School System in Crisis: How did the COVID-19 Pandemic Impact the System?

School systems across Canada, from province to province, are in crisis.  The massive school shutdown during the first phase of COVID-19 was much like a power outage which left students and parents in the dark and educators scrambling to master unfamiliar forms of education technology. Making radical readjustments following lock-step with public health directives upset the normal order in Canadian K-12 education.

What emerged to fill the vacuum was what online learning expert Michael K Barbour aptly termed triage schooling in the education ER aimed at stabilizing the shaken K-12 system. Three months of slapped together home learning produced predictable results—bored and tuned-out students, exhausted parents and exasperated teachers.

Charitable observers described emergency home learning as “Doing Our Best Education” under impossible circumstances. It was so sub-standard that harsh critics applied the label “a failure of pandemic proportions.”

The centralized and overly bureaucratic School System described in my new book, The State of the System: A Reality Check on Canada’s Schools, proved to be vulnerable and ill-equipped to respond to the massive COVID-19 pandemic disruption. Instead of rising to the unexpected challenge, provincial school leaders played for time and eventually took refuge in clinging to comfortable structures and ingrained policy responses, such as delaying e-learning implementation until all students had access to technology and the internet. When it was over, at least one quarter of all students went missing and were unaccounted for in Canadian public education.

Building back the disrupted and damaged School System will involve confronting squarely the fragility and limitations of top-down, bureaucratic K-12 education. The famous German sociologist Max Weber provided us with the very helpful metaphor of the “Iron Cage” capturing well the nature of a bureaucratic structure that traps individuals in a system of order, rationality, predictability, conformity and control.

Education’s “Iron Cage” was exposed during the COVID-19 shutdown and we came to see how dependent students, teachers, and families were on provincial and school district directives.  Cage-busting leadership will be required to transform our schools into more autonomous social institutions that, first and foremost, serve students, families, and communities.

Hardening of the Bureaucratic Education State

The modern bureaucratic education state has a fundamental problem and its roots run deep.  Since the rise and expansion of the modern bureaucratic state over the past hundred years, public education in Canada has grown far more distant and much less connected with students, families, teachers, and communities. Our public schools, initially established as the vanguard of universal, accessible, free education, have lost their way and become largely unresponsive to the public they still claim to serve.

Voicing concerns about the state of our public schools can be exceedingly frustrating – and more often than not, an exercise in futility. Parents advocating mathematics or reading curriculum reforms, families seeking improved special needs programs, or communities fighting small school closures regularly hit brick walls and glass ceilings.

Our public schools, initially established as the vanguard of universal, accessible, free education, have lost their way and become largely unresponsive to the public they still claim to serve. During the COVID-19 school shutdown the fragility of the impenetrable fortress was exposed for everyone to see. What my new book provides is a reality check on what’s happened to Canada’s Kindergarten-to-Grade-12 schools and a plan to reclaim them for students, parents, teachers, and communities alike.

Sources of Unease and Stress

Today’s schools have been swallowed up by provincial ministries and regional school authorities. Everywhere you look, the march of urbanized, bureaucratic, centralized K–12 education is nearly complete, marking the triumph of the System over students, parents, teachers, and the engaged public  Putting students first has little meaning in a system that gives priority to management ‘systems,’ exemplifies top-down decision-making, thwarts community-based schools, and processes students like hamburgers in a fast-food operation. Graduation rates have risen so dramatically that high school diplomas are awarded to virtually everyone who meets attendance requirements.

The System, originally conceived as a liberal reform enterprise aimed at expanding mass schooling and broadening access to the populace, largely achieved its goals twenty-five years ago. Having achieved near-universal access, school authorities in the 1980s began to pivot toward introducing bureaucratic managerialism in the form of “instructionally focused education systems.”

In a North American wave of structural reform, the systematizers saw the ‘incoherence’ of instruction from one classroom to another as a problem and teacher autonomy as an obstacle to further modernization. School change came to mean supplanting didactic instruction, knowledge-based curricula, and the teaching of basic skills, while embracing “ambitious instructional experiences and outcomes for all students.” At the school district level, it was reflected in new forms of school consolidation aimed at turning loose aggregations of schools into school systems.

Today’s central administrative offices, layers of administration, big-box elementary schools, and super-sized high schools all testify to the dominance of the trend. Elected school boards, a last vestige of local education democracy, are now considered simply nuisances and fast becoming a threatened species.

The teaching of foundational skills and knowledge was subsumed in a new school system improvement agenda focused on ‘educational excellence and equity.’ The shift also exemplified the logic of standards-and-accountability, resisted by classroom teachers as another encroachment on their prized autonomy as professionals.

Centrally established accountability infrastructure continued to encounter resistance when it came to penetrating what American education analyst Larry Cuban termed the “black box” of classroom practice. That may well explain why growing numbers of classroom teachers are drawing the line in defense of what’s left of teacher autonomy and breathing life into a movement for education on a more human school-level scale.

Education – What Kind and for Whom?

The System, as exposed during the COVID-19 disruption, is not working for students or teachers in the classroom. Educational gurus spawned by the school improvement industry have succeeded not only in commandeering school districts, but in promoting a succession of curricular and pedagogical changes floating on uncontested theories and urban myths. This trend is most visible in the development and provision of resources by commercial purveyors closely aligned with learning corporations, curriculum developers, and faculties of education. Challenging unproven progressive pedagogical theories will be essential if we are to base teaching on evidence-based practice and what works with students in the classroom.

Top-down decision-making, educational managerialism, and rule by the technocrats has run its course. Rebuilding public education needs to begin from the schools up. Putting students first has to become more than a hollow promise and that will require structural reforms, including community school-based governance and management.

A new set of priorities is coming to the fore: put students first, democratize school governance, deprogram education ministries and school districts, and listen more to parents and teachers in the schools. Design and build smaller schools at the centre of urban neighbourhoods and rural communities. It’s not a matter of turning back the clock, but rather one of regaining control over our schools, rebuilding social capital, and revitalizing local communities.

Re-engineering the System in the wake of COVID-19 has never been more urgent. For all that to happen, the walls must come down, and those closest to students must be given more responsibility for student learning and the quality of public education. The time has come for us to take back our schools and chart a more constructive path forward.

*Adapted from The State of The System: A Reality Check on Canada’s Schools (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020).

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Emergency Home Learning: What did the “Unmitigated Disaster” Teach Us?

Slowly but surely the evidence is gathering that the three-month-long 2020 experiment with “emergency home learning” was an “unmitigated disaster.” A recent Toronto Life feature story by investigative journalist Raizel Robin painted an alarming picture of the Toronto District School Board’s rollout of online learning in March and April of 2020. “Teachers flailed, parents lost it, and kids suffered,” the article summary declared. “Chronic squabbling between Queen’s Park (the Ontario Government) and the unions” was “mostly to blame — and that all spells a chaotic school year ahead.”  While the TDSB may be an extreme example, the general pattern was repeated from province to province, school district to school district, right across Canada.

The rapid and unplanned transition to distance learning turned the Canadian school system upside down and disrupted the lives of some 5 million children and families, and their teachers. Our system, reputed to be one of the world’s best, experienced a power outage, leaving educators scrambling to master new technology and the vast majority of children to “do their own thing” in family isolation operating, for the most part, under a vague and changing set of home learning guidelines.

Student surveys, school district reports, and investigative journalism are beginning to reveal where distance learning went off track and what needs to be corrected the next time. What follows is a brief diagnosis of what went wrong and a proposed prescription for getting the most out of the online learning experience.

The School Shutdown and its Impact  — A Diagnosis

Slapped together distance learning was a mass application of the triage system in the educational Emergency Room. Provincial authorities produced hastily assembled Learn at Home programs and posted broad student homework expectations with a dramatically reduced number of “hours of work” per week. In actual practice, these programs took on a crazy-quilt pattern ranging from high tech to low tech to no tech, highly dependent upon a student’s school district, individual school or classroom teacher. Deciding to guarantee students their March grades removed most of the incentive to work until the end of the year. The most vulnerable children and neediest students living in poverty or facing severe learning challenges lost their “system of supports” and, without in-person education, their families were left to fend for themselves.

Normal student attendance and achievement tracking appears to have mostly evaporated. TorontoDSB’s outgoing director John Malloy put such trust in his teachers that he considered it “very inappropriate” to keep track of how much time teachers were spending in direct contact with their students because it would demonstrate a lack of confidence in them as professionals. He and other system leaders, we have learned, did not think it was their job to establish or enforce teacher-led activity guidelines or track student work completion.

Many students, an estimated one out of four in junior and senior high schools, went missing or completely unaccounted for, according to the CBC News Investigation unit in the Maritime provinces.  No school authorities, including the TDSB, have yet produced a reliable, comprehensive report on student participation rates, attendance at scheduled sessions, achievement levels and graduation rates.

Getting it Right the Next Time — A Prescription

Concerned parents and the vast majority of students were so  poorly served that, by June 2020, most clamoured for a full return to in-person school in September 2020. Once school was dismissed for the summer, organized parent groups surfaced demanding full-time school for all grades under safe health conditions. Lobbying for a hybrid model combining in-class and remote learning, popular among teachers, gained little traction and, aside from some implementation in high schools, gradually died down. Seven provinces eventually opted for a full resumption of regular classes, and the remaining three, Ontario, New Brunswick and Manitoba, continued with some form of online learning from Grades 9 to 12. In most provinces, the near exclusive focus of debate was on implementing “COVID-19 health and safety” regulations to address residual parental fears and anxieties.

The biggest lessons , based upon my own “rapid response” analysis, were:

Teacher-guided instruction:  Be far more explicit in setting out teacher expectations when the system defaults to distance learning.

Only two provinces, Alberta and Ontario, attempted to include teacher expectations in the March-April 2020 home learning guidelines.  In Alberta, the student work guidelines specified that the hours of work would be assigned by teachers. Ontario’s guidelines described the work as “teacher-led” activities. Initially, there was no mention whatsoever of any explicit requirement for time commitment on the part of teachers. In the midst of the pandemic, the conventional administrative “span of control” was relaxed and teachers, for the most part, left to exercise their professional judgement, heeding the advice and counsel of their unions.

Synchronous Learning: Focus on maintaining daily contact with students and give a much higher priority to sustaining real time interaction and engagement with students on an individual and small group or class basis. Interacting twice a week in half-hour sessions proved insufficient to securing and maintaining student attention, participation, and meaningful engagement.

Simulating, as much as possible, in-person teaching involves giving a much higher priority to synchronous learning or real time online teaching utilizing video, interactive media, or text messaging. During the initial trial run, most teachers turned to assigning regular homework and continuing, where possible, with their preferred strategies, short posted or e-mailed assignments and project-based learning (PBL). This is known as asynchronous learning because it involves assigning work to be completed later in a day, week, or term. It is not generally interactive or engaging for students, especially after a few weeks of uninterrupted home learning. Ontario’s August 2020 education directive (Regulation 164) addresses the problem with an explicit mandate for utilizing synchronous learning strategies in the online learning environment.  Assuming 300 minutes of instructional time a day, it’s likely unwise to require, in Grade 1 to 12, exactly 75% of the time to be allocated to synchronous learning activities.

Supporting the Neediest and Marginalized:  School systems exist to support everyone and especially those children and teens living in poverty or struggling with learning challenges or complex needs — and that definitely needs to be addressed the next time.

Inclusive education needs to be factored into future plans during the default to distance education because far too many students, some 15 to 20 per cent in most school districts, are dependent upon either “learning supports” or intensive “special education services.” While congregated classes are not ideal for every special needs child or teen, they tend to be smaller in size and small enough to classify as ‘classroom bubbles’ meeting most public health pandemic guidelines. Some educational jurisdictions, such as British Columbia, for that reason, opened schools in June 2020  for the expressed purpose of supporting both special needs students and the children of essential workers. This policy option should be on the table next time around in the current pandemic cycle.

Student Assessment and Reporting: Establish and maintain a fair, consistent and predictable system of student evaluation irrespective of the mode of curriculum delivery and continue to issue student progress reports with clear, easy to understand marks.

Student marks and grading are ingrained in the system and form a critical part of the terms of engagement. Suspending grading of term tests and assignments affects student motivation and makes it even more challenging to hold and sustain their participation in an online environment. Abandoning grades or reverting to pass-fail marking systems sends out the implicit signal that somehow the work does not count or is of lesser importance to their overall academic performance. It also fuels the widespread phenomenon of grade inflation widening the gap between student performance and rewards for that performance.

Provincial Testing and Accountability:  Commit to maintaining provincial and national student testing systems so students, parents and the public can assess student achievement and have some gauge of how the school shutdown actually impacted the acquisition of knowledge and the development of academic skills.

Three months of school shutdown is bound to have affected student achievement, particularly in the development of fundamental skills in Grades 1 to 6 and in academic preparation for higher education and the modern workplace. Suspending provincial testing, as Ontario has done in 2020-21, is unwise because it will deny educators, parents and the public of one of the most objective and validated forms of student assessment. Shortening the advance preparation time for such tests makes good sense, but not suspending the evaluations altogether. No one expects students to perform as well after a prolonged absence from regular in-person classes. We do need some kind of reliable yardstick to identify learning loss and to provide us with a benchmark for remediation.

Educators everywhere are committed to doing better the next time with their newly acquired knowledge and skills in education technology. Coming out of the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, we will all be better prepared and educators have every right to expect enhanced support in terms of training, resources, and ongoing professional support. Instead of focusing almost exclusively on “COVID safety” and health protection, it’s time to give more attention to what ultimately matters — teaching and learning — the core function of K-12 education.

What are the biggest lessons coming out of the COVID-19 school shutdown and that frightening pandemic?  Was the radical and abrupt transition to distance learning a failure of pandemic proportions?  Should we be focusing on the positive and highlighting examples of its “silver linings”? Is it possible that educational conditions could get worse in the coming year? What’s the best way to build back our shaken and fractured K-12 school system? 

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Confronting ‘Doing Our Best’ COVID-19 Education: Are the Kids Really Going to be Alright?

‘Everyone is doing their best’ was the prevailing narrative during the COVID-19 school disruption.  That may explain why school authorities either suspended system-wide student tracking or chose to conceal data collected relating to student progress and engagement.  A June 2020 CBC Investigation into this issue in four Atlantic Canadian provinces came up almost empty  and revealed that no one was able to provide any credible information on how many students went missing during pandemic distance learning.

“Doing Our Best” education may well have lasting consequences for students. Coming out of a three-month suspension of in-person, face-to-face teaching and learning, we are beginning to confront the hard realities: the coronavirus generation has fallen months behind, most housebound children were bored and disengaged, and struggling students have lost the most ground.

What we know about the real COVID-19 impact on children and teens did not emanate from education officialdom. With senior education leaders and school districts remaining tight-lipped, public opinion survey pollsters stepped up to fill the vacuum and assist intrepid education reporters trying to penetrate the wall of silence. Back on May 10, over a month ago, the Angus Reid Institute broke the code: “Canadian children are done with school from home, fear falling behind, and miss their friends.” The kids, it turned out, were not alright.

What actually happened during the COVID-19 crisis is coming into clearer focus with the benefit of hindsight. For the first month,  ministries of education, school districts, and educators scrambled to fill the learning gap with “emergency distance learning,” building upon patchy online infrastructure and cobbled together together curriculum combining e-learning and hastily-assembled ‘learning packages.” With few exceptions, Canadian K-12 education was completely unprepared for the system-wide shutdowns.

Thrown completely off-kilter, educational leadership was left fumbling around in the dark looking for the proverbial light switch. Perpetually optimistic technology-driven educators found ‘silver linings‘ amidst the dark clouds, progressive educators focused on responding to children’s “fears, anxieties and trauma,” and global thought leaders rhapsodized about a “better normal‘ where “Maslow (finally triumphed) over Bloom.“ With little warning, parents were expected to guide “Home Learning” with their housebound children.  It looked ominous, but most educators sounded upbeat, made the best of an unsatisfactory situation, and retained some hope that it would all work out somehow.

Taking a closer look at the May 2020 Angus Reid survey, it’s now clear that, despite everyone’s efforts, the COVID-19 educational experience was decidedly substandard for the vast majority of Canada’s five million K-12 students, and possibly damaging for those from disadvantaged and racialized communities. Here’s a succinct summary of the worrisome findings:

• The biggest worry for over half of all children (ages 10-17) surveyed was “missing out on  work” this school year and next, roughly equal the proportion who feared getting sick themselves.
• A clear majority of children “attending” school online (60 per cent) were bored or  unmotivated, not very busy with the work, but still “keeping up” with the reduced academic expectations.
• Children and teens, outside of homework, spent the vast majority of their time glued to small screens, dominated by watching TV/Netflicks, You Tube (88 per cent), and playing video games (74 per cent).
• Parents may have been doing their best, but it was not good enough, because over half of teens ages 13 to 17 reported needing more help with their work.
• Some 70 per cent of children and teens reported missing seeing friends and participating in extra-curricular activities, but fewer than 1 in 10 (8 per cent) were willing to concede that they missed going to school.

Missing so much regular schooling, after two of the three months, was already having adverse effects. Most of the students reported that they were “missing out” on school work and were struggling to remain positive, mainly because of deteriorating friendships and relationships.  The so-called “home education blues” were real and, for the most part, went unacknowledged and unreported by Canadian school authorities.

Close education observers and inquisitive parents seeking straight talk about the actual impact of the COVID-19 school shutdown invariably come up empty when seeking answers to questions or any evidence to support periodic accounts of heroic individual efforts or hopeful reports of ‘silver linings.” Education reports out of the United States provided us with a much-needed wake-up call when it came to getting the straight goods on what was really happening to students and parents during the school shutdown.

Two key U.S. education stories exposed the harsh realities of COVID-19 education for students, parents and teachers and raised serious questions about the veil of silence shrouding Canadian K-12 education. New York Times education reporter Dana Goldstein blew the lid off the real story on June 5, 2020 with a feature demonstrating the impact in terms of learning loss.  By September 2020, she reported, most students would be “months behind” with “some losing the equivalent of a full year’s worth of academic gains.” Furthermore, “racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps” would “most likely widen because of disparities in access to computers, home internet connections and direct instruction from teachers.”

A Boston Globe feature on May 23 confirmed that the COVID-19 disruption exposed the reality of digital divide. One in five Boston Public Schools children were found to be “unplugged” from Google Classroom and disengaged to the point where they were essentially “virtual dropouts.” Significant education technology challenges and language difficulties were keeping children from continuing school online. That finding was confirmed in a large-scale study of some 800,000 students conducted by a team of Harvard and Brown university researchers. Mining academic research into student use of Zearn, an online math program, they reported that student progress in math between March 15 and April 30 decreased by some 48 per cent in classrooms located in low-income ZIP codes, and by one-third in classrooms in middle-income ZIP codes.

The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated, in microcosm, the extent of the public disclosure deficit in our provincial public education systems. Without American investigative education reporting, we would probably know little or nothing about the stubborn COVID-19 problems of getting students to engage in distance learning or the incredible proportion of children and teens who skipped out on home learning or lacked proper access to the alternative programs.  Knowing that the kids are not alright should spark some needed public discussion about working together on developing and acting upon a comprehensive, evidence-based learning recovery plan.

What happened to the initial plans for COVID-19 Home Learning in Canadian K-12 education? How did most children and teens fare in terms of “continuous learning” during the COVID-19 school disruption? Why were provincial and district education authorities so tight-lipped about the state of distance learning?  Should ministries of education and school districts be responsible for monitoring, collecting and reporting on alternative distance learning programs?  Does the public have a right to know how many children logged-in, remained engaged, and met the expected curricular standards? 

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E-Learning Days: Where was the Back-Up Plan when needed?

What a difference a global health crisis has made in Canadian K-12 education.  All of a sudden everyone has been thrust into “online learning” for weeks on end and “learning packets” are something housebound parents and children see as a welcome break from staring at small screens. It’s a completely new experience for the vast majority of students, teachers and parents with a few notable exceptions — those living in North American school districts with established E-Learning Day programs to support students during unplanned school closures.

The unexpected and unplanned COVID-16 school closures catapulted teachers into the unfamiliar territory of e-learning, forcing most to learn to use the new technology on the fly. It was no less a shock for parents, scrambling to grapple with Learning at Home programs while tending to their children cooped-up in social isolation. Now that there’s a glint of light at the end of the first wave COVID-19 school shutdown, it may be time to consider being better prepared the next time.

Some North American school districts were far better prepared than others for the radical shift to COVID-19 emergency online learning. Which ones?  Those in the twelve American states which had already adopted E-Learning Days as a means of making-up lost instructional time as a result of winter storms or unexpected calamities.

Former Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville made that exact point in a recent interview in the Harvard Gazette (April 10, 2020).  While assessing the paradigm shift to e-learning now underway, he mentioned that school districts in New Hampshire with established e-learning days were far better prepared and made a much “easier transition” because they already had “a back-up online learning system.”

No region in North America cancels school days with the frequency and duration found in Canada’s Maritime provinces. Introducing E-Learning Days in the Maritimes had been proposed, considered, and tossed aside several times in the preceding decade. For those who may have forgotten what transpired, a refresher might be in order.

Since a Nova Scotia Storm Days report by Dr. Jim Gunn in November 2009, a decade ago, not much has changed in terms of  recouping learning time and the number of days lost to storms almost doubled over the intervening years.

A succession of severe snow and ice storms in late February 2015 finally spurred some promised action.  After New Brunswick’s Education Minister  Serge Rousselle  announced he was looking at adding “make-up” days, his Nova Scotia counterpart, Karen Casey, shocked everyone by sounding a public alarm bell.  In a media scrum, Education Minister Casey drew what sounded like ‘a line in the ice’ and openly mused about sending students and teachers to school on Saturdays and during March break to make up for some five lost days.

The resulting furor actually set back the cause. Premier Stephen McNeil was forced to intervene, assuring worried parents that the province was not going to commandeer their upcoming holidays. Nothing more happened.

Five years ago, E-Learning Days were proposed in media interviews and in a series of commentaries for the Maritime Canada media and local news talk radio stations. Embracing E-Days and providing students without internet access with so-called “blizzard bags” was endorsed in editorials recognizing it as a ‘smart solution’ to appropriating school holidays or extending the school year.

Replacing Storm Days with E-Learning Days was advanced as a way of protecting learning time, clicking-in after five days of school were lost to storm day cancellations.  The mere idea of providing “homework pouches” for those children without internet access was mocked by skeptical teachers as totally impractical and of little value to children or families.

A December 2019 progress report on the spread of E-Learning Days, produced by the U.S.-based Digital Learning Collaborative, demonstrates the gradual spread of E-Learning Days and its vital role in expanding digital learning in mainstream American school districts.

E-Learning Days are now used in a dozen states to fill the specific need to “maintain instruction during unplanned school closures.”  Six U.S. states, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, all have their own policies and exemplary programs.

While the prime use remains as a means of ensuring ‘continuity of learning’ during adverse weather conditions or natural disasters, they are now being employed during “widespread illness” and for parent-teacher conferences or teacher professional development purposes.

Much like COVID-19 Home Learning Days, E-Days work best when they follow a simple, predictable daily schedule. Students access online instructional modules from home or elsewhere, usually in the mornings and submit work at day’s end.

Using a leaning management system, teachers post digital instructional materials and assignments, as well as refer students to core texts or resource books at home. Video conferencing is used periodically for brief check-ins. School systems expect teachers to be available during specific hours in case students have questions or to gather-up and date-stamp assignments. Learning packets are provided to students without access to ed tech or internet.

Critical lessons learned in implementing E-Days prove extremely useful during prolonged periods of school shutdown. “Planning, preparing and implementing E-Learning days well,” the recent report points out, “requires significant effort, and without significant planning and preparation, E-Learning days are unlikely to result in meaningful learning.”

Implementing E-Days now looks entirely feasible in the wake of the prolonged COVID-19 school shutdown. With such a back-up plan, school districts everywhere would definitely be much better prepared next time an epidemic knocks out regular in-person classes.

What stood in the way of adopting E-Learning Day plans and programs before the COVID-19 pandemic?  Why is it that some American states have proven much better equipped for a smooth transition to primarily online learning?  Why did previous Public Health pandemic plans simply default to cancelling school and sending students home without any real continuity of learning plan?  Which Canadian education authority will be the first to establish an exemplary E-Learning Day policy and program? 

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COVID-19 Education: What’s the Impact of the School Outage on the System?*

Our whole world has been turned upside down and none, more so, than the educational world inside Canada’s provincial school systems. Previous assumptions have been shattered by the frightening COVID-19 virus. Fierce ideological battles over the introduction of high school online courses, which dominated Ontario education warfare for the past two years, have subsided, for now.

What K-12 education is experiencing, going into a second month, may be a school shutdown, but it’s more like a power outage which has left students, teachers, and parents in the dark. Fumbling around to find the light switch is enough of a challenge without having to master unfamiliar education technology tools and completely re-invent the delivery of teaching.

E-learning has arrived, by default, and ministries of education and school districts are scrambling to fill the gap with patched together ‘continuity of learning’ programs.  Even the charter members of the C21 CEO Academy who’ve been espousing “21^st Century Learning” dogma for years are suffering culture shock. Especially so, when compelled to make radical readjustments, following lock-step with public health directives. It’s what online learning expert Michael K. Barbour aptly described as  triage schooling in the education ER aimed at stabilizing the shaken K-12 system.

With children and families essentially quarantined and homebound, educating children, for the first few weeks, has fallen largely upon parents and guardians. Resuming contact with students on the phone or by Zoom is a good, positive first step, but very soon most parents are going to be desperate for meaningful learning activities to keep their children and teens on track and out of trouble. Interactive games and videos won’t be sufficient if the school hiatus lasts until the end of the year.

Systems under such stress either rise to the dramatically new challenges with smart, innovative plans to bridge the torrent of change – or cling to comfortable structures, revert to familiar policy responses, and apply band-aids.

The COVID-19 has really wacked Canada’s provincial school systems and educational leaders initially lost their bearings, like everyone else. The first and most instinctive response was to reaffirm ingrained and practiced policy nostrums, such as providing equal opportunities for all children and addressing educational inequities first.

With such a mindset, the focus is almost exclusively on ‘worst-case social policy:’the belief that any policy initiative or program that may not reduce social inequities should not be undertaken at all.  In this case, e-learning was initially seen as problematic because of digital access inequities and so, in spite of the system outage, it should not be pursued until we were able to meet everyone’s needs all the time.

Schools and their teachers filled the vacuum and responded in sometimes radically different ways. Some super-keen educators seized the unexpected opportunity to try something new and to provide their students with short video chats, online learning and/or ‘lesson packets’ during the period of social isolation.  For others, the protracted shutdown provided a respite from in-person teaching and so there was no rush to resume parent or teacher-led education, essentially leaving kids and families to fend for themselves.

Some provinces such as Alberta and Ontario have moved quickly to establish Continuity of Learning portals, posted online course material, made e-learning resources readily available, and set explicit expectations for teachers in terms of the assignment of work and the delivery of content. Some provincial responses, most notably Nova Scotia’s Learning at Home program, announced March 30, 2020, took a “feel-better” approach, providing a set of broad guidelines and a smattering of hastily-assembled resources, emphasizing interactive games, fun activities, and healthy living exercises.

E-learning programs require far more planning and preparation than is possible right now in the throes of the coronavirus emergency. Teachers, willingly or not, are being expected to become online instructors on the fly, while everyone struggles to adjust to the brave new world of social distancing and almost everything going digital.

Existing educational inequities may be exacerbated by the current global crisis. Students of upwardly mobile, university educated parents may surge ahead, with more exposure to a knowledge-rich curriculum through Khan Academy, the Core Knowledge Curriculum, and the Discovery Channel.  Poor and marginalized kids and families without access to technology or safe, secure home study space will suffer more than others.

Relying solely upon standard provincial elementary curricula with a well-being focus emphasizing SEL (social and emotional learning) may not serve to advance achievement. In some cases, it might well deprive children of sound, evidence-based instruction in the fundamental skills of reading and mathematics.

“Learning loss” during the shutdown may be a concern of Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce, but it’s  the farthest thing from our minds when we’re in the path of a potentially devastating pandemic. Ringing arm bells about students falling off the COVID-19 educational cliff and losing ground to those of other nations pale in significance in such times. Right now, it’s all hands on deck.

Sooner or later, the real impact of the shutdown of K-12 education will hit us. When the black hood of COVID-19 lifts, the imapact will be more apparent.

*An earlier version of this commentary appeared in The Spectator (Hamilton, Ontario), April 8, 2020.

What impact did the COVID-19 Pandemic have on school system leaders from province-to-province across Canada?  Why does the term “triage” coined by Michael K. Barbour seem particularly appropriate in describing the e-learning responses of provincial school systems?  Will the COVID-19 health crisis spark lasting changes or not in the conventional mode of operations?  When might it be the time to examine the impact in terms of student learning loss? 

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Near Future Classrooms: What if ‘Keeping Your Distance’ Becomes the New Normal?*

Shaking hands is, for now, socially unacceptable and ‘keeping your distance’ is the new normal in all public settings. Following the strict advice of our Chief Medial Officers of Health, the vast majority of citizens, groups and organizations are complying with ‘physical distancing’ to contain the spread of the deadly COVID-19 virus.  If the new public health conventions become ingrained and persist beyond the immediate crisis, the fundamental change in social norms outside the household sphere will profoundly alter life in public settings, particularly in K-12 schools and classrooms.

Seeing images of public schools in Taipei, Taiwan, in full operation during the COVID-19 heath crisis, is jarring, if not downright shocking. Based upon hard lessons gleaned from the 2003 SARS pandemic, Taiwanese authorities, including school heads, were quick to recognize the crisis and activated stringent emergency health management plans to keep schools running instead of simply closing them down.

School life during COVID-19 was transformed into a virtual health protection zone. Students at Daija Elementary School in Taipei were asked to disinfect their hands and shoes before entering the school building, while a security guard took their temperature, and, once in class, the children were seated in separated rows wearing masks.  What set that school apart, and drew international attention, was the sight of elementary children eating their own lunches while sitting behind bright yellow dividers on their desks.

With the frightening pandemic upon us, education planners and policy-makers need to look beyond the immediate crisis and start making plans for the resumption of in-person schooling, likely months from now.  A whole generation of students, parents and families, having survived the ravages of the virus, may be not only more receptive to online learning, but expecting, a different kind of K-12 day school education.

School practices intended to promote social distancing may well be an unintended legacy of the current crisis.  If and when influenza pandemic control measures become higher priorities, social distancing conventions that increase space between people and reduce the frequency of contacts may well overturn progressive teaching methodologies and spell the end, in real time, of clustered seating, learning centres, and interactive small group learning.

Today’s student-centred, interactive classroom based upon ‘hands-on’ learning was, it is becoming clear, greatly advanced by the widespread adoption of vaccines and school-based vaccination and related health programs. The emergency health risk posed by COVID-19 is more reminiscent of the scourge of childhood diseases, unchecked by vaccines, up until the 1960s. While class sizes were larger then, the traditional classroom exemplified social distancing  because children were seated in individual desks, spaced apart, lined-up before moving from place to place, and taught personal hygiene in elementary classes.

Classroom design and seating since the 1970s has tended to focus on creating settings that supported ‘active learning’ and reputedly ‘progressive’ teaching methods, such as learning circles, cooperative learning, and project-based groupings.  Scanning the North American physical classroom environment research, it’s striking how may action-research projects were undertaken to demonstrate that teaching children sitting in rows was detrimental to student engagement, widely considered an end in and of itself.

Neglected research on physical proximity and anxieties about crowding will get a much closer look in the post-COVID-19 era of education. Coming out of household quarantine and re-entering school, students, parents and teachers will be far more conscious of infectious diseases and the physical conditions contributing to its transmission. Ministries of education, school districts and principals will likely give a much higher priority to providing face-to-face teaching and learning in classrooms meeting stricter health protection standards.

Academic studies of “peers in proximity” and the few analyzing the “mixing patterns of students in school environments” do provide us with signposts for deeper dives.  One 2015 Dutch study of interpersonal processes in the classroom, conducted by Yvonne Van den Berg, demonstrates how  “a careful management of physical distance between classmates” can improve classroom climate, but it focuses almost exclusively on rectifying identified imbalances in social status in classes where students choose their own seats.

The role of children in the community spread of respiratory diseases such as H1N1 and COVID-19 identified by medical health authorities has attracted relatively little attention from education researchers based in graduate schools of education. One Canadian health policy study, produced in 2013 by University of Toronto researcher Laena Maunula may have compounded the problem. It claimed that public health messages were “dangerous” because they reinforce “bio power” and “governmentality” (i.e., a coercive state reducing citizens to ‘trained subjectivities.’)

For more promising disease prevention studies, we have to look to Europe and the pioneering work of two research teams, led by Marcel Salathé of the Salathe Lab at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Juliette Stehlé of Marseille, working with the University of Lyon-based National Influenza Centre. Utilizing wireless sensor network technology, they have studied the social networks in both primary and secondary schools which facilitate infectious disease transmission. Logging the data for CPIs (close proximity interactions), the researchers honed-in on the problem presented by schools as high potential sites for pandemic spread. Follow-up studies by American health researchers applied this research and concluded that extensive alternative school-based interventions regulating free student movement, as an alternative to school closure, can significantly reduce contacts and potential exposure to infectious diseases.

A more recent 2018 Rand Corporation study, building upon the close proximity studies findings, examined American school influenza pandemic policies and practices. It found that, while strictly limiting student interactions in hallways and classrooms reduced transmission rates, only four of 50 U.S. states ( Georgia, Tennessee, Utah, and Virginia) had firm policies authorizing the full range of social distancing regulations. Ontario’s 2013 Health Plan for an Influenza Epidemic, much like those south of the border, relied upon school closures and made no provision for resumption of school after a pandemic outbreak.

Near future schools reopening after the hiatus will not look or feel the same, given the prospects for a second wave.  Taiwanese schools during the current pandemic might represent an extreme akin to a dystopian village, but post-COVID-19 K-12 public schools will in all likelihood incorporate some of those rigid protocols, at least until student, parent and teacher anxieties subside in the coming years.

*An earlier version of this commentary appeared in The National Post, March 26, 2020.

What will classrooms look like following the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic?  Will the heightened awareness of the threat of epidemic diseases impact upon attendance monitoring, classroom design and layout, and teaching methodologies?  Will the post-COVID-19 classrooms look more like those in Taiwan during the pandemic?  How much e-learning will survive when face-to-face, in-person teaching resumes in the coming months? 

 

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Coronavirus and Digital Migration: Are We Prepared for the Abrupt Transition to E-Learning?

A tectonic shift is underway in global K-12 education in response to the rapid and unpredictable spread of the frightening COVID-19 pandemic. Schools, colleges and universities have shut down almost everywhere leaving students, teachers and families in uncharted territory. With our educational institutions closed, parents are stepping-up to provide improvised ‘homebound’ education and educators are abruptly transitioning, almost by default, to e-learning in the form of distance education or video enhanced online programs. Provincial school authorities are playing catch-up and trotting out hastily-packaged Learn at Home distance learning programs to fill the extended interruption of regular, in-person classes.

Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, gave the first signal on Saturday March 14 of a significant change in the official public health response to the pandemic. Public health officials right across Canada are now routinely forecasting lengthy school closures beyond two weeks and possibly until the end of the year.

Closing schools for an additional two weeks after March break came first, and now educators are scrambling to make the sometimes rough and difficult transition to providing e-learning for students unable to report to ‘bricks-and-mortar’ schools. Some schools districts may be able to patch-together short-term e-learning modules, but few are prepared for the shift to online leaning on a system-wide scale.

The global COVID-19 pandemic looks like the realization of the wildest dream of the purveyors of technology-driven “disruptive innovation.” Almost overnight, the competition for online learning is not face-to-face, in-person classes, because those classes are cancelled. Now, it’s down to two options — distance learning and online teaching or nothing at all.   It’s happening so fast that even champions of radical technology innovation such as Michael B. Horn of the Christensen Institute are fearful that it may actually backfire.

Transitioning online cannot happen overnight. Recognized experts on digital learning, including the University of Limerick’s Ann Marcus Quinn, warn that technology is essentially a tool and transitioning is for more complex than simply swapping traditional textbook content for digital material is not the answer.

“Online teaching takes preparation and planning,” says Michael K. Barbour, co-author (with Randy LaBonte) of the annual report, The State of Online Learning in Canada. It requires “the careful consideration of the tools,” their strengths and ,imitations,  and the adoption of “pedagogical strategies” best suited to the means of delivery. “The situation we currently find ourselves in is one of triage,” Barbour claims. “It is’t online teaching, it is remote teaching in an emergency situation.”

Closing schools makes good sense in the midst of acute public health emergencies if it helps to save lives. Yet it does not necessarily have to mean suspending all teacher-guided instruction and learning.  While Alberta announced on March 15, 2020 that all of its K-12 schools and day care centres were closed indefinitely, elementary and secondary teachers are at school and engaged in developing plans for e-learning to support students.  In the case of the Calgary Board of Education, the top priority became gearing up to offer learning online, especially for high school students in their Grade 12 graduating year.

Much can be learned from the abrupt change to distance learning in countries ravaged by the pandemic.  Surveying the challenges faced by China over the first month of school closures, Adam Tyner, a former American visiting scholar at Shanghai’s Fudan University, identified  some vitally important lessons.

• Expand your learning management system capabilities so that teachers can post videos and interactive content, students can submit work, and teachers and students can easily engage in ongoing communication.. Upgrade your limited, ‘bare-bones’ student information management system by adding a new module, and hold teacher training sessions to bring teachers up to speed on how to utilize the tech tools;
• Increase your bandwidth and assume that not all students own smartphones or have computers at home.  Regular television stations can be required to air community programming and to include televised elementary school lessons, on a rotating basis, grade-by-grade during the daytime hours. Secure free internet access, for the duration of the crisis, following the lead of major Chinese providers such as Huawei.
• Encourage teacher experimentation with every means of communication to maintain active links with students.  Lessons and teacher-guided activities can be delivered in small videos or on podcasts, and mini-lessons or discussions carried out utilizing Zoom and other commercial apps.
• Address the technology access digital disparities gap: Purchasing 4G-equipped tablets and service may help to bridge the “digital divide” between ‘haves’ and have nots’ when it comes to access to technology and the Internet.
• Plan for Learning-Challenged Students: Switching from in-class to distance online learning is jolting for many students, and particularly for those who are struggling, need more attention, and perform better in guided activities.
• Tailoring E-Learning for High School: Teenage students experiencing more freedom than usual need more motivational strategies, ongoing monitoring, and accountability to keep them on track with their learning plans.

Ministries of education and school leaders are gradually recovering from the school culture shock delivered by a totally unexpected and dire public health emergency. Some school district superintendents have lost their bearings and continue to promote conventional system-bound thinking in a rapidly changing educational order. With students being educated at home during the regular school hiatus, e-learning has emerged, almost by default. First off the mark were Alberta and New York City schools,, Ontario is now on board with the March 20, 2020 launch of the first phase of its Learn at Home e-learning initiative.

New challenges are surfacing as high-tech entrepreneurs and dominant learning corporations such as Nelson LC see an opportunity to expand their market share in K-12 education.  Educational leaders, closely aligned with learning corporations and working through the C21Canada CEO Academy, see an opening to advance “21st century learning” as the best preparation for the workplace of the future. Teachers’ concerns, on this score, about the encroachment of corporate interests and the fuzziness of such programs are well founded.

Educational technology has its place when it’s serving the needs of teachers rather than complicating and overburdening their working lives. A brand-new book, Daisy Christodoulou‘s Teachers Versus Tech ?, tackles the question squarely and demonstrates its value, particularly in the case of spaced repetition adaptive algorithms and comparative judgement assessment. 

Seasoned technology learning analysts, such as Henry Fletcher Wood  recognize that online learning has, so far, over-promised and under-delivered when it comes to improving teaching and raising student achievement. Practicing classroom educators like Minnesota K-6 teacher Jon Gustafson are actively engaged in translating and adapting “effective principles of instruction” to online and blended learning. Eschewing jazzy e-learning strategies such as student-centred “PBL/inquiry projects” and video chats, Gustafson is applying best practice, including retrieval practice, explicit writing instruction, and formative assessment.

Getting schools, teachers and students prepared for a longer period of distance learning is fast becoming a priority for provincial education policy-makers and school-level management and curriculum leaders. Let’s hope that evidence-based pedagogy and best teaching practice do not get swept aside in the transformation to e-learning in K-12 education.

How is student learning changing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis?  What is emerging in the hiatus to fill the gap left by the prolonged cancellation of K-12 schools?  Should classroom educators be wary of learning corporations appearing bearing charitable gifts to school systems?  Why are teachers so skeptical of system-wide e-learning and online learning panaceas? Going forward, will teachers and ed tech find a way to live in peaceful coexistence in K-12 education? 

 

 

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Coronavirus and School Closures: Should Schools be Closed and, if so, When?*

The global footprint of coronavirus – COVID-19 – is expanding and national governments as well as regional school districts are making the difficult decision to shutdown the schools. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared it a “pandemic” and all of Canada’s education ministers participated in a teleconference to discuss the situation and potential policy responses, specifically following the annual March break for students and teachers.

Political leaders at the highest levels, working closely with public health authorities, are weighing their emergency measures options to combat the pandemic, ranging from school closures to mass quarantines. Closing schools may be politically expedient, but its effectiveness in curbing transmission is far from clear.

School closures have already interrupted the public education of some 300 million students across the globe. The first nation to close schools was Hong Kong, back in January, then Japan on February 27, and now many more jurisdictions have followed suit, including Italy, South Korea, Iran, France, Pakistan, New Delhi, the New York City region and northern Washington State.

Deciding to close schools in the case of COVID-19 is particularly challenging for one major reason. In the initial wave, the novel coronavirus, unlike HIN1 in 2009, had not affected children at high rates. Out of 44,672 initial confirmed cases in China, fewer than 2 per cent occurred in children under 19 years of age, and no deaths were recorded among those younger than 10 years old. That may be a low estimate because the attack rate for children, at a later stage in Shenzhen, was 13 per cent.

Closing schools, in some previous epidemics, has proven helpful in reducing transmission of seasonal flu among children. One 2013 British Medical Journal report, based upon a systematic review of epidemiological studies, concluded that school closures contained rates of transmission, even in the absence of other intentions. Yet determining “the optimal school closure strategy” remained “unclear” because of the wide variation in its forms of implementation.

Tracking the impact of school closures has proven tricky for researchers.  Some closures were limited to individual schools and, in other cases, whole school systems. Closing before the peak of the outbreak or well into the outbreak suggests that decisions are being made as either a precaution or a reaction to rising student influenza-related absenteeism. In some cases, schools close so children can receive antiviral medicines or vaccines, or in conjunction with a strategy of “social distancing.”  Such wide variations in implementation strategies makes it a challenge in determining which change actually affected transmission.

The body of research on school closure impacts during epidemics is surprisingly large, encompassing the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, the 2002-03 SARS pandemic, and the 2009 HINI flu outbreak.

Yet the results of those school closures have been mixed. Closing schools for more than two weeks has been linked to lower transmission rates in Hong Kong (seasonal and pandemic flus) and in England (H1N1), but not so in Peru (pandemic) or the United States (during seasonal flu epidemics).

The 2008 Hong Kong outbreak, the 1957 epidemic experience of France, and the 1918 pandemic records in some U.S. cities demonstrate that shutting schools can have no discernible impact, especially if decisions come too late in the cycle of the outbreak. Relying upon older parents or grandparents to be caregivers during closures may actually increase mortality rates among more susceptible populations.

Public heath experts caution educational leaders and school principals against basing decisions on the North American H1N1 experience. “The sensitivity of the 2009 pandemic to school closures probably relates to the high attack rates in children compared with adults,” the BMJ study pointed out. “Outbreaks in which children are less affected” such as COVID-19, “might be less sensitive to school closure.”

Closing schools also has broader socio-economic impacts and unrecognized health effects. There are trade-offs in being overly cautious by closing schools, including potential lengthy disruptions in student learning and compelling parents to stay home from work. Students from lower socio-economic neighbourhoods would also be deprived of school meal programs and cost-free supervised athletics activities.

The most authoritative study of school closure impacts, in the August 2009 issue of The Lancet, actually assesses broader community impacts. If all U.K. schools closed, some 30 per cent of health and social care workers would be taken out of commission, compounding adverse effects on the financial health and viability of communities.

School authorities would be well-advised to consider the potential duration of closures in their emergency response plans.  While it is probably wise to err on the side of caution with school-age children, the longer the closure lasts, the more problematic it becomes, especially in the absence of e-learning bridge programs.

Closing schools for more than two weeks to combat COVID-19, as in the case of Hong Kong, could have a detrimental effect upon the school schedule, year-end-examinations, and the conventional grade- promotion system. It’s possible, perhaps likely, that students will be seriously set back by missing so much instructional time.

Implementing “e-learning plans,” including digital and distance learning, is recommended by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but there’s a major problem with that constructive proposal in its guide for school administrators. It’s feasible in e-learning ready school systems like those in Hong Kong, United Arab Emirates, and the State of Ohio, but not yet in our provincial school systems.

Few Canadian school districts are prepared or trained to implement e-learning days system-wide, and they have, with few exceptions, resisted piloting e-leaning modules during winter season storm days.  Scrambling to implement hastily prepared distance learning or online courses will not prove effective at all. Nor are schools fully equipped to administer year-end assessments online or to report the results electronically to students and parents.

Closing schools may be expedient in assuring the concerned public that actions are being taken to control the spread of the contagion. This is especially so now that managing the fears and anxieties of children and families is emerging as a priority during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Given the lower attack rates for children and the weight of research evidence, it’s much harder to make the call to dismiss classes and suspend school for what may well be an indeterminate period of time.

 Should schools be closed to contain and reduce the transmission of the 2019-20 coronavirus?  What does past experience closing schools during epidemics tell us?  Should schools be closed early in the cycle as a precaution or in reaction to escalating attack rates among children and their teachers? How prepared are school districts to implement e-learning as a bridge in the teaching-learning process?  If schools do close, the question is — for how long given the unpredictability of the spreading contagion?  

*An earlier version of this commentary appeared in The National Post, March 11, 2020. 

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Mandating Online High School Courses: What’s Driving Ontario’s Bold e-Learning Initiative?

The Ontario government’s multi-headed education announcement, released on March 15, 2019, gave new meaning to William Shakespeare’s infamous dictum, “Beware the Ides of March,”  judging from the chilling effect it had on educators and close observers of the school system.  Rooting out ‘Discovery Math,’ restoring the basics, and realigning an ‘age-appropriate’ sex education curriculum were entirely expected, but not the declaration that all secondary school students would be required to take four online courses. Mandating online courses appeared to come out of nowhere.

Secondary students will be required to take a minimum of four e-learning credits out of the 30 credits needed to earn a Grade 12 Ontario Secondary School Diploma, equivalent to one credit per year of high school. All we really know about implementation is that the changes will be phased-in starting in 2020-21 and that the delivery of the e-learning courses will be centralized.

Where the online learning initiative originated and what it actually meant for students and teachers generated plenty of speculation. That was largely because Ontario Education Minister Lisa Thompson announced it as a fait accompli with nothing approaching a detailed rationale.

Now that the furor over mandating online courses has subsided the question of where it came from can be pieced-together. It is looking, more and more, like a foray into ‘disruptive innovation’ rather than another sleight-of-hand scheme to reduce the $26.6 billion education budget.

Online learning and virtual schooling show great potential for transforming student learning, but Ontario like other provinces has pursued a ‘growth-management’ strategy quite different than most American states. Unlike the U.S., the free market remains regulated and private providers are largely absent.  South of the border, “virtual schooling” outside of bricks-and-mortar schools has grown by leaps and bounds in a largely unregulated education environment.

Online learning in Ontario evolved out of what were known as provincial correspondence courses. Since 1994-95, many of the province’s school boards have established their own district programs and then in 2006 twenty of the boards formed the Ontario e-Learning Consortium (OeLC).  That joint venture has helped increase course offerings and the sharing of resources with positive results.

From 2008-09 to 2009-10, online student enrolments in OeLC boards jumped from 6,276 to 9,695. The consortia model has also been replicated by Ontario’s French language boards and by the province’s constitutionally guaranteed separate Catholic school boards. In 2010, a Northern e-Learning Consortium (NeLC) was established to allow remote northern Ontario school districts to address shared challenges (Ontario Education 2011).

Ontario’s regulatory regime, outlined in the 2006 E-Learning Strategy and codified in school regulations initially imposed limits on the delivery of online learning.   “In some instances,” North American online learning expert Michael K. Barbour reported, “the Ministry requirements were once quite restrictive.”

Originally, the Ontario provincial Learning Management System (LMS) could not be used for either blended learning or the professional development of teachers. That led school districts to run parallel systems, the provincial LMS as well as their own separate LMS for those other purposes.

Ontario has gradually loosened its regulations and, in September 2011, finally embraced blended learning as part of the system. By 2013-14, it was estimated that 52,095 students were taking e-learning courses, including summer school, from school boards through the Ontario Ministry’s virtual learning environment. In addition, 20,000 Ontario students were enrolled in correspondence courses and about 6,000 in private online schools.

The leading Ontario parent lobby group, Toronto-based People for Education, emerged after 2013-14 as a champion of “digital literacies” (information, media and ICT) and the promotion of ICT to enhance student learning.

Expanding e-Learning became a contentious issue at the bargaining table. Back in 2010, the big issue, for the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF) was not quality programming but rather closing the so-called “digital divide” separating students fully equipped with the latest e-tools and those without such access.  Closing the “ICT competency divide” between urban and rural Ontario proved to be a stumbling block to progress.

Online learning has grown, but at a carefully managed rate. Today, the Canadian e-Learning Network estimates that only 65,000 Ontario students (2017-18) take at least one online course and that represents approximately 10 per cent of all high school students. If the PC plan goes forward, the numbers enrolled will balloon to as many as 630,000 students a year.

Such a dramatic change is a classic example of what Clayton Christensen and his Harvard University Institute team of researchers mean by ‘disruptive innovation.’  The goal of such a change is to open the door to a whole new population of consumers (students) at the bottom of a market access to a product or service (online learning) that was previously denied to them and accessible only to the few with the access, resources, or expertise.

Lifting technology use regulations and removing barriers may be messy and fraught with risk, but students, according to Christensen, thrive in such a dynamic, competitive learning environment. Free to embrace e-learning in all its forms, they gain access to the full range of teaching modalities, ranging from strictly online, self-paced learning to blended learning combining online and face-to-face classroom instruction.

The Ontario Progressive Conservative education ‘brains trust’ has definitely latched onto technology-driven educational change. Mandating online high school courses is a clear sign that the Department has embraced the kind of market experimentation and disruptive innovation common in the United States.

Education reforms implemented in Florida from the late 1990s to the 2000s, spearhead by Republican Governor Jeb Bush and known as the “Florida Formula,’ now hold sway among PC education policy-makers at Queen’s Park.  Ford’s “Back to Basics” education reform echoes most of the five key Bush policies – high expectations, school accountability, student performance targeted funding, teacher quality standards, and school choice.

Florida, under Jeb Bush, was among the first to mandate online learning as a secondary school graduation requirement.  Today, five states – Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Michigan and Virginia – require one compulsory online course.  Some other states, including Georgia, New Mexico, Massachusetts and West Virginia, have passed legislation or approved regulations supporting the inclusion of online courses. No state goes as far as requiring the four courses stipulated in the Ontario plan.

Ontario’s shotgun online learning initiative deserves to be challenged. Classroom teachers and informed researchers have much to contribute as school systems wrestle with how effectively integrate technology into classroom practice. Front-line practitioners bring real life experience and a healthy skepticism to bear on ephemeral fads and what might be termed ‘hair-brained’ transformation schemes.

Top-down educational initiatives, especially in ICT and technology integration, die a quick death or simply languish without the active support and engagement of regular classroom educators.  That is why innovative and disruptive ideas like the ‘flipped classroom’ and a Virtual Enriched learning environment dreamed up by corporate change management  experts and delivered from on high have, so far, not succeeded in changing the trajectory or improving the quality and variety of student learning in K-12 education.

What sparked the Ontario Doug Ford government’s move to introduce compulsory high school online courses? Was the policy announcement driven by change-management theory, sound e-learning research, or a commitment to reducing education costs?  Is it feasible to expand online courses so significantly over such a relatively short timeline? Will it now be possible for Ontario educators to come to terms with the change? Is “disruptive innovation” destabilizing, by definition, or potentially beneficial when it sparks new ways of thinking and deepens learning for students?  

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Technology, E-Learning and Teachers: Why Do Most ‘Digital Age’ Ed-Tech Initiatives Run Aground ?

Why do so many “Digital Age” Ed-Tech initiatives run aground in the classroom? That was the critical question that I tackled on September 10, 2016, at the researchED 2016 National Conference in London, UK.  My short presentation set out to confront the significant challenges posed for classroom teachers by initiatives attempting to usher in what is now termed the “Brave New World” of 21st century learning. It also attempted to pick-up and further develop insights gleaned from Tom Bennett’s thought-provoking 2013 book, Teacher Proof, an indispensable little handbook for every teacher who’s been introduced to an ‘innovative’ teaching strategy or ‘new’ curriculum and been told that it is “based upon the research.”

The current 21st Century Learning mantra likely found its origins in a very influential November 2000 OECD Schooling for Tomorrow address by Sir Michael Barber, British PM Tony Blair’s chief education advisor. In his sppech, “The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Re-conceptualizing Public Education,” he provided the essential narrative, replicated in most of the derivative education initiatives:

“The explosion of knowledge about the brain and the nature of learning, combined with the growing power of technology, creates the potential to transform even the most fundamental unit of education: the interaction of the teacher and the learner. Moreover, huge social changes, such as growing diversity and population mobility, present educators with new and constantly changing circumstances. As a result, the characteristics which defined the successful education systems of, say, 1975, are unlikely to be those which will define success in the future.”

Barber and his disciples unleashed what I term “Big Idea mimmickry” that popped up in a whole series of top-down education policy spin-offs ranging from the infamous June 2009 UK “Your Child, Your Schools,Our Future” declaration to New Brunswick’s short-lived 2010 “21st Century Learning” initiative (NB3-21C) with its bizarre CRT2 formula, with C standing for “Creativity,” R representing “Relevance,” the first T signifying “Time” and the second one “Technology.” In the case of New Brunswick, it provided a convenient new pedagogy to accompany the mass distribution of laptops to all of the province’s teachers. While the NB plan fizzled and died, its initiator, Deputy Minister John D. Kershaw, resurrected it and took it nation-wide rebranded as C21 Canada: Canadians for 21st Century Learning and Innovation, championed by the Council of Ministers of Education and bankrolled by Canadian branches of the world’s leading learning corporations.

Most “Digital Age Revolution” plans, like the September 2015 North Carolina version, promote “binary thinking” pitting the “old” against the “new,” analogue vs. digital, and traditional vs digital age/progressive.  It all rests upon the purely theoretical assumption that constructivist learning is better than explicit instruction, and proceeds to perpetuate such false dichotomies. The latest iteration, Michael Fullan’s “New Pedagogies of Deeper Learning,” hatched with Barber and Pearson Education, is the most recent example of Digital Age pedagogical theory rooted in such fallacious thinking.

Twenty first century learning advocates set out to “Shift Minds” utilizing You Tube videos mimicking Colorado IT teacher Karl Fisch’s 2006 smash hit, Shift Happens.  Riding that 21st century bicycle has proven difficult, facing an uphill climb against stiff headwinds emanating from resistant classroom teachers and legions of concerned elementary school parents.

Three dominant ideologies have recently arisen to propel the latest phase of high-tech education: personalization, robotization, and Goolization. Mass introduction of ICT is now packaged as a way of “personalizing” education for today’s students, allowing them to work more independently and to proceed at their own pace.  Preparing pupils for a life “dancing with robots” is now accepted uncritically as a necessity in the 21st century workplace.  School districts once cautious about technology integration are turning to Google for single-source agreements to get free or heavily discounted access to Google Apps for Education (GAFE). Few  education bureaucrats seem to question these priorities or the implications of such technological initiatives.

Education policy analysts like Stanford Education professor Larry Cuban and Hack Education blogger Audrey Watters have issued periodic warnings about the impact of “machines” on teachers in the classroom. In Teachers and Machines, Cuban examined previous cycles of classroom technology from film strip projectors to calculators. Every new innovation, he shows, has followed the same pattern in the classroom: adoption by teachers, inflated claims by enthusiasts, deflated expectations, then followed by a new technological panacea.

So far, ed-tech has not transformed how teachers teach in the classroom. That’s the firm assessment of Larry Cuban in a June 2015 piece posted on the Education Week Digital Learning Blog. It also prompted me to dig a little deeper to find our why there is such teacher resistance to initiatives seeking to introduce widespread e-learning in K-12 schools.

Based upon my own recent research, conducted for an upcoming chapter in the Springer Guide to Digital Learning in K-12 Schools (September 2016), the explanation is deceptively simple. Top-down initiatives branded with “21st Century Learning” labels tend to falter and rarely succeed in winning over regular teachers or in penetrating the so-called ‘black box’ of the school classroom. The potential of e-learning will only be realized when initiatives enjoy the support of regular classroom teachers and engage those teachers from the school-level up.

Top-down initiatives simply do not work in education, and a succession of struggling high-tech education initiatives are proving this every school day in classrooms world-wide. Four critical factors come into play in undoing such initiatives: great teaching still matters most, “sheep dip” tech-ed training does not last, new pedagogies are merely ‘warmed-over’ constructivist ventures, and teachers integrate IT only when it demonstrably improves their teaching effectiveness.

All is not lost when it comes to introducing technology and e-learning in the classroom, if the hard lessons are absorbed by wise education policy makers and head teachers, capable of tuning out 21c learning missionaries and IT zealots. It will take what I describe as a “flexible, agile, responsive approach” starting with teachers themselves.

To that end, at researchEd 2016 in London, I proposed four strategies with a better chance of succeeding in winning over today’s teachers.

1: Support Early Adopters committed to Technology Integration and initiating Blended Learning Programs

2: Strengthen and expand Existing and ‘Seed’ New Self-Directed Online Learning Programs

3: Focus on building the A La Carte  Model of Blended Learning Programs in Junior and Senior High Schools

4: Build School Leadership capacity in E-Learning, Change Management, and Disruptive Innovation

5: Develop and test (before proceeding large-scale) more reliable measures of the effectiveness of E-Learning Program innovations.

What is really needed is a much more strategic, longer-term Technology Integration plan in our school systems. Teachers must be in full control of the technology— to produce true deeper knowledge of much greater benefit to students.  Students and teachers are yearning for more stimulating and engaging classroom instruction, tapping into the potential of e-learning. We deserve much more from our schools.  My presentation was intended, in a small way, to demystify e-learning in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

Why do high-sounding 21st century learning initiatives fail to gain traction among classroom teachers?  When will high-tech education advocates begin to demonstrate that their have absorbed the hard lessons?  Is my modest set of proposals worth pursuing?  Would it work – where it counts – with teachers and students in the classroom? 

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