“Canadians can be proud of our showing in the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report,” declared Science consultant Bonnie Schmidt and former Council of Ministers of Education (CMEC) director Andrew Parkin in their first-off-the mark December 6, 2016 response to the results. “We are, ” they added, “one of only a handful of countries that places in the top tier of the Oganization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) in each of the three subjects tested:science, reading and math.”
“Canada” and “Canadian students,” we were told, were once again riding high in the once-every-three-years international test sweepstakes. If that that effusively positive response had a familiar ring, it was because it followed the official line advanced by a markedly similar CMEC media release, issued a few hours before the commentary.
Since our students, all students in each of our ten provincial school systems, were “excelling,” then it was time for a little national back-slapping. There’s one problem with that blanket analysis: it serves to maintain the status quo, engender complacency, obscure the critical Mathematics scores, and disguise the lopsided nature of student performance from region to region.
Hold on, not so fast, CMEC — the devil is in the real details and more clearly portrayed in the OECD’s own “Country Profile” for Canada. Yes, 15-year-olds in three Canadian provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, and Quebec) achieved some excellent results, but overall Mathematics scores were down, and students in over half of our provinces trailed-off into mediocrity in terms of performance. Our real success was not in performance, but rather in reducing the achievement gap adversely affecting disadvantaged students.
Over half a million 15-year-olds in more than 72 jurisdictions all over the world completed PISA tests, and Schmidt and Parkin were not alone in making sweeping pronouncements about why Canada and other countries are up and others down in the global rankings.
Talking in aggregate terms about the PISA performance of 20,000 Canadian students in ten different provinces can be, and is, misleading, when the performance results in mathematics continue to lag, Ontario students continue to underperform, and students in two provinces, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, struggle in science, reading, and mathematics. Explaining all that away is what breeds complacency in the school system.
My own PISA 2015 forecast was way off-base — and taught me a lesson. After the recent TIMSS 2015 Mathematics results released in November 2016, an East Asian sweep, led by Singapore and Korea, seemed like a safe bet. How Finland performs also attracts far less attention than it did in its halcyon days back in 2003 and 2006. The significant OECD pivot away from excellence to equity caught me napping and I completely missed the significance of moving (2012 to 2015) from pencil-and-paper to computer-based tests.
Some solace can be found in the erroneous forcecasts of others. The recent Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) “Brace Yourself” memo with its critique of standardized testing assessment, seemed to forecast a calamitous drop in Alberta student performance levels. It only happened in Mathematics.
Advocates of the ‘Well-Being’ curriculum and broader assessment measures, championed by Toronto’s People for Education, will likely be temporarily thrown off-stride by the OECD’s new-found commitment to assessing equity in education. It will be harder now to paint PISA as evil and to discredit PISA results based upon such a narrow range of skills in reading, math and science.
The OECD’s “Country Profile” of Canada is worth studying carefully because it aggregates data from 2003 to 2015, clarifies the trends, and shows how Canadian students continue to struggle in mathematics far more than in reading and science.
Canadian students may have finished 12th in Mathematics with a 516 aggregate score, but the trend line continues to be in decline, down from 532 in 2003. Digging deeper, we see that students in only two provinces, Quebec ( 544) and BC (522) actually exceeded the national mean score. Canada’s former leader in Mathematics performance, Alberta, continued its downward spiral from the lofty heights of 549 (2003) to 511 (2015).
Since Ontario students’ provincial mathematics scores are declining, experts will be pouring over the latest PISA results to see how bad it is in relation to the world’s top performing systems. No surprises here: Ontario students scored 509, finishing 4th in Canada, and down from 530 on PISA 2003. Excellence will require a significant change in direction.
The biggest discovery in post-2015 PISA analysis was the positive link between explicit instruction and higher achievement in the 2015 core assessment subject, science. The most important factor linked with high performance remains SES (soci0-economic status), but teacher-guided instruction was weighted close behind and students taught with minimal direction, in inquiry or project-based classes, simply performed less well on the global test.
The results of the 15-year-olds are largely determined over 10 years of schooling, and not necessarily the direct consequence of the latest curriculum fad such as “discovery math.’’
It’s better to look deeper into what this cohort of students were learning when they first entered the school system, in the mid-1990s. In the case of Canadian students, for example, student-centred learning was at its height, and the country was just awakening to the value of testing to determine what students were actually learning in class.
Where the student results are outstanding, such as Singapore and Estonia, it is not solely attributable to the excellence of teaching or the rigour of the math and science curriculum.
We know from the “tutoring explosion” in Canada’s major cities that the prevalence of private tuition classes after school is a contributing factor, and may explain the current advantage still enjoyed in mathematics by Pacific Rim students.
Children of Chinese heritage in Australia actually outperformed students in Shanghai on the 2012 PISA test, and we need to explore whether that may be true for their counterparts in Greater Vancouver. The so-called “Shanghai Effect” may be attributed as much to “tiger mothers” as it is to the quality of classroom instruction.
Whether Canada and Canadians continue to exhibit high PISA self-esteem or have simply plateaued does not matter as much as what we glean over the next few years from studying best international practice in teaching, learning, and assessment.
Surveying PISA student results, this much is clear: standing still is not an option in view of the profound changes that are taking place in life, work, and society.
Wow, this is a thoughtful, well written commentary. Excellent analysis of the PISA data. Just a footnote, about BC’s math scores…they have remained stagnant from 2012 at 522, and I believe it might even be for longer, since 2006, where it then experienced a 16 point decline from previous years. So yes, complacency+explosion of tutoring enrolment in this province might have something to do with the lacklustre performance of our students. Also note that Canada’s overall score has not changed since Science was the major domain in 2006. So suggesting we’re the best in the world at some things has a hollow ring to it. An examination past the headline, as you have done here, is required if we truly want to produce our students as being “global” competitors.
Numerous excellent points here Paul!
You didn’t mention something that caught my eye, though. Notice the disappearance of Shanghai in 2015. It’s not that Shanghai is no longer participating, but that its results have been rolled into a larger “China” number, so it is disguised. The four-province “China” figure falls just above Canada.
Considering that Shanghai has a population of 11 million and 3 years earlier was performing well over 600 on the PISA — leaving all other systems in the dust, and 100 points above Canada — this huge drop clearly represents that among the other three Chinese regions rolled into this figure there is at least one extremely poor performance.
This change not only masks the astounding success of the Shanghai system, it obscures the alarmingly low performance of another Chinese system.
In fact, that may well be the point.
PISA has received some criticism in the past, first for treating Shanghai as a separate system and, second, for not publishing scores for some Chinese regions that participated in the assessment.
My guess is that the OECD put its foot down (or rather buckled to pressure from educationists unhappy with Shanghai making China look better than it really is on average) and insisted that all Chinese scores be published. And I’m guessing that China’s response was to re-aggregate the China score to avoid embarrassment for the lower-performing regions.
I dislike this. I think we need — as you have argued brilliantly here — a more careful parsing of PISA scores to distinguish between geographically close school systems with very different internal characteristics.
If the Shanghai effect does exist and affects (for example) BC’s score, it leads me to ask what the effect on the score would be if those students were subtracted from the data. Further, about 10% of BC elementary schools are using JUMP Math. From what we’ve seen when JUMP is properly used, students experience much higher success rates. To what extent are these things skewing the BC figures?
You can say the same across the country. How are private schools, those which don’t conform to the progressive ideology, affect scores? To what extent is the (documented) huge increase in the use of Tutorial centers muting the negative effects of pedagogy, curriculum and resources?
I wonder if one could successfully petition the OECD to disaggregate PISA data and have it grouped according to such factors.
As usual Paul you have presented many different points to consider. First, we typically measure our success based on an overall score and how it compares from year to year. We tend to focus less on what produced the score. There has been a push in most provinces to lower the achievement gap and the results of the PISA suggest that we are headed in the right direction in this area. Is the focus in Canada moving Level 3 students to Level 4 or moving Level 1 and 2 students to Level 3? Many other countries have less concern about reducing the gap which can play a role in skewing the results.
The second point is the role of the tutoring explosion in this country. Many would argue that this explosion shows a weakness in our education system. There could also be an argument that unfortunately tutoring is becoming part of the need to be successful in this competitive world. One only needs to look at the usual successful PISA countries to see that most also have a much more intensive tutoring system than we could imagine, or want, in this country. All I can think is education and tutoring is similar to hockey and power skating. Unfortunately, both education and hockey have added these extra elements that should be optional but are now considered a requirement to success.
One can also never forget the reality that our systems are a provincial responsibility. I wonder if greater success in overall score or closing the achievement gap might be attained through more federal responsibility?
Lots of agreement Matt.
– on the importance of helping ALL students achieve
– on the significance of the “explosion” in tutoring
I would hope that any national efforts would not follow the American pattern
The tutoring phenomenon is a relatively recent response to the changing pedagogy introduced to our schools. Tutoring has always been available to Canadian students, however dig a little deeper and one will find that in the past decade or so, enrollment in these centres, and private tutors, has skyrocketed. In the past 10 years, tutoring has really taken off in both AB and BC. It’s unprecedented. This is something that many across the country have been lobbying our provincial and federal government institutions to track. None have budged. A closer examination might explain why it’s so predominant in so many homes.
A decade (or 2) ago, 15 year olds might not have had as much trouble adding double digit addition in their heads. Today, they weep, as they sit in Kumon, because they have no clue. A quick review of curriculum – today’s vs. that written 10, 20 even 30 years ago gives a glimpse of the pedagogy and guidelines which were expected of teachers and classroom teaching. This cannot easily be explained away by observing what other nations are doing. Here in Canada, it’s very easy to see the changes and make a connection about where the weaknesses are, and where improvements need to be.
The ‘tutoring explosion’ (read: helping our highest SES students) should have raised our scores, but didn’t. The improvement in equity (read: helping our lowest SES performers) should also have raised our scores, but didn’t.
That points to a declining performance of the broad middle swath of students. There’s good reason that forecasters expected the worst.
The challenge is that those two improvements are likely exhausted.
The fascinating thing about these conversations is that they are familiar and, in a sense, comfortable.
First, the same voices chime in. The same folks have been putting their two cents in for several years.
Second, the same positions are stated by those same people. In other words, no one has moved in their thinking.
The people that believe that pedagogy is the problem still believe it to be so.
The people that believe that socio-economic factors are key still believe it to be so.
The people that believe that there are systemic differences between jurisdictions still believe it to be so.
So, same voices, same positions=status quo.
The good news is that the system, itself, is shifting and will continue to shift in spite of our entrenchment.
There is so many more important conversations that open up to us when we step away from our talking points and our stances. We need to be uncomfortable in our interpretations and what we hold to be true.
Nicely put Stephen
1) Let’s take a moment to bask in the sunlight of Canada overall high achievement.
2) I will repeat again Macao and Hong Kong are not countries they are special economic zone as different from China as Massachusetts is from Mississippi. They should not be listed. Neither really should Singapore which for historical reasons is a mainly Chinese city state carved out of the Malay peninsula where many of its workers are guest workers from Malaysia. Artificial.
3) Most Asian nations use math specialist teachers from grade 1. Something I highly recommend for those interested in raising scores.
4) The Sask Man problem is highly reflective of the overall 1st Nations education problem in Canada- a disaster by anyone’s standard and our original sin.
5) Korea and Japan are real nations however and very successful in math. Japanese teachers have incredible prep time contracts – anyone? Crickets churping?
6) Asian Americans do every bit as well as Asians in Asia on math tests having suffered under the oppression of inquiry learning. There goes that theory. Better look at SES and cultural priorities a little harder.
7) One might take a moment to notice that Canada RICH provinces do well and POORER provinces do poorly with similar curriculum and pedagogy. That pesky SES again. Quebec being somewhat of an outlier.
8) 25 years of high stakes testing, voucher and charter privatization, teacher bashing, NCLB RTTT, and all the bromide of the corporate reform movement and the USA continues to languish far behind. What do they call it when you do the same thing over and over and expect a different result.
9) results in Alberta have fallen in lock step with the price of oil. Surprised? Not me.
10) Supreme Court forces BC to hire back literally 100s of teachers. I expect their results to continue to climb.
11) Canada is a leading nation in post secondary graduation rate. Want an even higher rate? Make community college free for ALL students and begin working on the elimination of university tuition in stages.
This would pull hundreds of thousands off the job marked helping to create a necessary labour shortage and driving up wages for all. A situation we badly need.
The glass is 90% full. It is very easy go fill it to the brim.
I think that, instead of wanting to stay at the 39 000 ft level, continuing to compare Canadian jurisdictions with other contexts around the world, we need to ground ourselves for a while in real classrooms, in real schools, in real communities. We would benefit from seeing how the pedagogies and practices that we “think” are being used right across Canada are “actually” being implemented. We need to look at the local conditions that are supporting effective teaching and learning or, more important, preventing that teaching and learning from occurring in the manner that we either hope or assume.
Media reports and public hand-wringing about test scores ebb and flow throughout the year but they can never serve as proxies for the “on-the-ground” knowledge of what is actually happening in schools and why. That, I believe, will change the conversation substantially!
A deeper dive into PISA 2015 leads you to CMEC, Table A.1a (CMEC, Measuring Up, 2016) — and provincial “exclusion rates.” Why, for example, were 1 out of 7 PEI students excluded, 11.7 per cent exempted for “intellectual disability.” That’s double the national average of 6.9 per cent.
Paul, it is my understanding, having submitted my class to one of these tests before, that (a) not all students are tested and (b) exclusions can happen at various levels of the process: provinces can choose which districts participate, districts can choose which schools and schools which students.
When we participated (about 7 or 8 years ago), my class was the only group in the school that participated and my school one of two in the district.
Not sure if this has changed, but my point is that the results need to be tempered with a knowledge of who the participants actually are.
As Stephen notes, we are not sure about how “random” the samples being tested are.
As Doug implies but Robert Lynn a testing expert in these measures for decades (supported by Jim Popham, another such expert) BTW expert = experience in designing scoring and interpreting results says.
The idea that large scale testing will somehow improve performance (at least in the US) is without merit.
I wonder if the hand wringing and blame is analogous to the old command
“The beatings will not stop until morale improves.”
Perhaps we should worry more about other things
– decline in voting
– lack of critical thinking and falling for “fake news”
– mean spiritedness, prejudice and venal behaviour by too many
From the end of the 1800s to the 1930s the German school system was admired. Had we tested them for math they likely would have scored well.
Other aspects of their education were sorely lacking as we can see from the historical record.
Very good points John.
The PISA test results yield much that is extremely valuable, leaving aside the contentious and unreliable rankings. You would find the detailed analysis of success correlates absolutely fascinating. With the scale, sample size and breadth (72 jurisdictions), it’s like catnip for education policy researchers. It’s becoming more and more important for its broader data sets.
You are right, John, to question the sampling methods and representativeness of the cohorts. Broadening the China survey reach is a big improvement. I think OECDed needs to be clearer and more vigilant in overseeing “exclusions.” PEI’s sudden rise should have been flagged much earlier.
Be careful with China. I am there dealing with rducation twice a year. They moved from testing their best city (Shanghai) and 2 rarified special economic zones (HK and Macao). The latter stay plus the the 4 best Chinese provinces are now tested. China is very nervous about “losing face” .
Imagine if USA entered only Massachusetts Minnesota in PISA testing. They would be right near the top. As such, Macao HK and to a great extent Singapore do not belong and if they are included there should be an * beside their name.
Canada should say BC will represent Canada from now on.
I was thinking about how the forecasters were predicting a decline that didn’t happen. Hmm, maybe it did, but is masked by the bell-curve reporting.
PISA scores are bell-curved with a mean of 493 and an SD of 100. It used to be a mean of 500, but that was lowered in 2006, likely to accommodate the new countries joining the test.
Imagine that Canada wanted to improve our score (we didn’t improve, but it’s easier to explain this way). There are three ways. The first two are expected. We can actually improve. Or the rest of the world’s average can decline.
But we are already a leading player, and our score gets a bigger bump from the SD than the mean. So what would help us increase? Nothing that we need to do ourselves.
If China consolidates their regions, then they become more average and we become LESS average – up goes our score. Finland crashes – up goes our score. If the worst performers around the world improve, they become more average and up goes our score. If the internet serves as “the great leveler”, then up goes our score.
The use of SD also masks the huge gaps between the provinces. Hey, it’s only 50 points out of 500, that’s gee, what? 10%, no reason for innumerate parents to march with pitchforks. But half an SD behind is probably 3 years of schooling between 15-year-olds in BC and Manitoba.
So PISA results are unreliable; i.e., inconsistent, therefore violating a key assessment measure along with validity- the notion that the test measures what it is supposed to.
Some people just cannot accept Canadian success because it does not fit their agenda. We accomplished this without vouchers or haters or teacher bashing or any other aspects of the corporate agenda.
Face it. Canada is the real #1 in reading and very high in science and math largely through a pure public system.
Not unreliable or inconsistent. It measures and reports exactly what it claims, and probably makes sense to do it this way. But we don’t read the fine print, we didn’t take that statistics course in university, and we happily assume we know what the numbers mean – especially if they look good.
CMEC should release the raw data if we are to have a meaningful discussion. But I suspect that would cause a crisis in some provinces.
John: You are right. The reported numbers are probably garbage. I had to sleep on it to understand why.
Reporting country scores as mean-and-SD makes excellent sense, allowing use of the powerful tools of correlation and regression. All the downstream analysis, such as effects of poverty or how spending money doesn’t help, relies on using these tools.
But there is a fundamental requirement – the raw data must look like a bell curve. Doesn’t matter if it is too pointy, too flat, or skewed a bit, we can fix all that up. But underneath the data has to be fundamentally Gaussian.
And I can’t see why national education system outcomes would be Gaussian. They are driven by politics, history, trade unionism, population-size, and cultural norms, NONE of which are likely to be Gaussian.
This also means the output analysis and conclusions are rubbish.
My personal belief is that there is a plateau that can be reached in contemporary society. Canada is doing an incredible job under these circumstances. No manner of curriculum pedagogy or teacher training or in service will change much. We are at out limits with one exception.
A serious mitigation of poverty, easily accomplished with political will, is the last best chance for Canada to pull away from others and become the world’s true new and better Finland.
We clearly have no need for charters or vouchers or much testing or a reworked teacher cadre.
We can be the example to the USA that there is no role for privatization in quality improvement just as we are with Medicare.
I tend to stick to the facts. Stagnant/’declining math scores for Canada since 2003, along with skyrocketing tutoring enrolment does not indicate student success. Ditto for Science; our scores haven’t budged since 2006. We also need to look at the difference in how much farther ahead the leaders have become. Where we once ranked up there with them, we’re so far behind them now that we’re eating their dust.
Pedagogy HAS changed, and PISA’s examination of this phenomenon is very clear: our move away from teacher directed explicit instruction and our embrace of inquiry based learning has had a definite impact on our results. You can thank our educrats for that.
The scores though only reflect a snapshot of what our school system has become: a two tier nightmare that only the very well connected, or parents with money, can navigate. Those without either, are left behind. The cracks are growing, and the masking of these problems are evident with the influx of tutoring centres.
This is not a time for celebration, it’s a wake up call.
Well Tara we are a world leader and miles ahead of any Western nation that employs the tools of corporate reform.
Not improving is not declining. My thesis is that we have very little room left without addressing poverty.
IMHO what else can we do?
-math specialists from primary
-smaller classes
-earlier than JK for all.
-free tuition
Even all of these will have effects at the margins compared to dramatic changes in an anti poverty direction.
Canada might be judges as being a world leader based on the rankings, but one cannot read into PISA results without understanding what they’re about. Canadian standards remain stagnant and declining. This doesn’t make us a world leader; it just confirms the status quo, which indicates much improvement is required.
Class sizes doesn’t = better student performance unless class size is less than 12 students. Lots of data and evidence which confirms what does make a difference. This is down on the scale, as is spending $$ on education.
SES not a factor in PISA data.
Go off data that has been rigorously examined by world’s top researchers: pedagogy is huge factor, not SES.
I’ve just spent the day at the curriculum archives at UVic. I am so completely disillusioned and pissed off at our educators and consultants right now at treating our kids like they’re stupid. Textbooks, curricula and resources confirms that. The STANDARDS of our education system have deteriorated so rapidly, and so significantly over the past 50 years it’s unbelievable. But not nearly as significantly as it has since the mid 80’s. All because our “educators” decided that they needed to change things up and micromanage teachers and dumb down our kids, employing progressive Deweyism child centred garbage in the classroom and in our education schools.
Want to know how to make things better? Challenge our kids by using proven methods that have ALWAYS worked. Our children’s minds haven’t changed. They need strong guidance, straightforward methods for learning, and teachers being able to be left to teach. It wasn’t until the big $$ in education, big power to all ed leaders – unions, ministries and all other groups took over and started treating education as a business to be exploited, that it REALLy started having a detrimental effect on our children.
Disgusting.
Wrong. SES #1. American has been told that they place so low due to poverty and the concentration of said poverty.
We have know since Coleman that SES is THE OVERWHELMING factor.
Even our EQAO tests and your BC tests rise and decline based on SES.
The PISA 2015 report lends support to your contention about SES, Doug, but the data in a Table on contributing factors in student science performance identifies explicit instruction as next in importance.
No problem with that Paul. Tell Tara and Tom.
SES is always and everywhere the main factor in education gaps.
We don’t have a rise and decline in BC Doug. Just a decline. SES always been there but you’re usual chime about it being all about SES is so wrong. What came first? Poor kids or poor teaching methods? Good teaching reaches even those kids in the the poorer neighbourhoods whereby poor teaching methods affects ALL kids. So why is it that educrats insist on shoving poor teaching strategies onto them in the name of “progress” to pat themselves on the back and say they’ve made a diiference, when all they’ve done is dumb them down.
Shifts in pedagogy has been huge and tutoring rates has seen huge shifts over a very short timeframe. SES rates not so much. Goto Kumon and see for yourself.
At the risk of being politically incorrect, the SHOCKING number in the CMEC PISA report was the discrepancy between the Ontario Anglophone and Francophone school systems. The French boards under-performed the Anglo ones across the country, but Ontario’s gap (526 to 486) is, well, I’m lost for a word. That’s probably a 2-3 year gap in schooling.
How come it doesn’t show in the EQAO scores?
I’m not surprised. They have always been behind. The Francophone community in northern Ontario is has traditionally been involved resource extraction and in eastern Ontario in farming. It is a blue collar community in the main. Overall a lower SES than the English community. Not poor mind you, but honest blue collar.
Tom
I emailed you a report on the Ontario gap of Francophone and Anglo phone Ontarians.
I don’t agree with all of this article especially China’s 4 best educated provinces but the Canadian/American part is interesting.
http://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25920011&item=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.edweek.org%2Fv1%2Fblog%2F115%2F%3Fuuid%3D64175
I still believe that focusing our efforts on raising international test scores is a fool’s game! Sure, it may be fun to play but it’s a game that takes the focus off some of the really important issues and challenges that face our local systems of education. There are cracks through which students are falling, but you step right over those cracks when you rush to questions about how we can make it look like we’re doing better on the national and international stage.
To me, the widest cracks have to do with the way our systems are set up to accommodate the growing cultural diversity, students in First Nations communities and students who are deemed “special needs”.
Our current systems don’t have the capacity to begin to approach “excellence” along any one of these three trajectories. Add a fourth—mental health among our young people.
It’s really easy to shine a light on TIMMS and PISA but that takes us away from what really need to be paying attention to.
It’s not a matter of throwing one pedagogy or curriculum out in favour of another. Instead, we need to be open to the many approaches, strategies and ideas that are available to us and learn to apply them appropriately.
That requires a lot of different thinking, not the least of which involves refocusing our attention on our local contexts and challenges.
Stephen
I think you need to work within a context that says ” that is not going go happen”.
The context I would like us to keep in mind is that there is a certain amount of apples and oranges to PISA TIMES. …
FOR EXAMPLE
Korean hagwons means 14 hour days for some Korean kids. Not actually a good ratio of PISA points per hour compared to Canada.
Japanese teachers teaching in a monoculture context with world’s best prep time.
China testing it’s best 4 provinces out of 25.
Macao and HK special economic rich zones in a poor country.
Finland somewhat monoculture except some Swedes and Laplanders
Highly developed European ECE context.
Rigid British class system
Appauling levels of poverty in USA.
Highly developed souther cone in South America vs rest of Latin America.
International comparisons ARE helpful but context is critical.
I think that I understand your point, Doug, but I’m not sure.
Would you agree that we have apples and oranges—even within our provincial and national context?
To some extent. In Toronto even. We have some of out citizens who look at Rosedale ps in our richest neighbourhood and see a building full of teachers. They look at Regent Park our poorest school and see a building full of teachers.
They cannot for the life of them figure out why the latter group cannot get the same results as the 1st school. They are convinced ed that the Regent teachers are slackers or incompetent.
Those close to the system understand the you could switch the entire staff of the 2 schools next year and the results would be the same. Rosedale on top Regents on the bottom.
The teachers have almost nothing to do with it. Same for admin, building, support staff.
The differences are all in the community. Mainly SES.
Doubt you’d be saying the same thing if Canada had favourable results.
Nobody complained when we were at the top of the world 15-20 years ago. Now that we’ve experienced a significant decline, all those responsible for the decrease in student performance is calling TIMSS/PISA useless.
The reason we have standardized testing is to ensure the system is working effectively. It’s not.
Talking points from the corporate reform handbook little basis is reality.
We had a recession. Poverty is increasing. There is polarization and income inequality on thd rise.
Of course scores will fall. The poorest are hardest hit. Ravinous capitalism is destroying the lives of the poor. What did you expect to happen?
Look at Alberta.
Price of oil goes down.
Jobs lost
Increased immizetation.
Scores fall.
When poverty goes up scores go down like a see saw.
To many of those who have posted, if only cause and effect relationships were so simple and direct. 😦
This is much more complicated than rocket science. Human beings, their minds, their emotions, etc. are much too complex.
We might be more productive if we looked at outliers- of which there are many-
and tried to account for them. Then implement factors that show improvement.
Maybe trying to do what Stephen suggests.
We are always told “look at outliers” much to learn then. Not all poor schools do badly. I told them at TDSB ” show me a poor school that does well”.when they point to school x I say that school also does badly. Their comeback is “but not as badly as the others”.
Well of course there will always be a spectrum of poor schools but all did badly.
I ask “their are 400 schools. Where are the poor schools that do as well as the rich schools?” Much eye rolling.
Then I tell them ” don’t talk to me about outliers”
Everybody is looking for a silver bullet. A simple cost free shift that will make the achievement gap disappear.
Other than ending posted erty good luck with that.
Outliers are NOT silver bullets!
Scientific inquiry happens when we get unexpected or unpredictable results.
I was poor.I went to a high school whose median income in the 1960s and 70s was among the lowest in the old Toronto School District.
Many of us did well.
Poverty is a condition- not a sentence.
You can wait for the REVOLUTION if you wish.
All shifts have a cost.
One challenge is to get people- especially those with $$$ to invest more in schools- not easy.
But Canada is not the UK or the US- thank goodness! So we have hope.
And I would rather live with hope than with doubt.
Sure. Some poor kids do well but nowhere near enough. I would not call our family ‘poor’ but blue collar for sure. My father ran a printing press and my mother was a school secretary – both avid trade unionists but otherwise somewhat conservative.
There seems to be a profound reluctance to just going full bore at poverty with a view to eliminating it even though it is cheaper to get rid of it than to keep it.
People seem sanctimonious about it. Someone has to lose or how will I know I have won?
Technology is destroying labour much faster than free trade but with zero attempts to share the benefits which , since the recession, have all gone to the 1%.
This immizetation of the working class is exactly what Marx said leafs to revolution. Yes it we t right towards Trump but if he does not diver full employment with great jobs it will go in a Bernie Sanders direction very soon.
How does this all relate to education? Well it caused the collapse of nation leading Alberta. It has long underwritten Atlantic education gaps.
Paul,I have always wondered…are identified kids exempt from this and what about First Nations-?
Since this post, I have published three newspaper commentaries on the PISA results, looking at the differences in each of the three Maritime Provinces. It’s interesting to look at the provincial variations and the lessons that can be learned from an analysis of PISA results in each case:
On New Brunswick: https://www.telegraphjournal.com/telegraph-journal/story/49626048/commentary-pisa-test-results
On Nova Scotia: http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/1424218-opinion-student-tests-show-the-value-of-teacher-guided-instruction
On Prince Edward Island: http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/opinion/2016/12/13/paul-bennett–much-ado-about-some-improvement.html
I would expect those prairie numbers are low due to 1st Nations achievement. Manitoba has highest % 1st N and Sask inner city poorer) neighbourhood highly Native.
I don’t know if there were break out numbers.
This article surprisingly in EN as a great summary of thd effects of SES discovered by Coleman and verified by every following study. Since it is EN they slipped “school choice” into the solutions but I forgive them this. It is their site 🙂
http://educationnext.org/how-family-background-influences-student-achievement/
Coleman summary:
There is almost no difference between the schools themselves. The differences are almost all in the community and the family.
Factors related to low achievrment:
Parental education
Parental income
Parental incarceration rate
Family structure ( 1 or 2 parents)
All factors of SES.
Cure this 1st or you are bailing a row boat with a teaspoon.
I really respect your thoughts Doug..you say a lot of truth.
I know you taught and have VAST experience,it`s evident.
I am still out there…
There are some great things going on..the underprepardeness of K children and the work the speech pathologists have been asked to execute…those are the poor AND the L.D.-They can be billionaires-17%-will still fail!
The other point I would like to make is-we are not using what we know-shallow preparedness of teachers..the research has shown us some great stuff-I use it constantly..it can make or break a reader.
I`m sure that there is research out there for math as well that Tara knows about.
Finally-the big big big problem-the archaic nonsense of waiting till grade 4 to identify..now that`s pathetic.
Early is so important!
Last month a speech pathologists from a large catholic board in On. called-her sister is one of my trainees…50% of 7 grade 2 classrooms can`t read…
She asked for funds to get teachers trained and do intervention-a flat no.
So-you`re right and so am I-we could and should do better!
Ethically speaking.
By the way-this speech pathologist was in agony..it`s so hard to get up and go to work!
Completely agree with Jo-Anne. And I taught Gr.1/2 for many years out of the 34 years that I taught. SES is a huge factor, but high quality methods are vital. I taught in what would be considered a low SES school, but got to 90 plus% of class reading. That was my job; that’s what I did. And I ignored 90plus% of the nonsense. And I second Tara all the way.
The question I always have for those people who worked hard in low SES schools is this.
Did the students go on to post secondary work at the same rate to the same institutions as the rich kids? I think we know the answer is NO.
Would more ECE smaller classes teacher directed education testing choice incentive pay ….whatever from left or right change this?
Yes but only marginally. Finland has 5% child poverty. Canada 11% USA 20% .
This is where the rubber meets the road.
No they didn’t go to post-secondary at the same rate as wealthier kids, but at least they did not go through life feeling very dumb because they didn’t learn to read. On the whole Canadas participation rate in post-secondary is very high as you remind us so often. Much of it was the methods I used that got that them reading. and I have no doubt at all that poor methods are currently negatively impacting middle-class kids in a way I have never seen before. And I ignored the very expensive nonsense pushed at me all the time.And yes smaller classes help and extra EA/ECE help is necessary.I had a class at 20 or under and also got extra EA when it was available, problem was this was not continued throughout the higher grades. I definitely know and agree with you that SES is a huge factor and some methods are much better than others.
One of the main reasons that there is an uproar about math is because middle-class kids are being hugely negatively impacted and their parents are far more vocal than their poorer counterparts. Current methods are harming far too many kids unnecessarily.Yes Doug, we have a great system, no argument.
In other words I could have worked just as hard or even harder using different methods ( the very expensively prescribed ones) and under the exact same conditions and got worse or much worse results than I did.Not at all hard to imagine.
Methods have a small amount to do with improvement as do class size ECE support services PD training but they all have marginal effects.
Everybody is looking for a silver bullet that totally closes the achievement gap WITHOUT spending billions.
It CANNOT be done. Only the serious mitigation of poverty has profound effects. This is well known.
The Finland miracle of the last 10 years was really based on it’s very low child poverty rate.
Actually Doug teaching methods have a huge impact on student learning. Read the PISA data. It’s ranked 2nd as having the biggest impact on student learning. And guess which method they’re talking about? Teacher led/direct instruction in the classroom. Otherwise all other kids coming from poor neighbourhoods would still be there. Instead, many of them grew up and went into teaching, thanks to teachers like Teresa, JoAnne and Tom, who understood what worked and employed them regularly on their students. And thank God for that.
Of course it is 2nd far behind SES. THE OECD have repeatedly told the Americans that they lag far behind the rest of the nation s due to POVERTY aggregated by oncentrations of poverty.
That cannot be fixed by privatization, teaching methods or anything else. We now have cities like DC Detroit or NOLA which are half or more charters and they are still floundering due to their power poverty.
We can stand on our heads and spit wooden nickels. We will not make ANY serious progress without addressing poverty.
This has been well known to social scientists for decades.
The Amricans cannot address it. A belief in income inequality is who they are.
Maybe it is as Churchill said “the Americans will always do the right thing – after they have tried everything else. “
Funny, 50 years ago i am pretty sure poverty levels existed in this country same as today. Still, kids managed to memorize their times tables. Why is that? Also find it interesting that BC kids did much better on PISA than Finland, even tho our poverty levels exceeds theirs by a substantial margin.
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/12/15/Global-Student-Test-Results/
Hmmm….any way you flip it, can’t quite seem to make the argument fit. I am sure the good folks at Michaela public school in the lower SES ranks of London, England should have their excuses too. But they don’t use poverty as an excuse, or a crutch. In fact, they’re exceeding all expectations by teaching kids properly and not making excuses for them being poor. The only thing teachers are required to do, is teach. And miracle of miracles, kids are learning.
https://pragmaticreform.wordpress.com/2015/02/07/a-knowledge-led-school/
And despite all the hand wringing about how more discussion is required, it’s really not. Discussion from ed consultants and “experts” is what got us in trouble in the first place. Meddling with teachers, and making excuses about why poor kids can’t learn…let’s just focus on what we know works. Our kids might thank us for it.
The results of the education 50 years ago were far worse than they are today. The literacy rate was fr lower. The dropout Rte was far higher.
We did nothing in education 50 years ago better than we do today. I’m sure Paul can verify the data on this. You base far too much on your anecdotal feelings of nostalgia from a bygone Era than the actual facts of 1966.
Every single time a “miracle school” arises it is eventually found to Ave feet of clay.
The usual suspect is in the selection process. It is not good enough that the kids are also poor or from the same neighbourhood.
If the school can discourage the low achieving kids and push them out they will get a very good result for sure. This is the case with Success Academy in NYC and every other “miracle school” long hours more school days can also help but that hardly endorses teaching methods does it?
And again, our kids were at the top of the world a few short years ago – 2003 to be exact, and before then. Poverty levels haven’t changed much since then. Yet our scores are now either stagnant (Science) or statistically significant decline for math since then. But looking at HOW kids are learning…now that is a factor. Pedagogy has swung way left, over to the progressive side, with massive rewrites in curricula guidelines mandating inquiry/student centred learning. Facts don’t lie. Trying to ignore them, or excuse them away won’t improve things. Nobody complained when we were at the top. Now it’s all about excuses or suggesting we do away with PISA because they don’t measure the right things. Hard to accept that we’re to blame, for letting this happen. Answer is very easy, within our control, yet not allowed to take successful steps to implement proper learning. Sad. What kind of world are we creating for our kids when they can’t even learn basic arithmetic properly?
Wrong Tara. Scores have declined in Alberta as unemployment went up. Although not a dramatic as the USA we have our own version of immiseration and income polarization.
When the rich get richer and the poor get poorer scores will fall.
When the poor get richer and the rich get poorer scores Will rise. Read the actual Coleman Report. Read WHY Berliner says about WHY the poor do badly.
SES is , always HAS been and always will be THE critical factor in the education gap. ALL efforts at reform by any side will FAIL and fail badly unless and until this is addressed.
50 years of social science research says I’m right.
Actually Doug scores in AB were top of Canada in 2003. So was their economy. 2012 different story. Scores plummeted, worst in Canada, or second worse, to MB, and yet again, their economy was fine. What had changed tho, was the curriculum, and the pedagogy. Sounding like a broken record here…
Nope. The score crashed with the price of oil and loss of good jobs.
Distinguished education researcher David Berliner explains how corporate reformers are on the wrong track.
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/dianeravitch.net/2015/07/14/david-berliner-why-poverty-and-inequality-matter-more-than-schools-and-teachers/amp/
Such directions as more direct teaching, testing, privatization and the like cannot help a child who:
Is often absent from school.
Moves home constantly.
Needs glasses but cannot afford them
Needs dental help but does not receive it.
Has low nutritional levels
Comes from violent homes
Latch key kids
FAS
Addiction problems
The attraction of gangs.
Single mom with 2 jobs
Parents who have low levels of education.
Try whatever pedagogy you want. If the child on the class list is seldom in class, it will hardly make a difference.
Take another look at PISA Tera. We are 3rd in non Asian nations in math. Macao HK and Singapore are artificial constructs. Reading tie for second. Throw out artificial Singapore and HK we are #1. Science also very high.
Americans have done absolutely everything the reform community has advocated. Charters vouchers testing teacher bashing… it is all going nowhere.
The USA is failing miserably and the cities under reform control are also going nowhere very fast.
Are you suggesting we become Cuba-?
Or are you suggesting the status quo..
Or are you just bragging about our country`s great results?
We can do better and we should continue to try…
Some of us Doug are about one child at a time..
I understand that you are more of a statistician..
Two very different things.
I think I am pretty clerk. I think Paul and John understand my position very well.
I don’t think the system can improve one student at a time. I believe the system CANNOT AND WILL NOT SIGNIFICANTLY improve unless and until poverty is seriously addresses. This is not to say that people are wasting their time trying to improve the system in other ways but don’t expect significant results from any reforms except poverty reduction .
Take a look at what Coleman says. The schools themselves are practically identical but the results are wildly different. The teachers in the poor schools are every bit as good and usually better than the teachers in the rich schools.
The difference is and I quote ” parental income, incarceration, education and family structure.”
Renowned researcher David Berliner can provide a list with more precision of exactly the reasons poor kids do badly.
New Orleans, Washington DC, and Detroit are now 50 -100% charter schools with no significant change in results.
The reform movement lurches from priority to priority. Test will fix things- nope. Privatization will do it- nope. Merit pay will do it- nope. Now dire t teaching is the new hobby horse.
It will also be shown to have marginal effects.
There are many small solutions that can improve this system but there are no MAJOR solutions without poverty reduction.
Logic question-an illiterate person applies for a job as a salesperson in a store during Christmas rush.A literate person applies also…which one will get the job?They are both well groomed and have pleasant personalities…
Hot tip..they need to fill out an application form.
So..how can instruction improve poverty?
You are smart Doug…
Happy Holidays!We have exhausted this discussion!
You have the formula backwards Jo Anne. Education does not cure poverty. The elimination of poverty makes education possible. Without poverty elimination very little progress will be made.
This is what PISA/OECD told the USA.
This is what Coleman said.
This is what Berliner said.
This is what all social science confirms.
Too many in the reform group are profoundly influenced by confirmation bias. They want a CHEAP solution. When you point out that only reshaping the politics and economics of the state to a more social – democratic direction can improve education they conclude it is not worth it then.
The jails are full of illiterates!
So are the unemployment lines..
Like I said Doug,happy holidays!
Canada #2 in reading and Singapore and HK don’t count. These are 15 year Olds so the future is very bright.
Some final thoughts from me
– Coleman with US data of more than 50 years ago is significant yet complex- SES and achievement is NOT a 1 to 1 correlation
stable families count too which was the case in my old high school
– back then from what we know drop out rates were higher and literacy rates (likely lower)
– curriculum demands and demands on schools and teachers in general are higher and more varied than 50 years ago
– teachers have more influence than Doug suggests
– while we have spent a lot of $ on fads and more to introduce sound ideas that were not properly implemented (such waste might be useful in lowering poverty through a variety of programs- proven though small scale, some ideas work better than others
– if John Hattie’s research says nothing else (and it has its flaws too) the main message is sound;
namely,
– teachers and students should establish solid educational connections
– quality feedback counts
– teachers need to see the learning as it is happening
– nothing works equally well for all students all the time
have a happy . . . and a merry . . .
Looks to me like our standing g jumped in every catagory. We are really 1st in real nations in reading.
http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-of-math-science-reading-skills-2016-12
Discovery Math is the culprit..many teachers were asked to change-let`s look at the Fullanite invasion and timing in Alberta.
I think it`s flimsy and ridiculous to assume everything is about economical circumstances.
Yes,if there is no food or shelter or the family is dysfunctional-the child is not emotionally available for learning.
But..give me a break-sometimes if you asked me to learn something in a flawed way-I recently took up bridge-I can`t learn and make up the rules by myself if I want to play..I need a teacher to teach me with a sound curriculum.
I also need a foundation on which to attach learning growth.
Give us a little respect for some intelligence and critical thinking..to simply swallow is just not possible.
I agree wholeheartedly that the PISA scores are impressive…
It`s the socioeconomic argument that you simply take too far.
The buck does not stop there!
Almost everything IS about SES . I know many of you don’t like to accept it but you need to look at the overwhelming evidence and not your preconceived notions.
What is behind low SES . Basic needs are not being met.
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-public-schools-in-poor-neighborhoods-tend-to-underperform-relative-to-those-in-wealthy-neighborhoods
More truth in this than any of us would like.
Food banks around since early 1980s
Like income tax were advertised as temporary.