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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
New jobs for old
GUEST BLOG BY ROD CLIFTON, SENIOR FELLOW AT THE FRONTIER CENTRE FOR PUBLIC POLICY
An article in the Brant News notes that the Ontario College of Teachers says that fewer than 15% of graduating teachers will get teaching positions immediately. Most will need to take subbing and term positions if they are ever to get any job in education. The same, unfortunately, is true in other provinces and territories.
Some of these bright, young, cracker-jack teachers could add vitality and vigor to stale schools with teachers marking time till retirement. It is a shame that there are so few teaching jobs for them.
Now, take a look at the number of Ph.D. students in Education and their job prospects. Over the last decade or so, faculties of education have shifted considerable resources from educating teachers to educating increasingly more graduate students. For example, in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba, where I taught for over 32 years, there are 62 Ph.D. students with 43 full time faculty members. In other words, the Education Ph.D. students represents 6.8% of the total number of Ph.D. students, while the Education faculty members represents 3.8% of the total number of faculty members. What will these Ph.D. students do when they graduate? Ph.D. degrees prepare people for university teaching. Unfortunately, there won’t be nearly enough positions for these students.
Universities should not spend resources educating people for non-existing jobs. At the least, they should tell students what the job prospects are likely to be. Not to do so, is disingenuous. Universities pride themselves in saying “truth” to “power.”
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
The rug rat race
Our resident socialist sent in this column by a Stanford professor of education and sociology. In it, he states that the academic achievement and income gap between middle class and rich kids is growing, and that the increasing disparity is largely due to increased focus by rich parents on their children's cognitive and educational development. Here is the key paragraph.
It may seem counterintuitive, but schools don’t seem to produce much of the disparity in test scores between high- and low-income students. We know this because children from rich and poor families score very differently on school readiness tests when they enter kindergarten, and this gap grows by less than 10 percent between kindergarten and high school. There is some evidence that achievement gaps between high- and low-income students actually narrow during the nine-month school year, but they widen again in the summer months.
It thus follows, according to the professor, that society should "ensure that all children have similar cognitively stimulating early childhood experiences" (by means of more government programs like Head Start and so on).
There is, however, a flaw in the professor's logic. Just because on average schools are not reducing the disparity in test scores between high- and low-income students, it doesn't follow that schools can not reduce this disparity. In fact, there are hundreds - perhaps thousands - of schools that are doing precisely this - the KIPP schools for example, and the Success Academies, and these schools are more than willing to share their methods.
Yes, it would be nice if low-income parents could and would prepare their children for school as well as high-income students and, given that they can't or won't, it would be nice if the government could step in and do it for them. But government intervention has turned out to be very difficult and very expensive, and there are very few examples of effective compensatory programs around. Since experience suggests that it would be easier and much less expensive and much more doable for schools to overcome the deficits of low-income students, it seems to me that this is the logical first line of attack. H/T D/D/J
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (A Groundswell for School Choice)
In the US, parents and teachers are noticing that other states have more school choice, and the realization that it is achievable is spurring them to press for it too. In this short clip, 2000 North Carolinans are rallying for school choice - and it kind of looks as if they will succeed. Such a happening could not occur in Ontario. Not sure why........
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Give low-income families school choice and stand back
It is popular in education circles to explain the low achievement of low-income students by blaming their parents. The assumption is that the educators in charge are highly competent and doing everything humanly possible, but some endeavours are simply impossible. Low-income parents simply won't or can't give their children the support they need.
So when choices like school vouchers and charter schools and trigger laws are made available to low-income families and large numbers of low-income families rush to access these options, then it must follow that low-income parents are making yet another bad choice on behalf of their children. And educators need to protect low-income children from their parents' bad judgment by denying them the opportunity to choose their children's schools - instead continuing to force low-income children to stay in the non-choice schools that are failing them.
It's amazing to me how these educators twist themselves up like pretzels in their efforts to justify the status quo to themselves.
I have borrowed heavily from this column by T. Willard Fair (Former Chairman of the Florida State Board of Education, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Urban League of Greater Miami, Inc., and a member of the Foundation for Florida’s Future Board of Directors).
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
The trouble with high-stakes testing…......
Chas sent me a link to this fascinating opinion column about the Atlanta cheating scandal where 178 teachers were identified as falsifying students' test results. Likening it to the Soviet Union where middle managers fiddled grain production records because they were afraid for their lives, the article says that people are always going to cheat if the stakes are high enough.
"The problem is not the cheaters per se; the problem is the ridiculous idea that you can reinvent reality by passing a law [in this case a law mandating higher student achievement] and enforcing it."
“No Child Left Behind” was nothing but a soft version of Stalin’s Five Year Plan. It was an attempt to reform around the edges a system that is fundamentally wrong. It mandated that nationalized institutions, with students who are required to be there or face penalties, achieve a certain level of output or else everyone in charge gets replaced. This reform legislation was passed as a “back to basics” plan to replace the previous liberal plan that seemed to have no standards at all.
"Now it stands as just another failed reform, another attempt to make reality different by passing laws and cracking skulls. It never works. So long as schools remain the province of politicians and are owned and run by the State, these reforms will continue as they have for a century. And in the same way, there will be incentives to cheat the system, no matter how strict the penalties.
"The real way that education is being reinvented in our time is through myriad private efforts. Home schooling, privately-managed charter schools, privately owned schools, unschooling, Internet-based learning, church schools—each of these solutions is something that the political and bureaucratic class doesn’t like. But they are marking out the only real path for reform that can work."
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Math Solutions Ontario
There's a brand new grassroots group in Ontario that wants to raise math standards. You can get in touch with them here.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
What About That Other 3% ?
Here's an interesting interview with JIm Leech, the outgoing CEO of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. Read the transcript here if you can't view the video. He answers some questions such as: Why can't plan members contribute more to the plan? and how he justifies a plan that is only funded to 97%. (There is a $5 billion shortfall.) One of the reasons he gives, besides poor past investment performance, is that teacher-retirees are living longer. Believe it or not, there are some retired teachers who will be recieving pension benefits for more years than they actually worked!
Why should this concern the average Ontario taxpayer? You pay through your taxes because school boards match the pension contribution. To date, the liability that sits on school boards' books for benefits totals well over $3 billion.
Here are some facts from the OTPP 2012 Report (H/T BT and Fair Pensions for All):
(Don't forget they are eligible for $12,500 in CPP and $6,500 OAS.)
FAST FACTS
• Number of pensioners has tripled since 1990
• On average, a member teaches for 26 years and is retired for 31 years
• 58% of pensioners are under age 70
• Average new unreduced pension starting in 2012 was $48,000
• Pensioners who retired before 2010 have full inflation protection
• At 1% interest rate, the plan must set aside $985,000 to secure a $40,000 annual pension
• There were 107 pensioners over 100; the oldest was 109
In that light, it will be interesting to see the fine print in the new deal with the OSSTF and ETFO!
(P.S. for those who gripe about corporate creep and the classroom, the OTPP owns a sizable chunk of some of the largest corporations in the world, including Microsoft )
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Real Accountability - or an illusion of success?
In 1995, Ontario's Royal Commission on Learning recommended the establishment of system-wide testing. The Royal Commission had been struck by an NDP government but it fell to the succeeding Conservative government to set up the testing body. John Snobelen, he of create-a-crisis fame, was the freshly-minted Conservative minister of education and Mr. Snobelen had not yet grasped that the educational establishment was playing for a different team. As a result, he chose one of the usual suspects to head up the Education Quality and Accountability Office, instructing her to institute every-grade testing. Of course, this turned out not to be possible, and Ontario ended up with a very expensive but not terribly useful testing program.
Now Action Canada is calling for a review of Ontario's testing program, pointing out that the tests have been going for almost 20 years with no examination of their effectiveness - despite the Royal Commission's recommendation that the "mandate of the EQAO and standardized testing [be reviewed] after five years to ensure that standardized testing was appropriately designed and implemented and that the Commission’s reservations did not come to pass". Here is Action Canada's report. Of particular interest is the chart on page 12 showing that Ontario tests less and more narrowly than most other provinces.
I don't for a moment think that the current Ontario government will act on Action Canada's report but, if a miracle occurs, it is crucially important that the panel be "comprised of a balanced and diverse group of experts", as Action Canada recommends.
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Ontario Take Note
In Washington, DC, 43% of the city's public school students are enrolled in charter schools, and still the demand vastly outstrips the supply (more).
Clearly, parents want charter schools and, since it's their children and their tax dollars, it follows that governments should make charter schools available. H/T CB
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Sunday at the Movies (Libertarian Point of View)
The interviewee proposes to get government out of education and leave it entirely to the free market.