Public education trends in K-12 schools across Canada can be difficult to track. Without an eagle eye and a swivel-head, the next epic “education crisis” can come and go without much public notice. Nor do Canadians have any real federal presence in education to either establish national standards or provide independent assessments of provincial or territorial school programs.
Gauging the upticks and downticks is still possible, in between the beats and before the self-repairing school system quickly returns to its normal rhythms. What follows is a look back at 2015 in Canadian education with an eye to the coming year.
Notable Upticks
Educational Reconciliation
The release of Justice Murray Sinclair’s massive December 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, together with the appointment of Dr. Carolyn Bennett as Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister, bode well for educational reconciliation and a satisfactory resumption of First Nations education reform. Establishing a stronger basis of trust, more stable federal funding, and more holistic, Indigenous-informed curricula, will go a long way to repairing the damage.
International Teaching Summit
The fifth annual International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP 2015), at the Banff Springs Hotel, March 29-30, 2015, was sponsored by the OECD Education Office, but it shied away from discussing PISA testing and instead focused on supporting teachers and building their confidence to prepare students for a rather nebulous “rapidly changing world.” Chaired by short-lived Alberta Education Minister Gordon Dirks, ISTP 2015 was clearly the work of OECD education director Andreas Schleicher, OISE eminence gris Michael Fullan, and Stanford University education professor Linda Darling-Hammond. Out of the 400 delegates, most were actually Canadian officials or educators sponsored by provincial authorities and teaching unions.
Nova Scotia’s Three Rs Reform Plan
Public school students in Nova Scotia will focus more on mastering the fundamentals in mathematics and literacy, less on writing standardized tests under a N.S. January 2015 reform plan with the catchy title, The Three Rs: Renew, Refocus, Rebuild. Delivered by Education Minister Karen Casey, the initiative responded to a blunt October 2014 provincial review that found half of Nova Scotians “not satisfied” with the quality of education. It also called for a stronger teacher certification and evaluation system and a provincial audit of the efficiency of school boards.
Math Matters Protests
Hundreds of Alberta parents rallied in July 2015 to protest a new Math curriculum, dubbed “Discovery Math” by a growing number of parents, math professors, and local business advocates. Spearheaded by Dr. Nhung Tran-Davies and bearing a Math Petition with 18,074 signatures, the protestors continued to pressure a succession of Education ministers for changes to restore basics-first math instruction. The popular protests came on the heels of a May 2015 C.D. Howe Institute report claiming that Canada’s math teachers need to shift their focus away from discovery-based learning and move back towards traditional methods.
Indigenous Leadership Renewal
A new harvest of Indigenous leaders began to emerge in 2015 aroused by the Stephen Harper Conservative government’s intransigence and emboldened by the public support engendered by the nation-wide TRC hearings. Two of the better known of the newly empowered generation were National Assembly of First Nations chief Perry Bellegarde, who succeeded the deposed Shawn Atleo, and the multi-talented Wab Kinew, author, host of CBC’s Canada Reads competition, and Associate Vice-President at the University of Winnipeg.
Memorable Downticks
TDSB Leadership Upheaval
Canada’s largest public school district, Toronto District School Board, endured one of its worst years on record. When Board Director Donna Quan resigned in mid-November 2015, it brought a tumultuous end to her short tenure, 18 months before the expiration of her contract. Torn by a deep rift between Quan, her staff and the elected Board, the beleaguered Director stepped aside. In doing so, she also bowed to the findings of an earlier TDSB investigation, ordered by Education Minister Liz Sandals, that described in detail the board’s “culture of fear” and dysfunctional leadership.
School Closure Express Train
Armed with the dreaded New Brunswick Policy 409, and aided by that province’s District Education Councils (DECs), Education Minister Serge Rousselle and his Department imposed a top-down, speeded-up “school sustainability process” upon supporters of a dozen threatened rural schools. Described by critics as a runaway “Express Train 409” bearing down on their communities, it sparked the formation in April 2015 of the first Rural Schools Coalition in the province.
Protracted Ontario Teachers’ Strikes
A year of teacher strike disputes continued in Ontario, with a few interruptions, until November 2015. Public elementary school teachers (EFTO) reached a tentative salary deal in early November, ending a lengthy period of work-to-rule. Support staff represented by a separate union (CUPE) also struck a deal then, ending negotiations that lasted over a year. One major difference between the November deals reached with ETFO and CUPE and the agreements with other unions is that these did not come with payments from the government to cover the unions’ negotiating expenses. A return to normalcy was promised with the issuing of full December 2015 student report cards.
Missing B.C. Student Records
British Columbia’s Minister of Technology Amrik Virk shocked British Columbians in late September 2015 when he publicly disclosed the loss of an unencrypted backup hard drive containing about 3.4 million student records. The missing hard drive contained student data from 1986 to 2009, including information on children in care with serious health and behaviour issues. While the minister called the breach “low risk,” the B.C. information and privacy commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, claimed it raised “very serious privacy issues,” and launched an investigation.
Threat to Local Education Democracy
Elected school boards continued to flounder across Canada in 2015 because they are being eclipsed by expanding centralized administration far removed from students and parents. Since the stiff warning issued in a 2013 Canadian School Boards Association study, conducted by Gerald Galway and a Memorial University research team, elected trustees have been unable to recover their “voice of the people” role and face probable extinction. In the fall of 2015, Quebec and P.E.I. joined New Brunswick in ending elected boards. Disbanding school trustees without a viable replacement is not what’s best for students, parents, or local schools.
So much for the most visible trends and newsworthy events: Where is Canadian K-12 education drifting? Will the next round of OECD Education international tests show any real change in student performance levels? Is the era of centralized administration and standardization showing signs of fracturing in our provincial school systems? Has the education sector borne the full brunt of government austerity or is more to come? Will elected school boards survive as presently constituted across Canada?
Educhatter 
My Annual Education Reviews for Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island go into more depth in analyzing provincial trends. They appeared in The Chronicle Herald and the Charlottetown Guardian, once again this year, over the past week. Here are the links:
http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/1329586-nowns-education-uncertainty-after-skittish-year
http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/Opinion/Letter-to-editor/2015-12-31/article-4390758/Rocking-P.E.I.-education-boat/1
It’s encouraging to see teachers surfacing in Nova Scotia and finding their public voices. I seem to have PEI all to myself, so far.
People want to assign TDSB chaos to personalities. I tend to see it as a giant exercise in creating a huge organization with awesome responsibilities and then seriously underfunding it and jamming it with endless provincial accountability.
If you want local democracy in education then local boards must be given all the tax power and all the power over programming curriculum testing school opening closing whatever.
I do see it as an all or nothing proposition.
Happy New Year Paul and I hope 2016 is a healthy and prosperous one for you and yours.
Many thanks Paul for all your support and expertise in all things educational. Please continue your work here, as we have benefitted from your perspective and look forward to more of the same in 2016. All the best.
American teacher-blogger Larry Ferlazzo has just posted this commentary on his “Best Year-End Round-Up List” for 2015. Take a look at the other lists, all originating in the United States:
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2015/12/28/the-best-education-year-in-review-round-ups-for-2015/
My more optimistic hope is that we might finally have a Federal government who cares even a little bit about 1st Nations education and will fund it at the provincial level. We should fund it at double the provincial level as compensatory education until results are equal.
Sadly,transparency must come first.
I`ve worked in quite a few and it`s very complex to address.
I wish the same though and agree with you completely.
Unfortunately in 1867 Section 91 92 of BNA Act we decided education was provincial. No sense losing sleep over it. Zero chance to change it.
If we continue to look to the US for our next reforms than hopefully there will be a conversation about the limits of charter schools, further questions about the role of standardized testing and facing the reality that schools in different SES areas are funded differently.
Larry Ferlazzo also reinforced the strong role that teachers need to play in reforming the systems. He posted about one district where teachers had to fight to ensure that their students had recess.
I also agree with those who believe that school boards need to have some taxing power to fund local needs and initiatives.
Good post Matt. We have almost nothing to learn from south of 49. We don’t need “no excuses” charter schools ( neither do they).
Within the corporate reform group many have an ideological spectrum that runs – private good, public bad. That is the scope of these free market fundamentalists. The money for the effort comes from the Waltons of Walmart fame, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and many other very wealthy people who keep a lower profile.
I basically support almost everything in this thread beginning with Paul’s upticks and downticks. I have but one MINOR quibble with Doug’s comments on TDSB.
In my experience with TDSB. I think trustee “contributions” to the chaos, while not significant in the overall mistakes in amalgamation, had more deleterious effects on curriculum policy than Doug might accept. I found trustees on all parts of the political circle (spectrum is an outdate metaphor not supported by historical evidence) had their unique “passions” which we in classrooms and in roles as central office curriculum supports were forced to endure despite some questionable merits unsupported by evidence.
This explains why around the time of amalgamation a number of very talented people (and me) took early retirement or gravitated to teacher education where we felt we could positively influence current and future teachers.
There is at least one other Canadian blog that slams preservice education based on no useful Canadian evidence though there is still too much missing in teacher education to be smug. Teacher ed is much better than it was decades ago though the demands on teachers may have grown even faster.
It would be my hope that some day preservice ed becomes one of Paul’s year end upticks. We are not there yet but some of us
– are actually trying
– do pay attention to solid research on teaching and learning
– and try as best we can to resist the flavors, bandwagons and passions that infect teacher education as well as policy in general: a part of the human condition it seems based on recent work in history, psychology and politics (Rob Ford and Donald Trump being examples of negative consequences, the recent federal election results being an example of (to date) of positive consequences).
I really don’t disagree with John’s points.
I prefer a Cartesian chart for politics -left right on the x axis, ends justify means or not on y axis as used by CBC vote compass.
Historic figure closest to my score? Ghandi 🙂
https://votecompass.cbc.ca/
A Blight Has Settled On Our Schools – 2016 Will Open Eyes
Anything but research drives our schools. After decades of ignoring evidence and proven standard practices 2016 will see a crescendo of signs that TRUTH is emerging through the haze of fumbling school behaviors.
There is a long history here and most people, especially parents, have no idea what has happened or continues to happen still.
If you’re a farmer you know the damage done by blight. It sneaks in, attacks your crop, but doesn’t kill immediately. Over the years, the disease has embedded itself into the very seeds so that gradually the whole farm crops are destroyed from within.
This is akin to what’s happened in education. Educators — for various reasons, some for dubious pedagogic reasons, others for teacher-empowerment reasons — have subscribed to methods which were/are untested but had/have strong beliefs attached.
Mindsets became engrained. Constructivism is a global label for the predominant movement featuring — relativism, subjectivism, learning-by-doing, no textbooks, discovery, inquiry, child-centered, etc. approaches — excluding or disparaging standardized testing, direct instruction by teachers and evidence-based programs. Even students are heard to reply in conversations, “That’s just your opinion!”
It is this nose-thumbing of evidence-based research that is most troubling today. Eric Kalenze in his important education reform book — Education is Upside-Down, 2014 — says educators continue to “turn their noses up at research around building effective readers”.
To get caught-up to the Reading-Wars and the mindset battles that continue to this day, read this 4 year old article — A is for Apple, B is for Brawl —
http://nymag.com/news/features/16775/index3.html
I neither have time nor interest in responding to the errors/stereotyping/untested assumptions/generalizations unsupported by evidence in this post, largely because
– to cynics no evidence is sufficient
– to true believers no evidence is required
Tunya traditionalists have been saying this long before Dewey. Good luck I suppose.
True believers. Interesting bunch.
Tuniya ,I know that you probably feel the way I do when you hear these objections, just pity poor Dr Stanovich at OISE but
John and Doug don’t run the country.
I was at a meeting recently that asked why are there so many LD kids and the answer is we manufacture them.
I agree 100% we manufacture most LD kids.
-poverty
-neglect -1st Nations
-large classes
-lack of ECE
-racism
-FAS
-lack of nutrition
-lack of dental, vision care
-housing, transportation
–
For the record
Keith Stanovich is a fine scholar and I have learned much from h9is work and implement his ideas as best I can when appropriate.
The LD question has been around since the late 1970s when I began to work in this area as a classroom teacher. The question you raise about LDis most appropriate after all this time.
BTW I am a teacher, not a czar, nor an educational pundit or “educrat”.Unless you read minds, ascribing intentions is silly.
Since the tone on this blog has almost always been civil, I shall sign off.
John I simply replied to your response to Tunya’s excellent post.
???
Manufactured LD
At least two books on topic:
– Programmed Illiteracy in Our Schools, Mary Johnson, 1970. This book is not available for sale but can be borrowed through inter-library loan. Johnson was a teacher in Winnipeg. Bruce Deitrick Price did a splendid Book Review and called her a Mama Grizzly. Go to Amazon.com, put in title and author, and this one review turns up.
– Sponsored Reading Failure, Martin Turner, 1990 This monograph is also unavailable, but this was condensed and turned into a chapter on Google Books — 17 pages, https://books.google.ca/books?id=Nbm3IKdE35sC&pg=PA111&lpg=PA111&dq=sponsored+Reading+Failure&source=bl&ots=dznw1_wpr2&sig=il3wCyyVVH_GZU92IrYsLpBwRwY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6sLmC4ZHKAhUU0mMKHbR-AQUQ6AEIIzAA#v=onepage&q=sponsored%20Reading%20Failure&f=false
Not that impressive.
This is where we need to end up.
http://www.fountainmagazine.com/Issue/detail/CONSTRUCTIVISM-in-Piaget-and-Vygotsky
It is my belief that the charter school and privatization fad will crest and break this year as they prove no added value and continue to be plagued with scandal at every turn.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1209244?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Herb Kliebard in The Struggle for the American Curriculum outlines how traditionalists and progressives including constrictivists like Piaget and Vogotsky have been at war over curriculum for many decades verging on centuries now.
This is like Orwell’s 1984 where he says “Oceana has always been at war with East Asia”
In truth the American curriculum has elements of both just as their government will always have Democrats and Republicans.
The balance may shift in one direction for a decade or even two but it then shifts back.
There is no “final victory” for EITHER side in this.
Get used to it.
That`s your opinion,not a truism.
Everything here is an opinion Jo Anne.
Why Is Education So Cultish?
Like in 1984, the wars in education between “traditionalist” and “progressives” are but an imposture, a deception.
The public and consumers are given an excuse not to get involved because “they” whichever side “they” are on are the ones to keep the other at bay. Trust us! It’s interchangeable. Transformation! Trust us!
I’ve ordered this Kliebard book mentioned by Doug because it’s considered a classic in Education Faculties. If this history book perpetuates a legend of continual conflict between different beliefs — that will be interesting. Because that seems to be where we’re at even today — one BELIEF against another — facts, knowledge, evidence-based research, proven standard practices, don’t count.
It’s just one cult versus another cult. One opinion versus another opinion. Heaven help us!
No wonder this young writer, Nikhil Goyal is frustrated and calls all this educational malpractice. His book comes out soon. Schools on Trial: How Freedom and Creativity Can Fix Our Educational Malpractice — http://www.amazon.com/Schools-Trial-Creativity-Educational-Malpractice/dp/0385540124/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1452053197&sr=8-2-fkmr0
I don’t think evidence based comes into it Tunya. Both sides have academics. Both sides have researchers. Both sides have studies up the wazoo.
The struggle continues at every level.
Kline bards basic thesis IMHO is this.
The American school and school system represents the compromise of the competing visions. It is part traditional and part constructivist.
As one group gains an upper hand it may shift somewhat but returns to stasis very quickly as the forces exhaust themselves. Sometimes it is 50/50. Sometimes 60/40 for one of the forces.
In many ways “the compromise” may be the not just the best we can do – it might be the best possible result.
https://www.the74million.org/article/ohio-fixed-its-scandal-plagued-charter-schools-right-not-so-fast
The problem with charters? If you want good ones (quality)there will be very few. Not enough to change national trajectory.
If you want many charters (quantity) you end up like Ohio with hundreds of low quality charters running behind public schools.
Opinions and a buck will get you a McCafe. As I have noted in other posts, and supported by ed researchers from Stanovich to Hattie to Marzano to Englemann to Wallberg and researchers in all fields
– evidence counts
– opinion does not
– either / or or all or nothing positions are usually “incomplete” when it comes to human behavior and what shapes it.
– even constructivist advocates confused theories of learning (which it is) with models of teaching (which it is not)- behaviorists can do this too though less so
– it is noteworthy that the two most strongly research supported teaching strategies
direct instruction
and
cooperative group learning
largely fall under one of the above theories of learning
have some elements that fall under the other category
It is also noteworthy that the history of humanity’s development has evolved greatly over the past 500 years
not because we have evolved biologically
but
because we have come to recognize
– we do not know everything
– we need to explore what we don’t know
– we need to make meaning (the heart of constructivism)
If you want to deny 500 years of human experience and the evidence that goes with it, go ahead, but you will be out of date with human history.
So
What do we know about learning?
What do we know about teaching that supports learning?
How do we know? John Hattie has the best current answer- “Know Thy Impact.”
But
note that because our mindset for centuries has been to recognize ignorance, the scientist in us will note that
while Hattie has the best account today
it may not the the best account in a generation as we do more research into those conditions that promote learning.
That I have made these points before and have been ignored while people do same old, same old would be a downtick to use Paul’s term.
Citing Kliebard or Neatby from half a century ago and assuming things were better then is the mindset of the European middle ages.
Finally, let me cite just ONE book for you all to read and learn from
Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
Many others in the past decade in the fields of history and psychology have written similarly- Dan Kaneman, Dan Pink, Stephen Pinker to name three.
Back to preparing for class including
– lessons, tests, readings, information presenting and “gasp” group activities structured cooperatively so that all have to work to get the job done with every member of the team being accountable for their part.
The point of Kliebard is not which teaching/learning theory is correct but more a history book about the nature of the education wars to date.
John the problem with the “why don’t we just do what works” perspective is that we live in a democratic society in which, the ‘deciders’ as George WBUSH called them will not choose ‘evidence’ over ‘popularity’ at any juncture.
As a result, progress towards “what works” is very slow, full of setbacks, and often overtaken by events as you describe – new research, new successful models.
It is also intensely political with ‘traditional’ education largely congruent with right-of-centre political forces and progressive/constructivist education largely congruent to left-of-centre political forces.
Each will only give up ground grudgingly, notwithstanding any evidence. They simply unleash their own academics to refute it.
All Kliebard is saying is that the seeming mishmash of American education is like the Treaty of Versailles between the factions.
A temporary lull in the ongoing power struggle.
Why do they all care so much? Because they ALL hope that the school system will educate generations who think like them allowing a hegemony for their various political perspectives.
Conservatives also hope to shift education towards ‘job training’. Liberals (liberals really) want education to lead to greater personal happiness and fulfillment while social – democrats want education to be a greater instrument of social justice.
Naturally all three must be part of the scene but it is largely a matter of how many curriculum hours should be devoted to each pursuit.
Your last statement is a political question to be decided democratically, as messy as that is. But if we ignore evidence then nothing changes. It is a bad mindset but very hard to break. Competing ideologies are like religious faith-fine and needed in some realm, but not in others.
The goals of schooling are contested as is necessary in a democracy. The means to achieve them needs to be evidence-based.
The US education wars are hardly a model to be emulated in Canada.
It should be that way but it doesn`t happen.
There is a dictatorship that runs the ship.
I can`t figure out how it could change but definitely,evidence is not the driver.
There`s a big difference between research studies,they need to be gold standard. ,
John you can say we must be evidence based until the cows come home but if the “evidence ” showed a conservative government that progressive solutions are best it would be rejected. If a liberal government was shown evidence of “traditional” success it would also be rejected.
The alternative is blending or alternating.
Witness “balanced literacy”.
Evidence will always need to be squared with the regime in power and the prevailing popular will as expressed in polls on the issue or political polling.
When why blog if nothing changes.
Goodbye
BTW
things do change
Yes we got rid of strap and dunce cap, smaller wages and Canada puts a higher % of people in post secondary than any nation on Earth.
Smaller classes not wages 🙂
Ask any Dean of any university or College,they will tell you that most kids are not prepared when they graduate!They graduate anyway!
In law and accounting,they will tell you about the disintegration of education,they can`t parse a paragraph or correctly write a report.
People say,what happened?
Doug,you make participating in the intellectual hard work of Mr. Bennett`s fine blog very draining.
Look at the preparation in this piece,it is tragic that only your view that we are trying to reform education counts.
We are trying to improve it and many many parents(children) are not being served.
The early years “discovery learning” crap is leaving many kids behind unnecessarily.
I am also trying to improve education. I have dedicated my life to it. I have a 180 degree difference of opinion regarding what works.
There are every bit as many experts on my side of the divide as there are on yours. I would say far more.
The denial of poverty as the main cause of the education gap condemns the entire corporate reform movement to the margins of the education debate.
I am dedicated to educational improvement through :
Smaller classes
ECE
Higher wages
Mitigation of poverty
Nutrition
Dental and vision
Funding 1st Nations
Longer training for teachers
And so on with compensatory education.
A critical point is to keep the profiteers and financial sharks of Wall Street far away from the system.
Time Magazine calls Canada “the world’s best education system”. Depending on your criteria there is a strong case for it.
I do believe Paul understands this.
Evidence counts and in most though not all cases, evidence is on Doug’s side.
Those why decry “declining standards” are wrong due to the mathematical concept called
Simpson’s Paradox
Every subgroup in a population;e.g. every decile, improves but the overall “standard” drops. This is because we include groups who were not in earlier populations.
Let’s take Ontario university undergrad enrolment as an example
While the population of the province has increased a little more the fourfold in the last century,
the undergrad enrolment at universities has increased 50fold. Note I am not including community colleagues which did not exist back then.
Of course we could kick out the bottom 250, 000 students but there would be consequences.
One feature of the modern mindset (noted in an earlier post) is to recognize what we do not know and explore the darkness to bring more knowledge to bear.
Pining for a past that never existed based on historical evidence (also noted above) is unproductive.
How does that address my comment on Discovery Learning as a strategy for learning when there`s no foundation for the exploration IN THE EARLY YEARS..after all if I`m going to try to address any theory I need SOME KNOWLEDGE!Why don`t we keep our kids at home and let them play with Lego all day and simply take them to creative and sport groups for socialization?Dear school board,give parent back their tax money!
How can kids get to grade 6 and not know the difference between a noun and a verb and a period and a semi colon?Or for that matter a vowel and a consonant?
Your problem is that Canada is always near the top of PISA for the reading level of 15 year Olds.
Of real whole nations ( not Singapore, Shanghai, HK or Macao) only Japan reads clearly better. Canada is tied with Finland for 2nd place. At this point your argument collapses.
I guess you could include South Korea if you want your kids in school until 10PM ?
Japan 538
Korea 536
Finland 524
Canada 523
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/dec/03/pisa-results-country-best-reading-maths-science
Of course one reason Japan leads the pack is next to zero immigration.
No JSL classes needed.
The easiest policy in the world to maintain standards in university would only allow the same % of the population that had access to university in 1935 to attend today. At that time it was overwhelmingly affluent and English speaking. Wow. Our standard would be sky high but the population would tar and feather the politicians that promote it.
The trouble with teacher training is it lives in zero accountability sphere.
Can’t believe I need to respond to this.
Schools have their informal rankings of teacher education programs and only hire those they think are best suited to their schools. They read resumes and do interviews.
It might be nice for for public and formal ratings, but to say the accountability is ZERO is simply not true.
Charter Scoops in 2016 will continue to deal with scadal after scandal.
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-taxpayers-assume-risk-little-gain-for-charter-schools/2258977
I feel that charters are an instrument to deal with the apathy of chronically failing public schools but as a blogger here,I am not someone who ever goes there..I am someone who feels that the public schools need to help the struggling kids,it`s a moral obligation and they need to do it with instruments based on science,not marketing babble.
That`s my gripe.
I have a recent gold standard research study that was just listed on ERIC.
As a Canadian who has invested in the clinical creation of a system to deal with strugglers and support the teacher,it`s a didactic experience,I was never supported in my country even though I am a Canadian.
There,once this research was completed I was “offered a grant’ of some magnitude by a famous university to do a much larger scale study.We are working on that now.
I feel that if you have a charter school and you use the same methods as the public school,what is the point?
Many people agree with me,the only difference is,they have a lot of pressure to perform.That`s why they make sense.
By the way,my study took place in a Title 1 district and so will the next one.
Re your poverty stance…
Anybody who tries to take the position that poverty is not THE central issue in the achievement gap when ALL the data from all of the standardized testing that THEY demanded, shows a straight line decline in test results from rich to poor has a tough row to hoe convincing all of the social science researchers that they are wrong.
Some like Berliner don’t just show THAT the achievement gap exists but exactly WHY it exists.
Agenda 2016 — Get Data On Private Tutoring
Paradoxically, concerning the issue of poverty and school achievement, it is the very champions of the poor who are the most responsible for this predicament. It is the traditional left, while decrying poverty as a major cause of school failure who by their omissions not only help perpetuate this problem but actually contribute to widening that gap.
It is E D Hirsch, himself a socialist or quasi socialist, who draws our attention to this matter. He says that regarding education these utopian, romantic, Freirian (after Paulo Freire) educators — instead of leveling people down — should follow the Marxist Antonio Gramsci line of approach.
“Gramsci was not the only observer to predict the inegalitarian consequences of “naturalistic,” “project oriented,” “hands-on,” “critical-thinking,” and so-called “democratic” education.” Gramsci wrote about conservative schooling for radical politics. Hirsch continues: “[students] should learn the value of hard work, gain the knowledge that leads to understanding, and master the traditional culture in order to command its rhetoric.”
It is because the traditional left in education — the teacher trainers, the bureaucrats, the teacher unions and teachers — who do not place a high value on reading and math who are making the achievement gap between rich and poor even wider. The Economist in a 2006 article on The Search For Talent concluded that because of the child-centered approach in education the “chief victims of this were underprivileged children who could not rely on their parents to make up for the deficiencies of their schools.”
The year 2016, hopefully, should produce some studies of the growing private tutoring industry and see if there is some correlation regarding the adequacy of school programming.
Socialists in their central control mindset would outlaw private tutoring, wouldn’t they, instead of seeing their expansion as a signal to improve schooling?
That is odd. In the USA the Democratic states outperform the Republican states by a mile. The countries in Europe that often have Labour/Socialist/Social Democratic governments have very high achievement.
Once high flying Sweden has Ben falling ever since the Social Democrats finally lost an election.
The left is a broad catagory containing it’s share of cranks.
There is almost nowhere that actually runs a pure constructivist curriculum or a pure traditionalist curriculum.
Everybody has blends some simply lean a little more one way or the other.
Cuba may well have the best 3rd world education system
For an educator who postulates that all your adamance is for supporting the poor you don`t in the same breath care what`s good for them.
I only have a small piece here and it`s prevention and early reading intervention so students can do well later and not fall through the cracks.
I know a great deal about that and have no overarching views other than manufacturing learning disabilities should be viewed as education malpractice!
Yes Much of LD is manufactured by the failure to offer proper financial support to education for smaller classes deeper faster ECE more support staff….
Agenda 2016 – 2 – Recall, Rebates, Remediation, Regret . . .
Whichever way you shake it, the focus in education will increasingly be on accountability.
– How many inmates in prisons and corrections simply cannot read? Cause and effect?
– How much remediation in the basics is being done in colleges and universities? Do feeder schools get a bill for corrective work?
– How many “learning disabilities” are really “teaching disabilities”? Teaching refusals? Withholding of effective standard practice?
The BIG question will loom large: What are schools for besides babysitting?
Education reform books will be eagerly studied. Amongst them will surely be: Education is Upside-Down: Reframing reform to focus on the right problems, Eric Kalenze, 2014. See this quote:
“It should be noted that the problem of low-ability readers in advanced grades sprouts from seeds planted in the early grades, when students are still learning to decode written language. As so many who teach and choose curriculum in American education’s early grades turn their noses up at research around building effective readers . . . preferring instead to deploy whole language-inspired approaches like Balanced Literacy to teach primary-grade readers, scores of students are sent into the upper-elementary grades with nothing close to mastery of reading’s basic requirements.’ (p75)
The tide on so called test driven accountability is already going out. There is a massive anti testing movement in USA especially in NY state that has forced Governor Cuomo to back down on test driven accountability. ESSA has dialed back federal test driven accountability.
It has been tried. It failed.
Teachers have almost nothing to say in those matters Tunya. They are inspected and judged on the prevailing ethos. If they taught as you like they would be failed by inspectors and principals.
The government is responsible since they alone set a policy framework for the whole system. If you can’t change the government’s with a political party of your liking you will get nowhere. Even conservative parties change very little.
Graduating unprepared students:
Prepare to be astonished,
http://eric.ed.gov/?q=Remediation+Plus+effectiveness+study&id=EJ1038729
Both universities and colleges have been saying the same thing since Plato. “Send us better students”. The rest of the system says to them “you are the gatekeeper of your own admissions. Don’t accept students if you don’t like them. That would force the government to invest more in education. “
Of course the post secondary would have to lay off half their staff but if they want only very high quality students they can do incoming tests.
They want to make millions from off shore students who have high intelligence bit not enough English. They are trying to push the problem off on K12 who only had the kids for 1-2 years. The kids got 90 math 90 science 65 English. The university accepted them and then said ” OMG their English is not high enough” but if they don’t accept them California will.
They charge these kids $ 35000 but don’t want to supply support. Post secondary is asking too much and will not get it.
I note how Simpson’s Paradox is ignored. Perhaps we are math phobic.
They can’t deal with it. The whole reform edifice is built on the idea that things are terrible and getting worse due to progressive education methods.
When you prove that things are good and getting better they are left with little to say. As a result they ignore.
“But the curious thing is that the progressive educator, in the name of democracy, has in effect accepted the distinction, originally made by the Greek and Roman aristocracy and so repugnant to us today, that there is an education suitable for the few and an education suitable for the many, an education for free men and an education for slaves.”
Ref: Hilda Neatby U/Sask
The truth in that edu beat, is that we still do not spend enough on compensatory education, aboriginal education, … and we still run a streaming system that favors the affluent over the poor.
The last great necessary reforms.
Destreaming would make a HUGE difference.
Quite the reverse,I believe the argument has been won.
By the way,we are concerned citizens wanting better outcomes,none of us here are reformers.
You`ve been reading too much U.S. propaganda!
What argument are you referring to.
Nope sorry. You are all lumped together with the right wing corporate reform movement which has Fraser Institute and SQE at its core.
Interested citizens? What are all those who oppose your direction.
Like many on the reform side you see the argument in terms of right and wrong.
It is political.
Education is Upside-Down: Reframing reform to focus on the right problems, Eric Kalenze, 2014. See this quote:
“It should be noted that the problem of low-ability readers in advanced grades sprouts from seeds planted in the early grades, when students are still learning to decode written language. As so many who teach and choose curriculum in American education’s early grades turn their noses up at research around building effective readers . . . preferring instead to deploy whole language-inspired approaches like Balanced Literacy to teach primary-grade readers, scores of students are sent into the upper-elementary grades with nothing close to mastery of reading’s basic requirements.’ (p75)
Tunya`s excellent quote!
The dyslexic brain and the child raised in impoverishment is the same brain.
You can`t just fling money at teachers you need to train them and there needs to be a conscious effort to train them.
Doug,I feel satisfied that I have tried to illuminate and it`s time for me to move on.
Your glaring flaw is your inability to consider research as THE important nuance towards improvement.
No western nation reads better than Canada (PISA).
Only 2 nations on Earth read at higher levels. Japan has virtually no immigration. Koran stay in hagwons until 10 PM.
No nation on this Earth graduates more young people from post secondary. ( Time Magazine, StatsCan).
Can we do better? Sure we can always do better but the solutions lie in mitigating poverty and the effects of poverty in schools so says the OECD.
The world should be asking, and some are, how do Canadians do so well with education. Perhaps we can learn from CANADA.
Why public schools outperform both private and charter schools.
http://news.illinois.edu/news/13/1111private_schools_ChristopherLubienski_SarahLubienski.html