SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

How’s that again?

Ontario's testing body, the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO), has just released the province-wide results of its grade 10 literacy test. As the graph shows, only 83% of the province's grade 10 "fully-participating" students passed the test (the unfully-participating students include students who have dropped out of school, students who are ineligible to write the test because they are, for example, disabled in some way or are not fluent in one of the province's official languages, and students who were absent on one or more of the test days: if the unfully-participating students were taken into consideration the pass rate would be much lower - perhaps in the neighbourhood of 60%). And the test is easy (see this sample test booklet). 

Anyway, that's not the main point that I wish to make. In the EQAO's press release, they state "of the 143,246 students who actually wrote the test, 83% were successful, thus maintaining the high rate of success seen over the past five years". Then they say, "there has been a one-percentage-point decrease in each of the last two years."

Exactly how does a two-percentage-point decrease over two years represent the maintenance of the rate of success? After all, we're talking approximately 3,000 students here. The EQAO's remarkable pronouncement reminds me of the concept of doublethink as coined by George Orwell in his book 1984 - the ability to accept two mutually-contradictory concepts in your mind at the same time. And this from a supposedly-neutral arms-length testing organization!

Tipping Point for Parents and Teachers?

Is this latest move by the unions the tipping point for teachers (and parents) in Ontario?

It was bad enough that $60 of extra dues was taken out of teachers' pockets: now teachers are going to get paid leave to go to campaign school.  Problem is, that the only lesson they will be allowed to learn is how to fight provincial conservative candidates.  Democratic?  Hmmm.  The other problem is that the timing could not be worse for Ontario students since the October 6th election date means that the campaign will be in full swing during the month of September when schools are at their busiest.  No problem, says the union--we'll pay for supply teachers!  Unbelievable.

From the sound of angry calls to talk radio, looks like this may just backfire on them.

The Folly of Picking Winners and Losers

Here's an interesting new study from the Cato Institute that takes note of the fact that many charitable foundations have recently been partnering with selected charter school networks in an effort to ensure the development of very successful schools. Looking at California charter school networks and controlling for individual student characteristics and peer effects, the author finds virtually no correlation between foundation funding and charter network performance.

The report supports other education research suggesting that spending more on schools will not necessarily improve their performance. The report also suggests that it is very difficult, if not impossible, for charitable foundations to pick winners and losers and that, although market forces are not perfect when it comes to rewarding high performers, they are likely to do a better job than charitable foundations (or government agencies, for that matter). 

It looks as if a better role for charitable foundations would be to fund organizations that promote the use of market forces in education. Like, for example, the Society for Quality Education. ☺

News Flash: Literacy is important!

As I have mentioned, I am currently in Japan. This trip has given me a new understanding of what it is like to have limited reading skills.

In Japan, most of the signs are in Japanese characters, almost none of which I can read. Even the scarce English signage can present problems, as it can include mistakes or comprehension can depend on background knowledge which I lack. So I am reduced in most cases to guessing or relying on my daughter-in-law or - most often - to just sticking to the known and safe. The inability to read makes me helpless and dependent.

Until this trip, I had no idea how much I rely on my ability to read in order to get me through the day - navigate to unknown destinations, figure out bus schedules, order food in restaurants, read toilet instructions (the toilets here are VERY sophisticated), and on and on. 

Bottom line: we have a moral duty to ensure that all children become competent readers.

Sunday at the Movies (Japanese Schools)

Since I'm now visiting Japan, an extremely impressive country in terms of logistics and friendly culture, here's a short clip about Japanese schools. Certainly, we see groups of kids everywhere on school trips and, although they are clearly having a very good time, they are courteous and well-behaved.

Butting heads against a school board wall

Further to yesterday’s posting about school boards and democracy, here’s a telling story from upstate New York. You have to read all the way to the end, because the plot contains more twists and turns than The Perils of Pauline. In this episode, though, the bad guy wins.

The True Role of School Board Trustees

The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board has clarified the fundamental ambiguity surrounding the role of school boards by passing a resolution requiring trustees to "represent the board and its officers in a positive light". This means, for example, that from now on it will be impossible for a Hamilton-Wentworth trustees to bring foward a constituent's complaint since, by definition, the complaint would cast the board in a negative light. The new policy makes it clear that the role of the Hamilton-Wentworth trustees is henceforth to represent the school board to the public - as opposed to representing the voters who elected them. 

The trouble with removing trustees' ability to represent their constituents is that school boards were invented in order to inject an element of democracy into an education system that offers no other access point to voters. Muzzled trustees remove any pretence of democracy. In fact, I guess we should be give a vote of thanks to the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board for making it crystal clear that there is no need to elect trustees any more, since their only role is to represent the board to the voters and there are no doubt plenty of paid staff members who can do that job just fine.

And, since I am writing this from Japan where my son has just married a Japanese girl, I offer you this depiction of the three wise monkeys as carved on a mural in Nikko, Japan.

Convocation At Last!

Today is my daughter's convocation.  It is a proud day for most parents and no less for our family as well.  Readers who know me know it was my daughter's elementary school education experiences that brought me to the education reform movement many years ago. 

She wasn't learning to read very well in the primary grades and yes, I got the same treatment and heard the same clichés as parents still do from their public schools twenty years later. A fateful letter to Malkin Dare and OQE at the time opened my eyes to the possibility that things could certainly be better in our school system.  I learned about "school-proofing", direct instruction, systematic explicit phonics and more.  I vowed I would not stand by and let another child suffer setbacks to learning.  One of the most heart-wrenching moments in her learning was when she confided to me that she wished someone had taught her how to do fractions properly in the first place so that she wouldn't have had so much trouble in math.   This, after we sent her to a girls-only high school.  She won the award for most improved student in grade 10.  I cried that awards night.

Last night I attended the Donner Canadian Foundation Lecture.  The guest speaker was Tiger Mother, Amy Chua.  What an eye-opener!  Dr. Chua spoke eloquently about her book and how she had been absolutely misrepresented in the press.  Her book was meant to be a memoir and not a parenting manual--although she says in China she is looked upon as a "cuddly" mother, not a tiger!  She gave us the real story about her family and her struggle to ensure her daughters lived up to high expectations, avoided materialistic pop culture, achieved honest goals, and true self-esteem.  She says that there exist too many false dichotomies such as drill and knowledge vs. creativity.  Why can't there be both?  Creative minds must have a solid foundation of skills and knowledge.  The full talk will be broadcast on CBC Radio.  

I think most of us who support SQE would not disagree too much.  And yes, I'll probably cry when my daughter gets her diploma today as well.

[Footnote--Lest readers think that all of us at SQE are "drill and kill" tiger-mother monsters who don't value or nurture creativity, my daughter is graduating from Ontario College of Art & Design University.  She is an illustrator and award-winning graphic designer.  So there.]

The devil and the deep blue sea

The Ontario Conservative Party (the favourite to win the coming election) has released its platform. Click here for Moira MacDonald's commentary, in which she observes that - for the most part - the Tories propose to leave things pretty much the same as before. Moira's take on this is that the Tories are hoping to appease the province's powerful teachers' unions, one of which has already collected $60 from each of its members in order to build an anti-Conservative warchest. 

It will be interesting to see how the teachers' unions react to this gambit. On the one hand, there's no question but that the unions could expect even better treatment from the provincial Liberals, if elected. But, as mentioned above, it's beginning to look as if the Liberals will not be elected. So would the unions be smarter to face reality and start building bridges to the Conservative Party? I'm sure the debates are raging within the union offices even as we speak. I'd love to be a fly on the wall!

Too bad, by the way, that the best interests of kids and parents don't appear to be a consideration........