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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Googling our way to educational excellence
I wish I had a nickel for every time one of our supporters urged SQE to start a school - and by modelling what excellence looks like, lead other schools (especially government schools) to excel. This excellent column by Andrew Coulson shows why this plan is a non-starter. Best case scenario? Government administrators close their eyes to what's possible. Worst case scenario? Government administrators move quickly and savagely to shut down the threat. Here's an article from our archives giving a couple of Ontario examples.
Acknowledging that the lighthouse school notion doesn't work, Andrew Coulson draws on historical and statistical evidence to find an approach that does work. His conclusion is compelling: an entrepreneurial educational marketplace is the best way to facilitate a scaling up of excellence.
The same free enterprise system that has given us Google, Starbucks, and Apple works in education, too—if we let it. This system works for businesses through several key conditions: freedom to innovate, consumer choice, competition between providers, price signals, and the ability to distribute profits to investors.
These same tools can allow and encourage educational success. In fact, they’re already doing so. In the Korean tutoring sector, it is not uncommon for the top teachers to have class sizes in the range of 20 to 40 thousand students, thanks to effective use of the Internet to distribute lessons. The best among them earn millions of dollars a year from profit sharing programs operated by the tutoring firms. The more effective a teacher becomes, and the larger the number of students who seek out her lessons, the more she earns.
At the other end of the economic spectrum, hundreds of entrepreneurial independent schools currently operate in the slums of Hyderabad, India, vying to serve the children of day laborers and food-stall vendors whose poverty is beyond anything in America. These parent-funded independent schools outperform the local state-run schools, and they do so at a fraction of the cost—barely four dollars per month.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Off The Clock
There is an interesting article on the effectiveness of the currently-popular "Extended Learning Time" (ELT) approach to school reform. The idea is that disadvantaged students need more school time if they are to catch up to their more advantaged peers. The issue is of particular relevance to Ontario, as it embarks on its ground-breaking experiment with universal all-day junior kindergarten.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the article reports that ELT is far from a slam dunk. For one thing, there are a number of unintended consequences - for example, the budget-draining cost of higher teacher and support staff salaries and the tendancy of experienced and highly-qualified teachers to transfer out of schools that bring in ELT. According to the article, students in US states with mandatory ELT policies perform the same as students in states without mandatory ELT policies.
It turns out that simply adding extra school time changes little. "Schools that have succeeded with extended time have done so largely because they include time as part of a more comprehensive reform.... Good schools are made by strong networks that support and demand great leaders, who create and cultivate effective teams of teachers, who really know what and how to teach students. To suggest that our nation's worst schools will be transformed, and that student outcomes will improve, because of more time, is not any different than suggesting that they will be transformed by more money. Both are necessary, and both boast plenty of persuasive adages about why more is better. But both are overly simplistic treatments to the very complex problem of improving education."
Hamsters work long hours on their running wheels, but they don't accomplish a thing.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (How private schools are serving poor students)
Dr. Pauline Dixon unveils an amazing story about how the private sector is serving poor students around the world. I know the story is true, because I accidentally visited one of these schools when I was in Ghana a few years ago. The school was unimaginably basic, but the children were achieving - in English! - at a higher level than their Canadian counterparts.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Danger - or opportunity?
There's an article in today's Globe and Mail on declining public school enrolments in Canada (except in Alberta and Nunavut) and the resulting temptation to close schools - despite the devastating impact on small communities. But it doesn't have to be like this. To find out why, read Paul Bennett's and my recent opinion piece in the Halifax Chronicle Herald.
The written word for crisis in Chinese consists of two characters - one representing danger and the other representing opportunity. The school closure crisis is in fact offering school boards an opportunity - if they can only see it.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
An Apple for autistic students
It has always seemed to me that the tantalizing promise of new technology has so far mostly eluded educators' grasp, and in fact in many cases technology has actually made things worse (texting in class, intrusive intercom systems, budget-draining interactive whiteboards, ringing cell phones, movies shown in class, and so forth).
However, a school for autistic kids in Toronto seems to be using handheld touch-screen devices like iPads to good effect, as per this article in UofT Magazine. It's early days and the sample size is small, but it appears that this technology is helpful in breaking through into "the previously incommunicado world of children with severe developmental challenges". H/T PB
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Where in the world did it happen?
Here's a cool site that traces history's greatest journeys - Columbus, Charles Lindbergh, the Old Silk Road, and so forth, providing some visual context for each journey.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
A word to the wise, and perhaps not-so-wise
This disturbing story out of Alabama reminds us how dependent our kids are on us and how important it is for us to advocate on their behalf. The story concerns two teachers' psychological abuse of a 10-year-old boy with cerebral palsy. The teachers might never have been caught if the boy's mom had not bugged his wheelchair. And even when his mom took the evidence to the school board, the teachers were able to return to their positions after a few days of "administrative leave". It was only when the mom took her tapes to the media and they went viral on YouTube that the school board decided it might actually do something. They will be meeting on April 9 to discuss what to do about the teachers' cruel behaviour.
It's important to bear in mind that psychological child abuse is only one of the abuses that schools are able to perpetrate on kids. Even harder to detect and arguably even more important, is academic child abuse - abuse that often goes on year after year and has a cumultively devastating effect, blighting kids' futures. In this arena too, children are totally vulnerable and dependent on their parents as advocates.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Ma France
The BBC makes available this excellent free site for intermediate students of the French language. Videos, games, mini-lessons - it's perfect for students who want to brush up their French vocabulary and tune up their ear for the language.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Supernumeraries - Help or Hindrance?
Doretta is really getting quite famous now, as witness this article from the Toronto Sun. The article deals with the poor results of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). And she'll be on CFRB after the 11 am news, same topic. (Last minute note: also on Goldhawk Live tonight 9 pm on the Rogers Toronto Cable channel)
Which got me to thinking about why the Tedious Board does so badly. I know they like to point to their high percentages of immigrant students, but of course it turns out that the majority of immigrants, having received superior schooling back home, actually boost scores on the provincial tests.
So then I formulated the hypothesis that the more supernumeraries a board has, the worse its students do. I didn't have the time to actually test my hypothesis, but I did take a look at the Tedious Board's results on the recently-released sunshine list (a list of all public servants with salaries over $100,000). I found that the Tedious Board has almost 1500 employees in this category, although about a thousand of them are principals, vice-principals, and a surprising number of teachers. The remaining 440 sunshiners seem like quite a lot of supernumeraries for 238,000 students - roughly one supernumerary for every 500 students. Of course, the 440 includes 8 plumbers, 2 sprinkler fitters, 1 insulation mechanic, and 1 steamfitter, and perhaps they should be omitted from the count.
So, anyway, I'm sticking to my hypthesis until proven wrong - the more supernumeraries a board has, the worse the kids do. Does anyone have the time to look at his own school board and test this hypothesis?
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (Why nothing changes)
This is a thought-provoking (and depressing) explanation of why there has been no significant improvement in education for a long time. Those looking for help for their own kids, and that's where everybody starts, should listen for the quick reference to www.tutor.com.