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• Politically Correct Preschools and their Discontents: One Teacher’s Story

  January 5, 2012 4:56 PM Comments Off on Politically Correct Preschools and their Discontents: One Teacher’s Story

  Editor’s Note: Does this story from south of the border resonate with Canadian educators? Have schools crossed the line from sensitive to censorship? Where is that line? Post your thoughts below….

  Politically Correct or “PC” thinking is a potent force, operating at all levels of education in the U.S. Not even my preschoolers are immune from censorship – of traditional tunes and gender-specific toys. But, as a music specialist, I want these young students to enjoy age-old songs and their favourite toys.

  Superheroes

  “Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings at a single bound” – but for all that, the Man of Steel couldn’t break into the preschool classroom where I assist twice a week.

  During “free play”, two little boys had asked me to draw Superman on their construction paper. It was early in the year, and obliging their request seemed a harmless way to help them feel comfortable in school. They looked proud holding up their drawings of Superman.

  When they told me they wanted to take the drawings home, I suggested that they add their own decorations. Indeed, I turned the tables around, and asked them to draw a picture of Superman for me so that I would have something to take home. But before long, one brave Superman flew into the hands of Miss Nicole, the head teacher of this class. “We don’t allow drawing of action figures from the media,” she explained, primly tearing in half and disposing of the rendered intruder.

  I’m still not clear about the rationale for this prohibition. Did permitting me to draw Superman imply that children at our extraordinary school actually watched and enjoyed television sometimes?

  My friend Tracy, an assistant teacher in another classroom, wasn’t handled so gently. “When I first got here, you know, I was trying to win the kids over so I drew SpongeBob and the whole gang.” For this offense, Tracy had been harshly berated by our supervisor. “What’s wrong with you?” the supervisor demanded. “Are you rebellious? Are you sick?” The confrontation left Tracy in tears.

  The next thing I knew, reins were tightened and I was prohibited from drawing with the children altogether. The final, indicting picture – a cake and candles I’d sketched for a birthday child – was held over my head like a dripping murder weapon as Miss Nicole hissed at me, “I thought we discussed this. There is to be absolutely no evidence of adult artwork here!”

  I then learned the grounds for this prohibition: it was “bad for children’s self esteem” to “see my drawing as a standard that they couldn’t meet, and it would discourage them from drawing themselves.” But at the end of the day I was allowed to take out my guitar and play songs for the children, even though the kids couldn’t play a guitar as well as I. Why couldn’t I wield the magic marker? What did that mean?

  No Winners Allowed

  This philosophy of protecting fragile young egos extended to “table toys” and board games such as Snails. The children were excited when Miss Nicole cracked opened a new box. The pieces that moved towards a finish line were different coloured snails. To play, we rolled the dice with the different snail colours. If the dice landed on green, then the green snail could move forward, and so forth.

  Immediately the children got busy choosing their colour and crowing that they were going to win. Miss Nicole frowned on their jubilation. “This game has no single winner,” she declared. “When the first snail crosses the finish line then everyone’s a winner. We all win!” In the moment of silence that followed, the children looked blankly at each other. Quickly they resumed their cheerful boasting, “I’m gonna win. I’m blue! Blue is the best. Blue is gonna win.”

  “This game has no single winner,” she declared. “When the first snail crosses the finish line then everyone’s a winner. We all win!” In the moment of silence that followed, the children looked blankly at each other.

  All Miss Nicole had managed to do was confuse them. When she left our area, I allowed the children to continue the snail game as it was intended to be played. None of us could see the point of playing a game that had no winner. Besides, winning and losing are natural parts of life. Imagine removing the glory of watching The World Series or the Olympic games! We do children a great disservice by not preparing them to tolerate difficult experiences, or to celebrate triumphs.

  Guns and Roses

  Without meaning to, I became a reluctant leader in the nursery school underground. Before I knew it I found myself asked to smuggle weapons.

  “Bang, bang!” Little boys would point fingers at each other in our schoolyard.

  “Watcha doin’?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.

  “Shhhhh,” they’d beg me. “Don’t tell Miss Nicole. We’re playing with guns.”

  I’m no handgun advocate, but it’s simple-minded to think that guns mean to these children what real guns do to an adult. Besides, a pointed finger in a playground is not a real gun any more than a water balloon is an atomic bomb. To hold a “gun” is to wield power. Children simply won’t buy it if you try to tell them otherwise; they’re too smart. Policemen with guns protect our safety and even the most cloistered child in our culture sees heroes toting guns in movies and cartoons.

  The little boys – and yes, they are mostly boys – are only releasing energy and aggression deferred in a long morning of good behaviour. They are simply letting off steam. To remove their “guns” is to remove the exciting edge to their game. It’s like asking them to eat tasteless food, and brings us inanely back to the artificial world of Miss Nicole’s snail game, where everybody’s a winner, and nobody is.

  Trying to suppress a child’s desire to hold a gun doesn’t seem to work. Friends who forbid their children to play with “guns” have seen them desperately vie for water pistols in the less enlightened homes of their playmates. I have actually witnessed a child nibble a gun out of a piece of toast. A child’s desire to hold a gun in an exciting game will, like a determined rat, gnaw through the bars you set against it.

  I have actually witnessed a child nibble a gun out of a piece of toast. A child’s desire to hold a gun in an exciting game will, like a determined rat, gnaw through the bars you set against it.

  In 2009, the preschool staff attended a conference on The Importance of Play in Early Childhood. Speakers maintained that allowing children time to play, with only minimal adult supervision, was vital for their social and physical development and their ability to solve problems. These speakers stressed that children learned as much in unstructured play times as during formal classroom lessons. Putting such insights into practice for me meant encouraging children to choose their own games, even allowing a “shoot out” or two.

  Of course, during one recess it wasn’t just the firearms that had to be confiscated. In this instance the boys were using jump ropes to tie up the girls in a corner of the yard for a rather frisky game of “playing jail”. While I agreed with Miss Nicole that tying girls up with ropes was too hazardous for school, even the shyest girls weren’t interested in her clueless suggestion that everybody join hands and play “Sally Go Round the Sun” as an alternative.

  No Angels Need Apply

  By the time December’s cold temperatures were keeping us indoors all day, I was in trouble yet again. I was found to be in possession of a far deadlier contraband then even toy guns and jump ropes.

  “We don’t sing Santa Claus is Coming to Town at our school. It’s too holidayish for us,” I was reprimanded when I lit into this old seasonal favourite. Now Santa Claus, like Superman, wasn’t allowed down this chimney. Also blacklisted were Chanukah songs, anything sung in Hebrew or Latin as well as English lyrics resplendent with Christmas trees, holly, silver bells, mistletoe or even the most abstract and diluted reference to a spiritual existence.

  Although we had no African-American children enrolled, songs commemorating the more recently established holiday of Kwaanza fared slightly better. It seemed that only songs for holidays that none of the kids celebrated at home were found acceptable. At what some herald as “the most wonderful time of the year” – a time in New York City so rich in varied traditions, history, and sentiment – my songs with the children were restricted to Jingle Bells and This Little Light of Mine.

  Working on the Railroad

  Holding my job at this school meant that I had to concede to the head teachers’ requests. I tried. But when Miss Nicole tried to block the railroads I went on strike.

  In January, I was assigned the after-school program on Tuesdays. This meant that for two hours I was responsible for entertaining anywhere from two to seven children who already had logged in many hours of school. Little girls were often temperamental and cranky. They’d hide in the play loft, refusing to come out for snack, or cry if they couldn’t hold a beloved toy from home because that created too much distraction in the room. And often the boys, strained from hours of good behaviour, would erupt into biting and strangling matches that I had to quell.

  I’d noticed that these little boys of two and three, who’d spent nearly as many hours in school as adults do on nine-to-five jobs, loved to play with toy trains and Brio tracks. They’d string a row of cars together, lie on their sides and dreamily push the trains back and forth. After enjoying this private, quiet retreat, they were ready to play together peacefully again. With this in mind, I would set the trains on the floor when I arrived so my toughest customers could help themselves. Until Miss Nicole came upon me setting down the tracks, and told me that she didn’t want our little boys playing with trains.

  Girls were allowed to play with their dollhouse or with the basket of dress-up clothes they were drawn to. But now Miss Nicole was telling me that the little boys would be denied their beloved trains, presumably because they would fight over the cars. But it was more than that. Miss Nicole was beginning to embrace a worrisome pedagogical trend: the active suppression of gender difference in a preschool setting. To this “egalitarian” end, I was to address the class as “children” rather than “boys and girls.” It wasn’t enough to abolish winners and losers. Boys and girls, lads and lassies, were now also taboo designations. Miss Nicole clearly resented boys behaving aggressively and gravitating towards traditionally boyish toy trains. Their behavior violated her construct of hegemony, perhaps made her recognize its fraudulence.

  So I didn’t cave. I negotiated on behalf of the boys, reminding her that after a long day they’d fight over anything. Better they fight over the train cars than that they strangle each other!

  Even she couldn’t disagree. The boys were allowed their calming moment with toy trains and Brio tracks, and I promise that it will not make them male supremacists. I’ve heard objections to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and St. Patrick’s Day, and I’ve seen veritable war waged over Christmas. I’ve seen competitive games sabotaged and toy guns banned. Now toy trains. What next? Will certain letters be forbidden from the alphabet? Maybe provocative letters, like F or L or N or XXX could be forbidden from our ABCs.

  Soon they’ll be trying to fit the Table of Elements into their agenda. They’ll be telling us that the earth doesn’t turn, and that it’s flat. Or I can hear it now: “I’m just not comfortable with the Gregorian Calendar… it was introduced by the Pope, and the dates are based on Christian holidays, like Easter. Why do we have to have March, April and May? Let’s just have Cold Time and Warm Time.”

  Who would have thought I’d come to agree with conservative Christians, who rallied to retain gender-specific pronouns in the New International Version of The Bible? I simply agree with them that some people are female, and some are male. This is also true of flowers, trees, and animals. There is no harm or inequality implied in acknowledging gender differences. It seems to me that we should be teaching tolerance and honesty rather than denial of the obvious.

  But society expects us educators to inculcate its values, even when these values are not congruent: for example, we value individual freedom and we value conformity; we value competition and altruism; we value immigration and high fences. PC thinkers believe in a static society in which all such conflicts have been settled. They are the proud possessors of new answers to old questions. They feel comfortable, if not righteous, in blotting out differences that were freely acknowledged in the past. Pretend – indeed insist – that we are all the same: boys and girls, men and women. Reduce religious differences to a dull sameness. Banish festive holidays.

  I don’t want to teach in the narrow playrooms spawned by such certainty, in PC purgatories where nobody wins or loses, nobody can be more talented than anyone else, and nobody belongs to a religion that’s older than 1990. No teacher’s drawings, no trains, no superheroes, no moms, no dads, no girls or boys.

  I say, where is Superman when you really need him?

  EN BREF – La rectitude politique est une puissante force agissant à tous les paliers éducatifs aux États-Unis. Même le jeu préscolaire est assujetti à la censure des chansonnettes traditionnelles et à la condamnation des jouets assignés aux sexes. Des superhéros aux fusillades imaginaires, des fêtes officielles aux jeux de société, le personnel enseignant risque d’offenser des collègues et des parents. La société s’attend que les éducateurs inculquent ses valeurs, même si elles s’opposent : nous valorisons à la fois la liberté individuelle et la conformité, la compétition et l’altruisme, l’immigration et les barrières.

• Leah Wells: Have schools crossed the line from sensitive to censorship?

  4:39 PM Comments Off on Leah Wells: Have schools crossed the line from sensitive to censorship?

  Skype interview excerpts with Leah Wells, a New York-based educator, musician, and Education Canada author.

• TedXWilfrid-Bastien

  January 3, 2012 5:07 PM Comments Off on TedXWilfrid-Bastien

  Better than a cup of coffee in the morning is listening to a good TEDx talk. Most people know about TED (www.ted.com), which stands for “Technology, Entertainment and Design”. Founded in 1984, it provides a platform through which ideas can be shared between communities and inventors, thinkers, scientists, educators and the like. TEDx has since become a huge influence in creating important dialog, inspiring minds, sparking innovation and beyond-the-box thinking everywhere it goes.

  TEDxWilfrid-Bastien, is an independently organized TEDx event – by the people, for the people – to discuss, reflect on and celebrate education. Exclusively dedicated to today’s education, this conference will feature a number of important speakers who will share their innovative ideas in addressing the important question of the transition to a 21^st century pedagogy.

  This rare event is a great honour and as well as a first for the small elementary school Wilfrid-Bastien. It is furthermore the first ever independently organized TEDx event to be held exclusively about canadian education in French!

  TEDxWilfrid-Bastien, will be held on February 29^th, 2012, between 7-10pm at 8420 Boulevard Lacordaire in 
Saint-Léonard, Quebec, Canada. There are only a very limited amount of tickets available, so please hurry and visit http://tedxwilfridbastien.eventbrite.com to buy your ticket(s) today!

  Co-written by Amber Judge

  Note: The video footage of each talk will only be released for viewing on the web when they are translated with subtitles in English.

• Digital Literacy is not a tool or a series of checklists

  1:58 PM Comments Off on Digital Literacy is not a tool or a series of checklists

  Today I will return from maternity leave to a slightly reconfigured position which includes two new blocks of digital literacy coordination/leadership/support (I’m not totally clear on the name yet).

  Digital literacy is one of those phrases that starts out meaning one thing and ends up meaning nothing. It gets politicized, jargonized, and sometimes tossed out.

  So, as I move into this new role, I want to be clear about this hot potato term:

  • Digital literacy as a tool. The tool metaphor worked for a long time, basically characterizing the idea that technology can help us deliver our lessons in more flashy and engaging ways.
  • Digital literacy as a field of study. Here digital refers to anything technological and literacy as the skills necessary to make meaning. Marry the two and we have the idea that “reading” technology as a text requires a different skill set than more traditional texts like books, paintings and advertisements.
  • Digital literacy as something we teachers must add to our list of things to get through. Looking at the curriculum and considering the idea that we need to add more to what we already do is enough to make any teacher sigh and contemplate a simpler job with fewer pressures (like say, for example, almost anything else this side of molecular neuro-surgery – if that is in fact a thing).
  • Digital literacy as something that distracts us from the core subjects. This framework requires a belief that technology is a fad. As long as we keep our heads in our books, this whole computer thing with laptops, blogs, twittering, Prezi and other made-up words will blow over.

  None of these definitions work for me.

  Recently Gary Kern our Director of Instruction for Technology & Innovation referred to technology as a space for learning to occur. This metaphor puts me closer to a helpful understanding because it connects technology to learning more immediately than any of the others.

  Our goal is not to entertain students. It is not to pacify learners or distract them or discipline them or satisfy them. Our goal is to disrupt them just enough that they move into learning constantly and with a degree of independence.

  If we look at digital literacy as a series of checklists like

  • 12 great ways to use Twitter in the classroom
  • The top 5 reasons for student blogging
  • The best 30 apps for science students

  we can too easily skip over these deeper understandings around our current context:

  • that technology is a significant and often embedded part of how we  communicate
  • that as the rate of change increases we need to rely on sharp, ready critical thinking to navigate our world successfully and independently, and
  • that content is important too.

  I intend to use my role to support teachers in their teaching. Technology will enter the conversation not as a way to jazz things up but as a way to deepen the relevance, application and communication of the stuff of learning.

  Over the next few blog posts I will write to sharpen these ideas. Please feel free to challenge me with questions and comments; I welcome the discussion.

• Is our focus on assessment taking away from our children’s education?

  January 2, 2012 5:43 PM Comments Off on Is our focus on assessment taking away from our children’s education?

  It has become clear to me that we’re spending way too much time focusing on assessment and evaluation. In fact, conversations about data driven decision-making, authentic assessment practices, design-down planning and testing protocols have now worked their way into the everyday vernacular of teachers and students, and have become such a strong plot line in the narrative of modern-day schooling, to the point where I fear that the very ideas and practices that are supposed to make our children’s education richer and more meaningful are actually having the opposite effect.
  (more…)

• In Praise of New Year’s Resolutions

  December 31, 2011 3:55 PM Comments Off on In Praise of New Year’s Resolutions

  Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. – Immanuel Kant

   As we turn the calendar it is natural to wonder what this year will bring. Of course we cannot know what the future holds – who could have predicted the stories that dominate retrospective news reports on the top stories of 2010 – but we do know things will change. Life is dynamic. There will be progress and regression, disaster and triumph, sadness and delight. Surprise dominates, but the agony, for the most part, will find you of its own accord while the ecstasy has to be initiated.  So that’s a good reason for some annual introspection and perhaps a well-crafted resolution or two.

   But looking beyond our own immediate personal interests, it’s also a good time to think about the world around us.  What is it becoming and what would we like it to become? It’s easy to feel that we cannot influence the grand course of events, but someone will, and if it’s not us then the future that is forged by those who do take action may very well not be to our liking. You can be sure that somewhere others are hard at work trying to change some of the things you hold most dear. If, as Yeats observed in the aftermath of the First World War, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst
 are full of passionate intensity,” then we should indeed worry about “what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
 slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.”

   That is not to say that we should all immediately start forming Facebook action groups and joining political parties – although, hopefully, some of us will – but it does mean that we should all be overt and intentional about our values and take action within our sphere of influence to actively promote and enact those values. In the end, it’s neither the Nelson Mandela’s nor the Osama bin Laden’s who change the world, it’s the people whom they inspire to do things differently within their own lives.

   And this is true not just of changing things but also of preserving things. Like our relationships, the good things about our schools and our communities do not just sustain themselves. It takes constant attention to preserve what we value. It may be true of carburetors or plumbing that if it ain’t broke you shouldn’t fix it, but laissez-faire is the death knell for human endeavours. That which is neglected, decays.

   So what are you grateful for and what would you prefer? There is no better time than now to give that some careful thought – and then to do something to reinforce what you value or influence what you regret. It can be small but it must be specific, and it’s even better if you recruit a couple of friends. Then, if they tell two friends, and they tell two friends and … well, you never know what might happen.

• Come and sit beside me and I’ll tell you what I think!

  December 22, 2011 10:24 AM Comments Off on Come and sit beside me and I’ll tell you what I think!

  My two year and half year old son seems to be innately attuned to the degree to which I am fully present to him. Whether it is early in the morning while I’m making breakfast for the family, or later in the day when dinner prep is in full swing, if Liam senses that I’m too wrapped up in what I’m doing, he will invite me to come and sit beside him. “Come and see what I’m doing, Daddy” is a favourite line, emphasized by his little hand pointing to an empty chair next to him. When I insist that I can see what he’s doing from where I am working, he will press the point further, “No Daddy, sit here.”

  When I first heard Liam invite me to sit beside him, I thought it was rather cute. When it became clear, however, that this was not a random suggestion, but a well-expressed desire, I started to think about it a little more deeply. In particular, I thought of what is entailed in the act of sitting beside someone. The relationship established by having someone next to you is one of interest and intimacy. (Think of your own growing up and your desire to sit next to a dinner guest instead of across the table from them.) Having someone sit right next to you ensures a type of shared perspective; they are able to look at the same object, for example, and see things in pretty much the same way as you see them.

  The word assessment is derived from the Latin verb, assidere, which means, quite literally, to sit beside. In Roman times, the assessor was connected with the taxation process and always sat beside the judge. Despite its ancient origins, it is a term that has taken over a good deal of our thinking about modern schooling. It is difficult to imagine opening up any classroom resource, attend any professional learning conference, or attend any faculty meeting without there being some mention of either assessment practice or policy.

  There has been a great deal written on the topic of assessment. There are books and articles on how to make it authentic, balanced and meaningful. There are workshops offered about the difference between assessment and evaluation. Software products have even been developed to make our job of assessing students more efficient. There are entire conferences devoted to assessment of and for learning. There are gurus!

  Over the next couple of weeks, I would like to dig into the assessment movement a little more and pose some questions that might allow us to explore it from some different angles. But, perhaps the best place to begin is with the original meaning of the word assessment and the idea of sitting beside our students. And this brings me back to my original story.

  If the purpose of assessment is to gather information about student understanding and proficiency, then it stands to reason that the closer we can get to the student in terms of their real understanding of an idea or concept, the better. My sense is, however, that many of our current approaches to assessment actually put a greater distance between student and teacher. In fact, it would seem that the higher the stakes on an assessment, the further we get from that idea of “sitting beside”.

  It is certainly impractical to sit down and chat with students every time we need to assess understanding, but I think that, as educators, we have to admit that a gap exists between what our students actually understand and are able to do, and what we actually end up reporting. This is not a new phenomenon, is it? In fact, it is likely as old as schools, themselves. Ironically, it is a phenomenon that has really only come to light as we have tried to develop more accurate, more equitable and more responsive methods of assessment and evaluation.

  So the questions I would like to leave you with are both simple and complex: What are the assessment strategies and tools that allow us to collect the most accurate picture of student understanding? Which methods of assessment actually widen the gap between student and teacher? Which come closest to allowing us to “sit beside” our students? Does any of this really matter when it comes to quality teaching and learning?

  I’ll offer some of my own thoughts in my next post, but I would love to get some initial reaction from you!

• When is falling behind not inevitable, but unacceptable?

  December 8, 2011 6:01 PM Comments Off on When is falling behind not inevitable, but unacceptable?

  Canada’s educators can be proud of the achievement of Canadian kids in international achievement assessments like the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA). Canadian students have consistently achieved top scores in reading, math and science literacy in PISA tests for a number of years. Such tests may not measure the different and important ways our kids are learning, such as how to be responsible citizens, talented artists and masters of dealing with life’s adversities. But tests like PISA capture some of the functional knowledge and skills that open, rather than limit, life opportunities. And when you think about the circumstances that support such strong academic achievement, tests like PISA, while seeming to capture only a limited picture of learning, also stand for much more.  To achieve high math, reading and science scores, kids need good teachers, well-conceived teaching and learning resources, secure homes, safe and supportive communities, encouragement, and the belief that education matters. Test scores that are internationally comparable, like PISA, tell us something about how well Canada is supporting its kids in these ways, relative to other countries; but not necessarily relative to what is possible.

  International tests of educational achievement like PISA report results as averages. Averages hide a great deal of important information. That’s why UNICEF went a step further and calculated the equality gap in educational achievement using PISA test scores[i]. In our study, The Children Left Behind, we developed a new way to measure the gap between the average child and the children struggling at the bottom of their societies (we don’t compare children at the bottom with those at the top). We applied this equality gap measure to 24 industrialized nations in three aspects of children’s lives – material well-being, physical health and educational achievement. We used PISA test scores to measure the equality gap in education, and found that not only do Canadian kids achieve top scores on average, but the gap between Canadian kids’ scores is also very small. Canada placed 3^rd among 24 countries in our measure of educational equality. Not only are our kids’ average scores in reading, math and science literacy comparatively very high; the degree of equality in academic achievement among students is also very high. The lower-achieving children in Canadian schools are less likely to fall a long way behind their peers than students in Austria, France or Belgium – where the educational equality gap is greatest. Our education system is doing relatively well for all kids, leaving fewer behind than in many other countries. It’s managing to do this without limiting the success of the highest achievers.

  But, counterintuitively, Canada landed a worrisome rating of 17^th out of 24 affluent countries in poverty or “material well-being” (using combined indicators of family income, housing living space and access to educational resources).  The equality gap in material well-being is very wide in Canada, far wider than average among industrialized nations. Whose company are we keeping at the bottom of the material equality scale? Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece. The incongruity of this, considering our relative affluence and stable economic situation relative to these debt-threatened nations, is disconcerting.

  The equality gap in material well-being is very wide in Canada, far wider than average among industrialized nations. Whose company are we keeping at the bottom of the material equality scale? Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece. The incongruity of this, considering our relative affluence and stable economic situation relative to these debt-threatened nations, is disconcerting.

  The strong link between a family’s socioeconomic circumstances and educational achievement is well established. That’s why it’s remarkable that Canada’s education system has produced relatively low educational inequality in contrast to other industrialized nations, where material equality is greater. Some of the dampening impacts of family poverty on a child’s educational achievement including living in insecure housing in unsafe neighbourhoods, frequent moves, poorer health and nutrition, lack of sleep and of parental time, and other disruptions and deprivations. Canada’s public education system does a comparatively good job at reducing the effects of poverty and disadvantage on academic performance.

  The different levels of inequality in educational outcomes among the countries we studied are not the result of any natural distribution of abilities, but of differences in policies which limit the extent to which some students fall behind. In Canada, it appears that education related policies weaken the link between socio-economic disadvantage and school achievement. But other policy choices are doing little to close the gap in material well-being, and that is no help to the potential of our education system. The most potent fact about children who fall significantly behind their peers in education is that they, on the whole, are from families at the bottom end of the socio-economic scale. Further actions to prevent children from falling behind in education must at some point face the question of socio-economic gradient.

  The growing income gap in Canada may soon begin to diminish the degree of equality our education system sustains. While children themselves pay the heaviest cost of inequality, society also pays through increased costs for remedial schooling, health services, welfare and the justice system, and the loss to economic competitiveness resulting from a large number of children failing to develop to their potential.

  The growing income gap in Canada may soon begin to diminish the degree of equality our education system sustains. While children themselves pay the heaviest cost of inequality, society also pays through increased costs for remedial schooling, health services, welfare and the justice system, and the loss to economic competitiveness resulting from a large number of children failing to develop to their potential. How much better could our education system work for more kids if the resources spent on compensating for poverty were freed up? More children at the bottom of the test scores would achieve higher, fewer would drop out, and there would be more resources to invest in all children in the system. Research by UNICEF and others suggest that societies that manage to reduce the material disparity gap also tend to have higher overall well-being: everyone benefits when inequality is kept low.

  Every level of government in Canada should establish a policy to ensure children have a first call on resources, to be prioritized when funds are invested and to be the last and least to face spending cuts. Broadly, maintaining Canada’s support for public education in an aging society where health costs are rising is necessary for the short- and long-term good of children and of our nation. In education policy, falling behind is significantly more likely when students from low socio-economic status attend schools in which the average socio-economic status is also low. Directing support and excellent teachers to these schools shows good results. Paying attention to the most vulnerable children with flexible approaches to education and additional supports is necessary. For example, a 2007 report by Toronto’s social planning council found a high and persistent level of homelessness among school children (3,000 per year live in homeless shelters in Toronto alone), but found that there are no government or school board policies to ensure the educational needs of these vulnerable children. The Government of Canada’s commitment to begin a new relationship with First Nations for children’s education is a welcome step.

  Whether in education, in health or in the level of family resources, some children will always fall behind the average. Canada is rich with experts who have insight on the measures that are needed across Canada and in specific communities to reduce the equity gaps for children in all aspects of their lives. For the rest of society, we have yet to decide: how far behind? Is there a point beyond which falling behind is not inevitable but unacceptable?

  Related Education Canada articles:

  • Bridging The North-South Divide in Teacher Education
  • African Journal: Schooling and Politics in Rural Kenyal

  ---

  [i] UNICEF’s Report Card 9: The children left behind, measures educational equity using the 2006 OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reading, mathematics and science literacy scores. PISA administered reading, maths and science tests to representative samples of between 4,500 and 10,000 15-year-old students in each of 57 countries, including all of the countries featured in our report. The tests attempt to assess how well “education systems are preparing their students to become life-long learners and to play constructive roles as citizens in society.” More detailed information on the OECD 2006 PISA survey can be found at: www.oecd.org/pisa and in OECD (2007) PISA 2006: Science Competencies for Tomorrow’s World, OECD, Paris.

• Implementation and Innovation: The Route to Equity

  November 18, 2011 4:41 PM Comments Off on Implementation and Innovation: The Route to Equity

  This edition of Education Canada developed from a project between the Canadian Education Association (CEA) and the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) to foster dialogue about equity and educational improvement in Canada and the U.S. Although the two countries have many distinctive features, as discussions progressed we realized that we had less to learn from comparing each other in isolation than from developing our understandings of concepts, evidence, and issues relating to educational equity and improvement and – importantly – from exploring implementation strategies and innovations that may make a difference. The framing question became, “If we are really serious about equity in education, what will it take to achieve improvements?”

  Considerations of equity need to be grounded in an understanding of the wider demographic, social, economic, and political contexts in which inequities are being created, sustained, magnified, reduced, or addressed. A daunting reminder about the equity challenge is the current scale and spread of inequities. Both Canada and the U.S. witnessed a growing gap between rich and poor during the 2000s; however, the size, depth, and impact of such income inequality are larger in the U.S., with significant consequences. The latest U.S. census figures indicate that 46.2 million Americans are now living in poverty – the largest number on record and equivalent to almost one and half times the entire population of Canada. Around 16.4 million of those Americans in poverty are children – indeed, now 22 percent of American children overall live in poverty, a statistic that masks different experiences by race; 35 percent of Hispanic and 38 percent of Black children live in poverty. The scale of inequality is staggering. 

  The situation in Canada is less extreme but there is no ground for complacency. The most recent (2006) census statistics indicate that 13 percent of Canadian children were living below the low-income cut off (after tax), generally taken as a proxy for low socio-economic status. The interrelationship with race is more complex in Canada, as the visible minority population is growing and very diverse with over 200 ethnic origin groups reporting in the census. Recent immigrants to Canada are two to three times more likely to experience low income than non-immigrants, although as their time in Canada lengthens, their prospects improve. However, the probability of low-income status is greater for visible minority immigrants than for either other immigrants or non-immigrants. Interestingly, Canadian-born visible minorities are actually slightly less likely to experience low income than other Canadian-born citizens, although the difference is small.[1]

  Poverty need not be destiny. But overcoming the impact of poverty on educational outcomes requires sustained attention and systemic responses. It cannot be left to individual effort or chance.

  There is long-standing evidence of the effect of socio-economic status on educational performance, but there is also evidence that students and schools in all socio-economic contexts can perform at all achievement levels. Poverty need not be destiny. But overcoming the impact of poverty on educational outcomes requires sustained attention and systemic responses. It cannot be left to individual effort or chance.

  At the national level, the interplay between socio-economic background and educational success differs between Canada and the U.S. Based on analyses from the Programme in International Student Assessment (PISA) by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), both the U.S. and Canada have income inequalities above the OECD average.[2] This inequality is larger in the U.S. and has a stronger relationship with educational outcomes. The U.S. is identified as having an above average relationship between academic achievement and socio-economic background, whereas Canada has a below average relationship. Among 34 OECD countries, Canada has the fourth lowest impact of socio-economic status on variance in student performance, whereas the U.S. is ranked 28^th.

  The OECD defines student resiliency – one measure of social and economic mobility – as the capacity of students with low socio-economic status and achievement results in the lowest performance range to move into the highest ranges. Students in both Canada and the U.S. are doing this; however, students in Canada are demonstrating above average resiliency, ranked ninth out of 65 participating countries, whereas the U.S. ranked 27^th. 

  Another measure of social and educational mobility is the success of immigrants. Among participating PISA countries, first generation immigrant students perform below average overall. Nevertheless, while almost one out of four students in Canadian schools has an immigrant background (compared to one out of 10 across OECD countries), there is little overall difference in the performance levels of these students when compared to Canadian students overall.

  So we have an international picture in which social and economic inequality can and does interact with educational inequality, yet there are also examples of countries, including Canada, with both high performance and lower inequality. As the OECD concludes:

  Korea, Finland, Canada and Japan, as well as the partner economies Hong Kong-China and Shanghai-China, show high mean performance and a low or, at most, moderate relationship between socio-economic background and student performance… These countries combine high average performance with equity and have a large proportion of top-performing students, which demonstrates that excellence and equity can go together.[3]

  Such national data do not tell us about the diversity of experiences within and across Canada, although local evidence points to the need to attend to race, ethnicity, student mobility, poverty, and the long-standing issue of supporting Aboriginal students to succeed in school and beyond.

  We know that success in education confers both individual and societal benefit: higher earnings, better social and health outcomes, and greater participation in the civic life. Societal benefits include reductions in the need for public services – reduced reliance on social welfare, lower health care costs, reduced demands on the justice and correctional systems – and lower unemployment rates. An OECD analysis of literacy levels found that a 1 percent increase in adult literacy produces a permanent 1.5 percent increase in gross domestic product. For Canada, that would result in a permanent increase of approximately 18 billion dollars per year.[4] Analyses of achievement gaps between the U.S. and other countries in PISA assessments concluded that:

  …had the United States closed the education achievement gap to levels comparable to Finland and Korea, the impact on GDP would be 1.3 to 2.3 trillion higher (a 9% – 16% increase); if the gap between black and Latino student performance and white student performance was similarly narrowed, the GDP would have been 310 to 525 billion higher; if the gap between low-income and high-income students were narrowed, the contribution to the GDP would be 400 to 670 billion higher[5].

  The recent work of Wilkinson and Pickett shows that, in countries where the income gap is high, health and social problems are worse, levels of mental illness are higher, and measures of child well-being are lower.[6] Countries with greater equity (e.g.: Canada and the Scandinavian countries) have also achieved higher levels of intergenerational mobility than have the U.S. and Europe.[7] 

  Both Canada and the U.S. face tough social, cultural, political, and economic challenges that make the need to raise the educational attainment of those disadvantaged by current arrangements a public policy imperative. While public policies that reduce poverty among children would have important benefits (and certainly improve fairness), they are unlikely to deal with the interaction between schooling and socio-economic status that seems to influence educational outcomes more than the early ability of children.[8] Different approaches to closing achievement gaps reflect alternative understandings of this interaction between schooling and socio-economic status. 

  Part of our response to the question of how to achieve both excellence and equity in and through education requires the identification of existing promising and/or effective policies and practices with accompanying attention to how to strengthen, spread, and sustain their implementation. Traditionally, a concern with equity has focused on access to public education. Over time, attention shifted to a focus on outcomes. National and local approaches to specifying achievement targets, gathering test data, and examining performance – and in particular No Child Left Behind in the U.S. – have drawn considerable attention to “achievement gaps” for different student groups. More recently, we have been examining issues of equity of processes within schools and beyond. The concept of “opportunity policies” is concerned with examining what resources, conditions, experiences, and supports are available to students, educators, schools, and communities.[9] Do disadvantaged students and schools have access to sufficient numbers of highly qualified teachers? Do they have learning resources available in classrooms? Do they experience engaging curriculum and teaching for higher-order skills? Are school facilities safe and do they provide adequate learning environments? Expanding educational equity and excellence requires attention to all these factors – access, outcomes, and opportunities.

  We need implementation strategies that combine a universal commitment to educational improvement with targeted strategies to address existing inequities in educational performance and socio-economic status. The particular blend of universal and targeted strategies will vary, depending on the specific context and local needs.[10] Recent analyses of education systems that are moving toward greater equity suggest the importance of sequencing priorities, starting with the “basics of literacy and numeracy”, moving on to building the foundations of a solid education system – including appropriate human, capital, and material resources – to supporting excellence in teaching and learning through professional collaboration, capacity, and innovation.[11] While the specific scope and sequence of such strategies can be debated, consensus is growing about the vital importance of leadership and professional capacity to support student learning and equity with accompanying attention to necessary resources and supports. This is long-term work that requires sustained attention and capacity to identify and implement effective and promising practices with a commitment to continuous improvement and high expectations for all educators, students, and communities.

  An important component of advancing excellence and equity is therefore balancing implementation and innovation. Innovation is not new to education. Many of the defining features of current schooling – for example, special education, language immersion programs, Kindergarten, second and third language learning programs, anti-racist education, inclusionary practices – began as local school or district level innovations that spread, garnered public and professional support, and were eventually adopted as policy. These innovations differ from the myriad of abandoned pilot projects in important ways. Most notably they had system level sponsorship that ensured the necessary financial, technical, human, and social resources.

  The dual imperative of “raising the bar and closing the gap” requires strategies that improve the overall performance of all students and at the same time improve outcomes for the lowest achieving students at a much faster rate.

  The dual imperative of “raising the bar and closing the gap” requires strategies that improve the overall performance of all students and at the same time improve outcomes for the lowest achieving students at a much faster rate; otherwise the “gap” will be maintained or even widen. This accelerated rate of improvement is particularly important because we have considerable evidence that the achievement gap for some groups widens as students progress through school.

  Achieving equitable outcomes for children and youth from certain racial and lower socio-economic groups is a serious, complex, and persisting problem. Solving it may require more extensive solutions than we currently seem willing to envision. Existing policies and resource allocations constrain potential innovations so that most new ideas are “add-ons” to existing arrangements. More fundamental redesign of schooling sometimes occurs through the creation of new schools, some of which offer potential prototypes for system-wide transformation. However, reliance on policy models of charter or alternative schools runs counter to commitments to opportunity policy and universality, and to the need for systemic solutions focused on supporting all students rather than individualized successes and failures.

  As Ben Levin (quoting James March) reminds us, all organizations require “‘exploration’ (another word for innovation) and ‘exploitation’ (another word for system-wide improvement based on known ways of getting results).”[12] The question therefore is not whether we need innovation or system-wide improvement. We need both. Identification of where innovation might generate more effective solutions and where focused implementation of what we already know gets results may not be straightforward, but it is an urgent and important agenda for educators, researchers, and policymakers. The importance of equity is clear: existing inequalities are unacceptable and have widespread negative consequences for collective society as well as for individuals. Evidence is also mounting about what is required to close the equity gap: building professional capacity and improving education overall, alongside targeted strategies and innovations for lower performing and disadvantaged groups. However, such calls for equity need to move beyond rhetoric and recipes; educators need to wrestle with the challenges of combining excellence and equity through policies, professional capacity, and practices that balance proven strategies with innovation. This will require a commitment to transparency of practice and results, drawing on evidence and experience to spread improvement. It is not about quick wins, naming and blaming those who are struggling (educators, students, schools, or communities), or imposing mandatory accountability measures or predetermined models to target failure. Those remedies have been tried and failed.

  Are we really serious about equity in education? If so, it will take complex and challenging work, creativity and capacity, resolute focus, resilience to stay the course over the long haul, and our collective commitment – indeed demand – that we advance this goal together through educational practices, policies, and research.

  Carol and Penny were co-moderators of the Canada-U.S. Colloquium held in 2010.

  EN BREF – « Si nous prenons l’équité en éducation au sérieux, comment peut-on réaliser des améliorations? » Cette question a orienté un projet lancé par l’Association canadienne d’éducation et le Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education pour stimuler le dialogue sur l’équité et l’amélioration en éducation. Malgré leurs contextes sociaux et éducatifs différents, les deux pays tentent de réduire l’impact de la situation socioéconomique sur la réussite scolaire. Assurer des résultats équitables aux enfants et aux jeunes de certains groupes raciaux et socioéconomiques peu fortunés pose un problème complexe qui soulève des réactions. Les inégalités actuelles ont des conséquences défavorables étendues pour la société comme pour les particuliers et les mesures de responsabilisation instaurées pour résoudre ces problèmes ont échoué. Pourtant, pauvreté n’est pas nécessairement synonyme de destinée. Les preuves s’accumulent quant aux éléments requis pour combler l’écart d’équité. Nous devons rehausser la capacité professionnelle, améliorer la réussite scolaire de tous et instaurer des stratégies ciblées et des innovations à l’intention des groupes défavorisés et ayant de plus faibles résultats.

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  [1] Boris Palameta, “Low Income Amongst Immigrants and Visible Minorities,” in Perspectives on Labour and Income 5, no. 4 (Statistics Canada, 2004).

  [2] OECD, PISA 2009 Results: Overcoming Social Background: Equity in Learning Opportunities and Outcomes, vol. II (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2010).

  [3] Ibid, 101.

  [4] The Promise and Problem of Literacy: An Agenda for Canada (Toronto: Canadian Education Association, 2004). www.cea-ace.ca/research-publications/policy-papers

  [5] Analyses by McKinsey & Co. (2009) cited in Michael Fullan, All Systems Go: The Change Imperative for Whole System Reform (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2010),16.

  [6] Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009). Data slides available at www.equalitytrust.org.uk/resources/slides

  [7] Jo Blanden and Stephen Machin, “Report for Sutton Trust Recent Changes in Intergenerational Mobility in Britain” (Economics Department, University of Surrey and Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics, 2007).

  www2.lse.ac.uk/intranet/LSEServices/ERD/pressAndInformationOffice/PDF/Recent%20Changes%20in%20Intergenerational%20Mobility%20in%20Britain.pdf

  [8] Ibid.

  [9] See Linda Darling-Hammond, The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity will Determine our Future (New York, N.Y.: Teachers College Press, 2010).

  [10] See OECD.

  [11] M. Mourshed, C. Chijioke, and M. Barber, How the World’s Most Improved School Systems Keep Getting Better (New York: McKinsey & Company, 2010).

  [12] Ben Levin, “Do We Need More Innovation in Education?” (Seminar Series 199. Centre for Strategic Education, 2010).

• Restoring Our Schools: The Quest for Equity in the United States

  4:19 PM Comments Off on Restoring Our Schools: The Quest for Equity in the United States

  In 1989 President George H.W. Bush and the nation’s governors convened to establish a set of six national education goals to be accomplished by the year 2000. Among these were to ensure that at least 90 percent of students graduate from high school, that all students are competent in the academic disciplines, and that the U.S. ranks “first in the world in mathematics and science achievement.”

  These goals were not achieved. In 2011, the four-year high school graduation rate remains stagnant at about 70 percent; the achievement gap between minority and White students in reading and math is larger than it was in 1988; and U.S. performance on international tests has continued to drop.

  Far from being first in the world in math and science, the U.S. ranked 31^st out of the top 40 jurisdictions in mathematics on the 2009 Programme in International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, with scores well below the OECD average, and lower than in 2000, when the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was introduced. The U.S. ranking was 22^nd in science, sandwiched between Hungary and the Czech Republic. Reading scores were closer to international averages, with the U.S ranked 15^th – equivalent to Poland and Iceland – but average scores also dropped during the NCLB era. By contrast, Canada is the highest performing English-language speaking country in the PISA assessments, with a current ranking of 6^th in reading, 8^th in science and 10^th in mathematics.

  The dismal performance of the U.S. can be explained partly by the fact that international assessments demand more advanced analysis than do most U.S. tests, requiring students to weigh and balance evidence, apply what they know to new problems, and explain and defend their answers. These higher-order skills are emphasized in other nations’ curricula and assessment systems but have been discouraged by the lower-level, multiple-choice testing favored by NCLB.

  In addition, inequality has an enormous influence on U.S. performance; the U.S. is among the nations where socio-economic background most affects student outcomes. In the U.S., the impact of socio-economic factors on student performance is almost double what it is in Canada.[1] In the U.S., White and Asian students score just above the average for the European OECD nations in each subject area, but African-American and Hispanic students – many of whom are in highly segregated schools that lack qualified teachers and up-to-date materials – score so much lower that the national average plummets to the bottom tier. Thus, the poor U.S. standing is substantially a product of unequal access to the kind of intellectually challenging learning measured on these international assessments.

  Barack Obama has described our large race- and class-based achievement gaps as “morally unacceptable and economically untenable.” At a time when three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require post-secondary education, our college participation rates have slipped from first in the world to 17^th. Only about 40 percent of American young people—and fewer than 20 percent of African-American and Hispanic youth—receive a college or university degree, as compared to almost half of students in Canada.

  While government commitment to education has dropped, the number of prisoners has quadrupled since 1980; state budgets for corrections have grown by more than 900 percent, three times faster than funds for education. States that would not spend $10,000 a year to ensure adequate education for children in under-resourced schools later spend more than $40,000 a year to keep them in jail.

  While we have been busy setting goals and targets for public schools and punishing the schools that fail to meet them, we have not pointed our schools at the critical higher-order thinking and performance skills needed in the 21st century.

  Finally, unlike high-achieving nations, the U.S. has failed to invest in the critical components of a high-quality education system. While we have been busy setting goals and targets for public schools and punishing the schools that fail to meet them, we have not invested in a highly trained, well-supported teaching force for all communities, and we have not pointed our schools at the critical higher-order thinking and performance skills needed in the 21st century. We have not, as a nation, undertaken the systemic reforms needed to maintain the standing we held 40 years ago as the world’s unquestioned educational leader.

  A Glimpse of What High-Achieving Nations Are Doing

  Other nations are expanding educational access to more and more of their people and revising curricula, instruction, and assessments to support the more complex knowledge and skills needed in the 21st century. Starting in the 1980s, for example, Finland dismantled its rigid tracking system and eliminated the state-mandated testing system used to support it, replacing them with highly trained teachers educated in newly overhauled schools of education, along with curricula and assessments focused on problem solving, creativity, and independent learning. These changes have propelled achievement to the top of the international rankings and closed what was once a large achievement gap.

  In the space of one generation, South Korea has transformed itself from a nation that educated less than a quarter of its citizens through high school to one that graduates more than 95 percent from high school and ranks third in college-educated adults, with most young people now completing post-secondary education. Egalitarian access to schools and a common curriculum, coupled with investments in well-prepared teachers, have been part of the national strategy there as well.

  Similarly, starting in the 1970s, Singapore began to transform itself from a collection of fishing villages into an economic powerhouse by building an education system that would assure every student access to strong teaching, an inquiry curriculum, and cutting-edge technology. In 2003, Singapore’s fourth and eighth grade students scored first in the world in math and science on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) assessments.

  A visit to Nan Chiau Primary School, for example, finds fourth and fifth graders eagerly displaying the science projects they have designed and conducted in an “experience, investigate, and create” cycle that is repeated throughout the year. Students are delighted to show visitors their “innovation walk,” displaying student-developed projects from many subject areas lining a long corridor. Students study plants, animals, and insects in the school’s eco-garden; they run their own recycling center; they write and edit scripts for the Internet radio program they produce; and they use handheld computers to play games and create mathematical models that develop their quantitative abilities. Teachers, meanwhile, engage in research sponsored by the government to evaluate and continually improve their teaching.

  Certainly there are schools that look like this in the U.S. But what distinguishes systems like Singapore’s is that this quality of education is replicated throughout the entire nation. And Singapore is not alone. As many nations in Asia and Europe, as well as Canada, are pouring resources into forward-looking systems that educate all their citizens to much higher levels, the gap between the U.S. and these nations is growing.

  Contrast the picture of a typical school in Singapore with the description of a California school, from a lawsuit filed recently on behalf of low-income students of colour in schools like it throughout the state, a half-century after Brown v. Board of Education:

  At Luther Burbank, students cannot take textbooks home for homework in any core subject because their teachers have enough textbooks for use in class only… One dead rodent has remained, decomposing, in a corner in the gymnasium since the beginning of the school year…. The school library is rarely open, has no librarian…the latest version of the encyclopedia in the library was published in approximately 1988…. Luther Burbank classrooms do not have computers. Computer instruction and research skills are not, therefore, part of Luther Burbank students’ regular instruction…. The school no longer offers any art classes…. Eleven of the 35 teachers at Luther Burbank have not yet obtained full, non-emergency teaching credentials, and 17 of the 35 teachers only began teaching at Luther Burbank this school year.

  Under these circumstances, it is impossible to talk about developing the deep knowledge and complex skills required of young people in today’s and tomorrow’s society. PISA data indicates that the U.S., along with Turkey, Slovenia, and Israel, are unique within OECD for the fact that schools with high proportions of socio-economically disadvantaged students also tend to be disadvantaged in terms of inadequacy of basic resources. In Canada, the majority of students attend “mixed” schools, rather than highly advantaged or disadvantaged, and there is greater equity of access to resources within and across schools. One outcome is that the average public school in Canada has been judged to perform at least at an equivalent level to an average private school in the U.S.[2] 

  Learning From the Past

  These deep-seated problems in the U.S. education system are not inevitable. The nation made strong headway on educational achievement in the past and could do so again. For a brief period in the mid-70s, Black and Hispanic students were attending college at rates comparable with Whites, the only time this has happened before or since. By the mid-1970s, urban schools were spending as much as suburban schools, and paying their teachers as well; perennial teacher shortages had nearly ended; and gaps in educational attainment had closed substantially. Federally funded curriculum investments transformed teaching in many schools. Innovative schools flourished, especially in the cities. Large gains in Black students’ performance throughout the 1970s and early 1980s cut the literacy achievement gap by nearly half in just 15 years. Had this rate of progress continued, the racial achievement gap would have been closed by the year 2000.

  Unfortunately, that did not occur. While other nations built on the progressive reforms they launched in the 1970s, the U.S. backpedaled in the Reagan years. Conservatives introduced a new theory of reform focused on outcomes rather than inputs – that is, high-stakes testing without investing. Drops in real per-pupil expenditures accompanied tax cuts and growing enrollments, while student needs grew with immigration, concentrated poverty and homelessness, and growing numbers of students requiring second-language instruction and special education services. Although some federal support to high-need schools and districts was restored during the 1990s, it was not enough, and after 2000 inequality increased once again, and it has now grown to epic proportions with budget cuts hitting poor schools the hardest. 

  What’s to Be Done?

  Although some of America’s schools are among the best in the world, too many have been neglected in the more than 20 years since the clarion call for school reform was sounded in the 1980s. Clearly, we need to take the education of poor children as seriously as we take the education of the rich, and we need to create systems that routinely guarantee all the elements of educational investment to all children.

  Clearly, we need to take the education of poor children as seriously as we take the education of the rich, and we need to create systems that routinely guarantee all the elements of educational investment to all children.

  What would this require? As in high- and equitably-achieving nations, it would require strong investments in children’s welfare – adequate healthcare, housing and food security, so that children can come to school each day ready to learn; high-quality preschool to close achievement gaps that already exist when children enter kindergarten; equitably funded schools that provide quality educators and learning materials, which are the central resources for learning; a system that ensures that teachers and leaders in every community are extremely well prepared and are supported to be effective on the job; standards, curricula, and assessments focused on 21st century learning goals; and schools organized for in-depth student and teacher learning and equipped to address children’s social needs, as the community schools movement has done.[3]

  Thus far, the Obama administration has taken affirmative steps on a portion of this agenda. The administration’s stimulus package, which made $100 billion available for schools, has stanched some of the acute hemorrhaging that would otherwise have occurred as a result of the recession. And the president has signaled his interest in more intellectually thoughtful assessments that “don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity.”

  The most touted aspects of the Race to the Top initiative, however, focus on peripheral issues rather than investments that have characterized major improvements in education systems at home and abroad. It continues to sanction schools based on test-score targets and close those that serve the neediest students; it does not require states to equalize funding; it requires states to expand charters but fails to assure quality and ensure access, despite evidence that charter schools frequently underperform their counterparts, exacerbate segregation, and serve fewer students with special needs. The law does not aim to spread excellence so much as it aims to change governance. Nations that are focused on spreading quality – like Singapore, Finland, and Canada, for example – have developed strategies for schools to share successful practices through networks, creating an engine for ongoing improvement for the system as a whole.

  Rather than establishing a framework for dramatically improving the knowledge, skills, and equitable distribution of teachers, as high-achieving nations have done, Race to the Top encourages states to expand alternative routes to certification and to reduce coursework for prospective teachers, and it fails to make the critical investments needed to prepare and distribute excellent teachers and school leaders. Rather than short-term incentives, competition, sanctions, and quick fixes, federal policy should focus on building capacity across the entire system.

  Achieving these conditions will require as much federal attention to opportunity-to-learn standards as to assessments of academic progress, and greater equalization of federal funding across states. It will require incentives for states to provide comparable funding to students, adjusted for pupil needs and costs of living, as well as incentives and information that can steer spending productively to maximize the likelihood of student success. Finally, an equitable and adequate system will need to address the supply of well-prepared educators – the most fundamental of all resources – by building an infrastructure that ensures high-quality preparation for all educators and ensures that well-trained teachers are available to all students in all communities.

  This article is adapted from Linda Darling-Hammond’s The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future (Teachers College Press). Source URL: http://www.thenation.com/article/restoring-our-schools

  A version of this article was previously published on The Nation (http://www.thenation.com) on May 27, 2010.

  EN BREF – Le piètre classement des États-Unis aux tests internationaux résulte d’un accès inégal au type d’apprentissage intellectuellement stimulant qui est évalué. Alors que d’autres pays ont beaucoup élargi l’accès à l’éducation et revu les programmes d’études, la pédagogie et les évaluations en fonction de connaissances et de compétences plus complexes, les États-Unis ont privilégié les examens normalisés. Bien que certaines écoles américaines comptent parmi les meilleures du monde, les États-Unis doivent instaurer des systèmes garantissant tous les éléments d’investissement éducationnel à tous les enfants. Comme l’ont fait les pays caractérisés par des résultats élevés et par l’équité, il faudrait privilégier le bien-être des enfants; une éducation préscolaire de qualité; le financement équitable des écoles; un système assurant une préparation et un soutien adéquats du personnel enseignant et des dirigeants de chaque collectivité; des normes, des curriculums et des évaluations tenant compte d’objectifs d’apprentissage du 21^e siècle; des écoles organisées pour permettre l’apprentissage approfondi des élèves et du personnel enseignant et dotées de ressources appropriées en fonction des besoins sociaux des élèves.

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  [1] 8.6% of variance in student performance in Canada is associated with socio-economic factors, as compared to 16.8% in the United States.  OECD, PISA 2009 Results: Overcoming Social Background: Equity in Learning Opportunities and Outcomes. Volume II (Paris: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2010).

  [2] J. D. Willms, Reading Achievement in Canada and the United States: Findings from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (Report prepared for Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, 2004).

  [3] See David L. Kirp, “Cradle to College,” The Nation, 14 June 2010: 26.

• ConnectED Canada: Building a National Network for Change

  November 14, 2011 1:26 AM Comments Off on ConnectED Canada: Building a National Network for Change

  I think it’s an exciting time to be involved in the world of education.

  Across our country, school jurisdictions are rolling out plans and policies with the hopes of making school a more engaging place of learning for students.  As our profession makes this foundational shift, I get excited imagining classrooms that are places of vibrant, technology-supported, hands-on learning where all learners are supported and find success.  As I read these various visions I hope that all students are able experience a learning environment buzzing with discussion, activity, and engagement as students invent, share, refine and improve their own and each other’s ideas.

  To support these visions, I think we also need to shift what teacher learning looks like.  Many 21^st Century frameworks for student learning (for example here and here) revolve around skills such as collaboration, networking, creativity, communication and innovation, and I believe teachers need opportunities to learn and grow in similar learning environments.  I believe teachers need opportunities to see compelling images of contemporary teaching and learning being lived out in classrooms with opportunities to share, discuss, collaborate and learn from others.  We need professional development that is built on teacher engagement, networked learning and collective improvement.

  With that in mind, a group of educators from across the country have created ConnectED Canada – an annual gathering of teachers, students, parents and other stakeholders, each coming with a similar goal of making school more relevant and purposeful for students.  The goal of ConnectED Canada is to provide a platform for discussion and idea generation – all situated within a school community striving to live out the best of 21^st Century Teaching and Learning.

  ConnectED Canada is open to teachers, administrators, superintendents, and ministry representatives in additional to students and parents.  We want to bring together engaged professionals from across the country gathering to talk about what’s currently working , what’s emerging and where we might go next.

  The first year of ConnectED Canada is taking place May 25-27^th 2012 at the Calgary Science School, a school of 600 students focused on inquiry-based, technology-supported and outdoor education-enriched learning.  You can see examples of our approach to teaching and learning here on our school blog.

  

  As a staff member at the Science School I am so pleased we are hosting this first event. While we feel we have some great things happening at our school the idea of opening up our classrooms to 300 outsider visitors is both thrilling and nerve-wracking!  As the first day of the three-day event will be a normal day at the school, our teachers welcome the opportunity to share their ideas, questions and struggles with a wider audience. Also, we are eager to provide our students opportunity to share their experiences with a national audience.

  The second and third days of the event will be built around conversations and discussions.  We are currently looking for facilitators willing to host and lead 90 minute discussions.  Topics of discussion can range from technology implementation to policy development to assessment practices – all framed around how we might better the needs of learners in the modern world.

  We hope you’ll consider bringing forth a topic for sharing and discussion – the deadline for proposals in Dec 8^th, 2011. You can submit a proposal here.

  Our hopes for ConnectED Canada are many. We hope this event will give participants a chance to engage in rich and timely discussions about meaningful topics and innovative ideas in education. We hope that participants will initiate new relationships and deepen existing ones. We hope that the student and parent voice will play a significant role in the discussion. We hope participants will experience engaging learning taking place in real classrooms. Overall, we hope that ideas will be shared – and that participants will leave invigorated and excited about the wonderful work that is teaching and learning in the 21^st Century.

  http://www.twitter.com/neilstephenson

• The 21st Century Personalizing Teacher

  November 9, 2011 8:56 PM Comments Off on The 21st Century Personalizing Teacher

  Personalized, learner-centered pedagogy is all the rage these days. There is a great deal good about that when it works but it scares me to think about what it could mean when it is done poorly. Inquiry learning can be powerful, but if it is taken to just mean doing projects it is probably little more than busy work. However, it also might be educational malpractice. Uncritical enthusiasm for thinly conceived and shallowly implemented versions of potentially empowering practices could take us back to the worst abuses of Whole Language – another excellent idea when done well and a mess when done poorly.

   In the good old days, the teacher knew and the students needed to know. The process was pretty simply. Teacher talks. Students listen. Teacher tests. Grade and move on. That’s how it was when I went to school and its still quite common. Of course, nobody wants to admit to such a caricature of transmissive teaching, and there are plenty of examples of much more sophisticated practice, but teaching as telling followed by summative assessment is still, in broad strokes, the underlying conception in many classrooms.

   As we move towards more student-centered practices in which the teacher shares responsibility for the learning with students, and becomes a co-learner (partly in terms of the discipline being taught but primarily in terms of understanding his/her particular students’ learning and the profession of teaching) it is important to do so with equal measure of ingenuity and skepticism. Good is the enemy of great and the good of the past is not sufficient for the future so we have to get better, but as we change we have to be sure we also improve and that we don’t lose anyone in the transition. How can we be sure of that? Standing pat with traditional methods is not the answer, so how do we learn our way into superior practices?

   In Visible Learning professor John Hattie of New Zealand reports on his survey of 8500 meta-analyses of educational research related to student achievement. Many have seen his book as another list of “what works” but Hattie warns specifically against cherry-picking research results and presents an entirely different message about teaching and learning – it needs to be more visible.

   He says, “It is critical that the teaching and learning is visible … The teacher must know when learning is correct or incorrect; learn when to experiment and learn from the experience; learn to monitor, seek and give feedback; and know to try alternative learning strategies when others do not work. What is important is that teaching is visible to the student, and that the learning is visible to the teacher. The more the student becomes the teacher and the more the teacher becomes the learner, then the more successful are the outcomes.” (p. 25)

   To make teaching and learning visible there has to be lots of formative assessment and feedback in both directions. Learning to build such ongoing assessment and reflection into the teaching-learning process is essential if we are to personalize learning in order to generate the deeper engagement that will enable achievement of the transformational goals of 21^st Century Learning. You can’t just try something and hope for the best. Every innovation must include an ongoing assessment strategy that provides continuous feedback to both students and teachers. Trying things out and looking at the results after a year is not professionally responsible. Quality control and adjustment has to be continuous.

   The superior instructional practices and school organizational patterns that will be required to better prepare students for an increasingly complex and dynamic world cannot be copied from Finland or Australia or anywhere else. They have to be developed through innovative practice right here at home, and as they are developed we also have to make sure that what is happening within our innovation is made visible so that we can actually learn from it and avoid any harm in the process.

   The 21^st Century Personalizing Teacher has to be, above all, a self-regulating learner, not just a follower. To adapt a well-worn phrase, you have to be the change you want to see in your students.

• The Dream World of the 1968 Hall-Dennis Living and Learning Report is alive and well in the story of transforming public education

  6:17 PM Comments Off on The Dream World of the 1968 Hall-Dennis Living and Learning Report is alive and well in the story of transforming public education

  The visionaries on the Hall-Dennis Committee, the ones who carried the day with their 1968 report Living and Learning, set out their aims a few of which are worth repeating for their relevance in 2011:

  • To serve the needs and aspirations of the people, there should be an advisory body of citizens to keep education policy and practice under review with power to report to the Legislature.
  • The fixed position of student and teacher must give way to a more relaxed relationship, which will encourage discussion, inquiry, and experimentation and will enhance the dignity of the individual.
  • Given an increased measure of professional freedom and inspired by a philosophy which puts foremost the needs and dignity of the child, our teachers will provide the education we envisage.

  There is more between the lines of these selected statements than in them. The first one directly challenges the Czarist power of the Minister of Education about which I commented in my blog Bossism in Public Education. The picture of a citizens’ advisory body voicing their wishes before the Legislature would surely cause heartburn among the bureaucrats who enjoy primary access to the ear of the Minister. Further, some would argue that it would be contrary to the tradition of responsible government achieved by dedicated effort in Queen Victoria’s time.

  Still, citizens/parents/teachers are relatively powerless in the structure and conduct of Canadian public education. By degrees, they have turned it over to the experts. Elected school boards, which have steadily grown in size and complexity in my lifetime are, to an increasing degree, mere handmaidens of the Ministry. New Brunswick tackled this problem by abolishing the boards some years ago and replacing them with a parent advisory structure. After more changes, there are now District Councils to manage the schools much as the school boards used to do. At the provincial level, the Minister is legally bound to consult with citizens on a regular basis. It seems apt to observe Plus ca change, plus c’est la même chose. But give New Brunswick credit where it’s due – they have recognized a problem and tackled it seriously.

  Ontario has mandated parent councils for every school but they have not changed by one iota the hierarchical nature of public education. The councils typically are busy with fundraising and fancying up the playground. Any really significant features of education policy and practice are beyond the purview of the councils. Nearly ten years ago when I questioned the capacity of a school council to examine and comment on the curriculum, a spokesperson for the council responded “Oh dear, we don’t want that kind of responsibility”.

  So, the Hall-Dennis dream of parental engagement in policy making in education has remained a dream.  Officialdom in education resist with the argument that there must be system-wide standards. In the digital age, I prefer the idea of system-wide ferment within a framework of generalized system aims.

  The second of the Hall-Dennis aims quoted above has been realized to some degree.  When the report was written in 1967-68, male teachers wore shirt and tie and females a skirt or dress. Males were often called “Sir”. If casualness is part of the ambience for good education, then the few surviving advocates of the Hall-Dennis philosophy can relax.

  The third aim above remains an unfulfilled dream. As I explained in my Oct 12^th blog, professionalism has largely eluded the teaching profession in North America. Many teachers, trapped in the no-man’s land between unionism and professionalism, are inhibited from offering leadership in education innovation and transformation – inhibited also by the all-powerful ministries of education, which continue to monopolize curriculum change.

  Let me conclude this brief retrospective on the Hall-Dennis era by recollecting a few of the mess-ups of the 1970s that doomed the report to ridicule and rejection.  The brief flush of excitement in Ontario resulted in a slew of experimental stuff – team teaching, audio-visual instruction, movies for social studies and language study, field trips galore. Complaints piled up about functional illiteracy and lack of readiness for the discipline of the work place or post-secondary education. The politicians seized upon the complaints so that by 1980 Hall-Dennis was breathing its last.

  For me at least, Hall-Dennis is alive and well in the story of transforming public education. Here is a quotation from the report that is more current than when it was written:  Unless a people is on its guard, the economic demands of society can be made to determine what is done in education. The society whose educational system gives priority to the economic over the spiritual and emotional needs of man defines its citizens in terms of economic units and in so doing debases them. There is a dignity and nobility of man that has nothing to do with economic considerations. The development of this dignity and nobility is one of education’s tasks.

  Amen!

• From Paradigm Shift to Narrative Shift

  November 4, 2011 3:28 PM Comments Off on From Paradigm Shift to Narrative Shift

  I remember clearly the first time I heard the phrase Paradigm Shift. I was sitting in an after-school staff meeting and my principal had just returned from a conference, inspired by the idea that education was about to undergo a substantial re-think.

  “We’re making a move”, he declared, “And our whole way of thinking about school is about to change. We’re about to undergo a paradigm shift!”

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• Just Supposing…

  October 31, 2011 5:47 PM Comments Off on Just Supposing…

  Just supposing a province or territory decided to conduct a major study of its public education system, a ‘thorough airing of the bedclothes’ so to speak. And just supposing it announced in predictably prosaic language the title of the study: Education for the 21st Century. Then imagine the number of other projects both private and public with the same title. So, to be taken seriously, it would be essential to set out terms of reference that would elicit some excitement among the taxpaying public. Tough assignment considering that most people, though they care about public education, are at a loss when it comes to changing it substantially. As things stand now, school offers security, qualified teachers, more or less competent instruction in the basic subjects, approved assessment practices, predictable reporting to parents, regulations for the care and management of needy and undisciplined children. Isn’t that adequate?

  No, not really. There is still a wide gap between the emerging realities of life as represented by the high flyers of all ages in the web world and what actually goes on inside the schoolhouse. The authors of a recent work, Teaching the Digital Generation (Kelly, McCain, Jukes), 2009, argue persuasively that education must be brought in line with the current situation where kids are “exposed to new kinds of input from digital experiences for sustained periods of time on a daily basis.” Most of that input is beyond the purview or control of parents and teachers. And, I believe, most of it renders the schoolhouse obsolete in the minds of its young clients – who still crave learning as much as ever. A checklist of emerging or real obsolescence would include: the textbook, the print oriented library, compulsory attendance until late adolescence, standardized testing for information recall, assessment of progress based on mastery of print information, age-grade lock-step progression. Of course there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these traditional education practices except that they are in varying degrees obsolete, that’s all. They are out of sync.

  The book mentioned above proposes asynchronous learning instead of everything synchronized with the textbook, the school timetable, the exam-test schedule etc. Some features of the new learning would include stronger emphasis on visual learning both artistic and practical, generous use of community resources, assessment of pupil progress based on teacher-pupil initiated projects, school architecture for individual or small group instruction, teaching as a largely advisory process. Farewell pedanticism as we’ve known it.

  As I suggested in my last blog, the emerging education paradigm for the 21st century would highlight individualism, singularity, and selfhood.  These need not be seen as menacing signs of civic irresponsibility or self-centredness running amok. Rather, they simply recognize and embrace the digital reality, which is all around us all the time. Education within such a paradigm would, on the contrary, foster the kind of citizenship compatible with a democratic society – intensely knowledge-based and emotionally satisfying. As for terms of reference for this new study, I would be happy with those set down in 1967 for the Hall-Dennis Report:

  • Identify the needs of the child as a person and as a member of society.
  • Set forth aims of education for the province.
  • Outline objectives for the curriculum.
  • Propose means of realizing those aims and objectives.

  That is to say, the terms of reference do not matter so much as the people who relate them to the facts that confront them. Look again at the first one above. An authoritarian reactionary sort of person would respond “Teach the little _______ to behave and work hard” while a more liberal-minded person might say “Our students are young citizens; treat them accordingly”. Either point of view would have profound implications for educators not the least of which would be unsettling questions like: What is the practical meaning of citizenship in a democracy? Should school life be a model for democratic citizenship? If so, how is that to be done?

  The Hall-Dennis Committee wrestled with such questions for a couple of years before publishing their coffee table book Living and Learning, a best seller. Next time, I’ll recall some of the Hall-Dennis fall-out relative to the second decade of the 21st century.

• Equity of Output Must Become the Next ‘21st Century’ Objective

  October 26, 2011 12:44 PM Comments Off on Equity of Output Must Become the Next ‘21st Century’ Objective

  In my first year as CEO of the CEA, I’ve had the pleasure of sharing our vision and mission with so many educators across Canada. I’ve realized that the courage it takes to provoke a shift among deeply entrenched mindsets of traditional teaching and learning is long overdue. We can all agree that we want all our young people to be ‘21^st Century’ problem solvers, critical and creative thinkers, collaborators, and great communicators, but our vision for how we get there ranges from a little tinkering to a massive makeover, and most innovators face roadblocks when they push the envelope for the latter.  This is why it’s time to move beyond 21^st Century rhetoric and build strategies that will nurture innovation and not deter it. CEA is working hard to convince you that this transformation needs to happen.

  At the 2011 CEA Council Meeting, 21st Century Learning: From Rhetoric to Reality, participants will have the opportunity to hear from three speakers who have a first-hand knowledge and experience with innovative pedagogy internationally, in a Canadian school, and in a Canadian classroom.  Following presentations, speakers will explore the barriers they face in moving their innovative thinking towards more systemic transformation.  

  This Council meeting is not about simply assembling experts in the field of education and from the private sector together to look at what innovative practices can be.  It’s about developing a deeper sense of commitment amongst the participants to finally move the discussions and debates to more pragmatic realities.  Pilot projects in education have been the easiest means to demonstrate that innovation and transformation of education can occur, but rarely have these projects become systemic.  

  For decades, education has placed a considerable amount of resources and energy into establishing equity, especially at the student entry points.  However, education stops the application of this fundamental principle and an increasing number of children leave education, either disillusioned or seriously questioning the pertinence of what they have learned.  Equity of Output, ensuring that all children achieve their potential, must become the next ‘21st Century’ objective. Ensuring Equity of Output obliges all education stakeholders to focus on the establishment of new learning/teaching environments that meet the needs of all children and not only a minority of them.

  This Council meeting will bring this principle to the forefront and provide a critical platform for exchange and debate on how to truly meet the needs of ALL children.

• The EdCamp Movement

  October 21, 2011 9:25 AM Comments Off on The EdCamp Movement

  I returned from the very first EdCamp Toronto event last Saturday afternoon somewhat weary, more than a little excited and a whole lot intrigued!

  Months of planning, combined with an early alarm on the day of the event accounted for the weariness. The positive energy and feedback that organizers received before, during and after the day inspired the excitement.

  [ibimage==3842==Original_size==none==self==null]

  (more…)

• Shaking the Education Tree

  October 19, 2011 4:09 PM Comments Off on Shaking the Education Tree

  A previous blog written on October 5 was on the eve of the Ontario election that returned the Dalton McGuinty Liberals, one seat shy of a majority. The province’s second most expensive public service, education, was never really debated during the entire campaign. There was an occasional glimpse of McGuinty slapping himself on the back that Ontario had the best of all school systems. His opponents’ platforms offered only unchallenged verities. Too bad!

  There is much that might have been said. It is 16 years since there was a thorough discussion of public education in the most populous province of the country.  I refer to the five-volume report For the Love of Learning, 1995, Gerald Caplan and Monique Begin, which fulsomely addressed the principles and practices of Ontario schools. Two such progressive-minded persons should have paid more respect to the liberating idealism of its predecessor report, Living and Learning, 1968, Hall/Dennis.  I, for one, hoped that the 1995 report would propose ways to increase the professional autonomy of teachers, open doors for students seeking more freedom to make choices, break down the subject rigidities of the curriculum, engage the community in the teaching-learning process, empower parents as auxiliaries rather than as bemused bystanders, advance the idea of children actually enjoying school – as the title of the report claimed.

  But 1995 was not a time for visionaries. It was post-recession, belt tightening time. Time also to be worried about international test results (1991), which revealed Canadian 13-year-olds in ninth place in science and mathematics in a set of fifteen industrialized countries. Thus the Caplan/Begin Report (unintentionally) slammed the door on liberal thinking in the public schools and implicitly authorized the test-and-remediate style of education. The apparent need for more rigour and discipline in the classroom was such an uncomplicated concept that the politicians could grasp it with enthusiasm. Thus we are burdened with the Ontario Education Act, 1,200 pages long in fine print. http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/html/statutes/english/elaws_statutes_90e02_e.htm

  All across North America public school teachers struggle to get their scores up based on standardized tests in reading, writing, science, mathematics, etc. Even a slight improvement in the scores is celebrated at the board offices, in the local newspapers and within the central bureaucracies even though a quarter to a third of pupils remain stubbornly below the mediocre standard set for their jurisdiction. In this numbers game, mediocrity has become the icon on the flag flying over most schools. This gloomy assessment does not do justice to all the points of light in some public schools in different parts of the country. But the bright spots , I believe, are the exception rather than the norm.

  In the outcome, private schools have blossomed. According to my best estimate there are six million pupils in Canadian publicly- supported schools, a number that is falling. Meanwhile rising private school enrolment in Ontario approaches 130,000. Multiply that number by four for a rough estimate of private school enrolment in Canada as a whole, i.e. about half a million. (Stats Canada seems not to keep private school enrolment figures).

  It is time for a change. What is needed is a paradigm shift in keeping with the groundbreaking social/economic/psychological drama playing out since 1995. Central to this seismic rumbling is, of course, the computer and the digital revolution. This technology has put in jeopardy the negative and out-dated hallmarks of public education – uniformity, standardization, centralization and bureaucratization. The new paradigm, on the other hand, heralds individualism, singularity and selfhood. Like death and taxes, this revolution cannot be stopped even though most schools in their structure and governance pretend not to be affected by it. Private schooling burgeons, among other reasons, either to defy the revolution or embrace it. Public schooling, at the very least, needs a major investigation into this historic, cataclysmic process now under way.

  Next time, I’ll lift my head above the parapets and offer some terms of reference.

• Has teacher professionalism been over-shadowed by unionism?

  October 12, 2011 8:21 PM Comments Off on Has teacher professionalism been over-shadowed by unionism?

  Once upon a time, when knights were bold, there were three professions: divinity, medicine and law. Now there are hundreds, possessing intellectual rigour ranging from high to low. They all boast professional accreditation and/or certification: engineers, hair dressers, realtors, opticians, brewers, surveyors, librarians, photographers, road builders, early childhood educators, teachers, etc., etc. They display framed diplomas and certificates and spend riotous hours at annual conventions. In this proliferation, the meaning of professionalism has too often been debased to mere technical know-how.  

  Historically, professionalism stood for intellectual independence derived from university and private study and buttressed by exemplary moral character. As things stand now, some elite professional people are very richly rewarded and some are not. It is the rarity of some professional fields that mainly accounts for high income. Sixty years ago, Dr. Alan Klass wrote a paper under the title  What is a Profession?  In explaining the concept of “going the extra mile” (beyond the terms of the contract), Klass wrote: “It is in this subtle area of private endeavour that a profession, in its totality, achieves greatness”.

  Teachers in the public system, generally speaking, display some of the hallmarks of a modern profession – explicit academic standards, certification requirements , rules of membership,  a code of ethics with a mechanism for enforcement and, not least,  work contracts bargained under provincial labour codes. But a devilish fuzziness hangs over these hallmarks.  Has professionalism been over-shadowed by unionism?  Is it mere quibbling to ask? Does it matter one way or another to students in school and their parents?

  Well, yes, it does make a difference. Witness the pell mell explosion of private schools, (private school enrolment in Canada, 1960 to 2005, grew by 357% compared with public school enrolment by 52.5%), a phenomenon partly explained by unionism in the schools. Witness the large number of persons, some now middle-aged, whose lives were messed up by a school strike. Before proceeding further, let’s be clear on one point. Teacher associations operating as unions under local labour law serve to ensure fair play, equal treatment in work assignments, promotions and pay scales. These assurances and protections contribute to good morale on the job and, therefore, to  a friendly learning atmosphere in the classroom.

  But there is a catch. Many teachers, trapped in the no-man’s land between unionism and professionalism, are inhibited from offering  leadership in education innovation and transformation. The need for such initiatives is greater as the digital revolution envelops us.  Additionally, teachers are inhibited by the all-powerful ministries of education. For example, there is almost no hope for a teacher or a group of teachers who believe they can do a better job of educating their students without the “benefit” of government standardized testing.  Premier Dalton McGuinty of Ontario has treated government test results as a political talisman through the recent election campaign.

  The sovereign power of the Minister goes back a long way — to the very earliest days of public education. I remember the struggle to get Ministry approval in 1961 for a pilot project in teaching history (Grades 11 and 12) without using THE textbook. The results of that project were overwhelmingly positive but fifty years later history textbooks are still with us, as with most other subjects.   In the early 1970s, I listened to David Clee, head of the Curriculum and Textbooks Branch of the Ontario Department of Education announce in a speech before the Ontario Education Association that Circular 14 (the listing of approved textbooks) would be phased out within a year.  David Clee was phased out instead.

  New life and spirit have indeed been injected into public education in some jurisdictions,- Alberta and Quebec come to mind. And there are pockets of excellence everywhere. But the termites are deep into the woodwork everywhere, the termites in question being the stand pat effect of centralization and standardization with their deadening effect on professionalism. In an upcoming blog, I will argue the need for a major enquiry into Ontario education, one that might be a signal light for other jurisdictions.

• How is a School System Like a Modern Automobile?

  October 6, 2011 10:12 AM Comments Off on How is a School System Like a Modern Automobile?

  I had a fascinating conversation today with my mechanic. I had brought my 2005 Toyota in for a 70 point inspection in order to help me decide whether I should hang on to it for a few more years, or whether it might be better to dump it and take advantage of the peace-of-mind offered by driving a newer model.

  Tom was in a talking mood and I took advantage of his enthusiasm and knowledge. As a result, I came away with a deeper appreciation of the technology that drives the modern automobile. In particular, our conversation focused on the complex set of computer modules that are used to control almost every aspect of functionality. We spoke of body control modules, ECM’s, oxygen sensors, emission and fuel controls. For me, the discussion really became interesting when Tom explained how each of the system controls “talk” to each other, adjusting functionality and performance based on the information received from other components. I came away thinking of my car as this perfectly synchronized ecosystem, complete with a finely-tuned feedback loop designed to respond to a series of quality controls and performance indicators.

  If something happens in one control system, a component somewhere else will either respond or refuse to respond. This, in turn, may trigger a response from another module which will either adjust its performance or begin a series of pre-determined tests. The final result of this process may result in the activation of an indicator light on my dashboard which, when investigated, will provide a full report on what has gone on as well as a code that can be used to find a plan of action to correct the problem.

  Now, it just so happens that, while waiting for Tom to complete the inspection, I was reading our Ministry of Education’s School Effectiveness Framework (really, I was!), a support document that identifies evidence-based indicators of successful practice in a number of components of effective schools. The SEF document encourages educators at all levels of the system to use these indicators as a way of building coherence and aligning practices across an entire school.

  Ontario’s SEF outlines six components ranging from assessment practices, leadership at various levels of the system, quality of classroom instruction, programs, and partnerships between school, parents and community. A great deal has been written on this site and elsewhere about each of these components, but the SEF does a nice job of bringing them together into a unified whole. But the SEF goes further by offering a series of indicators and observable points of evidence that make quality within each of the components visible and, as a result, actionable.

  This is a process that is to be carried out with integrity and transparency for the purpose of promoting reflection, collaborative inquiry and ultimately improved student learning.

  —Mary Jean Gallagher and Raymond Théberge(Introduction to the Ontario School Effectiveness Framework, 2010)

  Just like my automobile, I came away from reading our SEF with a sense that our school systems are another type of ecosystem, made up of component parts that, when they are running smoothly and effectively, are a thing of beauty.

  The School Effectiveness Framework that is now part of the drive toward quality and accountability in Ontario presents a vision for integrated, evidence-based planning and practice. It has something to say to folks working at every level of the system.

  In the long term, the SEF has the potential to drive the transformation agenda for years to come. In the short term, it forces us to look beyond the political darlings that currently drive our planning agendae—large-scale assessment scores and graduation rates— and focuses our vision on the actual components that ground these narrow indicators.

  Beyond that, however, the School Effectiveness Framework invites us to look at how each of the components within our modern education system is interconnected and interdependent. It’s a complex way of thinking, to be sure. At the same time, by placing our role in the system within the larger context of a tool like the SEF, our school systems become a thing of immense beauty—a marvellous type of ecosystem!

  Over the next few weeks, I would like to take a closer look at Ontario’s School Effectiveness Framework, exploring each of the component parts in a little more detail. But I would also love to hear about your experience in working with this type of process in your own district, in your own province. Have you been exposed to a similar tool for effectiveness planning? Are you involved in similar conversations at the school, district or community level?

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