Higher standards, challenging curriculum, school choice, and superior teaching made Alberta Canada’s highest performing province and, for the past decade, the highest performing English-speaking or French-speaking school system in the world. While Alberta ranked first on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests and topped the Pan-Canadian Assessment Programme (PCAP) tests in literacy and science, prominent Ontario educators captured the ear of the OECD, sponsors of the benchmark international testing programme. Then, following Finland’s highly-publicized PISA success in 2006, a new infatuation bloomed — one which has now morphed into the “Global Fourth Way.”
Jumping on the latest educational bandwagon is not really new, but it is assuming a different form. A recent thought-provoking post on The Conversation, by Australian Dr. Stephen Dinham, aptly called it “the problem of PISA envy.”
Ironically, just as Australians have “gone cold” on Finland and become infatuated with Asian city school systems like Shanghai, North American school change theorists have adopted “the Finnish solution” and been swept up with Pasi Sahlberg’s alluring “Fourth Way.” It’s prime objective, in Sahlberg’s own words, is to vanquish the dreaded GERM, that Global Education Reform Movement, supposedly carrying the policy virus of “neo-liberalism” and its principal strains — higher standards, school choice, and competition in public education.
Leading the Canadian charge is school change theorist, Dr. Andy Hargreaves, former OISE professor and former policy advisor to Tony Blair’s Labour Government, now perched at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education. After producing the Ontario Public School Teachers’ Federation booklets, What’s Worth Fighting For? (c0-authored with Michael Fullan 1991-92), Andy has embraced a number of “Success for All” teacher empowerment projects, the latest of which is The Global Fourth Way (Corwin, 2012), launched in Toronto on November 3, 2012 in cooperation with the Ontario Principals’ Council.
Andy Hargreaves’ latest venture, “The Canadian Fourth Way,” is featured in the Current Issue of the Canadian Education Association’s organ, Education Canada (Fall 2012), which reads like a virtual advertisement for the book. Canada’s high performance on PISA, driven largely by Alberta and resource-rich Ontario, is now trumpted as the harbinger of a new “Great Schools for All” movement bringing a Finnish-Ontario hybrid solution to a school system near you.
Hargreaves’ The Global Fourth Way is based upon studies of six high performing school systems and attempts to cast the Alberta Model as the outlier. Raising educational standards, rigorous testing, school choice, and teacher accountability for student performance are an anathema in Hargreaves’ educational world. Since developing the Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI) in 2009 with the Alberta Teachers’ Association, he has been chipping away at the real strengths of the Alberta school system. School assessment models, as he well knows, are very expensive and usually spell the death knell for provincial testing and any linked teacher quality initiatives.
Striving for “Great schools for All” sounds attractive until you begin examining the contradictions inherent in the new “Fourth Way” prescription for public education. Who would quibble with any of those glittery “seven principles”? “An inspiring dream… Local authority…Innovation with improvement…Platforms for change… Building professional capital… Collective responsibility… and Intensive communication” have a familiar ring. The new formula: Combine “Success for All” with the “Finnish Solution” (nix Standardized Testing and School Choice), “invest” millions more in education and presto — you have “the Fourth Wave.”
Whatever happened to learning from Alberta’s high performing school system? No need to ask because it runs counter to the “Fourth Way” which Hargreaves now terms “the imbedded and inclusive Canadian Way.” Just in case you need help connecting the dots, Hargreaves’ The Fourth Way comes with a handy Alberta Teachers’ Association booklet, “a great school for all..”(ATA, August 2012). It’s actually a well packaged, thinly disguised attack on the highly successful Alberta Model of education. Hargreaves and his former OISE colleague Michael Fullan, the ATA booklet reports, both oppose “the ‘business capital’ approach to school reform, one that focusees on standardization, compliance, school choice, market-based competition and technology.” (p. 5)
Andy Hargreaves and the Alberta Teachers Association talk of “transforming Alberta education” with the “Fourth Way.” Stripping away the high sounding edu-babble, it is clear that they are out to dismantle the Alberta Model and essentially “Finlandize” that oil-resource rich, conservative Canadian province. The ATA booklet targets provincial testing, expanded learning time, and teacher assessment tied to student performance. Alberta’s thriving “charter schools” and the truly innovative Edmonton Model of school-based management are nowhere mentioned in that skewed vision for the future. Those innovations are, presumably, not “the Canadian Way.”
What explains Canada’s Alberta Education innovation blindness and the Finnish infatuation? What’s the real intention behind Andy Hargreaves’ latest educational “Big Idea” — The Global Fourth Way’? How successful will Hargreaves and the Alberta Teachers’ Association be in convincing Alison Redford’s Conservative Government to renounce its impressive educational legacy? The bigger question: Will knowledgable Canadians and savvy educators swallow the “Fourth Way” panacea?
Choice has zero to do with Alberta success since the success of Alberta predates any choice policy by decades. Alberta success is 100 percent based on its economic success and therefore its high standard of living and especially low levels of poverty..
Low poverty rate means high educational achievement. Works in Finland AND Alberta. Everything else is window dressing.
don’t know what you think Alberta is like, but I lived there for many years. There is lots of poverty and the aboriginal communities, including those within large cities like Calgary and Edmonton face similar challenges to those with poverty in Toronto.
Have also lived in Alberta and those in low economic neighbourhoods there were the beneficiaries of school choice. Doug seems to play at an expertise that so far has eluded me.
In his new book (and elsewhere) Hargreaves does make mention of Alberta as the closest Canada comes to the political ideals of “bureaucratic accountability and market competiveness” he does, admittedly, downplay these in favour of a policy of local, disciplined innovation. There is also the backdrop of relative political stability that could be at play as well: one government for many years and one unified teachers’ association.
But there is also the admission that it’s difficult to point to one thing and say, “this is it! Do this and you’ll be just like Alberta”
I agree with Doug that economic success has to be taken into account, although I wouldn’t go as far to say that you can discount everything else. It does point to the complexity of things and how difficult it is to determine “causality”.
Ontario, a different economic and political animal, is almost on a par with Alberta in terms of results.
I haven’t finished the Hargreaves book yet, but I’m hoping that it doesn’t disappoint in the promise to move us beyond idolizing the very measures that has led him to hold these six jurisdictions up as “leading the Way”.
Thanks for beginning the conversation, Paul!
Stephen, It is very difficult for educators to get their heads around the fact that the school in total only accounts for about 20 percent while home and community mainly SES overwhelms anything the school does.
That 20 percent IS important nevertheless. ECE and class size,summer school,are all critical.
It’s interesting to read a little about how some in Alberta see things. I found this to be interesting:
http://www.teachers.ab.ca/Publications/ATA%20Magazine/Volume%2092/Number-2/Pages/What-Alberta-can-learn.aspx
The Dinham article is interesting and resonates with what is actually starting to come of out the OECD, itself, in terms of expanding its testing regimes to reach for some of the higher-hanging fruit!
“Finnish children start school in the autumn of the year they turn 7, and letters or reading-related skills are not taught at all before that. Reading instruction is intense in Grades 1 and 2, and is uniformly based on teaching phonemic analysis and phoneme-grapheme conversions.”
Have you seen the Finnish language OMG? BTW The Finns believe children are not ready for reading before age 7 but after that they can learn very quickly.
It would barely matter what system was used in Finland. The 5% child poverty rate is what matters.
By the way Doug, due to the simplicity of the Finnish language, and far fewer sounds, (I believe it is the second language with the fewest sounds), children are proficient readers in one year. It can’t be done on the English language, due to its complicity and have the highest number of sounds that must be learned. It takes 3 to 4 years for children to become proficient in reading English, and it is made all the worse given the current reading instruction and curriculum policies.
Include what Joanne has stated, because the Finnish reading instruction actually begins learning the phonemic sounds of the Finnish language. It is intensive and is the reason why there is far fewer dyslexics in the Finnish population compared to other countries, and the rate starts to climb in Finland when the Finnish students starts to learn English. All about the reading instruction, and has nothing to do with the SES variables.
The only reason why phonemic sounds are not taught in the English speaking countries, and more so for the NA continent, is because the primary educators and for that matter the SE teachers are not required to do so to received a teachers’ certificate. Nor do the education faculties, have the courses in reading instruction, nor the staff to trained the teachers in the 70 plus phonemic sounds of the English language. But the Finnish teachers do, and it is a requirement for one and all teachers.
It is another reason, why children who are struggling in the reading processes in the primary and junior grades, remain with low literacy skills throughout the rest of their schooling. The lack of training that the educators have received.
Rather hypocritical of the education establishment in Canada, to call for the elimination of standard testing, outcomes-based education, no alternative education choices, and other such external accountability measures, to shift all focus unto the educators. The Fourth Way no matter how it is approached, leaves little to the imagination that it is to increase the political and social power based of the educators and by extension all the associated education stakeholders. Hypocritical to stand on the PISA data streams, the soft-skills of the 21st century (hard to measure), and than use Finland as the model. What has not change in Finland. The number of students entering university. Still at the 23 % mark, and throughout the rest of Europe. In Finland, there is testing just like other European universities that offers free tuition. In Finland, the testing weeds out the graduating grade 12 students, and from what I read two weeks ago, there has been a decrease in the number of students taking the testing.
That said, in the article The Fourth Way of Finland – “Data is a powerful tool in business, politics, and in education, too. It can be used, as said above, for good or bad. Those who have the information and access to communicate it hold the power. The danger is that as the data about schools and
education systems get richer, it will be used in a selective way. For example,
focusing solely on student test scores and using them to judge the effectiveness of individual teachers or the quality of schools is inappropriate. Similarly, simply ranking countries by using the data from international student assessments is only a part of the picture. However, the media widely reported the recent 2009 PISA results by only referring to the country rankings of measured average student achievements. Narrow use of available data from national or international purposes is fueling the spread of GERM as a remedy to improved teaching and learning.”
Click to access The%20Fourth%20Way%20of%20Finland%20JEC%202011.pdf
The key sentence is – ” Those who have the information and access to communicate it hold the power.”
The Fourth Way is simply an attempt by the public Canadian education establishment to increase their political and social power, to where no external entities, including the public and by extension the parents , will be allowed access to the education data banks, unless invited by the education stakeholders. One of the reasons, why testing, gradeless report cards, no-zero policies and other such material that indicates a grade to where a parent can used it as a small indicator of how well their children are doing, is that the data itself is powerful and potentially damaging to the school, the educators and more importantly the school board education policies. In the case of my child, the report cards dating from grade 1 to grade 6, clearly shows consistent passing grades in areas of writing. However, my child consistently failed every demand written test from grade 1 to grade 7 in Language Art. As she did with the grade 3 and grade 6 CRTs, and the kicker is, consistently from one year to the next, I addressed my concerns to the teachers, the principal and of course the school board staff. All help was denied, and it became more troublesome when my child was formally identified as having LD, where the top recommendations was the writing issues.
The advent of the 21st century technology, has allowed the transformation of the data streams. It scares the hell out of the public education system, because it will clearly show the decline in the 3 Rs. With my child’s own data streams, the first question that is posed, “How did my child get missed?” or “Why wasn’t she given corrective remediation?”. Now just imagine, if AIMS or another external agency, has access to the reporting data of the report cards?
Finland is no different from the other developed countries. The post-secondary institutions are all reporting a decline in the reading, writing and numeracy skills of their students. More so for the countries that have English as the main language. At the same time, increases in the number of the adult population having low literacy and numeracy skills. More so for countries that have English as the main language. Within the public education system, at the global, national and state/province, school boards district, and the individual schools, there is a concerted effort by the stakeholders, and in particular the education gurus, to work together to prevent people from exercising their education legal rights. In so doing, it prevents changes on the legal legislation that is in place for the public education systems. In Canada, pick any province – all legislation states that the public education system will be the agency to delivered education services, but no where in the legal legislation does it state, on the quality of education services, and expected outcomes of students. The data streams displays it clearly, on what a public education does not provide, and that legally they do not have to provide quality education services that provides a level of attainment in literacy and numeracy.
In the Fall issue of Education Canada by the CEO, the articles is the beginning of a shift – a rebranding of the public education establishment. What I find really humorous, is the top level Canadian education gurus branding themselves as experts in special education, and then comes the Fourth Way agenda in some form or fashion. It is almost as if the articles are the advance publicity to set up the conditions in order to sell it to the teachers, the administrators, and the other education stakeholders. Once sold, the public needs to be sold on the idea. It is why the education gurus are in panic mode, concerning the data streams in public education.
” The International Quest for Educational Excellence: Understanding Canada’s High Performance”
Rebranding of the education gurus – “From 2009-2012, one of us (Hargreaves) also co-directed a collaborative study in Ontario, with ten school districts and the Council of Directors of Education (CODE), into the design and implementation of the province’s special education strategy.[4] This strategy promoted differentiated instruction, universal design for learning, use of assistive technologies, and the development of collaborative professional relationships and responsibility in schools and school districts. The idea was that what was essential for students with special educational needs would be good for all students.”
http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/international-quest-educational-excellence-understanding-canadas-high-perfo
Concluding the Fourth Way is the only way – “The Canadian Way to educational excellence is not a silver bullet or short-term miracle. It cannot be attributed to this or that recent short term policy, but to constellations of policies that run across provinces and systems, accumulate over time, and are consistent with a longstanding culture of high regard for public education, strong support for the teaching profession, and broadly collaborative and inclusive processes of educational change management, inspired by sets of commonly shared beliefs. This embedded and inclusive Canadian Way – that is being threatened by the global trend to weaken district involvement and control in favour of more and more centralized direction – says more about Canada as a society than it does about the relative value of any specific provincial policy. Perhaps U2’s Bono put it best when he said, “I believe the world needs more Canada.”
Who knew, the data streams of students represent the real threat to the stakeholders of the Canadian Public Education. I highly doubt refashioning the Canadian education gurus, as experts in special education when the data streams indicate the opposite, and as well as the Moore Supreme Court of Canada, that is still awaiting a ruling. The education heavy weights from BC and Ontario, argued on the grounds the public education would collapse, if the public education was required by law to give corrective remediation in the areas of the 3 Rs, to a standard of students without LD. Apparently the so-called inclusive processes replaces corrective remediation. The data outcome streams states otherwise.
In April, 2012, the Canadian Teachers’ Federation had an article on the Fourth Way, It is entitled, “The Far Side of Educational Reform: Why teachers need to be co-creators of change in education”
Soon, we be hearing the same words coming from the school districts and union headquarters. What is interesting, is the last paragraph – “The authors conclude that,
Learning should ultimately be about the enrichment of [students’] lives as citizens as well as consumers and producers. Education should ultimately therefore be not just about performance or even personalization in the form of individual customization but about creating better, more productive and more socially just lives for everyone. Teachers have lives too. Teaching helps others make meaning. They cannot do that if others are in control of the meaning that teachers make for themselves….
Canada has done well on the world stage of educational change. If this stage is to become a platform for even more dynamic change in the future, the country needs to have more than professional peace with or even “buy-in” from its teachers. It needs its teachers and their federations to be co-creators of change on the broadest scale for a strong and just society in the future. It’s one thing to be excellent. It’s another to stay excellent. Are governments and federations up for this challenge?”
How socially just it is, when the public education system, consistently produces 33 % plus of grade 12 graduates with low literacy and numeracy skills, that requires remediation in their adult lives, at their own expense? Not at all fair, but than again the Fourth Way has nothing to do with the excellence and quality of the education outcomes. It is about ensuring the future prosperity of the employees working within the public education system. Further to profit within the public education system, on the knowledge gaps, deficits in the basic fundamental skills of the 3 Rs – a built-in system based on the “neo-liberalism” tenets that the education gurus have declared a policy virus invading the public education system. Laughable, considerable the actions and behaviours of the education stakeholders versus the outcomes in the data streams.
Alberta teachers are the highest paid teachers in Canada. High pay = high results!!!!! Who knew?
No one cares what teachers are paid,we care that they view it as a vocation and have the right intentions and didn`t choose it as a lifestyle.Best way to cure that is to get people to work 12 months a year.
If they get paid well,A OK!
An article from CBC – “Manitoba Education- A decade of decline”
Nice set of interactive charts
Note teachers salaries and funding per student.
There is no correlation between salaries and achievement results.
OECD has also consistently pointed it on a global basis.
Finland is in the middle of the pack. Finland teachers have an exceptionally high level of post-secondary education, because universities are free. However to attend a Finland university, one must pass a series of tests for admittance. Ditto, for the other fields that requires a university degree in Finland. It is Finland’s way of trimming off at the end of the school days, to create natural barriers at the access gates of the universities.
Since the world’s economic crisis, and ongoing as I speak, the European countries, including Germany the citizens are demanding more choice. It is the average working citizens that are seeing the quality of their schools are in decline. One just has to pick up a newspaper in England, and see the complaints from the general public, the employers and the professors working in the post-secondary sector. Tossed in the rising rates of tuition fees across NA and in England, high tuition fees creates another natural barrier for inspiring students to cross over. Going into debt, must be considered. In the United States, student debt is the fastest climbing debt, over other personal debt.
The rise of the certified credentials since the 1990s, for all sorts of low entry jobs such as the accounting clerk to girl Friday. did come into being in a vacuum. In the 60s and 70s, a high school graduate had no problems obtaining employment. Starting in the 1980s, the employers had complaints of employees holding a grade 12 diploma on their levels of the 3 Rs. Not their knowledge base, but the levels of the 3 Rs. Provincial education ministries along with the usual assortment of the heads inside the education stakeholders, decided credential route is the way to go. At the college level, upgrading and remediation can take place at that level. All stuff that should have been taught in the first 12 years of schooling. Unions love it, because it means more new members, and more ways of negotiating contracts at the K to 12 level, that sets up the conditions for more teacher positions at the college level.
In Europe, it is the same complaints. Students enter the technology and trade colleges, only to find out they do not have the skills and the correct set of knowledge to do reasonable well on the courses.
As Doretta has pointed out, there is so many new innovative practices for disadvantage students, and I will add, plus the large underclass presently found in schools that represents the under-achievers and the low achievers. Choice is the only answer, when the public education system refuses to educate the youth, that safeguards their personal futures. Dumping more money into a public education system that works only for the best interests of the employees working in the education system, will eventually lead to the collapse of the public education system. At the very least, maintaining the status-quo where only 40 percent of the students received a quality education according to the income ladder. All others are out on their own, where private tutoring, home schooling, and alternative private schools become the options.
By that same logic, Most school choice = high results. Who Knew?
From SFT blog today: Truth and Hope. Here’s a very powerful speech by a Teach for America alumnus about what is possible for extremely disadvantaged students. Unfortunately, in Ontario we lack both of the essential ingredients for this kind of large-scale success – Teach for America and charter schools.
Lessons from Alberta. Seems the UK teachers like the Edmonton model. PISA envy indeed! Autonomy, Choice, & Competition.
http://www.evanswoolfe.com/player/alberta1.html
Teachers? It is the UK Tory government. Stop the presses!!!
The Fourth Way, does not considered the education quality being received by the students. In one article, on the homeschooling sites, and other off beat sites run by parents, if the schools are too focus on the social aspects of the students, such as acting as the substitute parents and the social workers to ward off the external SES variables. As several parent blogs have noted, if the schools are too busy with social work, than the school’s mission becomes warding off the SES variables, and the education of the child becomes secondary. Social promotion, no-zero policies are all such policies that attempts to manipulate the external SES variables, rather than providing quality instruction, that would prevent the need to socially promote and no-zeroes on assignment.
Already seeing many signs in the NA schools, where reading problems becomes an issue of low-self esteem problems. Where low achievement is attributed to the external SES variables, It shows up in the data streams as well. On an American talk show, it was about how to motivate your child. The last half was of great interest, concerning schools. Parents need to have choice, options outside of the public education system. The talk was all about the education quality, the decline in the quality and achievement of their children and what parents can do about it. Private tutoring was part of the discussion, since private tutoring is firmly in placed within the American family context. In the Alberta files, the Alberta charter schools have long waiting lists. It is recommended that parents put their newborns on the waiting lists, and not wait until they are 2 or 3 years old. The talk show discussion, recommends parents to put their newborns on waiting lists of schools. It is all about getting the best fit for their children education needs. However the public schools will denied the options to the lower income parents and their children. And from my research today, it is global wide. The denial of a quality education that reaches students’ full academic achievement according to SES income ladder.
The Fourth Way done Canadian style – ” “The Canadian Way to educational excellence is not a silver bullet or short-term miracle. It cannot be attributed to this or that recent short term policy, but to constellations of policies that run across provinces and systems, accumulate over time, and are consistent with a longstanding culture of high regard for public education, strong support for the teaching profession, and broadly collaborative and inclusive processes of educational change management, inspired by sets of commonly shared beliefs.”
http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/international-quest-educational-excellence-understanding-canadas-high-perfo
It would lead to even more stratification of achievement according to the SES income ladder. Which would lead to big increases in private tutoring for the parents who have the means to do so, especially when the Fourth Way is all about as the Canadian Teachers Federation has described it as, ” Education should ultimately therefore be not just about performance or even personalization in the form of individual customization but about creating better, more productive and more socially just lives for everyone. Teachers have lives too. Teaching helps others make meaning. They cannot do that if others are in control of the meaning that teachers make for themselves….”
http://www.ctf-fce.ca/priorities/default.aspx?ArtID=1960&year=2012&index_id=65551&lang=EN
And as I have confirmed it in Europe, a whopping 60 percent of high school students have private tutors. Finland is no exception. The private tutors focuses on exit exams and the 3 Rs.
In one paper, on Poland – “Allowing private tutoring to continue means approving of the school system’s ineffectiveness. Many educational stakeholders should take part in the debate, including teachers, parents (particularly parents councils and associations), university staff
(particularly those from teacher training colleges), non-governmental organizations, and educational authorities at the local and national levels. As a part of this debate, the position of the Ministry of Education and Sport on private lessons and preparatory courses should be made public.”
Click to access 185-197.pdf
I selected Poland, because it was once was a former Communist country. But what really surprise me, is the number of full time teachers, working part time as private tutors. Talk about a conflict of interest, where education quality is degraded, so the teachers can make a hefty profit on the side, tutoring.
In England, 6 billion dollars is spent on private tutoring. “Parents spend £6bn a year on private tuition in the UK – with many saying it is a necessity they can barely afford.
More than a quarter of parents use private tutors to help boost their children’s education, and said that schools provide “inadequate” support.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/9651689/Parents-spend-6bn-a-year-on-private-tuition.html
Schools provide inadequate support for their children’s education. Such a nice way of putting it. If the public education concentrate on the education quality of the students, there would be no need for parents paying for education services.
Over in the Asian countries, the governments decided to get on the neo-liberalism bandwagon concerning private tutoring lessons. Instead of teachers conducting their side businesses in private tutoring, the government will now be the head huncho, in charging tutoring fees at a lower cost, under a criteria. This still allows the parents with lots of money, to seek private tutoring services outside of the public school system. However, it is in the developing countries, where the education authorities want to stopped teachers on conducting private tutoring lessons, and not to slow down the demand of tutoring lessons. “The policy defined “coaching” as teaching students before or after the class inside or outside the institution. It also prohibits teachers of government and non-government schools, colleges and madrasas from giving private tuition during school hours………..For extra classes, students of metropolitan areas will be charged Tk 300 per month for each subject while student of district towns Tk 200 and those of upazila levels Tk 150. However, the head of the institution can reduce or waive the fee for poor students.
A teacher will have to take at least 12 remedial classes on each subject every month and a maximum of 40 students can attend those.
No teacher will be allowed to have direct or indirect involvement with any coaching centre operating commercially.
With three monitoring committees, the policy kept the provision for stringent punishment for violators.”
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=239192
In Lithuanian – ““Demand for private tutors has been on the rise. Many smart parents do not wait even for Christmas and tend to look for tutors as early as September. In this case, parents spend on extra tutoring as much as they would if the child were in a private school. Either way, secondary education has become very costly,” says Rytas Jurkėnas, representative of foreign language center Kalba.lt.”
Skaitykite daugiau: http://www.15min.lt/en/article/business/secondary-education-costs-nearing-university-tuition-fees-527-246834#ixzz2BOXxUE39
As for Canada, private tutoring is well above the 2 billion mark. But once again, the stats are not track nor does the education officials bother with collecting the data. The private tutoring rise in demand from parents, occurred in the 1990s, and have increased steadily year after year, The proportion of full-time teachers, teachers who can’t find a position in a school are increasing as well. More than likely at the same pace as in Europe. The focus is not what the education gurus and others within the public education have claimed – enrichment. The main focus is the 3 Rs and specialized tutoring for subjects such as calculus and advance algebra or chemistry. As well as the specialized services dealing with reading deficits. Private tutoring is also in high demand at the post-secondary level, and grows from year to year. It still leaves a good percentage of students in the K to 12 system, in the hands of the public schools, that for the most part refuses to remediate in the knowledge gaps and weaknesses of the 3 Rs, If the public school won;t do it for the students with learning disabilities, they certainly won’t do it for the students without learning disabilities. Once again the data streams outcomes displays it consistently over the years, and more so since the 1990s.
The Fourth Way done the Canadian way, is another version of shuffling the chairs on the deck of the Titanic, to reproduce the same outcomes of the past, according to the SES variables. The Fourth Way is all about keeping the status-quo and maintaining the legal definition, by providing the minimum levels of education services to obtained a basic education. Look it up, and it doesn’t matter what province. Alberta is the exception, where choice has increase education quality beyond a basic education.
In the Canadian Teachers’ Federation article, the actual education of students would become secondary to the “creating better, more productive and more socially just lives for everyone.” There is nothing more unjust, when students come out of 12 years of schooling, with low literacy and numeracy skills. The Fourth Way, will create and increase the proportion of students with low literacy and numeracy skills, when the focus is creating better, more productive and socially just lives for all students. When education needs of the students are place secondary to the needs of the teachers and social policies that work on the soft skills, the students are bound to become far less productive lives as adults. All the self-esteem lessons will not make a student to improve their reading skills. Only good quality education instruction will do. I watch it happened, where I took on the job of tutoring my child in mathematics, and which the school would not do it. Tough job in the beginning since she had the negative track running through her head, that she is too dumb for school, and more so for numeracy. My child learned to believe that she was too dumb,from the school policies, the curriculum and the instruction. So, I rolled up my sleeves and within two months, my child was in the top 20 percent of the high achievers in math. It was no miracle, nor as some of the naysayers with education degrees suggesting my child never did have learning problems. My child became proficient in numeracy because of the instruction being received at home, the practice and more practice and of course the drills, specially designed for automatic recall of the math facts. Methods that are absent in the public education system. Mind you, the tutoring and re-teaching at home did not stopped, until my child entered grade 10.
There is nothing socially just, about ignoring the education needs of a mild to moderate dyslexic student. Nor is there is nothing socially just about education practices and instruction that leaves 60 percent of students in a classroom, at a dead stopped maintaining a 50 something average throughout the 12 years of schooling. There is nothing socially just about students leaving 12 years of schooling, with low literacy and numeracy skills and if they want something done about it, it will be at their own expense.
http://www.alternet.org/education/10-ways-school-reformers-get-it-wrong?page=0%2C0
Totalitarianism At Its Worst !
We are asked: “Will knowledgeable Canadians swallow the “Fourth Way”?
First — What is this Fourth Way? Here is the explanation from a BCTF paper pushing this approach
“Of the ‘four ways’ of educational change outlined in this book, two are historical, one current, and one projected as a preferred future direction. The first three ways can be summarized as:
— a first way of state support and professional freedom, of innovation but also inconsistency (1945–mid-’70s), ending with the emergence of Thatcher in the UK and Reagan in the USA;
— a second way of market competition and educational standardization in which professional autonomy is lost (late 1980s in the UK, early ’90s in Australia and currently in the USA);
— a third way that tries to navigate between and beyond the market and the state and balance professional autonomy with accountability (1999, primarily in the
UK, Ontario after 2003).” (http://bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Publications/ResearchReports/2012-EI-03.pdf pg8)
Thus we see right away — it’s all about government monopoly schooling.
So, this Fourth Way is simply trying to a) make more palatable the centralized government provision of schooling, and b) embed even further the role (and control) by the teacher unions.
Second — With the steady increase of independent schools and home education, which not only challenge the numbers but the results (academic and civic public good), the “establishment” is growing worried.
Third — Contrary to what “The Effective Schools” movement of the 70s advised concerning meaningful parent involvement, this Fourth Way simply relegates parents to being part of a new model of pseudo-accountability called “public-assurance” as found in the ATA (Alberta Teachers ‘ Association) paper. Standardized testing and parental school choice, for example, should in their view, be diminished in favor of “equity” criteria that are, in their view, best for the community.
Four — A tall poppy must be cut down. Remember this chart — way, way up goes Alberta in the PISA ratings – highest in English speaking countries — because it practices parental choice, competition and school autonomy.
http://www.evanswoolfe.com/player/alberta1.html The ATA proposal for the Fourth Way is guaranteed to cut Alberta down to size because any militant teacher union automatically must undermine parental choice, competition and school autonomy. [Michael Strembitsky, founder of the “Edmonton Model” of school based management, where are you now to help critique this outrageous proposal?]
Five — It should be called “The Marxist Way” — a totalitarian plan for “the masses” with a “vanguard” — teacher unions and their trained members — being the leaders and shaping change. In the literature on Vanguardism we find this behavior exalted as opposed to spontaneism because the masses can’t be trusted to be revolutionaries. The ATA paper mentions the term leader or leadership over 100 times. They say Hargreaves and Shirley say these are “leaders who can tap into and elevate public spiritedness”.
Beware the “Fourth Way” !
Your McCarthyite screed undercuts your cause badly and appeals only to the extremist elements on the very far right. If you notice, they were just rejected south of the border. as was the ‘vouchers’ candidate.
Public education in Canada has deep roots back to Ryerson and it is a very popular model indeed. Anyone advocating its demise is an extremist. Anyone saying “I advocate giving public money to privae schools” could not be elected as the dog catcher. Live with it.
American election mixed but overall merit pay and vouchers did badly.
From an interesting thesis from the ’70s:
One of the most important considerations for both
Strachan and Ryerson. was the preservation of the existing
order. This order can be defined as an exclusive group of
people who control the political end economic life of the
country. Both men used education as a mechanism to further
this cause. Strachan’s system of schools focused on an elite
or aristocratic form of education. In effect he neglected
the lower class desire for education and ultimately, his
system failed because of its aristocratic nature. Ryerson
used the desire for education to create a system of common
schools directed at the labouring classes. This system trained people to accept their lower station in society. Where
Strachan had neglected these people, Ryerson focused on them.
The ultimate effect was the same but the method changed. And
Ryerson’s system did not fail but remains basically the same
today, over a century later.
http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6509&context=opendissertations
Divided States Of America & Canada — Parallel School Histories
Why is GERM (Global Education Reform Movement) such a threat?
First — The concept of “common schools” in America and the social welfare schemes of Bismarck’s Germany — both 19th C artifacts — were meant as “social safety nets”. That both regressed counterproductively over time is no surprise. “Common schools” became coercive self-serving schooling industries — generally called “public schools” or “government schools” (Australia) — catering more to the self-interest of providers than clients.
People are increasingly becoming alarmed when cost-benefit analyses show declining results for ever growing costs of public schools. Some are profiting and it’s not the kids! Hence, the call for economic reforms in education.
Second — The education and schooling systems — ECE to universities — are seen by some as safe havens from which to conduct ideological political work.
For the individual whose own personal drive for power and control is frustrated it becomes convenient to displace this toward the schooling system wherein the power grids in the bureaucracy or the union provide opportunity and the rationalization that it’s for the public good.
For those already on the political mission to help the “oppressed” or to “transform society” it is easy to segue into the schooling system.
The Deans of Education of Canada themselves have enunciated this mission in their Accord on Teacher Training (2007). Of 12 principles #3 states: “An effective teacher education program encourages teachers to assume a social and political leadership role”.
Historically, Marxists sought revolutionary ways to transform society to their image. Gramsci was probably the first to state publicly that violence is no longer acceptable and that the next best thing is to change the means from violence to education.
Out of 45 articulated Communist Goals entered into the Congressional Record (1963), this is #17:
*** “Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.” http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm
More people are now urging education reform (GERM) or exiting for private or home education because of the politicization of “public schools”.
Third — What’s to be done in a “Divided America” concerning people’s aspirations for social mobility? Increasingly the politicization of public schools, the fatigue experienced at the increasing militancy of teacher unions and the increasing entrenchment of the left/right divide will accelerate the GERM efforts and the call for more school choices, be they vouchers, charters or other options.
This is not just a passing fancy of mine, easily dismissed. The eyes of the world — during this intense election period — have focused on the challenges ahead. One challenge is teacher unions.
This is what The Economist said in their latest issue as they went and endorsed Obama as “the devil it knows” :
“Indeed, the extremism of his party is Mr Romney’s greatest handicap. The Democrats have their implacable fringe too: look at the teachers’ unions.”
Well, our Canadian teacher unions are joined at the hip to their American cousins.
What is “implacable” in the USA is equally implacable in Canada — relentless, unstoppable, callous, ruthless, impossible to appease, unable to be placated, obdurate, rigid, stubborn, pig-headed, etc., etc.
Beware the snake-oil “Fourth Way” being pushed by the teacher unions !
Heed Tunya words. I went a bit further, because I have heard and read the words, ‘the fourth way’ across the literature in the philosophies. It was rattling in my brain, bouncing back and forth saying warning, warning. So, I undertook a search of the last two day, on the roots of the Fourth Way. It turns out, the Fourth Way is a spiritual philosophy that is common among the ancient civilizations. The twist is, it will allow the governing elite and its employees to focus on the science, technology and being the innovators, while the serfs tend to the labour, serving the needs of the governing elite, and it will allow the governing elite control over all knowledge. Apparently so, according to ancient gods of Ra.
That said, the Marxist way, is just another version where the governing elite and its employees, are in control. In a paper, “.While Marxism stands for the destruction of the capitalist state, and has as its aim the withering away of the state and all forms of institutionalised violence,”
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/help/marxism.htm
Instead of the workers leading the way, it is the great professional class with their 5 year plans, and Utopian visions dancing in their heads. Resuting in
the public education sector being in control who and who will not received a quality education of knowledge. In other papers, and articles I have read – the 21st century version of the Fourth Way, is the greatest threat to mankind. The globalists, including the top world organizations are actively promoting the Fourth Way, and in fact the European Union Commission, is all about the Fourth Way. It crosses all political lines, and is similar to when the Catholic Church ruled the roost. Keep the peasants dumb by focusing on improving their spirituality, rather than the reality of their living conditions and much of it caused by the ruling elite. In the 21st century, the Fourth Way is a potent virus, where the governing elites and the growing armies of public servants, with or without unions The losers are the citizens, being told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.
In one article – “What the world Socialist movement needs today is the Fourth Way – a bold anti-capitalist agenda to reform the world through human-centred, gender-just, ecologically sound, development. The Fourth Way must reform today’s asymmetrical world, with its enormous maldistribution of power. It must regulate capital, trade and investment to promote equity and balance. Its social agenda must be uncompromisingly pluralist and democratic. More than a decade after the collapse of the USSR, which was based on undemocratic ultra-centralisation, the time has come to fight for decentralised popular democracy. Mr Blair rightly says the election results are an “instruction to deliver”. But unless he moves away from the Third Way, such talk will be all spin and no delivery.”
http://www.tni.org/archives/archives_bidwai_fourth
“In a recent interview, prime minister George Papandreou said:
Rather than a “third way,” I would say that we need a “fourth way.” ….. The “fourth way” depends on responsible, democratic institutions that put global solidarity above national interests. We need to get hold of globalization and decide ourselves where we want to take it.
That means a number of things. We need global governance. Multilateral institutions like the G20 and UN must be more inclusive and more representative. We need to decide just how much interdependence we want and how much self-sustainability we want. More autonomy means more control.
……..
There is also the question of cultural globalization. Just because the younger generation has assimilated global culture through the communication of common symbols, popular music and a common grasp of global problems does not mean they are empowered.”
http://www.rieas.gr/research-areas/editorial/1306-the-fourth-way-and-other-mysteries.html
We live in a country where there are four guys-Michael Fullan,Ben Levin,Andy Hargreaves and Jim Cummins.They rule the roost and boy do they benefit.Private enterprise under the guise of Academia.
Joanne you hit the nail on the head. The classroom educators and by extension the administrators of the schools, are hanging unto the words of Hargreaves and his Fourth Way. With the rest of the Canadian education gurus making all kinds of suggestions, that would inevitably lead to more future earnings benefiting their pocketbooks. A blog by a principal has on the Fourth Way, has led to a Participant’s Manifesto. Participant meaning learner.
http://connectedprincipals.com/archives/6034
Two items of the manifesto.
1) Knowledge is static. Synthesis is dynamic. We create meaning.
Knowledge becomes secondary to the processes of learning. Where it is the synthesis processes that emerges the new truths. Regardless if it is incorrect. Old knowledge is not necessary to arrive at the new truths. Talk about a way, that naturally generates new forms of revenues for the educational professionals of expertise.
2) When I leave I will be more literate, more resourceful, more involved, more collaborative, more connected, more thoughtful and less willing to accept injustice of any kind.
Training the youth of the world to accept and trust the ways of the professional class. After all, it is the professional educator, who has accepted the responsibility to fight injustice of any kind. Too bad, injustices won’t include kids not reading, writing and doing numeracy well, or correcting the academic weaknesses of their students. Oops that would be old knowledge, and they far too busy teaching the student learner to become responsible for their learning and learning to construct new knowledge without the foundation of the old knowledge.
In the comments, one stood out – “If you did that I think you would be able to be more objective in discussing what has changed and what hasn’t changed. Technology hasn’t changed anything. Education was never about the speed with which you can look things up. You have to actually know things off by heart in order to use them when you think. It is knowledge and, our fluency with it, which gives us the ability to learn for ourselves and to be creative, not training in creativity of “learning to learn”. Our new knowledge of the brain confirms this You can find out by having a look at the books and articles of cognitive psychologist Dan Willingham who writes a lot of stuff aimed at educators. The empirical evidence from psychology also disputes the claim that “We all learn differently”.
This article, and in particular that video, seems to hinge on a number of myths about history, psychology, technology and learning. I would suggest you look into them and challenge them, rather than encourage educators to accept them uncritically as grounds for a return to the failed tradition of progressive education.”
http://connectedprincipals.com/archives/6034
I have a funny feeling, the real professionals will come out of the closet, such as engineer professors, and other related fields putting an end to the Fourth Way. And hopefully an end to the profits being earned by the professionals with education degrees. I place my faith in the engineer building the bridge, because it is his career that goes up in smoke, if the bridge falls down a year after. I can’t place my faith in an education system, that purports to claim professionalism, and proceeds to download the education responsibilities unto the youth, and than denied accountability to the outcomes of the youths.
To JTC,
The “Alberta Advantage” has been their for many years. It has to do with the demographics of Alberta, the composition of the population. It PREDATES any choice policies. Choice has zero to do with Alberta achievement.They were the highest BEFORE CHOICE. Alberta has the lowest rate in Canada of adult illiteracy.
The same is true in Finland. Yes they have a good system but 80% of the reason they are successful is due to the 5% child poverty rate and even that is not concentrated.
Jurisdictions succeed or fail based on the % of poor people they have and to a much lesser extent, what they do to mitigate its effects.
Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
To Doretta,
What you say about Ryerson is true however incomplete. Strachan is irrelevant here. It is also true that socialist and labour groups had been demanding a public school system decades before Ryerson. It is a featured element in the demands of Marx and Engles in the Manifesto but not only there.
There is a tradition in Ontario called “the cap in hand” where labouring ‘men’ came on one day each year to meet the Premier to request changes to laws to improve their lot in life. Public education has deep roots back to the 1830s here.
Ryerson saw the dual benefit of getting “little street Arabs” off the streets where they were creating mayhem and into school to become ‘patriotic’ citizens but Enoch Turner earlier open a free school for the children of his workers basically to keep them loyal and happy.
I didn’t say it, it was quoted from a Masters thesis.
Tunya, you say all of those things as if they were bad things. They are all good things. Your own screeds belong on the Tea Party fringe. That is the group that cost Romney the election with their lunacy and cost the GERM movement the control of the Senate and the White House. As a result, vouchers took a big hit. Keep up the good work.
Jo Anne
We live in a country where there are four guys-Michael Fullan,Ben Levin,Andy Hargreaves and Jim Cummins.They rule the roost and boy do they benefit.Private enterprise under the guise of Academia.
Funny, they seriously disagree on many issues. Fullan and Levin pro testing, Andy and Jim are anti testing. Jim and I were teamed on an OISE panel to debate Mark Holmes and somebody else re standardized testing.
They all live in a little world between the Liberals and the NDP. Andy thinks Michael seriously undermines his basic case by supporting testing. As soon as anyone supports testing they lose the cooperation and ear of the profession which is totally against it.
Andy does support random sample testing, no school names but perhaps boards to keep a handle on things and to keep the accountability crowd sweet.
I would call Fullan-Levin 3rd way people and Andy and Jim 4th way people.
BTW all 4 above think the GERM is clueless.
Well Doug, you certainly like to revise historically data streams, including the present data sets. Using only the PISA set of numbers, that are used in comparison to other countries. Literacy – where according to the OECD, Canada is doing relatively well in literacy compared to the international standards.
However, the globalists within the Canadian public education system, do not want to look at the inconvenient truths in the data streams that shows the real reading levels. One of the reasons why, external standard testing of any measurements wants to be eliminated by the Fourth Way advocates that really do consist entirely of all the education gurus, where Hargreaves leading the charge. It is obvious that the teachers’ unions are the under the aura of Hargreaves, because it means big profits for the Canadian public education stakeholders, plus a huge army needed to tend to the naval grazing of reflection and synthesis processes.
The OECD along with the Canadian government(s) present a true reflection of the literacy rates.Yukon has the highest rates of literacy, and Alberta is in the middle of the pack. So much for your Alberta Advantage.
http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/2012-46-e.htm
A 2011 NP article – with the data at the bottom.
The article itself is priceless. While New Brunswick stands at the bottom of the heap in literacy levels, the big corporations of the potato kind, are insisting on the traditional potato harvest, where students come and work on the farm. Nothing like youth labour, to increase profits. Just asked China, and well over 60 percent of their student population are waved off in their version of grade 9, to go to work to make a living. Cheap wages, is what makes China tick, plus the free labour of people in prison, and more so for the people who dare to express themselves. Meanwhile, China is touted by the global public education stakeholders as the way to go.
Taking a look at the data – quite the eye opener. Alberta is not number one, nor is Ontario. That said, the public education stakeholders are claiming a different set of numbers – where low literacy does not exist. A typical example can be found at the OSSTF. ” Canada has among the highest literacy and numeracy rates in the world. Study after study over the past twenty years indicates that literacy rates in our country have steadily improved and are now very close to 100 percent. Targeting government resources in areas such as critical thinking, problem solving and numeracy, are a better use of public funds.”
http://www.osstf.on.ca/Default.aspx?DN=e0fbcca7-9539-4225-96c4-6fced99f99ab
Of course, the OSSTF article is like reading the Fourth Way Agenda. The unions profit greatly at the expense of the students. The real time data streams predicts a future, where many future doors are closed, due to weaknesses in the foundation of the 3 Rs. If you take a look at the NP Potato article, and the data, concerning problem solving. It falls right in line, on the percentage of students enter the university level, directly from school. The rest enter the college level, and approximately 60 percent are once again but this time at their own expense to upgrade on the 3 Rs. There is testing at the college level, on the levels of reading, writing and numeracy. For example in the one and only college in NL, the first year students receiving a 80 percent or higher, can bypassed the introductory courses in math. In another example, cooked up by those within the public education unions, is this – “Just as literacy has evolved from reading and writing into the nine essential skills, literacy training is now evolving into contextualized learning. Research conducted by the National Research and Development Centre (NRDC) for Adult Literacy and Numeracy explored the impact of embedding literacy in vocational programs in five regions of England. Overall, the study found that both retention and course success rates were higher in embedded courses. Of the many different approaches to embedding studied, no single winning formula was found; instead success was achieved through a combination of structure, teamwork, and attitudes. The NRDC findings are shared in the summary, “You wouldn’t expect a maths teacher to teach plastering…”1
As the title of the summary suggests, one key observation is that to successfully create a contextualized learning program, a partnership must be formed between the literacy practitioner and the vocational education teacher. The research showed that, “where a single teacher was asked to take dual responsibility for teaching vocational skills and LLN (literacy, language and numeracy), the probability of learners succeeding with literacy and numeracy qualification was lower.” (5) As well, “…research shows that learners benefit from being taught by teams of staff, each with their own areas of expertise, working closely together.” (5)”
http://qela.qc.ca/2012/09/partnership-is-the-foundation-for-successful-contextualized-learning/
Would it not be easier and cost effective to ensure all students have proficiency in the 3 Rs? If so, there would be no need to have 2 to 3 teachers in a classroom, tending to the many weaknesses of students in the 3 Rs, and there would be time to learn knowledge. Saving big education dollars in the process, allowing the education dollars to be spent on the students and their education. No, can’t have that. Union leaders and the big bureaucracy of professional expertise and consultants armed with education degrees, would be left with little to do. Funny how Iceland and Cuba, have close to 100 percent literacy rates. Both countries ensure that that their citizens have a solid foundation in the literacy and numeracy, and yet share the same type of percentages of students going to university and college levels. Two different political and economic systems, and yet somehow both countries are weathering the global economic recessions, without people rioting in the streets.
A solid foundation in literacy and numeracy, always produced high problem solving skills. The figures on the OECD data streams are so low for problem solving for a good reason. The science of reading has already known that and have proven over and over again. Give the students a solid foundation in the 3 Rs, their futures are best serve. Even if one is poor, and if all the poor people have a solid foundation in the 3 Rs, without a fancy degree, there would be zero chance that governments and the politicians would be getting away with what is currently happening. And more importantly be far less susceptible to the professional experts working within government and outside to the clever marketing ploys trying to sell a policy, on the virtues that it is good for us, because we are the experts. I rather have Apple pestering me, than the Fourth Way advocates being pushed by the agendas of the education stakeholders.
The Fourth Way, only serves the agendas and best interests of the stakeholders. An economic system within an economic system, to replicate education by the percentages, to ensure a steady supply of students with weaknesses in the 3 Rs, a fully credential certificate education system at the post secondary from low skills to high skills. Want to be a waitress? A two year course at the college level at the student expense? It is at the end after 12 years of education, where students’ low levels of literacy and numeracy will be addressed. It ensures that the majority with the low levels of literacy and numeracy, will be looking at a lifetime process of taking upgrading courses in the 21st century. The Fourth Way does this in spades, when there is no outside forces looking over their shoulders, asking for accountability measures.
However, the Fourth Way has a big obstacle that will probably put a stop to the Fourth Way on a global scale. The 21st century technology, that has open the access gates to knowledge. People now can check the professional class of educators with a press of a button, the great search engines within seconds can confirmed what the educator experts have stated is true. The Canadian education gurus are in panic mode, as well as the rest of the global education gurus. The little paradise of the 19th century education design, is coming to an end.
And Doug, here is the a book, published in 1912 on Ryerson.. By the way, it was the churches of the Protestant and Catholic denominations that paved the way to the public education system. The Methodist Church leading the charge, and much of it still remains in the current Public education system. Doretta writes, “This order can be defined as an exclusive group of
people who control the political end economic life of the
country. Both men used education as a mechanism to further
this cause. Strachan’s system of schools focused on an elite
or aristocratic form of education. In effect he neglected
the lower class desire for education and ultimately, his
system failed because of its aristocratic nature. Ryerson
used the desire for education to create a system of common
schools directed at the labouring classes. This system trained people to accept their lower station in society. Where
Strachan had neglected these people, Ryerson focused on them.
The ultimate effect was the same but the method changed. And
Ryerson’s system did not fail but remains basically the same
today, over a century later.”
http://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/putman-egertonryerson/putman-egertonryerson-00-h.html
The Fourth Way, is an attempt by the forces within the public education system, to redefine public education by having the education stakeholders inclusive authority, political control and economic control over all things in education of youth and adults. All processes, with little, if any external influences interfering in the work of the professional educators of expertise. The Fourth Way is a Marxist invention, where the professional class becomes the top dogs doling out education in the water-down portions of substance, while at the same time, doling out equal proportions of socially just morals and ethnics.
“Striving for “Great schools for All” sounds attractive until you begin examining the contradictions inherent in the new “Fourth Way” prescription for public education. Who would quibble with any of those glittery “seven principles”? “An inspiring dream… Local authority…Innovation with improvement…Platforms for change… Building professional capital… Collective responsibility… and Intensive communication” have a familiar ring. The new formula: Combine “Success for All” with the “Finnish Solution” (nix Standardized Testing and School Choice), “invest” millions more in education and presto — you have “the Fourth Wave.”
Another thing about the Fourth Way, is that there is none of the how-tos to arrive at the Finnish solution. What would this new model look like for the dyslexics? Would the 94 to 96 % of the dyslexics found populated in the public schools, improve their low achievement? There reading skills? Would the dyslexics’ strengths and what the science be used? Would the Fourth Way, ensure the technology is dyslexic friendly? Or would the real ugly truth of the Fourth Way reveal itself in forms of denials, claiming it would be socially unjust for dyslexics to have an extra that the non-dyslexics do not have? Either way, it is the students with the learning struggles that are the canaries inside the school, and why is it for every reform carried out by the public education gurus and stakeholders, the canaries of the public school remains the low achievers without a solid foundation in the 3 Rs. As for the remaining 4 to 6 percent of the dyslexic population, this set gets the help that they need, at the private schools or private specialized tutoring to address the reading, writing and numeracy learning problems.
1. “Your typical entrepreneur? Hardly. His secret to success? Dyslexia.
What many would consider a weakness, Branson has branded his “greatest strength.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-innovations/richard-branson-and-the-dyslexia-advantage/2012/11/07/67a05b2a-2906-11e2-bab2-eda299503684_story.html?utm_source=LDOnLine.org&utm_medium=Headlines
Would the Fourth Way paved the way for dyslexic friendly fonts at school?
“Gonzalez is the man behind OpenDyslexic, an “open sourced font created to increase readability for readers with dyslexia.” OpenDyslexic works by adding “gravity” to letters, a trick to help keep the brain from rotating them around while also reinforcing the line of text.”
Or will the Fourth Way, opt for education philosophies as their guiding light, where learning research based on the science is secondary? Probably so, because it has been my experience and according to the data streams, the science is ignore, opting for a queasy, sweet sounding words of a 19th century education philosopher to explain why a dyslexic font would not be good for the dyslexic in the classroom.
2. Rather odd, the Fourth Way also prizes problem solving skills as well as the other 21st century skills. Below an article, on successful dyslexics in the academic K to 12 system. Mind you, in Canada successful dyslexics achieving in the high schools of middle to low income, are a rare find in the high schools. One or two, compared to the dyslexics found in a high income high schools. One might find 4 dyslexics that are successfully achieving at their full potential despite their learning difficulties.
” Each of them took different academic paths — either doubling down to labor through assigned texts (Boies) or quitting early (Branson). They all, however, agree that dyslexia taught them life skills — the ability to speak without notes, quickly simplify concepts, persevere — that have come in far handier than speed reading.
“It forces you to rely on thinking. As you get out in the world, thinking is a lot more prized than learning,” Bois said.”
Interesting, how the current crop of teachers at the local high school admire that in my youngest child who is the dyslexic. In the real world, thinking is indeed a lot more prized, than the actual process of learning. But it is in the learning process, the how-tos on the way to learn new knowledge the thinking processes can be engaged. A pity, since most dyslexics in the Canadian public schools are force to learned the life skills because they were denied the corrective help that would allow access to the education material. In the early grades, it is how my child was actual passing, being promoted, and the educationalists at the school board, were scratching their head, why my child was not failing on the report card, but on the psych-educational assessment report, the school board psychologist dutiful report at grade one level in writing, below grade one level in numeracy and at grade level in reading. The response, she could not have a learning disability and prompting dismissed the recommendations of the report for intensive remediation in phonemic sounds and mechanics of writing. As for numeracy, easily solved dropped her two grade levels below, like most public education systems do. However, it would be a slightly different story if I had the means to access private education services, like a couple of parents I know personally in Ontario. Huge support from the local schools, and none is in hand for parents who have lesser means. Socially just policies of the Fourth Way, just means – doing the same things without using the science and the data streams as evidence.
3. Another educator holding a far different viewpoint on assessments. The same type the Fourth Way agenda wants gone. “The WCPM procedure just described is an extremely time-efficient and reliable way to track students’ fluency — and their overall reading ability. While it may be surprising that a one-minute assessment can be so informative, WCPM has been shown, in both theoretical and empirical research, to serve as an accurate and powerful indicator of overall reading competence — especially through its strong correlation with comprehension. Its validity and reliability have been well established in a body of research extending over the past 25 years (Fuchs et al., 2001; Shinn, 1998).”
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/27091/
The Fourth Way doesn’t like the data leading the way. Data is too objective for them, and rather use the subjective observations based on the educator’s pedagogy expertise.
So can any one tell me the Fourth Way will lead to overall improvement in children who struggle in learning? Or won’t it matter, when grades are dropped in favour of an education that teaches the skills of being morally just according to the ABCs of the education professionals, where acquiring a solid foundation of the 3 Rs won’t matter at all, in the brave new world of the Fourth Way. The professional class of the Fourth Way, will be doing all the thinking and innovation……while the rest of us will toil away working for a living.
Follow The Money — GERM Doesn’t Stand A Chance
In resisting education reform, opponents have characterized it as GERM — Global Education Reform Movement. A noxious infection that needs to be stamped out. Not in the “public good”. Meanwhile this criticism of reform conceals all the time the real reason GERM cannot be allowed to take hold — it would harm THE producers (their livelihood, their sandbox in which to play). Yet, the arguments are couched as if not only consumers will suffer, but all of society ! Shocking. We, the leaders (full time paid teacher union elite, turnaround consultants, etc.) must not only resist, but must replace this reform activity with a fuzzy warm alternative. The Fourth Way! Or, so it goes.
First — There is NO reform “movement”. No crusade. No organized group or groups coordinating anything of the sort. What is lumped into the notion GERM are all these episodic eruptions, movies (Waiting for Superman, Won’t Back Down, etc) people calling for school choice, charters, vouchers, attention to special needs, ad infinitum — spontaneous frustrations from consumers who know too well that there is just one lifetime to live — and change can’t wait when your kid is needing help now.
Second — There IS SERIOUS organized, coordinated, well-oiled opposition to anything that smacks of reform, change, decrease, or elimination of the government system, of the public education industry. This opposition is well funded and ideologically driven. Not only are jobs threatened but the ideal venue for political work is endangered if reform takes hold.
Third — Takes one to know one. There is definitely a Marxist flavor to the leadership that is emerging and enforcing the resistance to reform. And in contrast to those seeking reform who have no coherent organization the opposition is well-funded. We can learn more about this disparity and unfairness from information coming from one who should know.
David Horowitz is an ex-Marxist who is now active in exposing how the left-wing money machine shapes American politics. He has just written a new book — The NEW Leviathan — and has been doing interviews and public presentations on it.
His claim is that the left beats the right in its funding of its causes anywhere from 10 times more to sometimes 200 times more.
Check Wikipedia about his Marxist background, now renounced. Here is an interview http://www.newsmax.com/Newswidget/horowitz-obama-election-fundraising/2012/06/12/id/442040
– He says a lot of the staff of even conservative foundations are left-wing organizers.
– He has written books about his research that shows that up to 90 % of professors in social sciences in universities are left-wing (95% in Harvard).
– He says a lot of the funding for left-wing causes comes from government unions. He thinks the way to clip the wings of union power over public policies is to do what Wisconsin did — remove mandatory unionization and automatic dues check offs. News stories say the teachers are leaving their union “in droves”. This should be a model for Canada.
BTW: A good way to identify a Marxist is by their language — laced with denunciations of “neoliberalism”.
Bravo Tunya,and may I add,the last thing they worry about is the kids that aren`t succeeding and their parents,they tell them they`re poor and unsuccessful-thus…failure is to be expected.We know that education is the way out of poverty,the great equalizer.
The edubabble from these people and Doug their great advocate is so transparent,their motives so narcissistic,it`s been a revelation,I knew before but now I know more.Hopefully,a Wisconsin like development will occur here as well,the teachers need to leave the Unions.
With Tunya around, the Jr Senator from Wisconsin will never really be dead.
Boy, Doug – in my third post – the education establishment better run for cover, and it will end the sloppy irrational thought processes of the education gurus. As well as the end to the Fourth Way and its agenda.
Part 1 – “To add to Tunya’s posts and reconfirmed what Joanne has stated, I spent a rather difficult morning, pouring over a long paper, by Dennis Shirley. A 2011 published date called – The Fourth Way of technology and change.
I had to stopped every 5 minutes, to digest the moral relativism garbage pouring out of it. As well, as the implied nuances that parents don’t have two brain cells to rub together, much less have the foresight and ability to know what is best for their children.and themselves.
Prior to that, I explored the papers from Europe on the Fourth Way in the Public Sector. The Fourth Way, in the public sector has the similar Fourth Way principles, as the ones described by Hargreaves and Shirley.
Prior to that, I explored the philosophy of the Fourth Way, that has its roots in the ancient civilizations. I came to the realization, while reading The Fourth Way of technology and change, is what I call, transforming society where each and every one acts and behave like saints, with the public sector professionals acting as the prophets, guiding the people that they serve to reach the fourth level of spirituality. The Fourth Way is in reality, a moral treatise – a way of life – that supposedly will transformed society. Much like reading Karl Marx, and in the end even he conceded that his workers’ Utopian will need a rather large army of highly educated professionals like himself, to control the all aspects of society, including the unintended forces (usually the inventors of technology), that distracts the workers from reaching the fourth level of moral social obtainment. Didn’t work for the old USSR, and nor is it working in the socialist countries of Sweden and Finland. Both countries experiencing social turmoil, in the form of questioning the professional class expertise, their authority and their knowledge base. It is not a coincidence, that the Fourth Way done the 21st century way, is initiating rose in Finland, and from there has spread out throughout Europe via through the networks of the public sector.No one has to wonder why, the Europeans are indeed questioning the wisdom of the professional class when people are being fined for parking on lawns that they own, or walking off the hiking pathways because it is harmful to the environment. That one must learned to respectful of nature and the environment. The Fourth Level, is what one might call the development of training society into becoming naval gazers, passive participants that follows the authoritarianism of the professional class, who are well educated of reaching the Fourth Level because the professional class have already reach the Fourth Level.
Yesterday, on the CEA blog , I read all about mindfulness. Stephen Hurley, seems to be swallowing hook, line and sinker on mindfulness that is a integral part of the Fourth Way, outlined by the education gurus. Philosophical Mindedness, and what lies behind the Fourth Way. The educators would become mindful of their tiny teaching moments, much like the students would become mindful of their education, the roads their travel that does not stray away from the pathway of the fourth level. In the CEA article, Stephen concludes, “We live in a time where most of the mainstream conversations about school, success and effectiveness are centered around the search for evidence-based best practices. Most of these are derived from some form of scientific research informed, to a large extent, by a psychological perspective on teaching and learning. Certainly, science (and technology) have something to say about 21st century education but, on their own, they are insufficient to allow us to meet the demands and challenges that emerge when we try to re-imagine this place we call school.
So, I’ll begin with a rather modest proposal for my own school district: for every 5 psychologists hired to work in our system, I would like to see one educational philosopher brought into the mix. ”
http://www.cea-ace.ca/blog/stephen-hurley/2012/11/1/5-psychologists-one-philosopher-and-conversations-could-emerge
The Fourth Way, has really become a virus in the Canadian education scene, since it downplays the technology, the science of learning, and is opting for education of the youth, based on social transformation of students, and by extension, society. Apparently, the students will become the foot soldiers to fight against the capitalist greedy corporations, and be trained in the art form of naval gazing, of what amounts to deep contemplation of the day to day activities of people. Mindfulness, and yes it is part of all the cults from the ancient times, to the present. Present in the Utopian versions of Marx and his kind. And has always been present from time memorial in societies in the form of citizens working on the behalf of their leaders, kings and queens, the pagan priests and priestesses, and what is called the public sector. All having one thing in common, holding the keys to access gates of knowledge, wisdom, and refusal to passed on the knowledge. Likewise, the Fourth Way as described by Hargreaves and Shirley, is the formation of the modern day priesthood of the Delphi Oracle kind. Having an educational philosopher on the team, will only lead to the revolt of the peasants, as history has depicted over thousand of years. However what is most important is the Fourth Way, the framework is based on the Plato and Socrates methods. It is one thing to study the works of Plato and Socrates, but it is much more dangerous to take their work, and applied the knowledge in the 21st century context, knowing full well Socrates killed himself, because he knew his precious philosophic principles would not help him in court. Philosophers, and more so for the kind that lies in the Western education system live in alternative realities. The great fault of the philosophers, is that they ignore the realities that surround them, and are intent to twist themselves into pretzels, to prove that they are correct. Sooner or later, the peasants will revolt, when the advice of the philosophers are no longer working for them. Much like the parents, who decide to home school, when they are given excuses, and are lecture on being more mindful of their parenting skills, and be advise to follow the wisdom of the educators.
Concluding in Shirley’s paper, “Beyond the customization and personalization of education through technology may lie something grander: schools that help our young people to find their personal passions and cultivate them in a manner that takes them deep into the core of what it
means to be human. Schools can help our young to learn the ultimate challenge of the human adventure: how to live in peace and dignity with our fellow Homosapiens, cognizant of their uniqueness and grateful for their dazzling singularities. Schools are not just about the transmission of facts or about immersion in a technologically-mediated present moment. Schools can help our young to be separate from and yet connected with others in these transient, unpredictable, and ultimately ephemeral journeys we call our lives.”
Click to access Fourth%20Way%20of%20Technology%20and%20Change.pdf
In other words the education of the child become secondary, to living more human lives of spirituality. Using the adjective ‘ephemeral’ speaks more of the happy theories of the education gurus, and the collective clan of humans. One of the best articles I ever read on the fallacy of collectivism is the one below, that represents the education system, and the new kid on the block, the Fourth Way. “Marx envisioned a series of coming revolutions in which the power of class would finally be broken, and man would be freed from the hold of class in a classless society. But the instrument that would bring all this about was to be the proletariat class when it would seize power. Marxism in power—Communism—creates a facade of rule by the proletariat by proclaiming the empowerment of the workers. In practice, Communists establish tyrannical dictatorships because the alleged working class does not possess the solidity required for revolutionary purposes. No class does or can; that is the collectivist fallacy that they could or do possess such solidity. One- man rule is a reflex of the collectivist fallacy.”
,http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/the-collectivist-fallacy/
Likewise, the global education gurus envisions a transformation of the education system into the Fourth Way, where it is the collective professional classes that would seized the power and authority over all things in education. To make it work, and the underlying fallacy that is at play, is to convince the students, their parents and the public working as a collective under the guidance and authority of the educators, and what is traded off, is the individualism of the person. What the Fourth Way, is asking is, to shed off the individual person’s wholeness and uniqueness, for being a small part of the collective. Students, parents and communities would lose their individualism, and become bit players, the supporting roles for the superstars the educators, with education degrees. Other words, lab rats for the collective group of educators and their so called expertise and wisdom.
The Supreme Court decision in the BC case involving Jeffrey Moore (See Huffington Post report) http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/11/09/jeffrey-moore-dyslexic-discriminated-against-north-vancouver-school-district_n_2100681.html exposes serious weaknesses in the public school system ….Watch in 2012, for Canadian class action suits, from coast to coast, and proving without a doubt – systemic discrimination. The same stories from one parent after another parent in all corners of Canada, being denied the tools and education services for corrective remediation of the reading, writing and numeracy services.
At the bottom of the Huffington Post article – a series of short videos on dyslexia – some humorous but not a laughing matter when the public education system has taken deliberate and cold calculating steps throughout the years, including the latest gobbledygook of edubabble, the Fourth Way. All such schemes aim to avoid giving all students a quality education, based on the evidence, and the science and not based on some wet socialist dreams of teacher pedagogy (involving teaching and learning the socially just method).
Time to crack open the science files on learning, to expose the Canadian education gurus who love to profit off their socialist babble at the expense of the children’s education and their futures. The Hargreaves and Shirleys of the education world will be in for a humbling experience, as well as the rest of the (insider) stakeholders within the public education. They be eating crow for a long time coming, and more so when the authoritativeness of the public education system seeks out to fire educators when they move off the script and defends them when they duct-tape their students. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/11/09/moncton-teacher-duct-tape_n_2100939.html Defenders of the system phone outside agencies, including the police to arrest parents who are carrying out their parental authority, and force parents to follow the scripts of the striking educators, turning them into pawns, and to be discarded after. The Fourth Way, is anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-assessment, and anti-human. It works against the very nature of human beings, and how human beings operate in their environment…..
Nancy,I just read the Globe and Mail this morning and even though I don`t know you anywhere but here,my throat got constricted and I wanted to say to both of us,Hurray!
I was too. Time for the developers of learning in the areas of reading, writing, and numeracy to make an impact on the poor methods of instruction, curriculum and teacher training. Biggest opportunity that has ever been handed to anyone on a silver platter, from the highest court of the land.
Uphill battle with the school boards and those that dwell in the ivory towers of education expertise, spending their days cooking up new ways to keep students dumb. Imagine that, a bus driver did them in, along with the help of a legal aid lawyer. Imagine that, being compensated for the tuition monies of a $100.000 dollars , and the Moores were not requesting to be compensated. All nine Supreme Court justices thought it was proper in their wisdom. I am wondering what the education heavy weights from BC and Ontario, that had standing in the Supreme Court case, are talking about today. Would love to get into their heads. Below is an inkling, and the noise is coming from Toronto. Oh yes the excuses and a new one that is emerging.
“The court’s definition of adequacy is stunningly open-ended. A psychologist had said the centre’s intensive help would be beneficial; to the court, that meant it was required. By that standard, anyone with a child who is autistic, developmentally delayed, suffering from anxiety or depression or a myriad of other diagnosed difficulties, would have a claim on their public school for intensive services. Would a child too anxious to attend school benefit from (and therefore need) daily home visits from a tutor? How many children with behavioural problems would benefit from or need a full-time personal aide?
It makes the court’s unanimous ruling more out of touch that the boy’s public education unfolded between 1991 and 1994, during and after a recession marked by across-the-board restraint, and finally, the overcoming of Canada’s deficit. Many political choices went into those years, and similar choices await today; governments, accountable to voters, should be the ones making those choices. The court overstepped its authority.”
The court out of touch eh? Perhaps, the so-called experts that dwells in the public education system are out of touch. I am quite sure the Supreme Court justices had access to information of the federal kind. Years upon years of the stories and discrimination practices across the country. Not to mentioned quite a few politicians and their stories, toss in the stories of the senior civil service and their nightmare years of education in a public school, plus all the senate and house of common reports dating back to the 1970s, on what was happening to the SE kids inside the public schools, the Supreme Court had all kinds of information, that made the Ontario and BC education heavyweights, look like that they were arguing for the right to deliver education services on second and third tier levels, while maintaining the exclusive right to call it inclusive education. Oh I should add, the senate over the years, the senators also have a close affinity to the learning disabilities and the difficulties in obtaining help from schools for the remediation of the 3 Rs. Supreme Court justices, all nine of them, I am sure uses the internet every day. In no time flat, over the years, not too many if any are happy with the SE services of any public education system, except for the adults that work within, and probably the justices did see the final outcomes of the LD students, as well as other children in the data streams. It is probably why, it took a bit longer to arrive at the ruling, and I can’t wait still next week, on who will be phoning the parents to address recent decisions of the schools to address the denials that certainly goes against the ruling of the Supreme Court. I wonder how many of the few high achieving LD students, will have their accommodations of alternative setting and more time restored to them. In that world, where ever one finds a high school, they take them away and restore them on pure subjective whims of whoever is in control.
I leave with the CTV web site. Two short videos of interest.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/b-c-school-district-discriminated-against-dyslexic-boy-supreme-court-1.1031727
In the comments – “We were told by the public school system that the best we could do for our dyslexic daughter was to be sure she could count money and tell time. We spent thousands of dollars to get her help outside the system. She earned scholarships in high school and was on the deans list at college. If she had been mentally handicapped there would have been lots of dollars for help in the system.”
Public school boards are notorious not to help the dyslexics of higher achievement. No doubt the Court Justices saw the data, where the majority of LD students are not only the lower achievers, but the vast majority from 94 to 96 percent are two grade levels below, and most actually do not receive a high school diploma but a certificate of achievement. The high achievement LD students, have to climb over the first obstacle – the educators with the education degrees, who bill themselves as experts, not receiving the corrective remediation help and their solutions are to dumb down the education for these children.
The next comment is from one who works with the dyslexics. I learned today why dyslexic and reading disability does not go hand in hand with the so-called experts with education degrees. No wonder the school board staff, don’t like me, and I wonder when they heard the news, were they thinking of me? I should hope so, considering what they have done, and all the wrongs just to prevent the help for my child.
“I am a reading therapist specializing in the rehabilitation of dyslexia. Regardless of the amount of money the government is providing to help students with ‘special needs’, children with dyslexia will not get the help they need when the reading disability of dyslexia cannot even be mentioned by name in public schools. Why you might ask? Because statistically 1 in 5 people have dyslexia and it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to retrain teachers and change the school curriculum to teach to the visual-spatial intelligence of the dyslexic brain. Much cheaper to ignore dyslexia and label it something else than to actually do something about it. That is why I have chosen a career to help those who are intelligent, want and deserve to read but aren’t getting the help they need and deserve.”
Know thou data streams – Eighty percent of dyslexics are mild to moderate. Eighty percent of LD students are mild to moderate. All 100 percent of the dyslexics and LD students have issues with the 3 Rs. Only about 10 percent of dyslexics are identified as specific learning disability. and the rest are labeled under the general label of learning disability. Most mild to moderate dyslexics are never formally identified, that allows the public school boards to reduce the percentages, to one in 20 found in a school. By high school, the number of LD students drops drastically to where they are no longer being counted, or track.
Just think Joanne, what developers with programs based on the science could do, when one throws in the data on the state of reading, writing and numeracy. The percentage of students now rise to 40 to 60 % of students that are being done in by the education practices and instruction methods of the dumb down kind. In some quarters it is up to 70 percent, and so my figures are the conservative ones. The comment from Grant, is very true. It is a whole lot cheaper to do nothing, and the stakeholders of the public education system, the creators of the Fourth Way want to keep it as cheap as possible, because all of them are making big monies off the backs of students and their education.
It is why the Fourth Way advocates do not want technology, assessments, standard testing, and anything else that shows the true state of the education quality and the state of the fundamentals in the 3 Rs. One of the reasons that I tell parents, keep all hard copies of tests and work of your child. Nothing like visuals that tells everyone, the local school board staff member is telling stories, again. The Fourth Way, wants everyone to be blind, mute and deaf to the realities of the public education system. Beside, the fact the upper education gurus actually think we are stupid and easily manipulated. Now there is a Supreme Court ruling that cannot be appeal, that will help not to have parents so easily manipulated. But parents are not stupid…..
Game Changer — Philosopher Navel-Gazers Take Note
Fourth Way promoters should be considered a luxury. A “dispensable luxury” as in the Supreme Court of Canada decision in the Moore case.
Fourth Way agitators should take their theories elsewhere — and stop using tax dollars, people’s time — stop trying to bend the ears of policy makers and legislators who have a different ball-game now. Get off the public agenda.
Using the government public schools to transform society to some ideal ideological utopian never-never-land is more than a “luxury”. It is criminal if it detracts from and interferes with civil society’s aspirations to allow human potential to flourish.
This is the post I produced yesterday on this topic. What a wonderful NEW DAY is emerging for those on the other side of the education equation — producers or consumers? Finally, consumers have some rights under the legislated School Acts.
*** Defying “Best Practice” IS Malpractice.
This unanimous decision by 9 judges in the highest court in Canada is a triumph for commonsense and logic. Government-run public schools do have statutory duties. And the client does have rights in this structure.
“Adequate special education, therefore, is not a dispensable luxury. For those with severe learning disabilities, it is the ramp that provides access to the statutory commitment to education made to all children in British Columbia.”
This is a monumental, long-awaited “opening of the floodgates”.
Though malpractice was not mentioned in the judgment, this case is definitely a significant contribution to tort literature and particularly to school laws literature.
Hardly a big deal. Teachers just read this as “great, they need to give us more money.”
Oh Doug, the teachers are uncharacteristically quiet on this one. Ditto for the union heads, and the exception is the BC union. However, rather a short press release, for such a huge decision that will have major repercussions the way unions and school boards conduct their business, and as well conduct the day to day operations of school. On the press release, “Vulnerable children suffer the most when education funding is cut. It is provincial governments that fund education in Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada has now ruled that “adequate special education is not a dispensable luxury.” All provincial governments are now on notice. In particular in BC, which has fallen so far behind the national average, the chronic underfunding must stop. We have recently become aware of new government directions that may adversely affect special education programs in BC. We call on the government of BC to ensure any changes in government policy around the delivery of special education programs must be done through meaningful and respectful consultation with teachers and guarantee the funding necessary to support the learning needs of students like Jeff Moore.”
Click to access 20121109-SupremeCourtRuling.pdf
Ontario teachers’ unions will have to dance to the same tune. Extra money and funding? It be attached to conditions – the outcomes of the SE children. No more 300 hours of remediation in 3 years, and the kids are still at the grade 1 level, and can’t string a few words together to form a sentence. In Ontario and else where, the capping of SE students to access SE services. A long list of systematic downgrades of education, while teacher training no longer include reading, writing and numeracy training. If anything, the teachers’ union are in a good place, compared to the school boards. But still, the unions are going have to tread carefully, not to dance on the backs of the children who have learning issues, as their means to obtain increases in salaries, to do more of the same instruction, that leaves students without the foundation in the 3 Rs and are at high risk by their teen years.
In the comment section of one CTV article – “School districts and the unions and their attempts to cap the number of students with disabilities, will soon find out. I can’t wait until these school districts are hit with class actions. The government isn’t the only culprit here, districts make their budgets based on their priorities, and in most districts, kids with disabilities are treated as disruptions, problems, liabilities. One trustee in SD68 was overheard in a bar saying they were going to have to make tough decisions with reference with kids with disabilities. Now maybe he’ll realize that the only tough decision he needs to make is whether he wants to be sued. This is good news!”
Read more: http://bc.ctvnews.ca/school-discriminated-against-dyslexic-boy-supreme-court-1.1031962#ixzz2BrIxnrGs
Class actions suits from coast to coast, between the ministries, the unions and the school boards they will have their hands full. The students they know about, attending school – parents should be hearing from them to remediate and get the situation corrected, to limit their liability. I fully expect a phone call, and if not, I bide my time. I be getting another phone call asking to join the suit. But I do expect the phone call from the school or school board, acting real nice, and I will be asking for the extra thing, remediation in my child’s core reading problems, even if it means private tutoring, while she is attending university. After all, I did most of teaching on the fundamentals at home, and that was no small feat, and there is a line of teachers starting from grade 1, that would state without a doubt, that it was me that did all the teaching, so my kid could go to school and participate in learning new knowledge. A five hour day, 7 days a week starting in grade 4 and this does not include all the many hours put in, learning everything there was to know about dyslexia, the education system, and everything else to fight the school board, who refuse to do anything regarding my child who was formally identified at the end of grade 3. What I could not do, was help in decoding because I cannot decode words either. But I am in good company, with many of an educator that does not have the training to remediate students’ decoding.problems.
What is really obvious, is that the public education system will have to change. Big changes in the elementary grades, when it comes to instruction and programs for reading, writing and numeracy. Far more cost effective to prevent learning problems, rather than hand the kids colouring books and dumb-down work. In another article – “The Supreme Court noted in its decision that the North Vancouver school district had funding choices: It chose to close the program that could have helped Moore while maintaining funding to an outdoor education program.
“Here’s the really important point: Budget concerns alone, straight up, cannot justify human rights denial,” Young said.
“That’s the take-home message. You have to show that those budget cuts were reasonably necessary. That means you have to look at what your choices were, what else you could cut, how you could cut, how else you could fund.”
Rick Moore said he believes the win against the North Vancouver board will have repercussions across the province.
“We’ve set a precedent that if you cut services to the most vulnerable kids, you will be liable as a district. We all know the districts are beholden to the ministries of education.”
His son agreed that procedures must change at school boards.
“It’s out there and they’re going to have to make the changes.”
In the ruling, the judges point out that the province’s School Act acknowledges the very purpose of the school system is to enable all students to develop “their individual potential.”
“Adequate special education, therefore, is not a dispensable luxury,” Justice Rosalie Abella wrote for the court. “For those with severe learning disabilities, it is the ramp that provides access to the statutory commitment to education made to all children in British Columbia.”
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/bc-school-district-discriminated-against-dyslexic-boy-supreme-court-178094651.html
Than there is all the misconceptions of SE kids. More so for the LD kids. In a comment from the above link, “This is puzzling. In Ontario, we have alternate public schools for children with learning challenges. Does BC not have this type of school?”
Alternate schools have become the dumping ground for the LD students of the misbehaving kind, and other students with mild to moderate learning issues that are related to the 3 Rs. Also check the youth detention facilities across Canada, apparently school is on, led by educators. Seventy-five percent is the percentage being reported that have learning disabilities. Doug, it becomes quite clear that in the last 30 years children with disabilities and more so for children with learning issues that impacts reading, writing and numeracy have been hard done by the public education system. Last article, a paper actually by the Council of Canadians with Disabilities. Twenty Years of Litigating for Disability Equality Rights: Has it Made a Difference? Published 2004.
http://www.ccdonline.ca/en/humanrights/promoting/20years
Here is the ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada.
http://scc.lexum.org/decisia-scc-csc/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/12680/1/document.do
I be printing this one out, because I am not about to let them think they be able to do things behind my back. Its the usual MO, done where I live. No doubt the big wigs in education, will be meeting on Monday, and go the route of trying to keep the most noisy and persistence parents quiet, by caving into our demands which are the accommodations such as extra time that are denied. Down our way, there is the 4-tiered education system. Different levels of dumb down education.
To follow Tunya, the Fourth Way is the version of what is socially just to meet the rights and the legal definition required by law. So in this backward spin, of turning and inverting the constitutional rights of people with disabilities in the public education system – the arguments used by the BC and Ontario education heavy weights were used was to grant the public education the right to delivered education services in second, third and fourth tiers of various dumb down proportions. One part of the arguments that was hope to swayed the Supreme Court in favour of the school board, was the socially just policies interwoven throughout the curriculum and instruction. Thankfully common sense and logic prevailed, but not the undercurrents of the general philosophies and belief systems of the public education system, and more so the education gurus at the top levels peddling Fourth Way theories that are essentially malpractice that shows in the education outcomes of the data streams.
In Macleans, an article called, “Why are schools brainwashing our children?”
http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/10/31/why-are-schools-brainwashing-our-children/
“Between the mounting examples of how social-justice education can go wrong, and the passionate defences from those responsible for training teachers, who believe their vision has never been more important, the fight is growing over what’s going on in primary school classrooms. It’s just the newest battle over an age-old question: who gets to decide the best way to educate our young?
What is not debatable is the growing commitment to social justice within our education faculties. Social justice in education is a trend that has come and gone over the past century, but nowadays one can specialize in it at teachers’ college, and there are courses and textbooks instructing teachers on how to approach the subject in the classroom. Its proponents argue that today’s students are especially in need of it: a growing mandate to integrate special-education students into mainstream classrooms requires better understanding from children; a new awareness of the effects of bullying puts the onus on teachers to inculcate empathy in students; and increased diversity in the classroom can fuel intolerance from all sides.
“The classroom has completely changed,” says Rita Irwin, associate dean of teacher education at the University of British Columbia. “We need to prepare teachers to deal with that.” To that end, the UBC faculty of education has implemented its revamped curriculum, which builds a social-justice component into every teacher-education course, so that would-be teachers can follow the same approach in their classrooms. By repeating the themes of tolerance and empathy throughout the curriculum, teachers have a better shot of reaching their students, Irwin argues.”
Teaching training is all about social justice. Where is the education of the students? At the bottom of the list of priorities, and is why the The Moore Decision is the most important decision to come down, and the education faculties nor anyone of the education heavy weights can appeal a Supreme Court ruling from the highest court in the land. I particularly love the addition that the Supreme Court of Canada, will be following, to ensure BC is following the ruling. In the Macleans article, about the middle of the page – ” Middle-school teacher David Stocker has heard those arguments. He is the author of the textbook Math That Matters: A Teacher Resource for Linking Math and Social Justice, for Grades 6 to 9, which ups the political ante with math problems related to such issues as workers’ rights, racial profiling and homophobia. He’s also no stranger to controversy—he and his wife made international headlines last year after announcing they intended to raise their third child, Storm, genderless. Stocker is frank about his political stance. “All material carries bias of some sort,” he writes in the introduction. “Really the question is whether or not we want to spend time educating for peace and social justice. If we do, let’s admit that bias and get to work.”
Moral relativism at work – If a parent wants drill sheets for their children to practice math, they are told that is bad for their children. What is sent home, is all about suicide, bullying, or some other social problem with very little math, to make the material not effective in the progression of math.
One of the negative outcomes, are young adults reacting emotional without having the ability and skills to understand why they are reacting emotionally. In other words, they are educating children to protest, without teaching them the how-tos’. The how-tos’ are the fundamental knowledge to truly understand social justice in governance to the rights and actions of the governments, who are supposed to be there enacting legislation, making laws to remedied the social inequities. What is always missing in the social justice agendas of the public schools, and throughout to the top, are the inequities caused by the education policies created by the so-called experts with education degrees. Such injustices, as the quality of SE education, or why SE children spend their time colouring, or are given the dumb-down work two grades levels below. Or the small proportions of meals at the school cafeteria at highway robbery prices. I called the latter the 1 1/2 bites of food. Far better to go down to MacDonald for the two bite cheeseburger, that is called the Happy Meal. Better value for one’s money, and one doesn’t get hunger. Or the meals that are made for the teachers, compared to the meals that made for the students? I pointed that out to my kid, when she was in grade 6, and she started to received that hot roast beef sandwich like the teachers. Teachers should be force to eat the same meal plans of their students, and now that is correcting an inequality and making it socially just.
And it can all be done using the math, and making the school more socially just by ensuring the adults that work within the school system are minding their Ps and Qs concerning the discrimination at work within a school. Instead the students are treated with more Fourth Way ideology. Below is one such example, and boy would I have a fun time with this teacher on debating how socially just is it, when the teacher is no longer teaching mathematics, but the evils of Walmart. Yet, I saw the teacher at the Walmart store buying supplies. Hypocrits all of them, and then the public educationalists have the gall to fire a teacher who give out zeroes.
“.To restate: relevant content is that which will engage the learner in their social reality. Now if you’re thinking about the vast majority of people on the planet, social realities tend to be awash in inequity and injustice. Fortunately, there are many opportunities to address that injustice, as long as you’re learning about the issues in the first place. Maththatmatters is a group of assignments designed to bring that content into the classroom.”
Click to access math_that_matters.pdf
The Fourth Way, will only increase the injustices and malpractice of the schools where curriculum content is no longer knowledge, but a series of social injustices that ignores the daily social injustices and education malpractice that is at the expense of the students and their future doors.
By the book can be purchase for $24.95. Creating curriculum resources is an activity that is healthy for teachers’ pocketbooks. After all, most in Ontario are suffering so much making do with $90,000 something after 11 years, a tidy benefit package and yet the Fourth Way authors, the so called education gurus are demanding more money for the teachers, more training, to practice the dark art form of social justice without teaching the students the how-tos and the knowledge needed to make lasting change. So much easier, to turn students into little protesters and dumb-down curriculum.
The money has nothing to do with it-why more money-they need to give explicit intervention rather than photocopy worksheets and place them with an educational assistant in a room that dumbs down curriculum.
Soon,statements like the ones you make will have repercussions;the elephant in the room is that there have been game changing interventions for those kids proven by years and years of research and hundreds of published papers,the school system thought it was perfectly fine to assess,label and throw away all responsibility to remediate due to the label.
Educational malpractice for sure!
Speaking about labels and funding – Talk is already present – “But the ministry wants districts to move away from categorizing students, wherever possible, he added.
“The reality is we get into dangerous territory when we’re trying to categorize children,” he said. “The challenge for all of us that have a strong interest in public education is to continue to work to get to the point where each child is being considered individually and we’re doing our best to ensure their needs are met.”
The same does not apply to low-incidence children because their needs are more obvious, he added. In some cases, those children require one-on-one assistants.”
Different section – “Confederation president Terri Watson said it’s hard to tell whether services have slipped over the past couple of years, but there is wide concern that they will if those in need aren’t formally identified.
Camley is also concerned about inadequate teacher training, and said one of the big problems is that too many school officials still regard special education as a charitable service.
While special-needs children go without, she said money is being spent on what could be considered “extras,” such as French immersion, Montessori and out-of-province band trips.
“I support all of that … but when push comes to shove, you have to provide basic educational needs first and then those extra things come second. But we still have those being seen as the priority.”
Camley said many parents would like to see a school within the public system that caters to learning-disabled children, or those who have “invisible” disabilities.”
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2012/11/10/warnings-in-2004-about-a-two-tiered-education-system-in-b-c/
Story written in 2004, and yet are the identical items that have been sited for the Moore case. To add another facet to the story, the known people who are are involve with the Canadian Learning Disabilities Association, now defunct – are coming out of the wood work. Surprise to see it on the FB page.
“While we are all celebrating the Supreme Court decision re Jeffrey Moore, it is important to remember that the school district at the heart of the dispute, North Vancouver, has implemented stellar supports for students with learning disabilities……”
http://www.facebook.com/groups/52488157512/
The people living there would beg to differ. What North Vancouver has is lots of private tutoring and alternative private LD schools. Plus not to mentioned the area has healthy numbers in high to middle income groups. Plus there is other low-cost choices for private services.
Haven’t really seen anything from the provincial LD associations. Rather quiet, in comparison to the Community Living and other associations.
But you are right Joanne, a lot of extra funding support that never did get to the students for remediation. North Vancouver has the identical data streams, as in other districts and the only reason that is keeping the figure lower, is the high to middle income groups that have the cash to spare for private services. It may look good on paper, but on the ground a different picture emerges, and its not very pretty. Parents like bus drivers are being mowed down in favour of the parent with the $150,000 income. Why the ruling is so important, because it represent the most important piece of what the education gurus call social justice. The ruling is social justice in action, that in the long run will improve education for every student. Now the hard part, the public education system who does not like to change their ways.
No, they will have to put him alone with a special ed teacher who costs $96 000
Ha ha Doug – School boards won’t be that foolish. The school board will find it be a lot cheaper to sent the kids to the private LD schools for a year or two. And the cheaper alternative is to change their ways, and provide the correct instruction and practices that leads to proficiency in the 3 Rs. One to one instruction at the present time leads to a lot of time wasted, when their are doing the homework assigned in the class, as their form of remediation.
Inclusive classrooms, made it all the worse. No one is getting anything, beside the dumb-down versions of education.
Watch the Global video – Listen, and heed the words. The BC school board will be paying $100,000 dollars to the Moores. Things are going to change, when there is money involve. School boards hate to pay out monies to parents and students. Few more law suits like it, at the lower courts, with monies awards attached to them, school boards will learned their lesson. It happened in the States in the due process hearings.The parents with the lawyers, won the day each and every time. Thou shall not discriminate due to cost considerations. Rather ironic because it is dealing with remediation of reading, writing and numeracy learning issues. The average remediation, would be 125 hours for the vast majority of the formally identified students in the primary grades. 175 hours for the students who are moderate to severe. Than there is kids that fall in the middle like my child, that may require 150 hours due to moderate to severe decoding issues. The Canadian public education systems are going to have to do it by the science, and a lot of help from the researchers and developers on the outside. One can forget any help from the education faculties, of professors who think dumb down curriculum is just fine and dandy, and more importantly they have forgotten where the research is buried. The good education professors buried it deep a long time ago, and you know the old saying, “Out of sight, out of mind”, and continue to teach pedagogy that are very unkind to 60 percent of student, and doing its worst damage on the SE children, where most never reach their full potential as adults, nor their full academic potential.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/education/North+Vancouver+school+district+discriminated+against/7524870/story.html
I see one of the comments is filled with social justice terms, taught on a regular basis in the school. Its good to see the social justice that is taught being put to good use, compare to the mini-protests of grade 2 students fighting something that is beyond their comprehension. Maybe what the schools should do, is to teach the fine lessons of discrimination and inequities occurring to students who are labeled, but never received the remediation. It is really hard to hear dumb every day in the schools, in so many different ways, Doug.
“For all of the parents and all of the students who lost their battles, and sometimes their lives, their livlihoods and their future because they were abandoned and discriminated against by an oppressive system, the first step towards change has been laid down. The Moore family is our Rosa Parks and we can all take the time to celebrate their, and our, win.”
The school boards will not send the kids to private schools, they will demand the money from the province and they will get it. There is no win for privatization here.
The Diagnostic Centre will reopen or similar provsions. The only thing that happened here is that school boards (ie taxpayers) will have to spend a great deal more for special ed knowing if they don’t they will be sued. The unions are very happy about that.
Oh Doug, you are so wrong. The diagnostic centre will be open to all mild to severe LD students. Not just the severe students. The Ontario provincial LD schools, are operating for only 20 percent of the severe LD students. The Ontario government are going to have change their ways. They are blocking access to the provincial LD schools to the bulk of the LD student population, who represents the 80 percent, the majority of the LD students. What the 80-20 LD population have in common – all core problems with reading, writing and numeracy.
So much cheaper and more effective – to trained the teachers, change the curriculum, and instruction, than it is to risk law suits. Just wait for the class action suits, that will prove systemic discrimination at the school board levels. Just watch in the next 14 months, the ministry of education coming in carrying their big hammers and sticks, ordering the school boards to abide by the court ruling. The ministries of education are set up in such a way, that the actual operations of the school and school boards are not in their authority. Read the ruling, and the part that the Supreme Court did not fine fault with the Ministry of Education. Read the reasons why, and it has gone the same route as in the American court cases. The fault lies with the school board and the school administration and operations, and not who funds the systems.
In the end, all stakeholders are going to have to work cooperatively with one another, and not as it has been done in the past, working in the silos of isolation, paying no mind to the outcomes of policies that has done all its damage on the students they serve. It is discrimination. Pure and simple. Against the Charter of Freedoms and Rights.
“Laurie Larson, President of the CACL said “Today is a watershed day for access to quality inclusive education in Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada got it right. It may be too late for many of our kids who are graduating from school this year and in the past. But the direction to governments is unequivocal. Special education in many parts of this country needs radical redesign.” Michael Bach, Executive Vice-President said, “Special education has been a ‘dead end’ for far too many students with disabilities. This judgment makes it clear once and for all that children with disabilities are entitled to the educational supports they require to be fully included in school. The real test of special education services is whether they provide the ‘ramp’ to educational services to which all children are entitled. And, as required under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, now ratified by Canada such services must, by definition and by law, be inclusive. All public education must be redesigned to ensure inclusion for all children in Canada.”
“The Moore family has been courageous in taking up the cause of a ensuring all students receive a quality public education.” says Faith Bodnar, Executive Director of the BC Association for Community Living. “The Moores fought for fifteen years knowing that it would not impact their son, doing it on behalf of all students with special needs now and in the future. The public education system must be held accountable for how it meets the needs of students. We join CACL in applauding the decision of the Supreme Court in upholding the fundamental rights of students with special needs to access the supports they need to be fully included.”
http://www.bcacl.org/inclusive-education/whats-new/victory-supreme-court-canada-right-education
The above is truly inclusive Doug,, and not the kind that is being played out at the school boards and schools across the country. Exclusiveness posing as inclusiveness. The Ministers of Education, will have to carry their big hammers and sticks, to ensure compliance on entry to learning by learning how to read, write and do numeracy well. Colouring books, self-esteem lessons, nor dumb-down work leads to access to learning, nor learning how to read, write and do numeracy well.
A pretty sure bet, the system will change, and along with the dodgy, feel good Fourth Way, and the other recipes cooked up by the Canadian education gurus. In fact, they will have to change their language, that often borders on discriminatory comments, that promotes misconceptions and biases among the others within the public education systems. The education big wigs, thought the bus driver would not get too far. Why? The misconceptions of the so-called experts in education who really do have funny ideas of people on the lower rungs of the SES ladder. Somehow the lower one goes, less intelligent, less able, more needy, more demanding, and the one that I met back in 2001 – no one was more intelligent than they are with all the fancy letters behind their names, compared to those who have no fancy letters of PHD. And I bet, the Supreme Court Justices, have seen some of the outcomes when they were judges in the lower courts. More than likely, they have seen their share of people without a firm foundation in the 3 Rs and what happens to them as adults.
Meanwhile, the public education systems across the country have always wash their dirt off the backs of the less able students. But no more, and maybe the judges will see far less of people in their courts without the firm foundation of the 3 Rs. Now the public education system, will now be force to teach all students to their potential, and not just their favourite ones.
Why Finland is better than anybody else?
No Standardized testing
Teachers make 102% of university educated avg (USA 65%)
Teachers need 2 masters degrees
Strive for equity results in excellence
low poverty rate
http://theagenda.tvo.org/blog/agenda-blogs/why-are-finnish-kids-so-smart
M
Nobody in the school boards or the unions is the least bit worried Nancy. They just see more money coming.
Boy are you wrong. Big pow-wow meetings next week on the ramifications of the Moore decision. All done in secret, no PR blitzes. Principals will be sitting on pins and needles waiting for the phone calls by parents that they have done wrong by. In Ontario. more so The charge will be lead by the parents who have advocated hard, but been pushed back. The ones that have hired the SE consultants to sit in on the IEP meetings. The ones that have taken the appeal route, and have gotten no where. The ones who have walked out and home-schooled or private school setting. The ones where the assessments of the private psychologists and its recommendations have been ignored. The watered down versions of effective programs from the private sector, pulling children out as soon as there is an improvement, not following the IEPs, ignoring the recommendations of school board psychologists. The parents with the gifted children, will also be in the group. Doug, you ought to go on their sites, and the talk there. Valid points, since the arrival of increases in SE funding, the only students befitting are the SEL students. The SEL students will not be represented, and only in the event, if the school board did not provide the support.
Rather odd, the SEL students since their arrival as SE designation, the SEL needs have pushed out all the other needs of students. Services, are far less, and now the educationalists have come up with another cost-saving measures, put the students with the reading, writing and numeracy difficulties with the SEL students. I read one article, this way the school doesn’t have to provide intensive reading instruction. All the dirt will come out Doug, in drips and dabs over the course of 2013. The real story on what is happening at the ground level. The real story on the state of education in Canada, and how the public education systems and its stakeholders conspired to keep education to the minimum legal requirement in the education legislation, by just delivering education services without providing the tools and skills to access the education services.
One of the values being sprouted by the Fourth Way – is self-regulated learning. But not the kind that one might expect to find, presented in the science research. Nor the kind, a student or parent might think of self-regulated learning. In reality, the kind that is drilled into the teachers at the teachers’ faculties.
Today, I ran into this article – entitled How kids outsmart learning disabilities. I read it a while back, and showed it to my youngest. Like I usually do, whenever their is a successful LD student in the news. At the bottom of the article there was a series of links – the usual suspects except for one called, the Canadian Consortium for Self-Regulated Learning.
Not even the Americans have something called a consortium for self-regulated learning. So, I pressed the link……………
http://srlcanada.ca/
I often thought of myself savvy on the latest aspects of cognitive knowledge, that might be useful for a parent. In self-regulation, all my children had excellent self-regulation skills and good impulse control. Two things that might come in handy, when the kids are in the public eye. In other words, my kids are well-behaved. When they did act up, it was in the privacy of the home, and my youngest child had a particular strong set of the two skills. Throw in strong willfulness, it is quite the mixture for unplanned events, that cannot be anticipated.
Below the view from the other side of the mirror – an Alice in the Wonderland moment but turned on its ear. Sort of welcome to the dark side, its time to label and give out failing marks for about 60 percent of the student population. The big capital letters of NI. All my children would have received the NI, for a number of reasons. My oldest was bored to tears. My middle, who cares. My youngest, frustration, and a few more adjectives.
“Put simply, self-regulated learning is about strategic engagement. Learners are described as self-regulating when they are engaged, thinking, proactive, responsive, and reflective.
While each member of the SRL Canada Consortium focuses on different facets, ages, or contexts for SRL in classrooms, we share some common research-based perspectives about learning:
We view learning as a complex metacognitive and social process that involves adapting thinking, motivation, emotion, and behavior.
We view learners as active agents who can learn to take control of their learning processes from very young ages and who naturally strive toward self-determined goals.
We view learning as socially situated and often involving dynamic interplay between learners, tasks, teachers, peers, parents, contexts, and cultures.
We view learning as personally situated in that every learner brings a history of knowledge, beliefs, and experiences (both helpful and not) to any learning situation.
We view self-regulated learning as adaptively responding to new challenges or failure in ways that optimize progress toward personal goals and standards.
We view self-regulated learning as a set of critical 21st century skills that extend well beyond academic work to support learning and success in such contexts as: work, social, sport, health and recreation.
We view self-regulated learning as an important set of processes that can be supported across the lifespan, from early childhood through the adult years, across contexts, in and out of schools.”
http://srlcanada.ca/?page_id=8
From what I can understand, self-regulated learning will be the new darling to replace assessments, moving away from the nasty scores – the numbers. To the soft skills of the 21st century, and the center piece is the newly defined SRL based and fitted within the 19th to 20th century pedagogy theories and philosophies.
Not very kind for any student and their cognitive development. More so for the children who have difficulty in learning. A Utopian socialist dream of learning. Engagement – Thinking – Proactive – Responsive – Reflective. Sounds more like a direct copy of the literature on collaboration of teachers and becoming the researchers.
As I stated before, my youngest child would always received NI, because what SRL expects the students to do. In another file – “Students have opportunities to regulate learning in classrooms where they are engaged in complex meaningful tasks, making choices, controlling challenge, and self-evaluating learning, and where they receive support from teachers and peers that is instrumental to SRL. Importantly, tasks are not static entities with inherent properties, such as degree of difficulty. Students experience tasks differently, depending on dynamic relationships among task
features, personal characteristics, and social and instructional supports. Therefore, researchers and teachers should pay close attention to how students interpret/understand tasks and how they engage with them.
Teaching toward SRL is not easy. Therefore, making the implementation of SRL promoting practices as widespread as research indicates they should be requires creating professional development contexts for teachers like the learning contexts we want them to create for their students—contexts that provide teachers with guided and sustained support to hone their self and co-regulation skills.”
Click to access Perry-Knowledge-snapshot-CAEP-FINAL.pdf
It has already creep into the local high school, with the new teachers. They actually expect students to run home, and learned new knowledge without ever having been taught. The kicker is, on tests, questions have popped up that are not in the current textbook, nor is related to the knowledge tested, nor was it ever taught or been in any textbook going back to grade 1. When the students make their voices heard, they are told it has been taught. Of course the students beg to differ, and it be one question on the agenda, that I will have for the teachers. It should be fun, since I will be in good company.
Considering the Moore decision, I be pulling rank over sloppy pedagogy, and insisting on well-structured teaching that enables children to progress. If not, they will be discriminating. I just thought of another development, the parents with the high-achieving children, will begin to appreciate the power of the lone LD parent whose child is sitting in the advance classes. We all share the common problems of questionable instruction, curriculum and they don’t like their children receiving poor grades. It does not look good on college and university applications. For my child, it creates high stress levels, the opposite of what is claim in the version of SRL by the education gurus with education degrees. The solution is to dumb down the work for children, but in my child’s case, she is no longer in grade school, and has proven she is capable of high achievement, steady progress in a well-structured classroom, clear expectations and excellent curriculum.
The Fourth Way is an agenda of dumbing it down for everyone. In the processing creating high stress, along with the negative social and emotional problems arising when students become frustrated. If SRL was fully implemented in the K to 12 education system, the failings of the academic records of the child would be attributed to the mental health of the students. The dumbing down comes in, to mediate the mental health issues. In no time flat, students will work at the lowest expectations. Acquiring a 50 percent. No more or no less. That is until something interests them……
A Great Ideological Divide Splits The Education Community
Everybody knows that there is a Left and a Right in public schooling.
The very biggest difference in the core values of the two different sides is that — while the Right (conservatives, traditionalists, Classical Liberals) honor the principle of tolerance, respecting the general belief that, as in freedom of religion where no proof exists that there is one proven correct religion, so too in education, freedom of choice should prevail — the Left adhere to the opposite.
The Left (progressives, Marxists) adhere to the doctrine that there is one right way — their way — which ought to be a monopoly where all young people will collectively learn social cohesion, and that centralized government nationalized schooling is the best vehicle. Because government regimes and ideologies change, the consistency and continuity that the Left pursue are operationalized via the teacher unions who embed themselves, via collective bargaining and other strategies, to effectively control curriculum, policies and practices.
Many more differences separate the two distinct camps.
Regarding parents — the real consumers/clients in the K-12 systems — the Right respects parent voice and advocacy. They observe The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) article which states: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children”. These parents fear homogenization of any kind, believing that the aggregate of many choices produces better overall achievements and caters to parent preferences. Universal programs like the common core standards and early childhood education are particularly suspect. See “Early Education or Early Indoctrination?” http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/11/early_education_or_early_indoctrination.html
The Left claim that the child is the focus and point to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1990) with Article 28 stating:
States Parties recognize the right of the child to education, and with a view to achieving this right progressively and on the basis of equal opportunity, they shall, in particular:
(a) Make primary education compulsory and available free to all;
(c) Make higher education accessible to all on the basis of capacity by every appropriate means;
(d) Make educational and vocational information and guidance available and accessible to all children;
(e) Take measures to encourage regular attendance at schools and the reduction of drop-out rates.
Looking at the dates, a cynical person could easily conclude that there was a strong “progressive” totalitarian voice at the framing of the children’s rights document. However, the literature and pronouncements from teacher unions and university faculties clearly show a bias in this matter in that the 1990 document is much more frequently quoted than the 1948 document.
What else is clear is that the Left-progressive view dominates public schooling. When we consider that the universities in their teacher training faculties have considerable license to adopt courses they see fit, we are not surprised to see great emphasis on Left agendas such as social justice, constructivism, self-regulated learning, teacher reflection, critical theory, etc. David Horowitz, an ex Marxist now devoting his efforts to exposing Left domination in American academe and politics estimates that 90% of social sciences professors are left-leaning. One of his books, “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics” actually names names and lists their specialties.
Meanwhile, the Left claims that public education is under attack by the Right. A leading Left education philosopher, Michael W Apple, in his forward to “The Assault on Public Education” (2012) says, “Let us be honest. The educational crisis is real — especially for the poor and oppressed. But as usual, dominant groups have used such ‘crisis talk’ to shift the discussion onto their own terrain. “ This book is intended, says the editor, William H Watkins, “as an organizing tool for teachers, parents, students, and citizens committed to genuine public education. The text is candid and strident.”
The Finnish Fourth Way forecloses on school choice and would effectively undermine the Alberta Model of school choice envied by informed parents across Canada.
A recent video produced by the Society for Quality Education delivers the key message:
It really makes you wonder: Why tinker with the Alberta Model when it supports high performance schools and offers school choice?
Once again Paul, success in Alberta predates any choice policies, is based on their demographics and is unrelated to even their contemporary choice policies.
There is simply no connection between choice and school improvement. I know that the GERM would like to establish one but there is no such thing as a relationship between choice and excellence.
Are some choice schools excellent? Of course they are based on ‘creaming’. Are most public schools in Alberta excellent as well? Yes, while serving all-comers.
Finland clearly demonstrates there is no need to have choice to have excellence.
Their are two deep motivations behind “choice” in education. one is privatization so somebody somewhere can make a buck and the other is religion/values. People want their religion and or traditional values reenforced by the school system because, as recently demonstrated south of the border, conservatives are losing the culture wars badly. They are foolishly retreating to the Alamo of religious schools, home schooling etc to “turn back the waves of liberalism” like Pat Robertson and King Knute.
That strategy is doomed.
“Why tinker with the Alberta Model when it supports high performance schools and offers school choice?”
A very good question indeed!
In essence what Tunya has stated – ” Great Ideological Divide Splits The Education Community”
A background paper on Your Brain on Politics:The Cognitive Neuroscience of Liberals and Conservatives.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/09/07/your-brain-on-politics-the-cognitive-neuroscience-of-liberals-and-conservatives/
Ideologies and belief systems are not kind to the cognitive mind of humans. Although in its infancy, the research in cognitive neuroscience has direct implications to the ideologies and belief systems of public education systems.
The ideology and beliefs becomes more important than the outcomes of the students that they serve. The Fourth Way, has stated that the underlying philosophies and ideology are not important, and what is important are the processes. The first selling point to the teachers, to smooth the worried brows of teachers with differing ideologies and belief systems. The Fourth Way, gives the impression that it is not based on ideology. When it is really is all based on ideologies and belief systems of Hargreaves and Shirley, and by extension the global education gurus. I called them the eggheads who believed in their own press, their intellectual brain power, and the firm beliefs of being right and just. In everyday classroom, there is always one student, maturing into an egghead, to wreck havoc in the future in the world somewhere. At the global level, eggheads rule the roost, across the political domain sprouting their ideologies and dogma under the mask of of logical and rational critical thinking. They too ignore the outcomes. The nagging outcomes of data streams, suggesting that the ideology will be heading into a crisis of epic proportions. It does not matter in the world of eggheads, as long as their precious ideologies and belief systems have been filtered down and lateral across society and within networks.
Ergo, within the public education systems of global, nationally, regional, and the individual schools, policies are all about the belief systems and ideologies, that supposedly is going to be the next best thing, besides slice bread. The Fourth Way, is playing out to be the next best thing, and it is all based on the ideologies and belief systems of the education gurus. The eggheads whose mission in the world, is to have everyone thinking that only the education gurus know what is best for everyone in society. Regardless, if it is against the best interests of the individuals and groups within society. In another paper, Introduction to the Curriculum Ideologies, it describes the 4 curriculum ideologies.
“These visions are based on four curriculum ideologies—or curriculum philosophies—that advocate very different purposes for schooling and very different methods of achieving those respective purposes.”
Click to access 47669_ch_1.pdf
Cutting to the chase, the Fourth Way is a combination of two.
1. ” Learner Centered proponents focus not on the needs of society or the academic disciplines, but on the needs and concerns of individuals. They believe schools should be enjoyable places where people develop naturally according to their own innate natures. The goal of education is the growth of individuals, each in harmony with his or her own unique intellectual, social, emotional, and physical attributes.”
2. ” Social Reconstructionists are conscious of the problems of our society and the injustices done to its members, such as those originating from racial, gender, social, and economic inequalities. They assume that the purpose of education is to facilitate the construction of a new and more just society that offers maximum satisfaction to all of its members.”
The Fourth Way is a mixture of the above two, that is evident in the four way of changes, and where the Fourth Way brings a potpourri of ideological education philosophies and social justice theories to the table. Outcomes are not important. It does not matter if a student does not become a proficient reader, writer or numeracy. What matters is on the individual level, the learner accepts their deficits, and sees them through the window of rights. The right to demand from others with better skills, to help them solve their problems. On the collective level, solve the social problems of race, gender, social and economic inequalities. Hard to do, when the collective at the bottom are dealing with a far weaker skill set of the fundamentals in knowledge, far less social and political capital to change the world, much less change their circumstances. But outcomes don’t matter to the Fourth Way advocates, nor the realities. It is the precious ideology and in this case, a just society of the Utopian kind. The kind one only sees in movies and books. In real life, the Utopian dreams of the Fourth Way, leads to more division and intolerance, because in essence it works against the cognitive minds of students, that leads to negative outcomes for students.
In another paper, by Hargreaves and Shirley, called the Far Side of Education Reform. By the way, have been busy beavers since 2007, taking incremental steps to pushed the Fourth Way agenda in Canadian public education systems. The next quote, is how Hargreaves and Shirley bill themselves as – “As independent researchers and as scholarly
collaborators we have undertaken and are continuing to undertake our own corner store interpretations of international comparisons of educational achievement and success based on independent and impartial firsthand
inquiry into high performance and the reasons for it in Finland, Ontario, Alberta, Singapore, teacher union reform, and outliers of success among schools districts and networks in what are generally lower performing
contexts (Hargreaves & Shirley 2009; Shirley & Hargreaves, in press; Hargreaves & Harris, 2011). This work is widely used by the educational
profession internationally but oddly absent from almost all the research and references of transnational policy and consulting organizations.”
Besides billing themselves as special education experts, they are also billing themselves as independent researchers and scholarly collaborators. If anyone believes this, why don’t you check out their bank accounts and where they send their own children to school. There is a reason why, private schools are necessary in their Fourth Way. Necessary, because people with any common sense and money, will be sending their kids to a private school that actually teaches knowledge, and not an Utopian social agenda to transformed society.
Below is an example from the LD developers and providers of tutoring for LD children. The providers certainly do received a lot of letters from parents, describing the negative outcomes of their children in public schools.
“LISA, ninth grade:
My teacher told the class that I have dyslexia so they would understand why I don’t want anybody else correcting my papers. Do you know what she told them? She said that I had trouble mixing up my Bs and Ds!
Is that really all she thinks dyslexia is? Don’t teachers want to know any more than that?”
Spreading the misconceptions of dyslexia. The realities do not matter, nor what dyslexia is. By telling students that it is mixing up the letters of Bs and Ds, is a falsehood of great epic proportions. The students will think that dyslexia is not a reading disorder, nor a big deal in learning. Dyslexic students do not want their papers graded by other students, because for the rest of day, they have to deal with the verbal abuse of other students, calling them dumb, can’t spell, and all of the other writing problems, that stems from the reading disorder.
“Children with dyslexia will often NOT qualify for special education services when tested in first or second (or even third) grade. Yet as the following parent shared, the classic warning signs will already be there, and that’s exactly when a child should start getting the right type of tutoring. ”
http://susanbartondyslexiastories.com/
For students who are the outliers, the Fourth Way will be ruinous to the students. But don’t worry, the education experts that tout themselves as having the best interest of students’ education will socialized the students to become the future citizens to work together as a collective, to fight the inequities of the world, with the highly advance learners guiding the multitudes. Cognitive neuroscience, and other science research will be dismiss, and students will construct knowledge of their own making based on the ideologies and dogma of belief systems and social theory philosophies. The new foundation knowledge. No more reading, writing and numeracy foundation.
For the learners the Fourth Way principles would produce negative outcomes.
1.Put responsibility before accountability – The actual knowledge attainment would be the responsibility of the learners.
2. Eliminate standardized testing connected to system targets. – For students, their knowledge base would be assessed through the windows of the ideologies, philosophies, and belief systems of the educators, All subjective assessments, not at all objective.
3. Develop and disseminate diagnostic and developmental
assessment alternatives. – done again through the ideologies and belief systems, and not by the science.
4. Abandon the obsession with technology – The reason is that most technology and devices, cannot be easily blend into the ideologies and belief systems of the Fourth Way. Constructivism is very hard to create and time consuming for educators using 21st century technology. More so for the social constructs of the social justice dogma.
5.The rest of them – a) Raise quality and standards for all teachers by
teachers and with teachers together
b) Blend and interconnect the best of different provincial
reforms
c) Pursue strategic international coalitions,
d) Promote public engagement
Are a combination that puts everyone global wide to the individual on the same page, ideological and belief systems to fight the great beast of privatization and neoliberalism. Protests, but not the how-tos in knowledge. Emotional reaction, rather than logical rational thought to solve problems. A weak knowledge base does it every time. But the more important outcome, is the helplessness of society at the bottom rungs that forces them to always relied on the people with a higher level of knowledge to guide their way in society. Outcomes don’t matter, since it is the responsibility of the individual, and not the person who is guiding and giving advice.
More importantly, the Fourth Way is the rise of the professional class, and their expertise. At the school level, twenty years from now, there will be teachers still sprouting the misconceptions of learning to the students. After all it is up to the students to construct their own knowledge base, based on their innate skills and abilities, their strengths. No big deal if the kid can’t read very good. No big deal if the kid does not know the fundamental arithmetic to understand algebra is socially unjust for their developing minds. There is others in the collective, that has minds that can handle the algebra equations. Their minds are more advance, and can handle the complex world of algebra equations. It is about the ideologies and belief systems under the social justice policies, where remediating the fundamental reading, writing and numeracy problems brings on socially unjust curriculum, inequities upon the collective and hardship on an individual basis.
It is unjust for the education professional class to take on the challenging aspects of teaching knowledge, when they have to teach the ideologies of social justice to change the world. After all the pigs on Animal Farm, found it intellectually hard on their more intelligent brains to transform the realities into their socially just vision of Utopian, when the other animals were becoming dissatisfied with their living conditions and their outcomes.
So you are against social justice and in favour of social injustice? Progressives can’t understand this kind of GERM thinking. We simply say racism is bad, homophobia is bad, sexism is bad, classism is bad, don’t do it. GERM types say this is “social engineering”. No, some things are just objective truth. The world is not flat? the earth moves around the Sun, evolution is correct, Intelligent Design is goofy. You can see the Neanderthals falling behind in the USA.
My favourite irony is that whereever charter schools spring up, private schools die but public schools retain their enrolement.
American Catholics are very concerned that charters are destroying their private catholic schools. Oh the irony.
Rather funny, when a school board is facing to pay $100,000 to the Moores, because the highest court in the land found the school district had discriminate, according to the Charter of Freedoms and Rights. The right to access the curriculum, the books with the accommodations.
Rather funny the current social justice policies of the public education system are an exclusive set of policies that excludes, rather than being inclusive to all students. Ableism is alive and well in the education system, in the form of substandard education. It certainly shows a peek in the arguments for the BC and Ontario education heavy weights. While the BC Teachers’ Union, presented the argument of the cuts that have been made to SE, while SE funding has steadily increased. It is in the factums Doug, and in the ruling. The 9 Supreme Court justices did not buy into the arguments, and ruled in favour of the Moores.
Meanwhile, the Fourth Way is just another cute way of creating a professional class, and the other side, steady law suits to keep the lawyers busy, remediating the many inequities caused by the Fourth Way agendas, and the social justice policies that goes with it.
In January, another BC law suit has been launch by a parent, who wants payment for lost of income, because she is now home schooling. Why? The school did not do anything about the bullying her child was a victim of. Apparently there is a couple more in the works, dealing with the dumb-down curriculum. The human right lawyers are becoming famous for good reason. They have their eyes on the public education system and other social institutes of the government, where systemic discrimination abounds.
” In speaking to the CBC’s Rick Cluff on The Early Edition, Moore paid tribute to Kelly, calling her a brilliant human-rights lawyer and a true friend. “No words can express the depths of our gratitude for everything that Frances and the Community Legal Assistance Society (have done) for our family and now for all of the families who rested their hopes on this case.”
Kelly, some may recall, was the lawyer who acted on behalf of Azmi Jubran, the young man who also won an important lawsuit against the North Vancouver school district for failing to protect him from bullying while he was a student at Handsworth secondary in the 1990s.”
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2012/11/09/north-vancouver-father-wins-legal-battle-over-special-education/
Other comments, are the type that says the public education system has turned the Charter of Rights and Freedoms upside down. Where the public education system will decide who and who will not have rights to an education in a safe environment. Something like the pigs on Animal Farm. It did not work too well for the pigs either…..
I love the idea over on SQE that bullying would not happen in a private school hahahaha look at the history.
In case anyone like nancy still doubts that teachers’ unions love the Moore case.
http://bctf.ca/
The Finnish Model has taken a major hit on the latest international student tests. A feature story in Education Week (December 20, 2012) strongly suggests that the Finnish infatuation may be coming to an end, at least in the United States. Here are the key findings: .
“Educational tourism has become a sizable industry for Finland in recent years, thanks to its strong showing on a global exam for 15-year-olds. But new data from a different set of assessments suggest that Americans might not need to travel so far to learn about building a strong education system.
The most striking contrast is in mathematics, where the performance of Finnish 8th graders was not statistically different from the U.S. average on the 2011 TIMSS, or Trends in Mathematics and Science Study, released last month. Finland, which last participated in TIMSS in 1999, actually trailed four U.S. states that took part as “benchmarking education systems” on TIMSS this time: Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Indiana”
Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, argues that the new results call for some rethinking of what he calls the “Finnish miracle story.”
“If Finland were a state taking the 8th grade NAEP, it would probably score in the middle of the pack,” he said, referring to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
“Finland’s exaggerated reputation is based on its performance on PISA, an assessment that matches up well with its way of teaching math,” said Mr. Loveless, which he described as “applying math to solve ‘real world’ problems.”
He added, “In contrast, TIMSS tries to assess how well students have learned the curriculum taught in schools.”
Read on at : http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2012/12/educational_tourism_has_become.html
Let’s hope this dampens the enthusiasm of the Alberta Teachers’ Association for “the Finnish solution.” It might also curb the “educational tourism” favoured by provincial and district curriculum and evaluation consultants.
Today’s CBC Radio Sunday Edition with Michael Enright goes all “gaga” over Dr. Pasi Salsberg and the so-called Finnish Education Miracle:
http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/shows/2013/02/17/finnish-schools/
It begins: “Oh, to be a kid in Finland.” Need I say more?
Dr. Pasi Salsberg wes interviewed in Calgary where he is about to “enlighten” the educational leaders in Canada’s highest performing province. It’s clear that Dr. Andy Hargreaves and the “levellers” have captured the Alberta Teachers’ Association. Who has Something to Teach Whom? is a question the ATA rarely asks, especially after falling under Dr. Hargreaves influence.
The CBC Radio program description for Michael Enright’s (February 17, 2013) interview with Dr. Pasi Sahlberg makes the Finnish school system sound like a CBC nirvana:
” The hand wringing over the state of public education in North America has produced a lot of reports, proposals and tensions between teachers, school boards, students, parents and governments.
We hear that teachers have too much power, that governments don’t adequately fund schools, that teachers need to be made accountable, that under-performing schools should have their funding cut back, that students need to be tested, that we need to focus on core subjects and spend less time on art and music.
Finland is consistently put at the very top of global educational rankings despite, or perhaps because of, taking a very different approach: teachers are highly trained and very well-paid, students aren’t tested until their teens, there’s very little homework, and there are no private schools.”
I’m prone, at times, to exaggerating for effect. Not this time!
What Happened In Alberta?
When Alison Redford became premier of Alberta some say it was because the teacher union — wink, wink — encouraged last minute sign-ups of teachers to the party to swing the vote in the leadership contest. She promised $107m to the education budget within 10 days of victory. Delivered.
It was understood that standardized testing would be eliminated. Not done yet.
The teacher union really despised, I am told, the ”parent veto” by which parents could still remove their children from school programs that offended their family values. No word. Guess the veto is still in.
Paul Bennett, on this his website, reported 2012 year end summaries with this about Alberta:
“Alberta . . . Finnish Dalliance” “When the plan got a chilly reception in Alberta conservative circles, a new Education Minister, Jeff Johnson, distanced himself from the Finland-inspired reform plan.”
A number of us on that blog topic were very worried — that Alberta, a high education achiever because of parent choices — would be cut down as a “tall poppy” by these levelers in the teacher union and political circles.
Apparently that “dalliance” continues with Pasi Salsberg in town (Calgary) spreading his egalitarian, equalitarian message. What happened last time the “Finnish Way” was turned back? Aren’t red flags up again? Who’s watching out for the children’s and parents’ interests now?
Paul: You’re not exaggerating. The “leveler” pressures remain. There’s another kick at the can in the works.
We should remember that part of the reason Finland adopted such extreme (yes, even exaggerated) measures — free education including university, teachers with Masters degrees all trained in mental health & early diagnostic assessment, lots & lots of play, LOTS of attention on well-being and happiness — are because of its shameful early reputation. It bent over backwards to remedy a dismal, joyless situation.
Finland was considered one of the world’s suicide capitals!
“Finland no longer suicide capital of the world. Finland has finally shed a bleak record as one of the world’s suicide capitals after the number of people taking their own lives in this Nordic state has dropped by 40 percent in the past 15 years.” (2007)
http://www.finlandforthought.net/2007/09/19/finland-no-longer-suicide-capital-of-the-world/
60 Minutes did a story on Finnish male depression.
On a blog someone said 4 mo ago : “Finland still has a high level of suicide, certainly nothing to be proud of. Could it be its so called brilliant education system the world wants to follow?”
Pasi says these education measures are not socialist or communist.
But, as I said before on this topic, this is the “Marxist Way”. This renewal of interest in Alberta foreshadows a totalitarian plan for “the masses” with vanguards of reliable trained teacher unionists being the leaders as ATA papers champion. Go back to their ATA literature. Standardized testing and parental school choice are to be diminished in favor of equity, and teacher leaders are to “elevate public spiritedness.”
Alberta: Wake up and smell the coffee! Are you ready to have your public spiritedness cranked up by teachers?
The CBC has really jumped on Dr. Pasi Sahlberg’s “Finnish Lessons.” Its now abundantly clear that Michael Enright is shaping CBC “Group Think” on education reform.:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2013/02/finnish-lessons.html
Such displays of Finnish Infatuation continue to be an affront to the incredible success of Alberta public education over the past 15 years. How quickly they forget –what it took to put Alberta in the forefront of international education. What’s also becoming obvious is that the Finnish educator is is Trojan Horse for the coming onslaught against school choice and higher standards in public education.