SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Who’s on first?

Perhaps parents' biggest complaint about public education is that their children's incompetent and/or unprofessional teachers can't be gotten rid of. It's also probably classroom teachers' (and principals') biggest complaint as well, as conscientious educators greatly resent being held back by and having to cover up for the deadwood on their staffs.

Of course, the reason why incompetent and/or unprofessional teachers can't be gotten rid of is because their unions protect them so well. 

So when the Alberta Minister of Education (who is very very friendly to progressive educators) asked Alberta school boards for information about incompetent and/or unprofessional teachers, the Alberta teachers' union filed a formal complaint against the Minister with the Alberta Information and Privacy Commissioner. Such is the power of the Alberta teachers' union that the Minister of Education has been forced to back down and publicly admit that he may be able to do without the information after all.  more

Georges Clemenceau famously said that "war is too important a matter to be left to military men". I, less famously, say "education is too important a matter to be left to the education men".  H/T TB

It’s Not Me, So It Has to Be You.

It was thought by some readers that my comment in Occam's Razor should be considered for a stand-alone post. So here goes: 

This brief list  was found while researching  for another topic, but it appears to be from the Lambton-Kent School Board's Riverview School Council meeting.  It is the school’s response to the school council' concerns to the Grade 3 EQAO test results. No date is on the sheet, but from the text it is probably from about five years or so ago.

(http://riverview.lkdsb.net/Council%20Minutes/Response_re_Gr3_EQAO.pdf)

Notice that nowhere Is there any mention on how reading will actually be taught. Most of the initiatives the school proposes are nice and safe, but in themselvles not likely to lead to any significant improvements in reaching achievement.

The school seems to be more concerned about how parents are doing things at home.  Considering school councils’ main job is to monitor student achievement, I’d say the school is not being accountable at all and puts all the blame on the parents. Again.
Sigh.

Here's the full text is below, in case the link isn't working:

Response to Council members question on the low EQAO Grade 3 Reading Results for
the past couple years and what is being done to address the issue:

•  Writing folders consistent practice all grades.
•  Bins organized by interest e.g. boys.
•  Smart Board purchased for all classrooms/listening centre all rooms/non-fiction books new additions in classrooms.
•  Professional Book for all teachers: Reading With Meaning and Better Answers.
•  DRA – 3X per Year: Oct/Jan/April – target setting – small groups Jump 2 to 3 focus.
•  Learning Upgrade for 20 Junior students struggling readers in Spring 2008.
•  Premier Suites Grade 3-8 in-service for students and all had flyer information sent home. UBS for non high speed users for Premier suites download at home.
•  Writing Continuum – Writing consistent practices all grades for 2008-09.
•  Materials for teachers Central Storage Library – mentor texts for Reading and Writing.
•  Graphic Novel – resources purchased and put in classrooms for struggling readers.
•  System Support– Irene Katzman LKDSB program contact, teacher moderation PLC for teachers, literacy coach (Anne Hazzard), Arm contact Geri Haskell (Spec. Ed.) developing common IEP practices in system, Student Tutor 7 hours per week in literacy block times to help struggling readers.
•  PD Workshops for teachers attended on Write Trait/Smart Board.
•  100 min. blocks of literacy – tardiness of late students arrival has been addressed through parent communication and loss of time late arriving at recesses.

Concerns Riverview Staff still have regarding making improvements to academic scores:

• holiday during school year, many families take vacation thus evaluation of skills earned cannot be assessed.
• attitude survey for reading in last EQAO survey of students in grade 3 and 6 indicated very little home support for reading with children.
• support of home for R/W/M shows lack of support for an adult helping children with homework in these areas.

(PS: Further digging found that Riverview Central School was facing some redistribution issues last year.  On EQAO testing it performs above the provincial average but is trending downward.  In 2008 it has particularly poor results.  In 2012 it did not report.

PPS:  Stats Can on Lambton Kent demographics.  There is a high average income there.  

Sunday at the Movies (Low-Cost Private Schools)

Here's a fascinating video that discusses a little-known way of delivering education to poor people and demonstrates that parents can and will choose their children's schools, given half a chance.  H/T TB

Literally a nanny state

In New York, the new "progressive" mayor has expanded his government's pre-kindergarten services, with the inevitable devastating consequences for existing private programs. more  Presumably other government services will have to be cut back to pay for this, or perhaps taxes will go up. 

In a similar move, late yesterday afternoon (the classic time slot for avoiding media scrutiny), the Ontario government announced the Day Nurseries Act, new legislation that will among other things make life harder for existing private programs. As well, the act will require school boards to expand their day care activities, - which will, as in New York, use taxpayer money to start in motion the systematic destruction of the rest of Ontario's childcare industry.

Quite apart from anything else, it's hard to see how the Ontario government is going to pay for this initiative.  H/T TB

Occam’s Razor

If your house was on fire, would you spend your time planting flowers in your window flowerboxes? I didn't think so.

Some will take exception to my metaphor, but it's what comes to mind when I read reports like this one. Instead of learning how to teach reading and math better, Avon Maitland teachers are back in class learning how to evaluate and channel their students' emotions. 

Like so much other education policy, this appears to assume that teaching methods and materials are already optimum and that the reason students aren''t learning as well as they should is some problem within the students (or, of course, in some cases the parents). 

In case I haven't mentioned this before, the most obvious place to start when trying to increase student learning is teaching methods and materials. Can anyone disagree that these are the most important factors in student success?  H/T DW

Good teaching is a skill like any other

Because the teacher training offered by most faculties of education is dreadful, in the US alternative routes to teacher certification have been developed. One such is Teach for America (TFA), a non-profit organization whose mission is to "eliminate educational inequality by enlisting high-achieving recent college graduates and professionals" to teach for at least two years in low-income communities throughout the United States.

Because TFA teachers on average get better results than non-TFA teachers (at least in math), Florida recently experimented with its meager supply of TFA teachers by sprinkling some of them throughout its schools, while clustering some of them in selected schools. The idea was to see if there would be an improvement spillover in the schools with a critical mass of TFA teachers. Unfortunately, this study found no spillover effect, in that the clustered TFA teachers got the expected test score improvement while the other teachers did not.

This does not come as a surprise to me. When I was tutoring, I often extended the offer to my students' teachers (via my students' parents) to show them what I was doing that resulted in such marked and rapid improvement, but there was never even a nibble. I have a friend who used to salvage kids in a private school and, same thing, the other teachers in the school had no interest in finding out what my friend was doing so that they could start doing it too.

I believe that most teachers think that the ability to be a good teacher is a gift, something you're either born with or not born with, as opposed to the result of hard work, analysis, practice, and study.

Charter School Pressures

In Washington, DC, almost half of the public school students now attend charter schools. And, just as proponents of school choice predicted, the competition has galvanized the conventional public schools into fighting back - because they are losing customers (and the associated funding). 

As this article points out, however, few schools are fighting back in the anticipated manner - namely improving their service in order to attract more buyers. Instead, most Washington principals are embarking on an aggressive door-to-door campaign and flyer advertisements. The schools are even spending significant portions of their budgets on political experts who train them in canvassing . And they have come up with other ploys. For example, one principal offers a treat - an ice pop party or a movie - every Friday to students who re-enrol, and in June "he puts on a day-long carnival, and only those students who have completed their enrollment paperwork are admitted to the choicest parts, such as the waterslide, the Ferris wheel, and the dunk tank".

Apparently, there do exist some public school principals who think that the best way to compete is to "run a good program" and rely on "word of mouth", but the principal who reported this "spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing superiors".

One has to wonder why this principal's superiors would be antagonized by his plan to run a good program. In any case, it all shows to go you that public policy is a tricky business and that you sometimes get unexpected results.  H/T AS

Learning about learning

I have mentioned before the wonderful resource books authored by John Hattie. His books synthesize current research on learning, and as such are the last word on principles and strategies of learning. Today, I have chosen four widely-believed education myths which are debunked by Dr. Hattie in his latest book.

People will learn better, with greater understanding, if they discover information for themselves, rather than being told this same information.
"There is little basis to suggest that personal discovery within itself assists a person to actually learn. In fact, additional load imposed by the need to explore and find things out can detract from our capacity to assimilate the information uncovered....Low ability students will prefer discovery learning lessons to direct instruction-based lessons, but learn less from them. Under conditions of low guidance, the knowledge gap between low and high ability students tends to increase." (p. 78)

An individual learner learns more effectively when the instructor's teaching style matches the learning style of that student.
"This theory lacks supportive data. This big idea predicts an interaction effect between teaching methods and different groups of students which has never been demonstrated to exist, and is counter-indicated by scores of studies into effective teaching strategies that show main effects (that work with all rather than just some) to be powerful." (p. 184)

Listening to certain types of music, such as Mozart, alters our brains to help us perform better.
The Mozart effect remains well researched but unproven. The data establish that listening to classical music may help to keep you alert and awake, but will not boost your intelligence. Researchers now see the Mozart effect as an artefact of what is called arousal. Anything that prevents you from drifting off can assist in keeping you motivated....Lilienfeld et al suggest a similar effect is achieved through drinking a cup of coffee."  (p. 208)

Raising self-esteem through programs within schools would alleviate societal problems such as teenable pregnancies, crime, drug abuse, and poverty.
"The theory is interesting, optimistic, challenging, but wrong. The trouble with such an approach has been that of ugly data. From the 1970s on, studies began to show that self-esteem increase is the natural outcome of successful life adjustment, rather than being its root cause....Most of the evidence suggests that self-esteem has no impact on subsequent academic achievement....But more sobering has been the uncovering of the dark side to elevated self-esteem. Researchers have docuemnted that many aspects of social pathology such as crime, delinquency, amoral conduct, inconsiderate behaviour, aggression, narcissism, lack of inhitition, sexual experimentation, and social prejudice, have at times been found to link up with elevated levels of self-esteem." (p. 217)

Is there a way for a very smart mouse to bell the cat of national standards?

The Canadian Council of Chief Executives has just released a paper documenting what it calls "an alarming slide in the quality of Canada's education and skills training" and proposing a national framework and instruments, among other things.. more

This makes me nervous. As far as I can tell, the US Department of Education has been pretty much a waste of time and money, maybe even a negative influence. 

On the other hand, with kids moving around so much these days, it would be better for them if there were a uniform curriculum and accountability structure, such that they could seamlessly transfer from their grade 3 class in Moose Jaw, SK to a grade 3 class in Fredericton, NB, and still be on the same page so to speak. And it would be nice if expectations could be raised.

However, any new curriculum and accountability structure would have to be done well - sufficiently detailed and demanding to be of high quality, yet allowing enough flexibility for educators to make allowances for local circumstances. This could be very tricky. In the US, the new Common Core curriculum seems to have been captured by progressive educators, meaning that it stipulates constructivist math and other poor teaching methods.

In any case, as Doug points out, education is solely the prerogative of the provinces. But I wonder whether an OPTIONAL curriculum and OPTIONAL tests, done well, could be something towards which the provinces could aspire?  H/T TB

Sunday at the Movies (Brainwashing)

I did another post because Doretta gave me the sincerest form of flattery with this week's movie. So here is a bonus video for you to think about (but not necessary believe).