SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

A camel is a horse designed by a committee. So what is a school board?

In this Toronto Star op ed piece, Charles Pascal lambastes the Toronto District School Board, calling for a total clean-out. Interestingly, Mr. Pascal mentions in passing that there are lots of effective school boards in Ontario. I didn't know that. As we have readers from all over the province, I invite you to provide a comment about your local school boards  - effective or non-effective, functional or dysfunctional. In fact, it would be wonderful to hear from readers in other provinces as well about their school boards. 

25% High School Graduation Rate for the Poor

GUEST BLOG BY TOM BEREND, SQE DIRECTOR

Ontario's Minister of Education crows about successful measures to fight inequality and poverty, and boasts about our 83% high school graduation rate.  We are the best in the world. 

For the poor, that claim is a cruel fiction. The 83% counts only 'fully participating' students' - the ones who are around to take the test. For marginalized communities, the high-school graduation rate is closer to 25%, the rest having already dropped out. True graduation rates should be easily deduced from historical school attendance registries, but educators don't want to look too closely. Poverty advocates have suspected it, but can find no evidence in the education data.

Furtunately for us, three intrepid researchers in Manitoba went the other way around to get the true graduation rate for a poor neighbourhood in Winnipeg. In 2006, Brownell, Roos, & Fransoo took a population-based longitudinal approach, tracking the entire population of students through their health records instead of their education records. Here's what they found:

" ... we used the cohort of children born in Manitoba in 1984 and remaining in Manitoba until 2001-02. Then, for those residing in Winnipeg in 2001-02, we determined where they were in the school system at that time (that is, during what should have been their final year in school) and also identified those who had withdrawn from school. Figure 3B shows this very different reality: only 27 percent of the youths living in the low-SES areas who should have been writing the standards test that year actually wrote and passed the test."  

Their data excludes Winnipeg's Aboriginal youths which would likely have lowered the completion rate even further. Toronto has fewer Aboriginals but more immigrants, meaning that it is reasonable to assume we would get the same results in our inner-city neighbourhoods. To fight poverty we need to focus on that dreadful 75% failure rate.  We can start by being honest about how our inner-city schools are really doing.

The Polished Stones

Today, a longish article from the New York Times. It's worth reading in its entirety but I'll try to boil it down.

There is a better way of teaching mathematics than solely drill and rote, namely polished lessons that foster passionate discussions among students and lead to discovery and understanding of math procedures, properties, and proofs.
This better way was developed in the US but botched in its implementation, while the Japanese took it and ran with it - with great success.
The salient difference is teachers' ability to use the new approach, and Japanese teachers are strongly supported in their efforts to become better teachers.
The US Common Core math approach tries to embody this better way, but its implementation continues to be botched.

Most people think that Japanese elementary math lessons are snooze fests, but people are wrong. I have a wonderful VHS tape, The Polished Stones, that shows typical grade 5 Japanese math lessons - and they are fabulous. I'm not sure whether it's the the students or the lessons who are meant to be the polished stones - certainly both are polished to a very high standard. The tape shows what is possible, and it is far more than most people can imagine. Certainly, Japanese students do extremely well on international comparisons of student achievement.

I would be willing to lend out the VHS tape to anyone who is interested (and swears to give it back).

Click here for a short article from our archives about Japanese education in general. H/T TB

Sunday at the Movies (Khan Academy)

From time to time, we touch down on the Khan Academy to see what progress it has made, and the answer is always amazing. Click here for a column by Newt Gingrich about how the Khan Academy approach is catching on in US public schools. H/T CG

If we give all children a fair start, then the race is theirs to win

It would be difficult to read this blog and then maintain that disadvantaged kids can't learn.

It can be done, in fact it is being done

Take a look at this Ontario private school that heals learning-disabled students - typically taking three years. Tuition at The Dunblaine School costs $20,500. Direct Instruction in reading, Jump Math, one-on-one tutoring, average class size of seven....

There is no reason why school boards could not offer similar schools. It's impossible to be sure how much Ontario spends per learning-disabled student (see the grant schedule here), but the government's per-pupil cost has to be approaching $20,000 a year. And even if it's "only" $15,000 a year, the fact that the government continues to pay that amount every year until the student drops out of school means that $20,500 per year for three years is a bargain. H/T TB

Unsafe Sex Education

Well, things have been kind of heated around here lately, and so I thought I'd introduce a nice, non-controversial topic to give things a chance to calm down. Click here for a recent Toronto Star column deploring the Ontario government's slowness in updating the province's "antiquated" sex and mental health curriculum.

My thoughts on sex ed programs in general are well summed up in this previous blog. While it may be possible to teach sex ed very sensitively in schools, it seems to me that the odds are stacked against it - partly because the kind of people at the Ministry of Education who are hot to modernize the sex ed curriculum are likely to be the last people in the world capable of doing it well, and partly because the kind of teachers who are attracted to teaching sex ed are likely to be the last people in the world you would willingly choose to broach sensitive subjects with your six-year-old. 

For those who are bears for punishment, here is the current Ontario elementary health and phys ed curriculum. I couldn't bear to spend any length of time reading it (and I can't imagine many teachers will have the time or inclination to wade through it either), but just for fun I searched for the word "sex" and got 80 hits.

Charter schools are coming of age

Today's reference is in response to the he-said-she-said argument in the comments section for yesterday's posting. It seems that charter schools are getting better all the time and hold out a beacon of hope to disadvantaged children. H/T TB

The Lesser of Two Evils - Cheating

Click here for an interesting article about the test score scandal in Atlanta. The article was posted to Facebook by an Ontario school board director with the inevitable caution about what happens when governments bring in high-stakes testing. 

To me, the big irony is that the profiled school could have legitimately raised its test scores (and student achievement) to the desired levels by adopting Direct Instruction, but instead chose to secretly alter the students' answers. H/T CC

Educators Versus the Public

There's a new book out (and we will be reviewing it later), but I was struck by its finding of a "deep, broad divide between the opinions held by citizens and those who teach in the public schools".

Although the book concerns the American situation, I suspect that the situation is the same in Canada, and one of the reasons for my thinking this is the deep, broad divide manifested in our comments section. Our educators continually are astonished (and in some cases offended) by the hard line taken by us non-educators, and of course Stephen is trying hard to understand their intransigence. Here is the situation as I see it.

We non-educators think that the basic mission of schools is to ensure that all students emerge with the skills and knowledge they need to to thrive in today's complex and challenging society. Because we non-educators believe that this is not happening - far from it - we are unimpressed by the many dedicated teachers, the luxurious trappings, the apparently busy and happy students, the spurious test scores and graduation rates, and so forth. It's like going to see a movie in a cinema where the staff are working hard to please, the place is spotless, the food at the concessions is delicious, the sound system is fabulous..... but the movie is lousy. 

The educators among us, correct me if I'm wrong, see the many good things that the schools are doing, and either play down the importance of the academic skills and knowledge sought by us non-educators, or have lower standards than our non-educators, or think that most students are acquiring adequate skills and knowledge. I'd be interested in our educators' take on this.

BTW, I am classifying myself as a non-educator even though I am a teacher through and through.