the mean streak, the mad hatters of progressive education fads and the outright cynical attitudes of those who work in the public education field. I leave with one Canadian, who has taken an interest in education, Rick Mercer. He tried to stop the closure of the Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School in Ontario, but the stakeholders close it. One of the oldest schools in Ontario, and was not close for reasons of low enrollment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterborough_Collegiate_and_Vocational_School
And yet the stakeholders within the public education system, remained silent, I wonder why? Could it be the ideologies, agendas and philosophies held by those within the public education model, have lost their way, and have given into seeing the boogieman at every turn?
Somehow, I fear so……………..
Time to raise a little hell, inside the hallow halls of the beast called a public education system.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-cavanagh/wont-back-down_b_1906434.html
Does that mean Phillip Anschutz is NOT a right wing extremist? The groups he and Gates and Broad and the Walton’s fund are all astroturf. They are out to privatize.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Anschutz
No credibility.
http://www.alternet.org/education/10-ways-school-reformers-get-it-wrong?page=0%2C0
Below a few alarm bells perhaps?
Is Parent Involvement on School Councils Working? A Parent’s Story
“It’s a Monday night and the parent advisory council (PAC) of my school assembles around a makeshift boardroom table in the school library. It’s my first meeting and I’m already wondering where the bored, ex-corporate stay-at-home moms with control issues are because, contrary to the stereotype, they sure aren’t in this room. I’m mingling with a math teacher, a social worker, two nurses, the former buyer for a major Canadian retailer, a professional singer, an autism specialist and a drama teacher.”
http://www.canadianfamily.ca/articles/h1joining-parent-advisory-council-leads-better-edu/
What a great way to start off an article by insulting the stay-at-home moms. Keep the attitude in mind, that is at play concerning the next links.
Stimulating Parent Involvement to Stimulate Student Success
Collaboration, Strategic Planning and Resilience are the
Essential Ingredients for Principals and School Councils
Interested in Stimulating Parental Involvement.
The above link, is a great example of turning parents into professional volunteers. Not at all impress, many of a good volunteer organization in communities are no more, since applying the same methodology and theories that one will find in professional organization, with a volunteer base.
The Challenge Facing Parent Councils in Canada
Mary McKenna and J. Douglas Willms
Mary McKenna is Assistant Professor, Department of Adult and Vocational Education, and
J. Douglas Willms is Director, Atlantic Center for Policy Research, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton.
“Concluding Statement
Both parents and educators view schools as places where all children should have an opportunity to learn. Parent advisory councils can play a significant role in helping educators and parents achieve this aim. To do so, they must increase their influence in matters that directly affect children’s learning, expand the roles in which parents are involved and widen the constituency of involved parents.”
The above report, no doubt is sitting on dusty shelves, being ignored.
The next link is from Revenue Canada – food for thought, considering the implications and the actual set-up and governance of school councils.
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/chrts-gvng/chrts/plcy/cps/cps-013-eng.html
The icing on the cake, or it could be the cherry. How $70,000 can go missing out of the school council’s accounts, and no one is charge. If $1000 dollars went missing in another school far removed from the swanky Ottawa address, you bet someone would be charge, arrested, court date set, and probably be convicted. Not at the swanky public school, I search over 20 pages, to no avail, and discovered quickly, the upper middle-class crowd, professional class are protecting their own, and have gone as far as removing video, and news articles. Not a single parent at the swanky public school is asking the obvious question – why should the parents be asked to repay the $70,000?
” Parents at Rockcliffe Park Public School voiced their frustrations at a meeting Tuesday evening about $70,000 in funds that appears to be missing from the parent council’s bank account.
In a letter to parents sent out Tuesday, the council executive said they have initiated an audit of their finances and said a police investigation is underway.
The council’s money issues first came to light said after the daycare that runs Rockcliffe’s after-school homework club told parents it would be halting the program next month. The school council has not paid for the service since last December.
The council’s executive said they first discovered the money was missing in February.
The school council said the irregularities are not connected to Rockcliffe Park Public School accounts, the school administration and staff or the book fair from 2011.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2012/04/10/ottawa-rockcliffe-park-council-funds-missing.html
Note – nobody has been paid since December, but the $70,000 was only found missing in February. Something smells and it stinks to high heavens..
“The disappearance of more than $75,000 from the Rockcliffe Park Public School Council’s bank account was a wake-up call for the city’s largest school board, which currently has no specific policy in place to instruct councils on how they should manage their money.
In a report prepared for trustees and later released to the Citizen under freedom-of-information laws, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board staff said the Rockcliffe affair “has clearly identified the need for change to our current policies and procedures with respect to school councils.”
Heavily-redacted in advance of its release, the report was discussed at an April 24 in-camera meeting, at which time trustees were given an update on the situation and discussed options for dealing with it.
Trustees then directed OCDSB staff to negotiate a financial agreement with Rockcliffe’s school council. That agreement saw the board pay $36,000 to cover debts incurred by the school council, including nearly $30,000 owed to the Bettye Hyde Co-operative Nursery, which operates a homework club at the school.”
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Missing+Rockcliffe+Park+school+council+money+prompts+call+change+accounting+practices/6833657/story.html#ixzz28AW0wAfE
“Rockcliffe Park Public School’s council said Friday it has a plan with the Ottawa-Carleton District School board and “community partners” to pay all outstanding liabilities.
This includes Bettye Hyde Cooperative Nursery School’s after-school program, which had said it would close Friday if it didn’t get the $35,000 it was owed, as well as the milk and pizza programs.”
Read more: http://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/rockcliffe-park-council-gets-money-for-programs-1.805710#ixzz28AWZ6NbK
The school site – http://www.rockcliffeparkps.ocdsb.ca/index.htm
My point is, that the structure and governance of parent councils, mimics a professional model, that in the end chases away the very parents one would want on a council. It is compounded by having the principal controlling the agenda, and I bet it is tightly controlled by principals as one goes down the income level. It will breed distrust, and parents will pick it up. The reason why it is so hard to engaged parents, especially when there is contempt held by principals, that the parents are not good enough. Where the hand selection of parents, pre-approved by the principal, and others at the school level, comes into play.
How can any school compete with Rockcliffe- the school profile.
And yet, the governance structure of the school councils, mimics the realities of Rockcliffe. Over 3000 parent volunteer hours, yearly, and students hold bake sales. How come the students in this school gets to eat cupcakes, but in another school far removed from the swanky address of this public school, bake sales are banned?
In the Willms report, The Challenge Facing Parent Councils in Canada
“Taking a Broad View. Parents can counter the concerns of some educators by becoming knowledgeable about key education issues. They could, for instance, seek to understand some of the research on controversial issues, or identify, and suggest emulating, highly successful programs. In essence, parents must narrow the gap between the roles of teachers as experts and
parents as clients, by gaining and supplying a broad perspective for their advice on school topics.”
Parents as a group, must strive to narrow the knowledge gap between the school and the school board, on issues that the principal, teachers and board staff don’t want us to become knowledgeable. Issues such as reading, or the mathematics curriculum. If the parents were more knowledgeable, perhaps $70,000 would not have disappeared out of the Rockcliffe’s school council bank accounts. Or the invitation of SQE, of providing a short talk on reading and math, and parent tips, at a school council meeting, or parental engagement session. From what I read today, on news accounts – private math tutoring is now officially part of the day to day expenses for families. More than likely, at the Rockcliffe school, it is probably at the 80 % mark, judging from the low math EQAO scores. Nothing to rave about.
No doubt, the parents from Rockcliffe just pay for the tutors, or do it themselves at home, but it becomes a different story as one goes down the income ladder. Parents become more dependent on schools to provide, but parents can only become so engaged, if the information given to them from the schools, does not empowered them to become more engaged. I know it is sheer fantasy to have SQE drop into a school, but what they offered, it is the type of knowledge that will empower parents, to become more engaged with the school and their children’s education. Schools are unwilling to provide it, nor are the school boards willing to provide it. But they are willing to provide speakers at the Ottawa board – ” Engaged Parents, Happy Students: Strategies for Weaving Student Success and Well-Being with Sir John Jones (October 3, 2012)”
http://www.ocdsb.ca/par/pi/ocdsbss/Pages/default.aspx
Just wondering, what type of parents show up to events, where a major speaker in the eduworld is the key speaker? It is free, from what I can determined, so costs is not a variable.
Here is a school support activity for parents to consider. Loosening the reins on perspective to include knowledge and reliable math skills.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/142943-how-to-make-math-education-worse-in-ns
BTW, Won’t back Down has has a disasterour open week. Apparently nobody much is interested south of the border either so I guess folks up here are not alone.
http://blogs.laweekly.com/arts/2012/10/wont_back_down_teachers.php
Agree or disagree, seems they’re interested enough to write about it.
Oh they write about it. It is highly provocative with the union bashing teacher bashing crowd but if nobody shows up to see it, the purpose of far right wing Christian billionaire Phillip Anschutz to use it as a Trojan Horse for privatization and religious public funding will go nowhere.
A farcical conspiracy Doug.
“Still, the underlying theme of the movie is not outrageous: When it comes to education, the needs of kids, not adults, should come first.”
Everybody believes that + patiets not doctors, victims not lawyers, an old stale topic. The worse you treat teachers the faster your system will decline because if it not a HIGHLY desirable job, the best and brightest will not be attracted to teach.
If you want a quality system you must treat teachers very well. This means attempting to have the highest wages, benefits and pensions combined with the smallest classes and best resources. If you don’t do it others will and they will have the better system.
The reform movement actually creates the demand by choosing “teacher excellence” as its most recent hobby horse all others having crashed and burned.
High quality teaching cadre is not built by firing a few from the bottom, it is built by attracting and retaining high quality teachers at the top. They will not work for peanuts or put up with abuse from know-nothing reformers.
80% of TEXAS school boards pass resolutions to end testing.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-stanford/the-texas-antitesting-rev_b_1937341.html?utm_hp_ref=education
Another stupid idea is finally on the way out.
Americans will always do the right thing after they have tried everything else.
– Winston Churchill
everything else = testing, vouchers, charters, triggers, union bashing, teachers testing, phonics only, Mayoral control, and an endless number of other lame useless ideas from the past. Been there done that. They don’t work and they don’t help.
The right thing = small classes, ECE,FDK-JK, high standards for teacher education, MAs for all teachers, PD, high level resourcing, medicare, nutrition, housing, higher minimum wages, free optical and dental, bans on hand guns, and so on. The schools do not exist in isolation. They reflect every single community problem.
OMG
http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2012/10/04/parent-trigger-flick-wont-back-down-gets-rough-landing-at-box-office/
What’s new about your latest staff bulletin board post, Doug?
It’s a “Progressive Policy Pulse” piece:
http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2012/10/04/parent-trigger-flick-wont-back-down-gets-rough-landing-at-box-office/
So far, Won’t Back Down has had a rough ride with movie critics, but 61% of the popular audience (based upon 8,000 Cinema Score ratings) have registered a “like” for the film.
That’s not surprising, because it’s a very entertaining movie.
Still number 10 in box office receipts – however with competition like Hotel Transylvania – a much more entertaining movie.
http://boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/
The other links that Doug provided – on high stakes testing – should be put in its proper context. However, Doug and unions should duly worried about the one thing that the public education stakeholders will no longer have the sway over parents, when parents start to insert their rights. Scary prospect in Texas, when parents of higher income, in nice AP schools – “The mommas in question live in good neighborhoods so their kids can go to good schools with great teachers. When these moms realized that the latest round of high-stakes testing “reform” was hurting their AP kids, they didn’t just get mad, they got organized—and everyone has noticed.”
On the facebook page – the letter informing the powers to be, their children will not be taking the state testing- “I am respectfully presenting a written statement to remove my child during the mandated standardized testing days this year. It is my parental right to choose to “opt my child out” of curriculum or instruction that is harmful to children as stated in the Texas Education Code CHAPTER 26. PARENTAL RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES Sec. A26.010.EXEMPTION FROM INSTRUCTION.”
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Texas-Parents-Opt-Out-of-State-Tests/121316371311714?sk=info
It has more to do with high stake testing from the individual states, where battles are being formed on the legal front. One Texas legal suit – http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2012/09/educators-want-tools-to-meet-their-mission/
Across the United States – “Opposition to high-stakes standardized testing is growing around the country, with more parents choosing to opt their children out of taking exams, more school boards expressing disapproval of testing accountability systems and even a group of superintendents joining the fight.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/high-stakes-testing-protests-spreading/2012/05/30/gJQA6OQX0U_blog.html
What is driving it in part – the questions on the test.
“A question about a “talking pineapple” on a standardized reading test given to eighth-grade students in New York has sparked something of an uproar among students and adults who say it doesn’t make any sense.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-meaning-of-the-talking-pineapple-test-question/2012/04/24/gIQAFSuefT_blog.html
“State education officials in New Jersey got an earful from parents recently after third graders were given a standardized test question asking them to reveal a secret and explain why it was hard to keep.”
http://theweek.com/article/index/227956/new-jerseys-reveal-a-secret-third-grade-test-question-the-fallout#
As for the feds, remaining quiet, since the large majority of high-stakes standardized testing is aimed squarely at the state level. But what the feds are not quiet about is this – “Feds Receive Record Number of Complaints About Special Education”
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/speced/2012/10/feds_receive_record_number_of_.html?cmp=ENL-EU-VIEWS1
It is all about parents inserting their rights, and not letting the stakeholders within the public education system stopping them, with more edubabble and excuses. Even if it means to partner with one of the stakeholders, and where unions become the defacto partner in high-stakes testing.
Doug writes the usual – ” small classes, ECE,FDK-JK, high standards for teacher education, MAs for all teachers, PD, high level resourcing, medicare, nutrition, housing, higher minimum wages, free optical and dental, bans on hand guns, and so on. ”
The parents with the higher incomes, have schools with all of the above, but are fed up with spending wads of monies on private tutoring for the 3 Rs. Get even madder, on the stupid questions being asked of students on testing, and receiving an edubabble response. Meaningless, to parents but indicates how teachers’ unions, usually in concert with the school board staff, pushing dodgy pedagogy and practices that in the end, requires parents to spend more money on outside help for their children. Anyone can well imagine, what happens to students’ achievement in the low-income school of a public school.
The opposition to Won’t Back Done, is consistent that they will denied the bureaucratic nightmare of students and parents experiences, and at the same time, denied that the very education practices and policies are at fault.. Somehow the child, with low reading ability, becomes the battering rod for the public education stakeholders, by using their political and social capital, to blame it on the students and their parents. Wealthier parents, only know too well, and have the option of seeking private services, but not the option of private schools. Charter schools, is a big hit with parents in the wealthier neighbourhoods, and yet it is an epic battle in the lower income communities.
The latest for Desert Springs – the real battle on parent trigger laws
“Mobley has launched a new literacy program through Success for All, a research-based curriculum with a national track record. A new after-school program extends the school day by three hours for about one-sixth of the school’s 600 students. And this month the school formed a new “alternative governance council” composed of teachers, managers and parents on both sides of the trigger debate to oversee progress.
The board voted in August to carry out that alternative governance reform model instead of the parent union’s charter school plan, on the premise that it was too late to convert to a charter school this year. Outraged, the parent union went back to court, arguing the district deliberately defied the judge who validated the charter petition.
If the judge again rules in the parent union’s favor at a hearing later this month, parents who signed the trigger petition will vote Oct. 18 on one of two local nonprofit charter operators that submitted bids to take over Desert Trails in fall 2013.”
http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/parent-trigger-law-divides-struggling-school-community-18266
I wonder why it took the school district as long as they did, to institute Success for All ? Could it be because it is seen as another corporate driven reform? “The Success for All Foundation (SFAF) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development, evaluation, and dissemination of research-proven reform models for preschool, elementary, middle, and high schools, especially those serving many children considered at risk.”
http://www.successforall.org/About-Us/
The common response from the teachers’ unions – “Written by private corporations that also serve as powerful lobbyists for school reform policy, these “teacher-proof” plans prescribe not just the content of a given lesson but every sentence that teachers will read off to their students in the course of a class. Accounts of teachers’ work with these curricula run from the ridiculous (the scripts allotting no time for teachers to repeat themselves) to the perverse (the common technique of call-and-response drills, a system of militaristic hand signals that accompanies one such program). ”
http://pressblog.uchicago.edu/2012/09/10/uncivil-rights-teachers-unions-and-race-in-the-battle-for-school-equity.html
But one can’t argue with success of improving the achievement for all kids, and hell, and in particular the math and reading scores. The above principal found the light, but at this late stage, parents in the Desert Springs community, are bound and bent to get their charter school, due in no small part, the consistent edubabble and excuses from the stakeholders within the school district, who are determined, to teach according to the SES variables. As for parents inserting their rights under the law, the unions would probably like to see them go bye-bye, and encourage teachers making their first million on another corporate site, selling lessons.
“Who says teachers can’t make a million bucks? Deanna Jump is a first-grade teacher in Georgia who made $1 million by selling her upbeat lesson plans — to other teachers.
She’s now among 15,000 teachers nationwide to cash in on their creativity by promoting original materials through TeachersPayTeachers (TpT), an online marketplace to help educators share and sell resource materials, site founder Paul Edelman says.”
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/02/14184513-georgia-teacher-rakes-in-1-million-by-selling-lesson-plans-to-teachers?lite=obinsite
Who are the number one customers – the parents – one site I would recommend to parents for language arts of the novel study guides, and some math lessons. I wonder where this teacher stands in trigger laws, high-stakes testing, unions, and other educational concerns. I also see now, the Teachers Pay Teachers site, has lessons all the way into the post-secondary level. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Browse/Price-Range/Free
In the Uncivil Rights article – “Former Minnesota Federation of Teachers president Louise Sundin has compellingly explained how the No Child Left Behind Act has set teacher unions back. “We spent 20 years trying to professionalize teachers,” she has argued, “and now we’re getting thrown back into the industrial model, because it’s top down, it’s organized around hierarchy, and it’s line supervisor oriented. You do the curriculum this way because that’s the way we’ve decided it’s going to be better.”
http://pressblog.uchicago.edu/2012/09/10/uncivil-rights-teachers-unions-and-race-in-the-battle-for-school-equity.html
And yet, it is the very same unions, rooted in the industrialized trade union model of the 20th century, that refuses to change in the 21st century, where students become the number one concern in steady achievement and reaching their full academic potential. Small classes, master teachers, and all of the other talking points of the SES variables, will still do nothing for student achievement , when the how-tos are not taught as a regular feature in the public schools. Somehow, students learned through osmosis, the mysterious discovery technique, that is attested by the teachers’ unions and other stakeholders as the key for effective achievement for all students.
An example, 6 students at the local high school, is taking grade 12 physics online. All week the 6 students, were supposed to figure out on their own and as a group, the how-tos to prepare for the quiz at the end of the week, and to complete the assignment. Great difficulty for said students, and life would have been made a whole lot easier, if the teacher said one thing and one thing only – do the calculations for the angles first. That said students were as mad as hatters, the day before the quiz, with their assignment graded to a low of 25 to the high 60s. The online teacher came to the rescue, and than told them, do the angle calculations first. Just a small thing, but cognitively speaking, by not telling students the how-tos, students are more than likely becoming frustrated students, which in turn, will make life for the online teacher more difficult than need be. The teachers at the school, nor the online teacher was not at all helpful, and refused to provide even the helpful suggestions that they were on the right track.
I am in the process of trying to locate the older versions of the 1960s and 1970s physics text books, where the how-tos are in full display, but in today’s dodgy curriculum and pedagogy practices, the how-tos are spurn in favour of the ‘osmosis’ methods, and do it yourself calculations, based on the student’s set of knowledge. How would a master teacher improved student’s progress in learning, when the teachers are unwilling to impart their knowledge, unless the criteria is met. Criteria, of everyone struggling? Or the number of hours spent by students going no where too fast, and still arriving at the wrong answer? Or is it the degree of frustration by the students, before teachers who are firm believers of the ‘osmosis’ methods’, will impart knowledge that requires the students to memorized the ‘how-tos’. The essential knowledge, needed to advance in learning more advance knowledge.
I suspect hard core reformers are the first week audience, then straight to video.
and so many more people will watch a video, Netflix it or download it on Pay per view, than pay $14 to go to the movie theatre.
Good luck with that. It will be out of the theaters in another week.
Uh, Netflix, DVR, PVR, PPV…?
Getting away from armchair reviews – the other day I heard the term ‘problematise’.
This interview with Annie Kidder does nothing to illuminate the opportunities for parent involvement or advocacy. Her views strike me as a ‘one size fits all’ reason to ‘problematise’ parent advocacy or parent engagement for that matter. If anything, after listening to her I wonder if her views would not dissuade parents from doing anything but create fundraisers.
Your post is bang on Steven. I’m pretty confident in suggesting that Ms. Kidder has done little to evolve the role of parents in education, OR work to actually help school councils do what they were intended to do.
Ms Kidder understands something that reformers fail to understand and it frustrates them. Parents have no interest in “running schools” they are not qualified to run schools and they know it. They simply want to be listened to and heard.
Parents are also citizens who play a role in ensuring standards and accountability in their community schools. Parents “running a school” is a knee jerk response Doug. However if they are part of an SAC they are required, among other things to be:
assisting in and advising on the development of school policies which promote academic excellence and a positive learning environment.
(d) all aspects of student discipline in accordance with By-Law 11.
(e) providing advice and support to the Principal and staff and advising the School Board with respect to programs and services that deal with curriculum, student services including student-support services and extra curricular activities, policy development, funding and fund-raising, parent-school communication, communication strategies, and similar matters.
————————————————————————————————
This a small section from a letter of agreement between the South Shore Regional School Board and the Minister of Education in NS.
And they are neither, hence the issue…
True enough.
I thought this was an interesting insight.
‘The greatest failing of the Advisory Council legislation is
that there are no consequences for those individuals that still
want to maintain the walls between parents and the school
system. There is little incentive to promote councils. Until
they are truly functioning in an open, co-operative environment, their potential benefits, especially to students, are
limited.’
Kidder’s brand of parent advocacy is a form of reinforcing the messages that the lower down the SES ladder, parents are lacking and not as capable as parents on the higher levels of the SES ladder. Why I have to laugh at her resentment of parents using their knowledge of the education system, to work for the best interests of their children, and yet, on the P4E does not provide the parent advice, knowledge and information needed for parents to become effective advocates for their children.
The repetitive advice is to follow the protocols and processes set up by the very public education system, designed to keep parents from being effective advocates for their children. Also add the thin line of not acknowledging all parents experiences in engagement whether negative or positive is another mark against P4E. It is the negative experiences that parents have experienced, that are more often denied by P4E. The refusal to accept that the protocols and processes of the school and school boards negatively impacts parental engagement,
Made worse by P4E, and the advice on what parents should do to become actively engaged in the schools their children attend. No amount of showing up to concerts, the parent-teacher interviews, and donating dollars to the fundraising causes is going to affect higher success for their children, when parents are not given the respect and dignity in the first place. What I thought being an engaged parent, bringing the Ontario documentation of my child’s preschool difficulties in delay speech, and other related problems to let the NL school know, was the biggest mistake I made. I was quickly labeled as a ‘problem parent’. When I open my big mouth, on reading instruction and math curriculum, I was stunned by the vicious responses with smiles plastered across the educationalists faces, as if it was normal responses to belittle parents with their lack of knowledge, and education background.
What both the public education model and the P4E organization cannot abide by, is criticism of sound construction and reason of the education policies and practices that are afoot at any school, and by extension the school board. My 17 year old, came home today, and stated she is beginning to hate calculus class. I responded, but why would you, since it is your favourite class? If I have to go through one more calculus class, listening to students who don’t know their fractions, I be walking out. P4E, should be listening to other voices in the parent community, and start discussing education issues such as the math curriculum, that allows students to have major gaps in their math knowledge. Currently in NL, two bullying incidents in the last week that has caused quite the stir among parents. Parents want action on bullying, but if one listens to the education ministry, parents are the one at fault and need to become more engaged with their children. On the P4E site – it is enough to make one scream – http://www.peopleforeducation.ca/faq/what-happens-if-the-bullying-continues-even-after-the-principal-and-parents-have-discussed-the-situation-lorraine/
The NL parents whose children were the victims, did just that but no one was listening to their concerns. Following the processes do not work, when parents are not given the respect and dignity in the first place. And when parents take measures in their own hands, such as getting a peace bond for bullies, schools have all kinds of excuses why they would find it hard to enforce on school grounds. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2012/10/09/nl-blaketown-assault-video-1009.html
So Doug, it is the education structure and model that don’t want parents to engaged, in the day to day operations of a school. It is the operations of the school that concerns parents, and at the very least parents should duly expect the school administration to follow and enforce their own rules. In the CBC story, “In fact, she said one of the incidents involving one of the girls played out in the principal’s office.
“She said, ‘if you weren’t here in this office right now, I would beat the face off you right here right now,’ in front of the principal and vice-principal,” she said.”
If I was that parent, things would have been different. First place, I would have the i-phone on record, and than proceed to call in the police, to lay charges of threats. Than I would tell the principal, I will be withdrawing my child, until you see fit to treat the bullying incidents and my concerns with the respect it should be given. Just before leaving, informing the principal, that digital copies and a letter will be sent tomorrow describing today’s events, previous bullying events and my concerns as a parent, to all board trustees, the staff at the top levels of the school board and ministry of education, plus the premier’s office.
Parents need to be told knowledge like the above, when schools refuses to enforce their own rules and regulations. The biggest sin of the P4E, is their refusal of not passing the knowledge and information needed, so parents can insert their rights as parents, and not leaving them helpless as the NL mother was.
Seems like an advisory capacity, similar to Ontario. If the principal and staff don’t want to do it, it won’t happen.
To top it off, they soon find out they are boxed in by the Education Act and the CA not to mention finance. They soon see that whatever each one hoped to accomplish is met by another parent who wants the opposite.
This idea that there is a “parent agenda” stiffled by “the blob” is a joke. Far right parents in the reform movement are somewhat unified but numerically insignificant.
It is part of the NS Education Act – section 20. If the principal won’t do it you get what you get – watered down community schools.
I sat on the parent committee at a high school for many years. The new parents would say 1) we don’t like Mr Xyz the French teacher. Principal “we cannot discuss personel matters here, you must see me in private.” OK we want a guitar course here (arts school). Principal “we tried a guitar class only 6 registered. We cannot have a course for 6.” OK the food in the caf is terrible, my son does not like it. “we have a contract with a catering company, I will pass on your concerns.” OK the school is dirty it must be cleaned more often. Principal “it is dirty due to cutbacks in custodial staff, we had 8 catetakers before- now only 4.”
You can see where things are going. Most things parents come to school to change cannot change much if at all due to Ministry policy, board policy, the collective agreement and the available funding. After a short time, they revert to fundraising organizations because that is fine with everybody.
I find the idea that change cannot happen “much, if at all due to…”, to be an extremely passive response. That which concerns the students concerns the parents. That which concerns the parents, as taxpayers, should be concerning our governing bodies. We cannot continue to let our children believe that they have no voice, nor can we continue to allow our education system to make a mockery of democracy. I want excellent teachers, who have a voice in curriculum and administration. I want educated, elected board members who want what is best for our the students, staff and community. Blaming school boards is not the answer, lobbying for political will to support and strengthen our education is. I don’t card if new board members say they don’t like teacher xyz, however I do care if boards are not allowed to ask if the reason teacher xyz is unlinked is because of not teaching the curriculum or if teacher xyz is abusive? I don’t care if what the excuse is for a dirty school, I care that something is being done to ensure the problem is being addressed! If school boards cannot effectively communicate the issues and concerns of the schools to the community then the community of taxpayers are helpless to support the teachers or the school boards. Ultimately it is the students who pay the price, as a parent that is the outcome I find unacceptable!
Just proves the need for an alternative choice mechanisms for parents! These laid back administrators wouldn’t be so complacent if they had to behave as though they weren’t a monopoly. Ask any small private school prinicpal who know parents will vote with their feet. Paul knows what I mean ;-))
Nothing stopping parents from going private except the money. Oh you want the money? Not happening. In fact as budgets shrink more and more people are asking why does BC fund half and Quebec up to 60% of private? more and more in Ontario are asking “why do we fund catholics again?”
Rather laughable Doug – ‘as budgets shrink’ and the education headlines in Ontario. are not being kind to teachers’ unions or school boards who think nothing of paying a few hundred dollars to installed a pencil sharpener.
“The unions had left the bargaining table months earlier, and the province said the legislation was necessary in order to keep teacher salaries from consuming the education budget.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/teachers-take-ontario-government-to-court-over-bargaining-rights/article4601152/
Or this one, that sure to raise a few questions by parents – “Ontario to spend $1 million on new resource centres aimed at parents, tots”
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1268997–ontario-to-spend-1-million-on-new-resource-centres-aimed-at-parents-tots
No doubt the centres that exists at the schools in Ontario – are only open by approval of the teachers’ union and school board, due to ongoing war being rage on the backs of the children, the schools and school boards supposedly supports.
“Finding solution to standardized test results for applied students remains concern”
http://www.kenoradailyminerandnews.com/2012/10/10/finding-solution-to-standardized-test-results-for-applied-students-remains-concern
School board manipulating the numbers, rather than finding solutions to the current fads in the math curriculum, that reproduces poor achievement results in math.
On the OSSTF feed that sure to be in the mainstream news – “Every teacher organization in English Canada has enthusiastically agreed to support this project. Teachers across the country are moving strongly to improve school climate for LGBTQ students; students with LGBTQ parents; heterosexual students who are also homophobically bullied; and the 58% of heterosexual students who are distressed by homophobic elements of school culture. The Every Teacher project team is led by Dr. Catherine Taylor at The University of Winnipeg in partnership with The Manitoba Teachers’ Society. The project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.”
http://www.osstf.on.ca/MN-Oct-10-2012
Too bad, there is little concern from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and teachers’ unions from improving the achievement of students with disabilities, and the ableism that occurs in schools daily. The cause of much of the bullying and social prejudice towards students with disabilities inside the schools.
Or this one despite the legislation of freezing salaries, a 7 million dollar bill to balance the school board budget.
” At any rate, the legislation has left the board with an estimated $7,072,887 in unfunded costs for this current school year, the report concluded.
“Obviously we will be looking for some funding,” remarked board chair Janet McDougald at the board meeting.
Finance department staff are expected to present a report in early December that will address the new budget shortfall. ”
http://www.mississauga.com/news/article/1516353–legislation-a-7-mil-bill-for-school-board
No doubt, the cost reductions will be done at the expense of the students……
I don’t know what this has to do with the topic at hand or anything else Nancy but FYI teachers’ unions do not install pencil sharpeners.
Our Children, Our Choice gives new meaning to Parent Power. http://www.societyforqualityeducation.org/index.php/publications/category/C27/
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[…] Finally, the inaugural meeting of Abbotsford SD #34 District Parent Advisory Council (DPAC) will be October 25, 2012. Abbotsford parents plan to restart our District Parent Advisory Council public meetings next Thursday. But only after shutting down for over half a year and cutting some school Parent Advisory Council (PAC’s) public meetings by half. There are 47 schools in Abbotsford School District, with 47 Parent Advising Councils (PACs) and 47 Council Chairs. In the last five years, I have only ever seen all 47 PAC Chairs gather once for a District meeting. It is a rare thing to ever see more than a dozen parents gathered together anywhere, unless it is a parenting event, like Operation Lodestar. And the dozen who do gather, are usually the spouse of a teacher, a school board employee, like a secretary, or an outright teacher. Some Abbotsford schools for example, have just appointed parents, who are also teachers from other school districts, to be our Parent Advisory Council (PAC) chairs. Some schools have already decided to leave only three more public parent meetings for this year. All the school decisions that get made every year will still be made by teachers, but with little or no oversight from parents. Only months ago, Abbotsford school board stated it would put a stop to these conflict of interest problems, but instead trustees now seem to turn a blind eye to the exclusion of parents and limiting of public information about schools. Parents across Canada are on the Web talking about this “PARENT POWER OUTAGE!“ […]
As a parent of a young child in the Ontario elementary school system, I find it reprehensible parents and children are basically powerless. There is a desperate need for a parents union in this country, that stands up and fights for our rights and civil liberties.
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