SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

Quebec has been a pioneer in the implementation of low-cost universal child-care, and it is costing the province about $2.2 billion a year. This program has been good for the provincial economy in that it "increased women's work-force participation and employment rates and boosted income tax and consumption tax revenue". However, it has long been known that the children in the Quebec child-care system are "more likely to have higher crime rates, worse health, and lower levels of life satisfaction as they have aged than their counterparts in other provinces who didn't have access to the same type of system".  A just-released follow-up study has confirmed this finding, adding that there is "striking evidence that exposure to the program was associated with higher crime rates, with the effects most acutely seen in boys". more

All in a day’s work

GUEST BLOG BY MARJORIE GANN, RETIRED TEACHER

I'm assuming that teachers are not supposed to stay late  under a work-to-rule, and likely are not supposed to take students' work home.  If I'm wrong about this, then you can ignore what I wrote, but here's my two cents.

As a recently-retired elementary teacher, I listened to Matt's interview with Sachin Maharaj with interest. What no one has touched on in the debate over the elementary teachers' work-to-rule is the essential role that assessment plays in good instruction. Are teachers allowed to take work home to correct under this work-to-rule? Are they doing prep (which includes marking) outside of their official prep time? Why isn't entering report card comments part of the basic job description for all elementary teachers?

I would like answers to these questions because I believe that the work teachers do outside of the hours actually clocked in the classroom isn't supplementary, and isn't done out of the goodness of their hearts: It's indispensable and absolutely essential to good teaching. If I don't stay after school to mark spelling dictations, or take them home to mark, my students won't get the necessary feedback to learn what they did wrong and won't learn from their mistakes. If I don't take home 25 stories to mark and make suggestions for changes, the next day's creative writing lesson won't build on the improvements I suggested to my students. I plan Wednesday's reading lesson on the basis of what I observe from marking my students' work on Tuesday, and that means either staying late to mark or taking the notebooks home with me. Teachers can't teach well unless they do a lot of work after the students leave -- either in their classrooms or at home. I have no idea what work-to-rule means, but my rule, over a 35-year teaching career, was that what I did after school was part of my job.

One size doesn’t fit all

Tara kindly saved me from sleeplessness by sending me this link about the experiment with Chinese teaching that I've been writing about for the last two days. It turns out that the group of English teenagers taught via Chinese methods for four weeks outperformed the control group by 10% in math and science. So, overall, it would seem that the Chinese approach (which involves mainly teacher-led instruction as opposed to the child-centred methods used by the teachers in the control group) results in greater student learning.

However, in the course of the BBC documentary, there are student interviews that suggest that some of the students like the Chinese approach and are learning from it while others do not and are not. Which leads me to wonder whether a self-selecting process, whereby the students themselves (or maybe their parents as proxies in the case of young children) select their teachers, might not lead to even greater gains.

By the same token, some of the control group teachers and indeed the principal expressed a revulsion towards teacher-led methods, and perhaps it is just as well that they are not forced to use them. However, I'm sure there are lots of teachers who would prefer to use more teacher-directed approaches, and it's quite possible that if these teachers were allowed to use their preferred methods their students would learn more as well.

Sunday at the Movies (Chinese Teaching in England)

Tom Berend kindly provided a link to the documentary referenced yesterday. I was able to watch the first two parts of the documentary this way, but unfortunately couldn't seem to find Part 3 - which is where we find out whether the Chinese method worked better than the child-centred method used with the control group. If anyone could provide a link to Part 3 I would be most grateful, because I'm worried I won't be able to sleep tonight because of the suspense.

Are our kids tough enough?

Recently, a BBC documentary on Chinese schools aired in the UK and rocked the country. The film documents an experiment whereby five teachers from China take charge of the education of 50 British teenagers, and it looks fascinating. more

Unfortunately, I can't seem to view the documentary online, and would be most grateful if someone could provide a working link to it.

Much More Than A Penny Saved

The province of Alberta has the most generous policy in Canada of helping parents with tuition costs if they wish to send their children to a private school - a policy which as you can imagine is very popular with parents. So exactly how expensive is this popular policy?

A new study finds that last year 29,400 Alberta students were enrolled in a private school, receiving $5,150 each from the government. The rest of Alberta students - 631.089 of them - cost taxpayers roughly $10,874 each. If all of the private school students had attended a government school, it would have cost taxpayers an additional $168 million. Over the five years analyzed in the report, the total savings were $750 million. 

A policy of encouraging more parents to send their children to private schools might well lead to even greater savings. And of course there are other benefits as well, but that's another story.

Chartering a Course for Success

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the situation in Alberta which currently has only 13 charter schools even though the legislation permits 15.  more

Now another really strong charter school proposal has come along - one that caters to children with learning difficulties - and it will be interesting to see if Alberta Education will authorize it or not. If the ReThink Charter Academy is not approved, the fatal flaw in Alberta's charter school legislation will be laid bare.  H/T TB

Does the Ontario public support the latest round of teacher pay increases?

In light of the ongoing teacher union negotiations in Ontario, what with some of them turning up their noses at raises that would elevate their top salaries to close to $100,000 as well as benefits that add another approximately 30%, I thought you might be interested in this American survey of the public's attitude towards teacher pay and education spending in general. Most people have no idea how much is spent on education in general or on teachers' salaries in particular, perhaps because the teachers' unions are so effective in playing the violin about inadequate remuneration. 

When Americans learn that their teachers earn an average salary of about $55,000, public support for high teacher pay drops dramatically, and when Americans learn that any increase would be funded by taxpayers' dollars, their support drops even more. So I wonder what Americans would think of Ontario where the average teacher pay is well over $80,000 a year (plus very generous benefits) - yet their unions are still insisting on more.

Education and the Sharing Economy

We have written extensively about the Japanese practice of "lesson study" whereby classroom teachers collaborate to develop exemplary lesson plans and then share them with colleagues all over the country. one  two  three

In Canada, it is normal for individual teachers to work in isolation and develop their own teaching materials - thousands of teachers all hard at work reinventing the wheel. 

So now there is a website where teachers can buy and sell exemplary lesson plans and teaching materials for a small fee.  more

This seems to be the North American version of Japan's lesson studies - entrepreneurial and online. This may be the start of the Uberfication of education!

Sunday at the Movies (Who speaks for education?)

This segment is from TVO's The Agenda last Tuesday. Unfortunately, the host Steve Paikin didn't give Doretta much air time, but when she got a chance she made some excellent points. And listen carefully to Janet Ecker - who knew?