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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (Dogged Determination)
No more excuses! (YouTube link) H/T to LR
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Two different schools of thought
Stephen Hurley kindly sent me a video about the EdCamp he hosted in Toronto last month. The video is worth watching. The event attracted a lot of dedicated, passionate, well-meaning teachers, all seemingly interested in being "change-makers" who turn kids on to learning, and who view teachers and students as being "co-learners" - with the students being allowed to determine what they will choose to learn.
The video is an eloquent testimonial for the importance of school choice. If I had any say in the matter, I would not choose these teachers for my own children - although I agree that there are many many parents, perhaps a majority of parents, who would. My preference would be for teachers who went to conferences to learn how to hone their teaching of basic - and not-so-basic - skills and knowledge. Personally, I would rather that my children's teachers didn't view themselves as change agents, for I see this as an attempt to tamper with the parents' job, nor do I believe that children should be allowed to determine what they learn - since this approach will inevitably leave random gaps in what should be a solid foundation.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Careers in the balance
I've written about this story before, but there has been a development that is so incredible I just had to write about it again. In a nutshell, in 2009 a PhD student at the University of Manitoba was awarded his degree, despite failing the comprehensive exams and not completing his coursework, due to the intervention of the dean. Some faculty members challenged the dean's actions, finally taking the matter to the courts. Now the president of the university has given a three-month suspension - without pay - to the untenured faculty member who is heading up the protest. The case has attracted world-wide attention, as this link reveals.
In the context of our usual beat, namely the elementary and secondary panels, this would be equivalent to a principal over-ruling a teacher who wanted to fail a student (happens all the time) and then suspending the teacher because he or she strenuously objected (not a chance). Of course, it's good that principals can't suspend (or terminate) teachers for frivolous reasons like this, but it's not so good that principals can't suspend or terminate them for legitimate reasons. Somehow we need to achieve a balance here. H/T to LDA
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Are summer breaks obsolete?
(Guest blog by Elaine Hirsch, a writer for onlineschools.org who frequently writes for other blogs)
Summer break has become such a traditional
part of the annual school calendar that students even sing songs about it.
However, summer break is a tradition that needs to end if schools are serious about increasing student achievement. The factors
that once led schools to implement extended summer breaks no longer exist, and
summer breaks have proven to impede learning and disproportionately harm our
most vulnerable students.
It's a common misconception that summer breaks originated in America’s agrarian
communities, where farms often depended on the labour of children. In fact,
agrarian schools often had fall breaks, so students could help bring in the
harvest. Summer breaks actually originated in urban schools, where
administrators believed school buildings were too hot and poorly-ventilated to
be attended during the peak summer months. Further, some physicians believed
longer school years would cause mental fatigue and student burnout.
Modern cooling and ventilation systems now make schools comfortable year-round,
and research has shown students have both the physical and psychological
strength to endure longer school years. The traditional motivations for
offering students extended summer breaks no longer make much sense.
In fact, evidence shows summer breaks hinder student achievement, particularly
among at-risk student populations. Studies indicate that over the summer students
regress the equivalent of one month of instruction in math and literacy.
That means on average America’s students begin each school year knowing less
than they did when the previous school year ended. This phenomenon, called
summer loss, is even more pronounced for students who live in poverty.
School districts that have experimented with longer school years have
experienced improvements in student achievement. A study by the National Center
on Time and Learning found school districts with longer
school years and school days witnessed increases in standardized test
scores and graduation rates.
The Knowledge is Power Program charter school network has used extended school years to help students who may be years behind their peers in math, science, and reading, and several California elementary schools with year-round schooling have seen significant increases in reading scores. University of Minnesota researchers analyzed several studies on year-round schooling and found such schedules consistently demonstrated increases in reading and math scores.
The success of year-round schooling has several school districts, particularly districts plagued by low student achievement, seriously considering eliminating summer breaks. Educators are waking up to the concept that summer breaks are an idea from another century, and that they probably should have stayed there.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
SQE Latest Poll Question
Do we actually know how many kids do this in Ontario? It's a statistic that would be interesting to find out along with the cost to education. School for Thought wants to know what your experience has been.
Answer our poll on this post or on on home page. Here's the direct link. Feel free to leave a comment here or on the polling page as well.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Don’t allow trustees to play god
Things promise to get heated tonight at the Toronto District School Board tonight when trustees discuss, among other things, an expansion of their alternative learning options. The board is still losing students every year, although the hemorrhage has slowed to about 2000 students per year in the last couple of years, and it has lots of schools with excess capacity.
Most of the trustees seem to support the idea of alternative programs per se, but the argument appears to be over which types of schools they would endorse. The linked-to newspaper article quotes one of the trustees, Chris Glover, who thinks that sports schools and choir schools would be okay, but not gender-based schools. His reasoning is that "we live in a diverse society, and people have to learn how to get along together".
Now, it's not clear to me exactly why Mr. Glover thinks that it's not as important for jocks and chorists to mingle with other types, but that's not really the main point here. The thing is - who's to judge? If I want a Waldorf (very unstructured) school for my kids, while my neighbour wants an academy, back-to-basics type of school for her kids, who is to say that I can have what I want but my neighbour can't? Or vice versa? Why is Chris Glover, who has never met our children, able to determine what kind of education they get?
Instead of asking school board trustees to play god, the criterion should be parental demand. If enough parents (let's say 50, for the sake of argument) support a particular type of school, then they should get it - assuming it's lawful. And if too many different schools are requested at one time, then the approved schools should be those with the greatest demand.
Society gives parents responsibility for all aspects of their children’s upbringing - and of course education is one of the most important elements of this responsibility. When parents are prevented from determining their children’s education - by being prevented from choosing the type of school they think will be best for their children - in effect, these parents are being prevented from carrying out one of their most important duties.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Mostly harmful education reporting
Here's a recent article from The Globe and Mail that shows what we're up against. Written by the Globe's middle east correspondent, the piece looks at Shanghai's crushing win on the latest PISA international comparison of student achievement and concludes that, while the students may have trounced all the other countries on the PISA, they come up short when it comes to creativity and independence. Of course, like most education reporters, the author is a generalist and he makes some incorrect assumptions. Here are two that leapt out at me.
- The author assumes that the PISA tests basic skills and knowledge, but it actually tests whether "students are prepared for future challenges.... can analyze, reason, and communicate effectively.... have the capacity to continue learning throughout life". PISA
- The author correctly explains that if China had been tested as a whole, the average would have been much lower - because Shanghai has one of the best education systems in the country. He then goes on to suggest that "Toronto or Calgary might have had equally good or better test scores". Maybe Calgary could have, although I highly doubt it, but it is laughable to think that Toronto, which actually scores below average on Ontario's provincial tests (public board, Catholic board) could have beaten Shanghai.
We desperately need more education reporters who know what they are writing about. Until such time, education leaders have carte blanche to continue pulling the wool over the public's eyes about the importance of higher-order thinking and creativity - and the relative unimportance of basic skills and knowledge.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (Train 529)
I'm sorry this is a bit clunky, but if you click on this link, wait through two ads, and then scrub to 7:20, you'll be treated to a very funny demonstration of why you should have paid attention in math class.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
A murmuration of starlings
OK, today a new vocabulary word - murmuration, meaning a group of starlings. The video at this link has gone viral. It's pretty amazing!
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Preserving a personal touch
When public schools were first invented, about 150 years ago, most kids went to a small neighbourhood school with only one or two teachers per grade, and these teachers tended to stay at that school for their whole teaching careers. As a result, the grade 2 teacher knew how good a job the grade 1 teacher was doing, on the basis of how well prepared her students were when they arrived in grade 2, and likewise for the grade 3 teacher and so on. This kind of face-to-face accountability was a marvellous way of encouraging teaching excellence. These days, however, there are multiple teachers per grade in most schools and it's very common for teachers to switch grades or transfer to another school, plus kids come and go, meaning that nobody really knows who's doing a good job of preparing his or her students for the next grade.
Same thing goes for high school. Where previously the high school teachers knew the kids' families and could keep track of what happened to the kids after they graduated, today kids graduate from grade 12 and that's the end of most of them as far as their teachers are concerned. And of course there used to be high school exit exams in Ontario (the old "departmentals") that provided swift and objective feedback on the students' academic preparation.
We've recommended the reinstatement of high school exit exams before, and in Ontario the chances of this happening any time soon are on a par with a sudden precipitous decline in the temperature of the place of everlasting fire. As for the other accountability measure - making it possible for high school teachers to see how well their students do after graduation - here is an interesting proposal for a unified data system that would make that easy. For what it's worth, I suspect that most high school teachers would welcome it. H/T to MDW