SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Sunday at the Movies (Education Reform Dot TV)

Here’s a clip of Bob Bowdon being interviewed by Reason.TV (a web-based TV channel) about his plans to launch a dot TV site dedicated to school reform. Bob Bowdon, BTW, is the producer of The Cartel which premiered at our accountability symposium last April. H/T to Allen Small.

The road to Damascus?

I read this very interesting piece in yesterday’s Globe and Mail about the growing demand for alternative schools.  The article by Trailee Pearce (the byline is missing off the print version) can be read in full here.

While the article talks about the rise in popularity of choices for alternative schools, what really struck me was the comment by the Calgary Board of Education’s superintendent of learning Cathy Faber:

      “Parents were telling us quite clearly they wanted more choice. They weren’t confident any more that the one-size-fits-all model worked. From our side we already knew that it didn’t work.”

Well they sure did take their time to find that out in Calgary!  What a change of tune from the public board, but only after they learned some tough lessons.

SQE’s film Charter Schools: Alberta’s Best-Kept Secret (made in 2004) has a segment on the Calgary Science School, a charter school, founded in the 1990’s long before Calgary’s alternative.  If you watch the segment (here) or click on the video below, you will hear the former Chair of the Calgary Board and founder of the charter school say that the Board wasn’t very accommodating when she wanted to start an alternative school in the board way back in the day:

    “They were quite belligerent about it. I think they found it threatening and they could NOT have been less receptive to the notion.”

So with charter legislation in place, the science charter school was born.

One other Calgary charter school, Foundations for the Future Academy, has a waiting list of thousands and several campuses.  There is also a Calgary Girl’s School charter.  You can see more about those schools in our video or on the YouTube segments, here and here.

So a conversion on the road?  None of the Calgary alternatives would have happened if it wasn’t for the competitive influences of Alberta’s charter schools. Parents want change and they want choice.

How to help slow learners (and raise their IQ’s)

On August 9, I blogged about cognitive psychology’s new insights into the nature of intelligence - most importantly, that it is not fixed - and promised to provide information about measures to increase slow learners’ IQ and learning. Once again, I am excerpting from Dan Willingham’s book Why Don’t Students Like School? (pp142-145)

Praise Effort, Not Ability
“You want to encourage your students to think of their intelligence as under their control, and especially that they can develop their intelligence through hard work….In addition to praising effort (if appropriate), you might praise a student for persistence in the face of challenges, or for taking responsibility for her work. Avoid insincere praise, however.”

Tell them That Hard Work Pays Off
“Praising process rather than ability sends the unspoken message that intelligence is under the student’s control. There is no reason not to make that message explicit as well, especially as children approach upper elementary school. Tell your students how hard famous scientists, inventors, authors, and other ‘geniuses’ must work in order to be so smart.”

Treat Failure As a Natural Part of Learning
“If you want to increase your intelligence, you have to challenge yourself. That means taking on tasks that are a bit beyond your reach, and that means you may very well fail, at least the first time around….Try to create a classroom atmosphere in which failure, while not desirable, is neither embarrassing nor wholly negative. Failure means you’re about to learn something.”

Don’t Take Study Skills For Granted
“All students must learn new skills as homework becomes more demanding - skills of self-discipline, time management, and resourcefulness (for example, knowing what to do when they’re stumped). Students who are already behind will have that much more trouble doing work on their own at home, and they may be slower to learn these skills.”

Catching Up Is the Long-Term Goal
“It is important to be realistic about what it will take for students to catch up….If your slower students know less than your brighter students, they can’t simply work at the same pace as the bright students; doing only that, they will continue to fall behind! To catch up, the slower students must work harder than the brighter students.”

Show Students That You Have Confidence in Them
“Ask ten people you know, ‘who was the most important teacher in your life?’....People say things like ‘She made me believe in myself’ or ‘She taught me to love knowledge.’ In addition, people always tell me that their important teacher set high standards and believed that the student could meet those demands.”

Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, and Jean Chretien were Jesuit-educated

This Cardus study is interesting on a number of levels. The researchers’ main goal - to find out whether religous schools are achieving what they set out to do - was answered in the affirmative. But along the way, there were a number of other, perhaps surprising findings - especially the differences between Catholic and Protestant Christian schools.

(Excerpts from page 12)

“Catholic schools provide superior academic outcomes, an experience that translates into graduates’ enrollment in more prestigious colleges and universities, more advanced degrees, and higher household incomes….At the same time, however, our research finds that moral, social, and religious dispositions of Catholic school graduates seem to run counter to the values and teachings of the Catholic church. For example, students graduating from Catholic schools divorce no less than their public school counterparts, and significantly more than their Protestant Christian and non-religious private school peers.”

“Compared to their public school, Catholic school, and non-religious private school peers, Protestant Christian school graduates have been found to be uniquely compliant, generous individuals who stabilize their communities by their uncommon and distinctive commitment to their families, their churches, and their communities, and by their unique hope and optimism about their lives and the future.”

“The research finds Catholic schools are providing high quality development but at the expense of developing faith and religious commitment to religious practices in their graduates, while Protestant Christian schools are seemingly providing a place where students become distinct in their commitment to their faith, but are not developing academically at any better rate than their public school peers.”

These findings raise an important issue. Is this an either-or situation? Must schools choose between intellectual and religious development? This seems unlikely to me. After all, look at what the Jesuits can do with their students.

New Poll Question on Ontario Election

Check out SQE’s latest poll question on our home page.

A ticking time bomb in our midst?

Boys are not doing at all well in school, as our microsite on boys’ problems explains. We don’t really get into the consequences of boys’ problems in our website, thinking that it is kind of obvious - unemployment, incarceration, fewer suitable husbands, human waste, that kind of thing…. But now comes Margaret Wente’s column Unskilled, unmarried, unwanted... and, as usual, Margaret has grabbed a news item and run with it. She ties the recent riots in Britain (and Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, and Milwaukee - and Vancouver) into “a surplus of unemployable, disruptive young males”, saying that this is not a new phenomenon - but one that frequently leads to trouble if not dealt with appropriately. 

Past solutions included sending these men to war, to sea, or to Australia. Margaret is thinking in terms of somewhere else to send them (into space, perhaps?), but I say - how about giving boys a decent chance in school, making it possible for them to become skilled, married, and wanted?

No gifts for these magi

There’s a telling article in The Globe and Mail this morning about the on-the-face-of-it-absurd refusal of the Tedious Board to move its program for gifted students out of the over-crowded school where it is now located and into one of the many half-empty schools elsewhere in the board.

The article is worth the read, because it is a classic illustration of the disfunctionality inherent in centrally-planned systems - shortages and surpluses, whimsical decisions, cost over-runs, waiting lists, and square pegs in round holes all over the place.

And I’m guessing that the school board has a certain level of discomfort about offering a program for gifted students in the first place. I would strongly doubt that a program for, say, homosexual students or hearing-impaired students would get similar treatment.

Sunday at the Movies (Teacher Seniority)

The first video explains why teacher layoffs based on seniority are a bad idea. The second video puts a human face on it.

Indiana families line up for vouchers

Indiana's new school voucher program, which makes it possible for low- and middle-income families to send their children to a private school, is very popular with parents. And, as the scholarship amount is on a sliding scale based on family income, many of these voucher students will actually end up costing the state of Indiana less than if they stayed in their public school. Affluent families have always had the ability to send their children to private schools if they needed to but, up until very recently in Indiana, poor families could not. 

Indiana's voucher program is fairer, saves money, and gives great joy to its participants. It also will change many lives for the better. And, as has happened in other jurisdictions, the public schools are likely to improve as a result of the increased competition.

As far as I can tell, the only people who will be worse off in this scenario will be the status quo educators, like the teachers' unions. Or am I missing something?

Provider Capture

Many US school boards are being forced to reduce their spending as financial conditions worsen, but the irresistable force is meeting the immovable object when boards try to cut education spending.

California is a particularly interesting case: it recently passed a law barring teacher layoffs. Now many boards are between a rock and a hard place. They have to balance their budgets but they can't touch their biggest line item. Fortunately, the state government is thoughtfully allowing school boards to further shorten the school year - by another seven days.

Illinois is tackling its budget problems differently, charging fees for extracurricular activities, textbooks, even required classes like physical education and English. 

As usual, the people the people who provide the service are being protected, while the people who use it are taking the hit.