Inclusive Education, Thirty Years after Salamanca: Why is New Brunswick “Giving Up” on Vulnerable Kids?*

Thirty years ago, the modern conception of inclusive education was born at a UNESCO World Conference on Special Needs Education held in Spain — and captured in what is known as the Salamanca Declaration. “Every learner matters and matters equally” is the guiding principle and that has meant including most students, if not all, in mainstream classrooms

Since 1995, school systems like New Brunswick and many around the world have shifted in their approach to serving learning challenged kids — from providing ‘special education’ support programs to including more children in inclusive learning environments.  While the principle is nearly universally accepted, few nations or states have followed one Maritime Canadian province, New Brunswick, in virtually eliminating specialized support programs for children with severe learning challenges and complex needs.

For a province that promotes itself abroad as an exemplar of ‘inclusive education,’ New Brunswick Child and Youth Advocate Kelly Lamrock’s latest report, Policy of Giving Up, is a devastating indictment. Maintaining all-inclusive classrooms comes at a steep price because hundreds of the most challenged, vulnerable and troubled kids are being excluded for days and weeks-at-a-time, just to maintain the current model.

One of those children is the 9-year-old son Riverview mother Cassie Martin,  a high-needs child who uses a wheelchair and lives with multiple and complex challenges, is more than a statistic. He’s a living example of a student sent home regularly and labelled a ‘partial-day student.’  Nor is he alone because it’s now happening in many cases, and to 500 or more children, in New Brunswick’s purportedly inclusive school system.

Lamrock’s latest investigation looked at the plight of students like Cassie Martin’s son, who are sent home and, in some cases, with “no educational services at all.”  While the practice was once relatively rare, Lamrock reported that today more than 500 children are being denied an education for most of the week.

Through its own investigation, Lamrock’s office found 344 students on ‘partial-day’ programs in the Anglophone school districts. While such students were not even tracked in Francophone schools, the office puts that number at around 150 students.

Under current, de-facto policy, students who pose the greatest challenges essentially disappear.  Many receive no additional services nor are they provided with alternative learning strategies. Even more disconcerting, Lamrock found no evidence that districts were tracking the impact of partial days on the children or monitoring their progress.

Then came the gut punch: “It is a policy of giving up on the children most in need.”

Children in care are the most in need of a proper education. Yet the Child Advocate found those students nearly 20 times more likely to wind up on partial days and be told not to come to school.  That is an utter travesty and completely indefensible.

School districts are not only breaking promises to be inclusive, they are actually breaking the law. That’s the view of Lamrock, one of the province’s better-known lawyers.

The Education department’s rationale for resorting to ‘partial-days’ is suspect, especially so when the publicly-stated policy is inclusive education for all. Under Policy 322 on Inclusive Education (2013), it is permissible to allow “variation of the common learning environment” when a student in a common setting pose “undue hardship.”  In such cases, there still remains a duty to provide some form of alternative provision.

In presenting his report, Lamrock provided an important clarification of what is required to fulfil the commitment to educate all students. “Placing a child in a setting where they receive short-term, targeted, and appropriate interventions to help them gain skills or master behaviours that they will need to return to the classroom is a variation of a learning environment,” he said.

“Sending a child home with no educational services is not a variation of the learning environment,” according to Lamrock. “It is a denial of any learning environment.” Taking a step back, it is also a clear indication that the inclusion model is full of holes.

Education Minister Bill Hogan’s response to the revelations was hard to fathom.  Put on the spot under the glare of cameras, he promised to look into the prevalence of ‘partial day’ plans but cast doubt on Lamrock’s claims that significant numbers of children and teens were cast adrift without education support services.

That’s completely at odds with the claims made by his immediate predecessor, Dominic Cardy. Almost exactly five years ago, in May 2019, Minister Cardy identified the spread of ‘partial-day’ plans as a problem and directed Anglophone districts to track and report on the growth in numbers.  This is, in all likelihood, the only reason the data even exists, albeit tightly guarded by school districts.

What’s standing in the way of rooting it out in the system?  The fundamental contradiction embedded in the N.B. inclusive education model.  Students with severe learning needs and complex challenges are now too numerous to be accommodated in regular classrooms. To restore proper support programs cuts against the grain of the gatekeepers, most notably Inclusive Education Canada, anchored in Minister Hogan’s home town, Woodstock, N.B.

Confronted by the usual deflections that we need to “address class composition” or to provide “more resources,” Lamrock called a spade-a-spade. “Whatever the response is,” he told CBC News, “it can’t be to take the 500 most vulnerable kids and send them home and say ‘Good luck, we’ll see you when you are homeless or in jail.’ And that’s what we’re doing right now.”

Thirty years on, New Brunswick’s inclusive education provision falls short of the laudable Salamanca principles. Adopting the language of inclusion means little when so many kids are ‘left out’ and underserviced in publicly-funded schools. It amounts to covering up the cracks and implicitly accepting exclusions through the back door.   Let’s hope the message sinks in, this time around.

*An earlier version of this commentary appeared in The Telegraph-Journal (Provincial), June 14, 2024

What is the true state of inclusive education if hundreds of children are excluded regularly and placed on “partial day plans”?  In adopting the total inclusion model, did New Brunswick create the problem by eliminating virtually every support program serving those with severe needs or disruptive behaviours? Is the province violating its own education law by failing to educate every child? Is it a matter of funding and resources or trying to fit everyone into a preconceived model of school provision?

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Ontario Airlift: What are Canada’s Global School Change Gurus doing in New Brunswick?

Two of the world’s best known education gurus from Ontario, Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves, are coming to the rescue of a Canadian provincial school system in the Maritimes. The leading school change theorists head the four-person ‘Panel of Educational Leaders’ recently appointed to advise New Brunswick Education Minister Bil Hogan and senior bureaucrat Tiffany Bastin on how to improve Anglophone education in the province.

The high-flying duo, Fullan and Hargreaves, are now promoting the “shared humanity paradigm” shift and signal the triumph of “engagement, achievement, and well-being” (in that order) as a long-term solution to the system’s challenges – declining literacy and numeracy scores, chronic absenteeism, and chaotic classroom conditions. Mesmerized by their star quality, educational leaders and principals in New Brunswick may well be taken-in by the latest vision promoted by the school change wizards.

The provincial education review, headed by NBTA director Ardith Shirley and Dr. Tiffany Bastin, set the stage for the ‘Ontario airlift’ with two reports (July 2023 and November 2023) and an 11-point action plan unveiled on April 16 in Fredericton. On that same day, the Panel was posted online and University of Ottawa professor Hargreaves announced to the world via Twitter X that he and long-time ally had been hired to “advise” N.B. education, along with Beth Keyes, UNB Saint John education professor, and Imelda Perley, renowned Wolastoq Elder and Indigenous language specialist.

The policy shift is mighty peculiar, especially for a Blaine Higgs led Progressive Conservative government.  The two Ontario change agents rove around from system to system, normally finding fertile ground in social democratic school systems – Ontario under Bob Rae and the NDP (1991-1995), U.K.’s Tony Blair and New Labour (1997-2004), Ontario under Dalton McGuinty/Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals (2004-2018),and, most recently, Scotland under Nicole Sturgeon and the Scottish National Party (2016-2023). Changes in government often lead to education policy shifts, generating openings for new contracts with substantial fees.

School change is a growth industry and Fullan and Hargreaves are the best-known Canadian practitioners with a rather extensive entourage or stable of associates or former graduate students, all over North America. Since Fullan wrote the school change bibles, Change Forces (1992) and The New Meaning of Educational Change (2001), and he’s been working with Hargreaves (on and off) since they collaborated on the Ontario elementary teachers’ union What’s Worth Fighting For series in the mid- 1990s.

Two of their more recent proteges are New Brunswickers, Assistant Deputy Minister Bastin and Moncton’s most decorated teacher, Armand Doucet, C.M., Top 50 Global Teacher Prize finalist and co-author of the global best-seller, Teaching in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Standing at the Precipice (2018), and author of Teaching Life (2019) in a series edited by Fullan and American colleague Dennis Shirley. He’s now a prominent advocate for Gen AI (Generative Artificial Intelligence) from his perch as a columnist for Education International, the global voice of teacher union perspectives.

One thing is crystal clear – former Education Minister Dominic Cardy’s 2019 Green Paper reform agenda focusing on literacy, inclusive education, and French language programs is dead in-the-water and much of his legacy is being slowly purged from the system. The new 11-point plan, unveiled by Ardith Shirley and Bastin, tilts in a completely different direction with far less emphasis on improving early literacy and fixing bilingual programs. Introducing a period of daily physical education and changes in programs for middle school learners, ages 11 to 14, are now stamped with Hargreaves’ troika of priorities, focusing heavily on promoting student engagement rather than raising achievement standards.

The two Ontario education gurus come with some recent baggage worth scrutinizing. Appointing a four person “Panel of Educational Leaders” looks mighty similar to what happened in Scotland when former SNP leader Spurgeon appointed the ‘blue ribbon panel’ of experts, including Hargreaves and other Fullan allies, that delivered the Scottish ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ now hobbled by widespread criticism and vocal opposition.

Under the ‘CfE,’ Scotland’s students have dropped significantly in literacy and mathematics on international assessments. Mounting concerns found powerful confirmation in the latest Education Scotland review. A month ago, the TES Magazine featured a scathing report citing serious deficiencies in the handiwork of Hargreaves and the prominent advisory team.  Adopting a “competency-based approach” with vague goals and performance standard has, according to Education Scotland, left a whole generation of students ‘lacking a common knowledge base” and prompting secondary school educators to recommend “starting again” to get it right.  Looks like a ‘do-over’ for Scotland.

Hiring Fullan and Hargreaves is questionable on many counts.  The two education gurus are well-known ‘progressives’ who, until now, have served social democratic governments with policy positions diametrically opposed to those of Premier Higgs and his current Education Minister.  Its hard to imagine Fullan or Hargreaves ever supporting N.B. Policy 713 on Gender Identities or favouring more robust student accountability or student assessment-driven educational improvement.

The new order in New Brunswick is also far more favourable than former Minister Cardy to technological innovation and the deployment of tech toys in schools and classrooms. “Leveraging technology to enhance learning and personalization” is a phrase snatched from the World Economic Forum education office and a one found in Doucet’s global teacher talks and his recent EI commentaries.

Embracing technology tools includes smartphones in class and that is completely at odds with many other provinces in Canada, especially Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia, all now implementing province-wide cellphone bans. It’s clear that N.B. Child and Youth Advocate Kelly Lamrock’s recent warnings about the mental health impact of social media addiction on teens have not registered with education authorities. Given Fullan’s past associations with global learning corporations like Pearson, there will be pressure to embrace technological advances such as “personalization” favoured by the ed-tech giants.

Why has one of Canada’s more politically conservative governments hired two global education gurus from Ontario, given their previous track record?  Were Higgs and his Education Minister taken-in by the wizardry of visionaries committed to the latest in a succession of Fullanite concoctions, the “shared humanity paradigm shift”? How is any of this going to change the trajectory of a school system lagging behind others in Canadian K-12 education? What happened in Scotland may well be repeated again.

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Student Behaviour and Inclusion: How well are “Coke Bottle Kids” being served in total inclusion classrooms?*

New Brunswick disabilities advocate Heather Chandler, the mother of a hearing-challenged daughter, is no fan of the what she describes as the “illusion of inclusion.” On an April 2023 CBC NB radio panel of parents, she described what it’s really like for her daughter Alison and far too many other children in New Brunswick’s one-classroom-for-all model.

Social isolation, anxieties and frustrations are an everyday school experience for many children. That’s what vocal N.B. parents such as Chandler are saying publicly, some for the first time. It all surfaced during the tension-filled consultations over the aborted French language reforms threatening the French immersion program

Chandler is far from alone in speaking out about how it’s adversely affecting her own daughter and children with disabilities of all kinds. “She’s holding it in,” Chandler says, while others are “blowing up in class” causing disruptions. It all comes out when she gets home. “For deaf kids, it’s actually exclusion.” In short, “it’s not working.”

Chandler’s daughter displays the classic behaviour of what are known as “Coke bottle kids.” That term, coined by American education observer Jay Elizabeth Brownlee, originally used to describe neurodivergent children, has far wider application. It helps to explain why teachers say school kids are “fine” or “had a good day” yet the second they get home (or before they leave the school parking lot), they simply “blow up in your face.”

Chandler and that CBC NB panel, including Moncton parent Clinton Davis and French immersion parent Weh-Ming Cho, identified, in considerable detail, how challenging it can be trying to cope in today’s classrooms. Each of them, to varying degrees, supported structural changes building-in more “fluidity” for kids, including a broader range of options to ensure meaningful inclusion for most, if not all kids, right across the spectrum.

Student behaviour and the remarkably rigid N.B. inclusion model are intimately connected. Investing some $30-million more may provide some temporary relief, but it’s not getting to the root of the matter. Without some fluidity in movement, it can be, in Chandler’s words, “an isolating experience.”

Listening to his children, Moncton’s Clinton Davis got a good sense of what’s actually going on in different schools. His kids simply don’t feel like the regular teachers know how to support students with disabilities nor do they have the resources to manage students with behavioural problems. Some unruly students, he pointed out, do not have diagnosed disabilities and are simply ‘acting up’ and disrupting classes.

While French immersion classes run more smoothly, Cho thinks they too might benefit from some variation in delivery models, including enrichment opportunities. Allowing students to periodically interact with “new faces” might provide some relief as long as it’s not perceived as punishment of any kind. Being stuck with the same people all day, whatever your age, he added, could become a “hellscape” for anyone.

The latest provincial plan to address student behaviour challenges, announced in late July by NBTA Executive Director Ardith Shirley and Assistant Deputy Education Minister Tiffany Bastin, came up considerably short. Hiring “behaviour mentors” and adding contract supply teachers was presented as a “near-term” response. It looks far more like a band-aid to patch-up the existing model and quell rising parent and teacher concerns.

Education Minister Bill Hogan’s statement supporting the latest plan sounded like it was simply a matter of providing more classroom supports.  The behaviour intervention mentors, he said, were aimed at helping students “learn to self-regulate” and helping staff to “co-regulate” guiding students on a “more positive path” and “reduce interruptions that happen in class.” Assigning supply teachers to specific schools, Hogan added, provided more predictability for teachers and consistency for learning-challenged children.

A year ago, former N.B. Education Minister Dominic Cardy was preparing to revamp thar province’s rather rigid inclusion model to address the incidence of behavioural disruptions. The policy change, he wrote, was aimed at “making it clear that we defined inclusion as being inclusion within the school, not the classroom.” That meant all students would be included in the class unless and until the behaviour of a single student disrupted the entire class. In such cases, that student would be provided with an alternative placement with resource support.

Sarah Wagner, executive director of Inclusion N.B., strongly objected to any plan deviating from Policy 322 on Inclusive Education, claiming that inclusion should continue to mean every student, all the time, without exception. “The right of the child is to be with their peers and within the classroom,” she told CBC News. “The way we need to look at it is — what supports are required to make that successful.”

The interim report issued by in June 2023 by Shirley and Bastin backs away from that inclusion reform commitment.  It tilts more in the direction of maintaining the status quo, in line with the position of Inclusion NB, formerly known as the Association for Community Living.

New Brunswick’s “Coke bottle kids” are not really integrated into those classrooms and some are disruptive because teachers are overwhelmed and unable to cope with the frequency of class disruptions.  When disruptions occur, teachers simply keep the lid on or evacuate everyone except the student acting out and causing a disturbance.

Legitimate parent concerns about disruptive students and the social isolation of kids with disabilities in regular classes are not really being addressed. New Brunswick has settled for What Cardy described as “ rhetorical inclusion” and it’s not only an “absurd situation” but not sustainable for much longer.  Let’s hope this isn’t widespread in our provincial school systems.

• Extracted and adapted from an Education Beat column, Telegraph-Journal, September 23, 2023. 

What is “meaningful inclusion for so-called “Coke-Bottle Kids”? Why are today’s teachers so overwhelmed by students with complex needs and struggling to maintain safe, calm and mutually cooperative class environments? Is adding “behaviour mentors” going to make much of a difference? How many adults can a regular classroom teacher manage along with a class of kids? Where might policy-makers look to find a school system where severely challenged kids are identified, supported and integrated back into the mainstream classroom? 

 

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Gender Identity Controversy: What did New Brunswick’s Policy 713 Review Accomplish?*

For five weeks, from early May to mid-June 2023, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs and his beleaguered and rather stoic Education Minister have been embroiled in a Canadian provincial version of the transgender rights controversy.  Ignited by the surprise announcement that Education Policy 713 was under review, it was made far worse by that infamous May 17 media scrum when the Premier stumbled onto a minefield and divulged his barely concealed views. The ensuing provincial gender identity war over LGBTQ rights completely dominated public policy debate, sparked a brief government caucus revolt, and aggravated societal divisions.

Premier Higgs and Minister Bill Hogan battened the hatches while weathering a storm of protest and a strong current of mobilized public opinion, supported by Canadian human rights protections. What unleashed the torrent was the Premier’s initial, ill-advised approach to such a sensitive teen mental health and multi-faceted human rights issue. Teens wrestling with gender issues or dysphoria are five times more likely to commit suicide and do require ‘safe spaces’ if only to sort out the complex mixture of feelings.

Modifications announced by Minister Hogan on June 8, 2023 were designed to impose a settlement and quell the dissent. The proposed new version affirmed parental rights to be informed of “self-identification” changes and, on the other hand, firmed up the commitment to provide “universal (private) washroom facilities” in each school.  The price was extraordinarily high in terms of aggravating social tensions and destabilizing the government.

While the Premier framed it as a matter of parental rights, he and his allies were triggered by two events, both only tangentially related to Policy 713 which deals with providing ‘safe spaces’ in schools. Politicians tend to be reactive, especially when facing a barrage of complaints, real and imagined.  Whether it came in the form of formal complaints or not, many parents reacted negatively to a March 11 Storytime drag show for ‘little ones’ at Moncton Public Library and the May 5 Pride in Education teacher professional development session at Hanwell Park Academy. Given the current polarized and agitated atmosphere, it’s hardly surprising that most holding such views choose to keep their own counsel.

Higgs and Hogan opened a ‘Pandora’s Box’ in public education. It started with a commitment to engage parents, where possible, more constructively in the transgender transition of pre- and early adolescents.  The Policy 713 review became a virtual magnet for the most divisive and contested social issues of our time – the use of gender-based pronouns, eligibility for sports competitions, and access to gender-free washrooms.   

While many and perhaps most New Brunswick parents feel that they do have a right to know if their child, under age 16, has come out at school, raising the whole issue is fraught with risks. It’s next-to-impossible to find a middle ground without compromising the well-being of teens in transition.  Given the highly polarized atmosphere, no one was prepared to go deeper or dare to engage in evidence-informed discussions about the rising incidence of social dysphoria, especially among young girls.

Gender-affirming care model approaches being implemented in public mental health and children’s services and through social agencies, now well-advanced in Ontario, are taking root in New Brunswick. Since the closure of the Toronto CMHA clinic in 2015, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) guidelines have expanded access to, and support for, early medical treatment for gender dysphoria in younger people.

Specialized care for children and youth who identify as a ‘gender minority’ is expanding in New Brunswick. Horizon Health is on board working with clients of all ages to ensure a “safe and welcoming environment for everyone, embracing 2SLGBTQIA+, which stands for two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual.

Advocacy groups draw support from the NB Trans Health Network, composed of health professionals with training in trans health who campaign for improved services and access. More than a half-dozen advocacy groups have arisen to support trans and gender diverse teens and youth, including Pride in Education, Imprint Youth Association (Fredericton), Safe Spaces Moncton, and Trans-Action on the Acadian Peninsula.

 More and more children and adolescents are identifying as transgender and increasing numbers being offered medical treatment, such as puberty blockers and surgical procedures, especially in the United States and Canada. A February 2023 British Medical Journal report, drawing upon evidence from Britain and Sweden, struck a cautionary note. There is professional disagreement over the evidence underpinning WPATH guidelines.

Britain’s National Health Service, currently in the midst of an independent review by Dr Hilary Cass, has registered concerns about the “scarce and inconclusive evidence to support clinical decision-making” for minors. In Dr. Cass’s interim report, it was identified as a “transient phase” requiring psychological support and health practitioners were urged to be “mindful” of the mental health risks of even social transition. 

None of this new medical research calls into question the foundational gender-affirming care approach now in place. Children and youth presenting with gender identity issues are vulnerable and at-risk.  Provincial school authorities and regional districts, following the lead of Horizon Health, need to recognize “how difficult the path to becoming your true self is, and how different the path is for each person.”  It is not a situation amenable to easy answers or blanket solutions.

Education Minister Hogan was not the person to be conducting consultations on Policy 713.  Last week, while meeting with Saint John High School transgender activist Logan Martin and a small group of LGBTQ+ students, he stuck his foot in his mouth again. Describing sexual identity and gender identity, repeatedly, as a “lifestyle” was potentially “harmful” and losing his composure exhibited a level of discomfort in confronting today’s school realities.  

Newly elected Liberal Leader Susan Holt was quick to pounce on Hogan’s public gaffe.  Demanding a public apology to the teens from the Minister for his ‘harmful behaviour’ did not elicit one. During his latest press conference, Hogan stuck doggedly to his prepared script and managed to steer clear of committing further offences.

Wading into gender identity politics divides far more than it unites and the Higgs government was in way over its head. It was a high-risk venture if the only real change was to ensure parents were advised that their child was seeking to use a different name or use a different preferred pronoun in school. It all would have gone more smoothly if finding a compromise was left to knowledgeable teen mental health researchers and pediatricians.  

New Brunswick is now more divided than ever before and the government’s future may be imperiled. For better or worse, more citizens are now better informed on children’s rights and more aware of the potential risks of transitioning minors. Of greater concern: the middle ground is disappearing and there’s little sign New Brunswickers are more willing to accommodate the shift in societal values.

*A shorter version appeared in the Telegraph Journal, Provincial Edition, June10, 2023

What sparked New Brunswick’s foray into the minefield of gender identity politics and policy?  Which sections of N.B. Policy 717 were identified for review and why did they stir controversy? If such a review was advisable, why was it undertaken by the Premier and his education minister rather than recognized human rights experts and mental health professionals?  What did it all accomplish in the end?

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Eliminating French Immersion– Why did the Delphi Technique Consultations fail the test in New Brunswick?

The proposed plan to change French-language education by eliminating French Immersion in New Brunswick’s Anglophone schools is facing a firestorm of resistance.  An initial mid-January 2023 live-streamed media conference announcing ‘public consultations’ was cut-short after 29 minutes. Then tempers and emotions flared up at the first meeting of the four scheduled ‘public consultations’ which hardened into a wall of opposition from January 17 to 25, 2023 in Moncton, Saint John and Fredericton.

Tampering with French Immersion in New Brunswick and elsewhere is a perilous undertaking in K-12 education. It now appears that “touching the third rail” in that province may claim its latest victims.

N.B.’s French Immersion advocacy group, Canadian Parents for French, led by Chris Collins, not only mobilized parents and teachers, but succeeded in disrupting the planned ‘consultation’ management process. It was exposed as a rather ineffective attempt to apply the Delphi Technique strategy of seating in circles, designed to contain and diffuse the dissent.

As a strategy for managing ‘public consultations,’ popularly known as the “World Café,” it essentially crashed and burned. “Manufacturing consent” can and does backfire, especially when utilized in thinly-veiled fashion to ‘ram through’ school reforms or facilitate school facilities changes such as school closures.

Organizers in New Brunswick were totally unprepared for the crowd, unable to answer fundamental questions, and a harried-looking Minister went on the defensive, first threatening to “dismiss” the unruly crowd, then conceding that, if not enough French teachers could be found, it would be started in grade 1 and delayed at the kindergarten level. By the end of the consultations, he was now insisting it was “not cast in stone.”

N.B. Education Minister Bill Hogan has been dealt a bad hand. Appointed in October 2022 to succeed Dominic Cardy, a confident, fluently-bilingual public performer, he finds himself fronting a massively unpopular French language education initiative which is opposed by as many as three out of four New Brunswickers. What’s worse is that a rushed implementation is planned for September 2023 and the initial 22-odd Language Learning Opportunities (LLO) pilot programs were never properly assessed in terms of their effectiveness in improving the fluency and proficiency of students.

Hogan and Deputy Minister John McLaughlin survived the initial skewering on January 17 at the Gowan Brae Golf and Country Club, but the Minister was essentially mobbed at subsequent public meetings. Crowds arrived early, challenged the “world cafe’ format and took to the microphone to denounce the plan.

The Minister and his senior staff were left scrambling under the glare of extensive media coverage. All the signs point to either a full retreat or an impending implementation disaster. After two years of planning and almost two dozen pilot projects, how did to come apart so fast?

The sacking of Cardy deprived Premier Blaine Higgs of his most effective and persuasive communicator and the Department never recovered.  Without Cardy fronting the project, the remaining trust dissolved among French-speaking New Brunswickers as well as the province’s most articulate Anglophone bilingualism advocates, French immersion parents and graduates.

Political skeletons sometimes get released from their closets at the most inopportune times. Few remembered Blaine Higgs’ 1989 Confederation of Regions (CORNB) leadership campaign pledge to eliminate immersion until it resurfaced again in a politically-damaging October 2022 CBC News NB commentary.  From that point on, the fix was in on the high-risk policy proposal.

Education Minister Hogan and his senior officials have broken all the rules in the textbook on how to implement successful education reforms.  It’s all neatly synthesized in one of my favourite sources, David Tyack and Larry Cuban’s 1995 modern classic, Tinkering Toward Utopia. It begins by taking stock of previous initiatives and learning from the past.

In the case of New Brunswick and French immersion, that means asking whether any other Canadian province has ever succeeded in eliminating the program and learning from past mistakes. The prime example would be former Minister Kelly Lamrock’s politically bruising 2008 attempt to delay the entry point to grade 6, then grade 3, eventually abandoned in the face of fierce opposition. Then, as now, it was all based upon the claim that the province was, according to Maclean’s Magazine “failing miserably at graduating bilingual students.”

Education reform initiatives proceed, in stages, from “policy talk” to “policy action” to “implementation.” In the education sector, changes falter mostly during implementation. The key reasons are: short timelines, lack of leadership capacity, or insufficient human or resource support to make it work. Implementation is much slower and more complex and governments tend to move on to other priorities. That explains why evaluation of initiatives, including data-gathering, falls far too often by the wayside.

Overcoming the gravitational pull of the status quo is not easy and, in the words of American education psychologist Robert Evans, most initially embrace “change” with as much enthusiasm as they do “changing a baby.” Inspiring and skillful leadership is required to “overcome the initial sense of loss” and convey a sense of renewed purpose going forward.

Introducing an upgraded universal French language program in place of French immersion is unlikely to work. With an election ahead in the fall of 2024, it all looks to be based upon ‘election cycles’ rather than ‘policy change cycles.’ Even if the change in French language program gets authorized, it will be far too rushed in its implementation, half-baked in conception, and impossible to staff, given the dire shortage of French teachers with the requisite competencies.

Public engagement is quite distinct from ‘public consultation’ and thrives under the right conditions and requires an open approach and a genuine commitment to breaking the mold. Being open, transparent, accountable and responsive does require unique, well calibrated skills. In the education leadership field, it often involves unlearning ingrained practices and habits. Finding a common cause, sizing-up the conditions, leading with questions rather than answers, and meeting groups where they are all critical ingredients.

New Brunswick’s disastrous public consultation taught us a fundamental lesson about engaging citizens and building support for reforms. Canadian ‘public engagement’ specialist Don Lenihan (Middle Ground Engagement, Ottawa) now calls it “deliberative public engagement.”  It may work in New Brunswick if the provincial government realizes that it’s time to start again, from ground zero, to find an acceptable solution to raising the numbers of bilingual graduates from New Brunswick’s Anglophone schools.

Why is French Immersion the “third rail” in Canadian education politics?  What sparked the New Brunswick government to tempt fate by proposing its replacement with a universal upgraded core French program? Why did the “Delphi Technique” attract attention and ultimately provoke a backlash? Will the setback completely stall further reform efforts? Is there a better way of finding a constructive path forward?

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