SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Anti-Bullying Workshop

For parents who live in the London, Ontario area, you might be interested in this workshop on Navigating the Bullying Maze, sponsored by the London Anti-Bullying Coalition.  Parents will have an opportunity to learn more about how to work with their schools when bullying occurs, including a comprehensive list of next steps and practical resources. 

The workshop will be held on Saturday, December 5, 2009, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Childreach, 265 Maitland St. London, Ontario.  For information or to register, call Marg at 519-434-3644, Ext. 38.

Give US the Money!

SQE operates on a shoestring, receiving no government money and supported solely by the individual contributions of its supporters (you can donate here). Our remedial programs, Stairway to Reading and Stairway to Math have helped tens of thousands of struggling students and, if we had more resources, they could help even more children (hence our request that you vote for our entry in the Aviva contest). All of which explains our dismay at the hundreds of thousands of dollars being wasted by the TDCanada Bank and others on the upcoming TD National Reading Summit. This two-day conference will “explore what it means to be a reader in a democratic society and share their research and experience in developing reading promotion programs”. Apparently, the organizers believe that we desperately need to “foster a reading culture in Canada”.

Has no one noticed that we already have a reading culture in Canada - for those who can read, that is? The TDNational Reading Summit will just pile on non-readers some more, rubbing their noses in the fact that they can’t read. It would make more sense to teach them how to read instead.

Laughing at Adversity

Click here to see some very funny test answers produced by students who had no idea what the solution was but were unwilling to leave the space blank. This blog tip, entitled “Failing with Dignity”, was sent to us by a teacher (as many of our best tips are).

A Heads Up for Ontario

This Canadian Education Association report on the English government’s “Innovation Unit” which, tasked with finding a solution for the fact that “not enough young people achieve well and become successful learners”, has come up with a new “improvement paradigm”. Using the “language of transformation and radical innovation”, the Unit favours a “fundamental shift in the balance in schools towards a deeper social constructivist approach incorporating co-construction with students; thematic, project-based assignments; re-balanced skills versus knowledge approaches; enhanced mixes of in-school and out-of-school contexts and settings; peer tutoring, mentoring, coaching; enhanced use of parents, community, ‘experts’, and a changed learner-teacher mix”. Yes, Virginia, some people really do write such things. But before you dismiss this as total nonsense with no relevance to Ontario, read on. Near the end of the report appear these chilling words: “The Innovation Unit has always been outward-facing….a new venture…..a transformed education across their jurisdictions….Ontario is one of the first cohorts.”

Provincewide School Closings

SQE Secretary-Treasurer Nancy Wagner will appear on CTV’s Provincewide this Sunday, November 15, at 6:30 pm. Nancy will be discussing the recently-released Parents for Education report on declining enrollment and school closings. Among other things, Parents for Education is calling for changes to the funding formula (ie, more money) that will allow small schools to keep their doors open. School for Thought notes that, while Ontario’s public school enrollment has declined by something like 90,000 students over the last six years, the number of school-age children has decreased by only about 20,000. Why has enrollment dropped by so much more than the number of school-age kids, you ask?

It suggests to us that more and more students are choosing alternatives to publicly-funded schools - options like home schools, private schools (Ontario has 921 of them), dropping out of school and, in the case of new Canadians, being sent back to the old country to live with grandma and get a decent education there. If we’re correct, Ontario’s enrollment decline indicates a high level of dissatisfaction with Ontario’s publicly-funded schools. Our hypothesis is borne out by the burgeoning enrollment in supplementary education services like Kumon and Sylvan. Ontario school boards might want to consider offering public schools that would lure many of these students back from their alternative settings - to wit, schools that offer a rigorous academic education in a very structured setting. 

And if the province is foolish enough to agree to give even more money to school boards, there is a strong possibility that most of it will disappear into the bureaucracy like usual and many schools will close anyway.

Chinese Irony?

School for Thought finds it quite ironic that a left-leaning public school board trustee in Toronto would be promoting tuition-paying foreign students but would likely oppose private school vouchers for the poorest performing students at his own board.  Moira MacDonald’s Toronto Sun column today talks about how the TDSB would be cashing in on foreign students from China. 

Perverse Incentives

This article about school closings in Ontario mentions in passing that the provincial government has been moving away from the per-pupil model of funding and quotes the minister of education as follows: “There’s a whole roll of money and grants we’ve put in place to take boards away from the head count”. And then the minister wonders why enrollment is falling and academic achievement is stagnant!

Unlike private school principals who have a strong incentive to attract and please parents and students (because every student who chooses their school brings in several thousand dollars a year), public school principals in a non-head count system have very little incentive to attract and please parents and students. To public school principals, growing enrollment just means more work and hassles juggling the additional students. And it’s not as if their salaries or status or promotion prospects are linked to enrollment growth either. In fact, public school principals actually have an incentive to repel and displease some of their parents and students, for example disgruntled parents or special-needs students* or mid-year transfers or students with behaviour problems or low achievers who bring down the school’s EQAO scores. The more of them that go away, the easier life gets for these principals.

The fewer incentives principals have to please their parents and students, the worse their service is likely to be. The inevitable result is falling enrollment, mediocre achievement, and high drop-out rates. By moving away from the per-pupil model of funding, the Ontario government is shooting itself in its foot.

*In Ontario, special education funding is calculated as a percentage of enrollment and the money is not attached to specific students.

Safety Nets for Disorganized Kids

Excerpt from Organizing the Disorganized Child: Simple strategies to succeed in school, Martin L. Kutscher & Marcella Moran, pp.16-17)

“We know of a sixth-grade teacher who announced to a group of aghast parents on open house night, ‘This is a good year for your child to fail’. You could hear the jaws drop. Most of the parents didn’t think that any year was a particularly good year for their child to fail. Now, I think I know what this excellent teacher meant. His point was that most kids who are left to sink or swim will sink once and vow that it will never happen again, and that middle school is a good time for that to happen - before it shows up on their transcript for college. Indeed, most kids do learn by sinking or swimming when it comes to organization - except for those whose brains can’t help but sink when left without a life-jacket.

“Letting a child who has trouble completing a task ‘sink’ is about as fair and helpful as letting a child who has dyslexia ‘sink’ when she keeps reading poorly. Our suggestion is to be the child’s safety net. Monitor the child’s progress while standing close by in the background. There is no harm to the child’s learning curve if, for example, you double-check that she put her homework in the homework folder. And if she occasionally forgets to do the needed task, then fortunately, you are there to be her safety net and provide a softer landing for her poor executive skills. It’s not fair that the child fail math, for example, simply because she is disorganized.

“Be the child’s safety net. Monitor the child’s progress while standing close by in the background. Most of the time, you won’t be needed, but there’s no harm in standing by. Safety nets are how they do it in the Olympics. The spotter steps in to monitor the athlete’s dangerous maneuvers, and no one accuses the spotter of interfering with the athlete’s need to take her own skills seriously. Most of the time, the spotter is not needed, but when he is needed, thankfully he is there. Be your child’s safety net. Allowing severe failure does not teach skills.”

No, Prime Minister

This 10-minute segment from the British comedy series Yes, Prime Minister is the middle part of the “National Education Service” episode. It centres on Jim Hacker’s proposal to abolish the department of education and allow parents to choose their children’s schools. The reaction to this proposal by Sir Humphrey, a civil servant, is hilarious. To view the other two parts of the episode, click Part 1 and Part 3.

A Modest Proposal

It is a melancholy object to those who walk through modern schools to hear the piteous cries of educators seeking ever more funding. Yet no matter how much money is disbursed to the education system, nothing ever gets better. In fact, if anything the moaning just gets louder and the results stay the same or get worse. How can this be, you ask? Well, the more superfluous money there is, the more is spent on things that actually hinder classroom teachers - intercom systems, time-wasting consultants, expensive technology, useless in-service, mandatory school assemblies and trips, etc.

Here’s one example. Last April, the Ontario Ministry of Education released a document that set out its “vision for an equitable and inclusive education system”, requiring school boards to “review/develop, implement and monitor an equity (sic) and inclusive policy”. The boards’ plans have to be three-year plans, monitored annually, reflect community consultations, contain timelines and indicators and on and on. The Waterloo District School Board, in partial fulfillment of this mandate, has now produced a glossy four-page equity and inclusion newsletter which has been distributed in great abundance throughout staffrooms and given great prominence in staff meetings. It is safe to say that some people might find parts of the document peculiar, for example the directive that teachers begin referring to their husbands or wives as their “partners”. When you multiply the time and money spent by the Waterloo board on this one ministry initiative by all 72 Ontario school boards, and then mutliply that figure by all the other ministry initiatives and all the other bureaucratic nonsense that goes on, it’s a wonder there’s any time or money left over to actually teach the kids!

Consequently, School for Thought would like to make a modest proposal, to wit that the powers-that-be start spending less money on education, not more. The result will be better academic results and happier taxpayers.