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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Wither Ontario School Boards?
One of our faithful readers sent along this link to a damning PricewaterhouseCoopers confidential analysis of operations at the Toronto District School Board. Here are a few of the findings.
- In FY 11/12, the TDSB lost an average of 13 paid days per employee, or the equivalent total of 351 ,552 paid days in aggregate.
- The number of staff positions within the TDSB - a critical piece of information - is not readily available for analysis and decision-making purposes.
- The TDSB has a capital deficit of approximately $50 million.
- Several high profile (re)development projects initiated on or about 2010/11 are now significantly over budget and/or delayed.
- There is evidence of maverick spend or non-compliance with existing contracts.
- Maintenance operations demonstrate little evidence of planning.
As you read the report, you can practically hear the PricewaterhouseCoopers consultants rolling their eyes. The problems at the TDSB appear to be so horrendous as to call into question the very existence of school boards. H/T ML
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Getting meat back from some Ontario tigers
If you give a tiger a piece of meat, it's going to be very difficult to get it back. And if the tiger has already been given so much meat that it's grown very big and very strong, it's going to be even more difficult.
That is the situation in Ontario with the province's teachers' unions, as this article in yesterday's Globe and Mail attests. These tigers have large teeth and strong claws, and they are seemingly prepared to fight to the death to protect their unfair share of taxpayers' money. Any government that picks a fight with the province's teachers' unions is going to be badly mauled.
That is why Ontario politicians ought to consider school vouchers/tax credits that allow more students to attend non-unionized schools. Another option is to make it possible for teachers to teach in Ontario without joining a union. The teachers' unions in Ontario have become disproportionately strong, and the best way to weaken them is to reduce the number of their members. H/T DW
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Follow the money
Most people try to improve the public education system by making a small, personal contribution - such as reading to kindergarten children or contributing a small amount of money. Of course, this is just a drop in an enormous bucket.
A few rich people have tried to improve public education by making an enormous financial contribution - see, for example, Walter Annenberg who made a one-time contribution of $500 million or Bill Gates who has spent several billion dollars already. But these were still paltry amounts compared to the more than 600 billion dollars that governments spend on education every year, and the Annenberg and Gates spending has made virtually no difference.
This is explained in a new book: Follow the Money: How foundation moneys change public school politics by Sarah Reckhow. Jay Greene's column explains that foundations have come to the conclusion that "trying to reshape public education through the sheer financial force of philanthropic dollars was futile—like pouring buckets of water into the sea. If philanthropists aspired to have a transformative effect on public education, they would have to use their limited resources to convince public authorities to redirect how public monies were spent".
SQE has come to the same conclusion. Rather than making donations to your local school or school board, we modestly suggest you redirect your money to us. By disseminating information about effective educational policies, we hope to make it possible for education decision-makers to spend our tax dollars more wisely.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (The Pension Precipice)
Here's a short talk by the head of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. His speech was made last year, and the other day it was announced that Mr. Leech will be stepping down at the end of the year from the fund that posted a 13% return – and faces a $5.1-billion shortfall. There is one comment by Brian Steel, which starts "Quite right. We need to stop this assault on worker pensions brought on by the corporatist groups". H/T DW
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
A Modest Proposal
How on earth did three average London, Ontario teenagers convert to Islam, become terrorists, and wind up dead or in jail in Mauritania? Click here for the full story.
According to this Wikipedia article, homegrown terrorists are "not the product of poverty, various forms of brainwashing, youth, ignorance, lack of education, lack of employment, lack of social responsibility, criminality, or mental illness". The radicalism incubators include "real or perceived alienation, discrimination, [and] racism".
One thing is clear - private Moslem schools do not produce homegrown terrorists. There has not been one case, to my knowledge, of a homegrown terrorist who attended a private Moslem school. Perhaps children who attend these schools (and other religious schools) are able to get comfortable in their own skins and be inoculated against recruiters who prey on the doubts and lack of affiliation of some vulnerable young men.
Topic for debate: should we make it possible for more parents to send their children to religious (including Moslem) schools?
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
School choice is for teachers too
I'm reading Born to Rise: A story of children and teachers reaching their highest potential by Deborah Kenny. This is a very personal story about the founding of the Harlem Village Academies (HVA), a network of pubic charter schools that serve mostly black slum kids. One of the fundamental elements of the academies' success is their support for their teachers. Here's an excerpt (pp. 224-225) that every teacher should read.
"Michelle, for examples, had worked at a public school a few blocks from HVA for five years before joining us.
"'I was a decent teacher. But nobody helped me,' she says. 'I got no support. If a child threw a bottle against the wall, the principal would either refuse to help or tell me to 'send him down' but nothing was done to fix the problem. My old school just took everything from me. It made me tired and depleted. I understood why so many smart people leave teaching. I have to admit that I stopped putting my best effort into my lessons. Finally I realized: This can't be it. How can I do this for thirty years?'
"'I was ready to change professions, which was devastating for me, because in my heart I wanted to be a teacher. But I didn't know what to do.'
"'Why does it have to be that if you're working in a public city school you're signing a death sentence? I wanted to believe it could be better.'
"'When I got to HVA in every conversation I heard that every teacher's story was my story. All of us had experienced the disappointment of trying to be a good teacher only to see our dreams destroyed. But here I saw what was possible in education. It blew my mind. I'm the same person and it's the same population - even some of the same exact students I used to teach in my old school.'
"'Here the culture allows you to be yourself. I feel respected and heard. I'm motivated to make my lessons better.'
"'Coming here to teach changed everything for me, not just as a teacher but as a person. All the things that had been taken away from me were given back to me: my confidence, my ambition, my love of teaching. The culture gave me back my drive to be a better teacher. And a better person.'
"'This school saved my life. It helped me to find happiness and peace.'"
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Just another forked-tongue politician
Well, I had to write something about the stunning revelation that the Ontario premier misled the public when she said the high school teachers' union had agreed to offer extra-curricular activities for no extra money. The clip just talks about how well compensated Ontario teachers are, but this article gives more details about the extra money for teachers and also includes a couple of additional video clips.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
The times they are a-changin’
School choice is huge in the US, with virtually every state offering at least one school choice program or charter schools - and busy expanding existing programs. This article from the New YorK Times gives a bit of the flavour of what's going on south of the border. Here's a particularly telling excerpt from the article about a recently-expanded Arizona school choice program.
"Some parents of modest means are surprised to discover that the education savings accounts put private school within reach. When Nydia Salazar first dreamed of attending St. Mary’s Catholic High School in Phoenix, for example, her mother, Maria Salazar, a medical receptionist, figured there was no way she could afford it. The family had always struggled financially, and Nydia, 14, had always attended public school.
"But then Ms. Salazar, 37, a single mother who holds two side jobs to make ends meet, heard of a scholarship fund that would allow her to use public dollars to pay the tuition.
"She is now trying to coax other parents into signing up for similar scholarships. 'When I tell them about private school, they say I’m crazy,' she said. 'They think that’s only for rich people.'”
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Who will guard the guardians?
The dawning realization of the importance of teacher quality has led to new schemes to evaluate teachers. After all, the first step in any improvement project is to get a handle on the the starting point.
However, as this article explains, it has proven surprisingly difficult to differentiate among teachers, as the early results have 97-98% of teachers evaluated as effective or highly effective. Of course, this is ridiculous, as a moment's thought will reveal. No profession has that level of excellence - nurses, lawyers, accountants - and there is no reason to believe that the teaching profession is any different.
Of course, it is very difficult for the education system to police itself, and we should not be expecting it to. Instead, teacher evaluation and remuneration should be exposed to market forces - allowing principals to hire and fire and determine salaries as part of a scheme whereby the princpals themselves have incentives to achieve excellence.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Ritalin is the opiate of the masses
Status quo advocates who allege that education reformers are motivated by a desire to privatize schools (and make lots of money somehow) ought to take a look at the big pharmaceutical companies that sold $9 billion worth of stimulants to children last year, just in the United States.
This article on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) says that about 6.4 million American children have been diagnosed with ADHD, and two-thirds of them receive prescriptions for powerful stimulants like Ritalin or Adderall. Furthermore, these numbers are set to increase next month when the revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders will loosen its criteria for an ADHD diagnosis - for example, making repeated losses of one's cellphone or losing focus on schoolwork a basis for an ADHD diagnosis.
My advice? Invest in big pharma - as opposed to big education reform.