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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Educationgate
The respected Brookings Institute has just published Invisible: 1.4 Percent Coverage for Education is Not Enough, a report on the disappointing quantity and quality of education reporting in the United States. Unfortunately, the report's findings apply equally in Canada, where we have only a handful of experienced, knowledgeable education journalists who tell it like it is (Janet Steffenhagen of the Vancouver Sun and Moira MacDonald of the Toronto Sun come to mind). There really is no reason why we can't have hard-hitting investigative education reporting similar to that in England. Andrew Nikiforuk used to have such a column in The Globe and Mail, and it was a huge hit - the most-read column in the paper - but for some reason the Mop and Pail pulled the plug on Andrew's column.
As Nikiforuk demonstrated, writing shocking and appalling exposés week after week, there certainly are stories out there - the new Canadians who send their kids back to their home country to get a decent education, the explosion of private schools and tutoring services, the low test scores, the antics of the teachers' unions, the problems with special education, and on and on. What we need here are some latter-day Woodwards and Bernsteins to get at the truth of our education systems. Inquiring minds want to know.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Would You Pay?
Would a suburban parent pay to put their child in a public inner-city school? Jay Mathews asks this question in this Washington Post column entitled Class Struggle.
"Would you be willing to send your child to a neighboring school district, no matter what the socio-economic background of the student body, if the curriculum looked good?"
Seems as though some Washington DC schools, long thought to be some of the worst in the U.S., are turning things around because of school choice. KIPP Schools are a prime example of how this has worked.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
School Rankings: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
In response to the Food For Thought section in our December newsletter, a Nova Scotia teacher wrote to us as follows.
"I found much in the newsletter that I agree with, but one thing concerns me - namely the statement that, unless educators compete for students, they won't have any motivation to improve. One could argue this point from the basis of daily experience (many teachers I have worked with would like to improve but don't like the PD paths their school board and the Department of Education shove them into), but it's the results of a competitive education system that I take issue with.
"Six years of teaching in Singapore, where school exam results are published each year and where parents struggle to get their children into the 'top' schools, have made me extremely wary of any push to make schools competitive. I agree that the tax-paying public should have a better idea of how the whole system is doing, and parents do have the right to know if their children are doing well or poorly in basic skills such as math and literacy, but both can be accomplished without publishing scores for individual schools.
"While the Singapore system does indeed motivate school administrators and to an extent their teachers to consistently push for better results, the over-emphasis on high-stakes examinations not only places tremendous pressure on over-worked teachers but also encourages young people to focus on getting some kind of advantage that will boost their exam scores, rather than on learning for its own sake. I'm no wide-eyed idealist when it comes to the belief that children just naturally want to learn, but a system that in effect says to young people that test scores are more important than development of the mind cannot be beneficial.
"The Singapore government, while not abandoning its exam-based system, is concerned about this too, and it has brought in courses in critical thinking, with student projects as one means of assessing progress. In the meantime however, schools there continue to 'hot house' their students (keeping them after school for exam preparation) and parents continue to hire tutors to give their children a competitive edge."
Comments?
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing
Ontario's Liberal Party has been making very little progress towards fulfilling their promise that 75% of the province's students will pass the provincial tests, even though the government has been throwing money at this problem for years - hard caps of 25 students in primary classes, secretariats and turn-around teams, higher teacher salaries, and so on. And of course, next on the list is a multi-billion dollar scheme involving all-day kindergarten.
But the canny Liberals are taking no chances, as this Toronto Star article reveals. The government is planning to "streamline" the province's grade 1-8 curriculum, describing it as "a series of overly robust subject-based documents which are disconnected, overwhelming and full of content reflective of 20th century knowledge". Those who are interested in investigating the truth of this assertion are encouraged to check out the current Ontario curricula.
So what does this have to do with increasing the number of students who pass the provincial tests? Well, the province's EQAO tests are based on the curriculum. If the curriculum gets easier, the tests get easier. And, if the tests get easier, more students will be able to pass them. In other words, dumbing down the curriculum makes it more likely that the Liberal Party will be able to keep its 75% promise (albeit several years late) and get re-elected. A happy ending for all concerned, except of course the students who end up learning less.