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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
It was built, they came, but then it was torn down
In a comment to yesterday's post, "If you build it, they will come", Nancy asked for stories of other high-achieving schools that were popular with parents but unpopular with school board administrations. Here are two.
St. Francis of Assisi Separate School in Stroud, ON (near Barrie) opened its doors in January, 1994. Under the leadership of a wonderful principal, the grade 1 teachers wrought seeming miracles, using a phonetic reading program called Open Court. By June, every grade 1 child was reading, and almost all were one or two grade levels ahead. The teachers were thrilled. The parents were delighted. The children were bursting with pride. The community, too, sat up and took notice. As word spread, some parents had their children baptized into the Catholic faith so they could go to St. Francis. But the school board was not pleased. The problem, they said, was that Open Court was not on Ontario's list of approved textbooks. (There are no phonetic readers on the list.) And so, a reign of terror began at St. Francis. During the 1994/95 school year, the superintendent began to supervise the principal very carefully. For example, her authority to purchase teaching programs was removed, and she was required to attend a whole language workshop. Despite officials' best efforts to cripple the school's reading program however, the grade 2 students and the new crop of grade 1 students racked up incredible reading scores. The parents were solidly behind their principal and raised $10,000 (in a blue-collar community) to buy more Open Court materials (since the school board wouldn't pay for them). In September 1995, the principal began a long-planned leave of absence, and a new principal and vice-principal were assigned to St. Francis with orders to shut down Open Court. Because the parents and teachers were so attached to the program, the new principal realized she couldn't ban it outright - at least, not right away. The new principal did, however, prevent the parents from spending their fund-raised money on workbooks and readers for the original cohort of children who had now reached grade 3. In addition, there was an extra class of grade 1 students at the school in 1995/96 that had to go without. The next year, a new whole language reading program was purchased by the school. And when the original principal returned from her leave of absence, she was demoted to a half-time principal and banished to a school on the far side of the school board. In addition, she was forbidden to enter St. Francis of Assisi Separate School ever again.
Parkview Public School in Lindsay, Ontario was once a middle-of-the-road school with average test scores. In 1993, the school's new principal, Lynn Hatfield, began working with the teachers to raise the students' academic achievement. Over the next three years, the children's scores on standardized tests rose steadily, until in 1996 the school ranked first in the board. Click here and here for articles by Mrs. Hatfield about the changes she introduced at Parkview. Far from being pleased by the children's success, however, the school board administration continually tried to thwart Mrs. Hatfield's efforts. Finally, with no warning and despite the fact that Mrs. Hatfield and her husband had just bought a house near the school, Mrs. Hatfield was transferred to Bobcaygeon, a 45-minute drive away. Mrs. Hatfield was unable to take up this position, however, because she succumbed to depression and moved to Thunder Bay. When last heard of, she was teaching First Nations students in northern Ontario.
Tomorrow, I will write about parents' efforts to convince their school boards to give them a traditional school.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
If you build it, they will come
There has been an interesting discussion going on in the "It's the difference between night and day" thread, mainly with reference to my claim that an academically-intensive academy-type school is the type of alternative school that would be most popular with parents. TDSBNW writes that he or she has been monitoring the development of alternative schools within the Toronto District School Board, and that no parents have ever even expressed interest in such an option, let alone proposed it. In his or her experience, few Canadian parents are seeking rigorous academic programs for their children.
Against this is the sad story of York Region's Flowervale School, as chonicled in our newsletter archives. Flowervale was a regular public school that was experiencing declining enrolment and so was reinvented as a "traditional" public school in 1999. One of our readers, Educhatter, was a trustee on the York Region board at that time, and this was his baby. As you will learn if you read our newsletter article, the school was an immediate hit, with a long waiting list. Despite its location in a blue-collar area of Markham, the school shot up to and remained at or near the top of the EQAO rankings for the entire province. But then Educhatter moved on and before long the school board decided to kill the program. Here's its epitaph.
Stories like this (and I have others if you would be interested) make me think that academically-intensive academy-type schools would be very popular if they were offered to parents.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
It’s the difference between night and day
Here's a good news story from Toronto about Eastern Commerce Collegiate Institute's new policy of starting school at 10:00 am. It's beginning to look as if teenagers learn better if they can sleep in a bit.
There are other advantages too. For example, the kids are not travelling at rush hour. For schools with bussing, staggered start times would make it possible for buses to do multiple runs, thereby reducing costs. And the kids are better behaved, which is always nice. One study even found that teen drivers at late-start schools have fewer car accidents.
And, as the article points out, "a little more diversity is being introduced into an education system that badly needs it". It's wonderful that the Toronto school board is introducing alternative schools (fully 41 of them now, according to their web-site). We live in hope that #42 will be an academically-intensive academy-type school - the type of school that would be most popular with parents.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Big Brother is sometimes wrong….
In our "Roots of Public Education Failure", Paul raised the issue of the "Social Justice" orientation of government schools and how impressionable children are being indoctrinated into socialistic, politically-correct ways of thinking. Today, Doretta is quoted on this topic in this National Post article. She tellingly highlights the hazards of school morality teaching by referring to the errors our Teaching Science in the 21st Century study found in provincial curricula. Quoting from page 11:
"Many of the curricula state that science is based on evidence: hypotheses that are not supported by facts must be abandoned. It is, therefore, disappointing that fasionable but unsubstantiated dogmas have a place in several of the provincial curricula. For example, the Manitoba Blackline Masters 7A document tells us that Aboriginal people have 'exemplified the qualities of good stewardship in their interactions with the environment' and that their 'decisions were made with regard for the environment'. We are also frequently told that science has a long history in all cultures, that different cultures have equally valid perspectives and that science and technology have 'evolved from different views held by women and men from a variety of societies and cultural backgrounds'.
"None of these statements is supported by evidence of any kind: most of them are probably false. Ian McTaggart-Cowan, a well-known Canadian zoologist and naturalist, tells us: 'There is no evidence that the native people had any concept of numbers applied to their food animals. They took what they could without concern for replacement rate or overkill.' These conclusions are supported by a recent examination of historical and archaeological evidence. Further, a recent investigation of the history of great discoveries in science from 800 BC to 1950 shows that virtually all of them were made by Europeans and their descendants in the new world and that only about 5% of them were made by women. The true situation should not be concealed from students."
It is also worth noting that these statements remain in the Manitoba curriculum, even though we sent them a copy of the study and pointed out these and other factual errors. Although one of the greatest benefits that science education can confer is the development of a skeptical questioning attitude and a strong determination to avoid taking dogmatic positions with no factual support, the Manitoba curriculum still clings to its politically-correct beliefs regarding Canadian Aboriginals. This is an excellent illustration of the perils that threaten when monopolistic school systems stray into the realm of morality teaching.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Repeat after me, class…
SQE has always supported direct instruction followed by lots of practice as an important part of ensuring that fundamental skills become automatic. Dr. Hung-Hsi Wu's article, reprinted in the SQE Forum, talks about how mastery of basic skills is essential to conceptual understanding. Seems that rote learning is not so bad after all.
This article on HechingerEd supports more rote memorization as a means to understanding. Watch the video below to see a three-year old recite the poem "Litany." Before you think this kid is merely another precocious parlor trick, the author says, "Notice what the young child's intonation on certain lines reveals: he hasn't learned this poem 'without thought of the meaning; in a mechanical way' - Random House's definition of 'rote' learning. He's wiser and more aware of what he's saying than many of us might initially think."
Rote learning is good for students because it's challenging, good exercise for the brain (which is probably good for us at any age!), and the ability to gain new insight is enhanced.
"It's only with multiple readings, viewings and hearings, then, that we actually begin to understand, see and hear. We're deaf and blind in our first encounters with things. And this is why practice matters so much as well. It's our chief hope for transcending mediocrity."
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Relational Bullying: The dark side of popularity
When people used to think of bullying, they tended to think of punches and broken bones. Then we got more sophisticated and realized that verbal bullying is equally hurtful. And now, researchers are focusing on a third category of bullying - relational bullying - and finding that this type of bullying, while very hard to identify and prevent, may be the key to changing the atmosphere in schools.
Relational bullying involves such things as social isolation, gossip, and manipulation. The Internet has proved an excellent tool for relational bullies (cyber-bullying). And here's the kicker: relational bullying is frequently used by the most popular students as a tool to propel themselves upwards in the popularity stakes.
This article provides more background on relational bullying, including information about successful intervention programs. (I think you have to register in order to access the whole article, but there is no downside to doing so. If you would prefer not to register but would like to read the article, make a comment below and I will cut and paste the article into an e-mail to you.)
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
The boys are in trouble
It was always my practice to give a cookie to the kids I was tutoring at the end of each session, but I was sure to check with their moms beforehand to make sure it was all right to do so. One time when I explained to the mom of a first-time student that I always gave a cookie to my boys, she asked in amazement: "But what do you give to the girls?" It made me confront what I had just come to accept up unitl then - namely, that I had had no female students who needed help with reading.
The boys are in trouble in school - big trouble - as our new web-site will demonstrate. If you are the parent of a boy who is struggling in school, or if you are a teacher with a class full of struggling boys, be sure to visit Why Boys Are Struggling In School - And what parents and teachers can do about it. In addition, if you know someone in this category, please refer him or her to our web-site. You might indirectly salvage someone's education!