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Sunshine on Schools Ontario has been profiled in the Globe and Mail today. Marcus Gee’s column, titled An Open Exam for the School Establishment has a full look at our website.
This New York Times article profiles Tom Dunn, a former defence attorney who switched careers in mid-life to become a teacher in an inner city middle school in Atlanta. Mr. Dunn took advantage of an alternative teacher certification program called Teach for America (TFA). TFA runs a five-week summer course which not only qualifies its graduates to teach in publicly-funded schools but also gives them an excellent preparation for teaching in low-income communities. As the TFA site points out, the impact of TFA teachers on their students’ achievement is as good as or better than that of teachers certified at a faculty of education.
In Canada, teacher certification programs take at least a year, discouraging potentially-good recruits such as university professors, music teachers, authors, and professionals of all kinds. As well, most Canadian teacher certification programs do a poor job of preparing their graduates for the classroom (see some of the “Teacher Training” articles in our newsletter archives for the gory details). A survey by the Ontario College of Teachers found that the province’s teachers ranked their training at faculties of education ninth in value as the source of their teaching skills, after such things as common sense and input from family members.
Canadian governments should consider introducing alternative teacher certification programs like Teach for America.
Sunshine on Schools Ontario has sparked some interest south of the border. On the Intercepts blog, Mike Antonucci has written about us in O Canada.
Intercepts is a blog that monitors public education and the teachers’ unions in the U.S., but the antics of the OSSTF haven’t escaped his notice.
Not strictly-speaking on topic - but watch this cute video anyway. It’s the heart-warming story of a kid who was always getting picked on, but then gained acceptance by saving his teacher’s life using the Heimlich manoeuvre.
A Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency report reports that between 2002 and 2008, the percentage of Michigan students enrolled in a public school other than their state-assigned school rose by 69%. Even without taking into consideration the growing numbers of students enrolled in private and home schools, the report comes to the conclusion that “the trend, both within the state of Michigan and nationally, is for people to want schools of choice”. The experience in other jurisdictions that have introduced school choice policies, like Alberta, Australia and Chile, bears out this conclusion. This article from our newsletter archives shows how one Swedish right-of-centre political party had the courage to introduce a strong school choice program back in 1991, despite the opposition of the left-of-centre politicians. Eight years later, Swedish voters had embraced their right to choose their children’s schools so strongly that many politicians had switched their positions and even some Communist politicians had begun to support school choice.
In the wake of the disastrous result of John Tory’s campaign promise to fully fund religious private schools during the last election, Ontario politicians of all political stripes are scared to death of school choice policies. However, the devil was in the details of Tory’s school choice policy, and not in the concept. An intelligent school choice program, carefully designed and explained, would be hugely popular at the polls - and even more popular after it was underway. Once people have been given the right to choose their children’s schools, no democratic government would be able to take this right away.
A delightful side effect would be that kids would learn more in school.
From time to time, School for Thought will zero in on a particular subject, providing teaching tips and a short list of resources. Today’s subject is science.
As a general rule, the human mind has a very easy time understanding and remembering new learning that is presented in a story format. It almost seems as though our brains are preprogrammed for stories. For more on this phenomenon, click here. For this reason, the Story of Science series by Joy Hakim are an especially good way of teaching science to young children. Additional good resources are listed in our December 2006 newsletter (scroll down to Everyone Can Learn Science).
Please add a comment to recommend additional science resources or to suggest which subject we should focus on next time.
(NO) PROGRESS REPORT ON ONTARIO REPORT CARDS
Ontario’s report cards embrace the learner’s dynamic processes in a developmentally-appropriate and holistic paradigm. They are designed to integrate and enhance an open-ended view of each learner’s meta-cognitive unfolding. Since it is critical that they harness the learner’s positive energies, the report cards correctly optimize the teacher’s synergistic schemas and focus on the learn’s multiple intelligences and diverse learning styles. Using authentic and collaborative assessment models, the report cards recontextualize the interface between the learner and the classroom. This revolutionary vision orchestrates disconnected dialogue and enhanced personal separation.
We did blog about The Cartel a few months ago, but if you haven’t already seen the trailers for this groundbreaking look at education monopoly check out The Cartel.
A worthy second feature is this look at a “good” schools. Not as Good As You Think, the Myth of the Middle Class School, according to the Pacific Research Institute who produced it, “shatters the myth that ‘good’ schools located in ‘nice’ neighborhoods are shielded from the education crisis that pervades schools in poor, urban areas.”
Canadian research led by Dr. David Johnson at the C.D. Howe Institute seems to support this.
Wouldn’t they make a great double bill?
A facilitator working with Ontario’s troubled Bluewater District School Board has recommended that the board begin surveying parents and students as to why they are leaving the system. What a revolutionary idea! Given that the Bluewater board is hemorrhaging students (19.4% since 2002-03, compared with the contiguous Catholic board’s loss of 5.6%), the Bluewater board might want to think seriously about acting on the facilitator’s recommendation.
If, however, their surveys were to find the same thing that SQE found when it sponsored a survey of why parents choose private schools, namely that private school parents are disappointed with the province’s publicly-funded schools in terms of the dedication of the teachers, the emphasis on academic quality, and the children’s safety, then the Bluewater board could face a dilemma. Most Ontario school boards, and the Bluewater board is no exception, cling to deeply-rooted educational beliefs and policies that are incompatible with a safe, structured school environment and high academic standards. What would be the point in finding out why Bluewater parents and students are leaving the system if the board has no intention of acting on the information?
American Chronicle has featured Nine Reading Experts Explain the Sad State of Reading and SQE’s Malkin Dare is one of those experts! Many of the others named are well-known to SQE readers.