SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Too Many Generals, Not Enough Foot Soldiers

Click here for the 2007 “Sunshine List”, the names of Ontario school board employees who earned more than $100,000. Since no classroom teachers earn this much, all of the names on the list represent bureaucratic positions. In 2003, there were 788 education sunshiners in Ontario. Each year, the number steadily increased, such that by 2007 there were 5,913 in the province, an increase of about 650%. It’s also worth noting that Ontario school enrolment fell by about three percent over the same period. You may wish to look up your own school board and see how it stacks up. A few boards have been relatively responsible, and others - for example, the Windsor-Essex Catholic School Board with an increase of 1275% - have not.

More Money Down the Drain

The Ontario Government has announced that it is “investing $25 million in colleges, school boards, and community literacy organizations in the Employment Ontario network to help laid-off workers and and other adult workers train for highly skilled jobs”. It notes that “3.4 million Ontario adults have literacy skills at less than the high school level”. That’s about 40% of Ontario adults.

We at School for Thought predict with great confidence that this $25 million will have zero impact on literacy in Ontario, since most of the money is going to the very organizations that are already generating and perpetuating Ontario’s illiteracy disaster. Furthermore, targeting the money at adults suggests that the Ontario government has no clue that the roots of the problem are in kindergarten and grade 1. After all, the failure rate on the province’s grade 3 reading test is stuck at around 40% - not so coincidentally, the same percentage as the adult illiteracy rate.  It’s like stationing an ambulance at the bottom of the ski hill to patch up the skiers who can’t get down the hill safely - as opposed to teaching them to be good skiers in the first place.

Propper Spelling

So what did you think when you saw the spelling mistake in the title? We thought so! Good spelling is important because it affects the way others regard you.

Click here for a quick spelling test that will let you get a handle on your child’s spelling grade level. The link also gives an overview of how to teach kids to spell.

Incompetent Educators

An article in Maclean’s magazine reports that “Of the roughly 200,000 educators licensed by the Ontario College of Teachers to teach, only 27 have been terminated due to poor performance since 2004 - an annual average of just 0.002 per cent. In the past five years, not a single permanent teacher has been dismissed for incompetence in the largest school boards in Montreal and Winnipeg: Saskatoon Public Schools has terminated just one; and in Edmonton Public Schools, says a spokeswoman, ‘very few if any’ have been let go.”

Incompetent teachers exact a terrible price from their students’ futures. In choosing to protect bad teachers at the expense of defenceless children, school boards and teachers’ unions reveal their priorities.

Scholarship Tax Credits

Jay Greene reports that Indiana has approved a modest tax credit scholarship program.

This means that more Indiana families can find the education of choice for their children.  Would that Ontario took note.

Perspiration, Not Inspiration

Here’s a book tip for people who yearn to become really, really good at something. You can achieve your dream - but only if you work your butt off! The Talent Code: Greatness isn’t born. It’s grown. Here’s how. by Daniel Coyle reveals that world-class performance - in any sphere, from music to sports to math to chess - is the result of a huge amount of dedicated, purposeful practice. Filled with fascinating examples and anecdotes, the book painlessly conveys important information about the learning process - information that every teacher and coach should have at his fingertips. Far from depending on inborn talent or genius, excellence is the result of personal motivation, good teaching, and purposeful practice. 

Desperate Measures for Desperate Times

This article in the Vancouver Sun discusses the Toronto School Board’s attempts to stem its enrollment hemorrhage (about 5,000 students every year). The board has become so desperate that it is offering more and more specialty schools - arts, sports, science and technology, Africentric, transgendered, the list goes on. Oddly, though, you still won’t find any “traditional schools” (teacher-directed, structured, uniforms, academic orientation, high standards) even though this is probably the most popular option with parents. School for Thought guesses that times are still not sufficiently desperate for THAT.