It’s too late to put that genie back in the bottle.  Employers won’t even look at resumes without college or university degrees, even for jobs that manifestly don’t require one.

Gresham’s Law (“Bad money drives out good.”) is just as valid in educational currencies.

But there is a horrible penalty being paid by older graduates.  That high school diploma that used to be sufficient isn’t anymore.  Jobs that used to require an undergraduate degree now require a Master’s or higher - not because the job has changed, but because the diploma has devalued from inflation.

Rose Simpson is one of my favorite bloggers, fantastically talented, and severely underemployed.  We were at university together three decades ago, when an undergraduate degree was still an accomplishment, and a Master’s was for the academia-track.  Now she can’t get a job answering letters for Canada Post, because they want a Master’s degree.  http://rosalita55.blogspot.ca/2014/04/dear-taxpayer-thank-you-for-your-letter.html

I also wrote departmentals.

They were hated across the province

They cause many students to repeat Grade 13 who then sailed through university easily. In other words they were far too hard and counter productive.

Canada has the world’s best system. Don’t mess with it. Mitigate poverty. It will fix everything.

Speaking to high school teachers I think a lot of them would actually welcome with open arms external high school exit exams.

High school teachers would love to be able to increase expectations.
Moreover high school teachers, especially the ones teaching courses that count towards admission, are under intense pressure to give high grades.

I have seen this year how the dynamic is completely different for a course with an external standard: my son is taking an AP course.
He and his friends welcome tougher assignments and tests, they pay attention not so much to the mark but to the feedback in the marking so that they know what to work on, are proud to be in a course where they learn so much.

Doug, yes, we know already, you have told us many times how you found the exit exams hard.

We also know that you, Doug, endorse and fight for low standards and lack of accountability in education.

Keep your comments coming!
We want people to have real examples of teacher’s thinking and of the level of discourse in their writing.

Europe. You are dead wrong about teachers.

Any idiot can raise standards.  Students however do not go up with them and therefore many more are excluded.

It actually takes judgement to have exactly the appropriate standards. We are exactly there now and as a result we have the world’s best system.

Ah well Dougie there you go again twisting the words . Don’t assume you speak for ALL teachers.

Well Doug, rather revealing comments - a parent hears the same type of comments - the language of dumbing it down or lowering of the standards.

Key sentence - (after the spelling corrections) - Students however do not grow up with them and therefore many more are excluded. - Translation - Parents standards are inferior to the collective, the public education establishment. One ought to read the pedagogical theories tied in with the political, feminist and some weird humanist philosophies that is advocating for the lowering of standards to ultimately enact the professional elite, the educator from infant til death vision. Done in incremental fashioned one step at a time. Standard testing, exams, and for that matter any type of testing has to be eliminated, to enact the radical pedagogy. of dumbing down.

That said, in NL - the public exams for 2014 - http://www.ed.gov.nl.ca/edu/k12/evaluation/exams.html

Fail a public exam, no academic diploma. Otherwise, there is some second chances available for students.

Also in NL, there is final exams starting in grade 7, one can fail a final exam, but if the final grade average is below 50, the student will go to summer school. Finals are normally called common exams that are marked by the school teachers, which is unlike the public exams which are marked by marking panels.

Finally, I have observed and experienced it too: “Not only do external exit exams yield more objective marks and deter grade inflation, they also enhance student achievement according to a number of studies by Professor John Bishop of Cornell University. ”  I have also observed, it motivates educators to have their students prepared for public exams. From what my child and her classmates have said, the public exams are a bit easier to write than the common exams, which might hold a few surprises of material not covered.

The only reason that I can see, after diving deep down in the pedagogical literature of the K to 12 ivory towers, is that any type of testing will immediately showed the weaker levels in the 3 Rs and as well as the knowledge gaps of students. Ergo, in 2014 the next goal to obtained by the teachers’ unions in Ontario, Alberta and BC is the elimination of standard testing. No doubt, there is a lot of heat coming from another section of the public education establishment - the markers of the standard tests. Year in and year out, nothing changes in the 3 Rs, and is the top reason why the hard copies are not shown to parents, just the scores.

As for Doug’s comments, all I can say it takes a special kind of genius to ensure that 96 to 98 % of LD students stay at the bottom of the achievement charts in the 21st century/ To keep them company, an assortment of students according to the social-income level of lower middle-class and below that comprises close to 50 % of the students in any school.  After all, a school needs a large sample test groups to enact the experimental learning in the schools. Self-esteem class, instead of reading class will be on the menu and coming soon to an Ontario school.

Mr Doug’s quick quip on the unnecessarily disruptive influence of standardized testing has to be read as a strong indicator that this solution could have merit, not withstanding, - the standard exit test could throw a monkey wrench into “guaranteed university” placements presently delivered by yours truly’s gold plated educational enterprise. 

As for Ontario Scholarships, they have become largely discount coupons for College/University entrance not as they started out as true scholarships which largely paid for one year of academic tuition.  Present coupon versions, barely pay for a quarter of formal tuition depending on the course.

The absolute proof that we are putting all of the right people in university and college is that we have the world’s highest post secondary graduation rate in the world 3-4 years later. Of course if you would like to say our world ranked universities are also sub standard I guess you could try to extend the case.

What you are peddling is clap trap.

Doug does not keep up to date on the papers and the new discussions taking place by the education intellectuals and the other global intellectuals in the global agencies such as the World Bank.

If he did, he would not be putting out his viewpoint based on the same line as the capitalist globalists.  Frank is not peddling crap….....I am afraid that it is Doug whose personal motivations is front and center as Frank has explained. Doug’s private high school for rich Chinese is also the perfect way,  for rich Chinese to avoid the long lineups at the immigration doors.

By the way Doug, the top universities in the world is United States. Next comes the the British and where does Canada place? Certainly not in the top three….....and if truth be told, Canada is popular with foreign students because of the foreign student visa program, and it does not help when Ontario offers scholarships to foreign students paid by the taxpayers’ purse.

I am very happy withWorld Bank realization that much more must be spent, it must be spent earlier and it must be spent FOR ALL.

It means Doug is also aligned with the World Bank, education according to social-income status. Not too much and not too little, but just enough for compliance to the globalized elite. Not working out too well, for India and China and the dumb-down education policies for the poor. The globalized educationalists have their work cut out for them to start the new world order of compliance and fake democracy.

Doug can now be considered without a doubt against civil rights of the individual. The mutant socialist version on the go at the global level versus the mutant fascism version on the go at the global level.

Mutant socialist fascist my goodness Nancy , having a bad day?

And this has WHAT to do with exit exams? Doug-behave or we’ll put you in the corner.

The World Bank Has Much To Say About Accountability

In the report — “Making Schools Work – New Evidence on Accountability Reforms “— three core strategies are suggested:

1. Information for accountability — schooling rights, responsibilities, inputs, outputs, and outcomes

2. School-based management — decentralization of school-level decision making — autonomy — to school-level agents

3. Teacher incentives — policies that link pay or tenure directly to performance

This is a BIG report — over 450 pages.  But, policy analysts and advocates for meaningful education reforms would appreciate a lot here.  I think the three strategies are right on for system reform if central government is to have a major role.  http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/278200-1298568319076/makingschoolswork.pdf

I like their Accountability Framework, page 11.  They would replace the long route of accountability (the state bureaucracies, etc.) with the short route and client power.  A bigger bang for the buck.

A big problem in accountability pursuits, however, is “elite capture” of the narrative, thus misleading and sidetracking the intended program.

This topic of exit exams fits in perfectly with point #1 about measuring inputs, outputs and outcomes.  Hopefully teacher unions won’t become the obstacle to reform in developing countries, or even provision of basic services, as they are in our part of the world.

Europe,

I too is Europe.  And we agree.  Bring on the exit exams!!!!!  There is no more efficient method to parse the effective from the sorry mess - be it teachers or schools    

We could abandon the $$$$$ EQAO $$$$$ and get back to the system that delivered, before it was politicized by Mike Harris and Bill Davis to advance a self serving agenda.

Europe, if you are in Europe, count your blessings, the colonies get mad on a regular basis, given our developmental time line ....we in North America are enjoying our “terrible twos” .  So if you are in Europe celebrate the evolutionary jump while most everyone on this blog needs a “time out” to collect their thoughts and be better.

cheers, Mirka

(Nancy I continue not to read your posts)

Well Mirka, it takes a certain type of genius that is only found in the K to 12 education establishment to keep doing the same things and expecting different results.

Europe was speaking about the positive effects of AP courses with external standards, have upon students. I certainly seen that with my child and her classmates in advanced classes and the public exams.
“I have seen this year how the dynamic is completely different for a course with an external standard: my son is taking an AP course.
He and his friends welcome tougher assignments and tests, they pay attention not so much to the mark but to the feedback in the marking so that they know what to work on, are proud to be in a course where they learn so much.”

What Europe did not suggest, was to dropped the EQAO in favour of exit exams. That said, Mirka needs to go over the history of Canada with a fine tooth comb and drop her European biases towards the younger countries in North America. Also she should read the historical education files of Canada and the provinces. Actually for a new country, dealing with the aristocratic attitudes of the British governors, the people were quite forward in their thinking and attitudes towards education for children. Perhaps Mirka may readjust her thinking about the Davis government and the two progressive conservative government prior to the Davis government. After all, I never paid for a textbook, much less a pencil or even an eraser or paid big dollars to go on a field trip to Buffalo, New York or to a sports team game at another school. Fully equipped schools, janitors where the school floors were polished to a sheen, and they fixed the broken window glass from errant balls. Imagine that rubber balls on the playgrounds and now in some schools are banished by the education class set.

My found memories of looking forward to all afternoon art class once a week. No colour, cut and paste art program of today’s schools that are short on the resources and tempera paint. We worked in all mediums, including good old fashioned sketch lessons sitting under the chestnut trees (to which at one school in the GTA are discussing the removal of chestnut trees) in May and June enjoying the warm weather, trying to draw nature. Beginning in the mid 1970s once the teachers’ unions got their claws into the K to 12 education system, all of it gone including home economics and wood shops. Geography and history starting in grade 5, all of it gone by the beginning of the 1990s. By the end of the 1990s, gym went for its farewell ride and now the only public schools that have it all are the high income schools The rest of the schools have to make do because the hidden agendas of the K to 12 education establishment must be met, before a school or a school district would even think about paying for the pencils in a low-income school without stripping the funding from another area of operations.

Yes Mirka, it certainly takes a certain type of genius to pumped out from one year to the next, grade 12 graduates who have weaker skills and abilities from the previous generation to the next.