Moira’s column doesn’t even begin to talk about the hardship of the smaller, rural boards in having the ELP shoved down their throats.

It has always been a whole different ball game outside the GTA and urban centres.

FYI - you do know that links to Sun articles are no longer available outside a pay wall so clicking on the link may no longer get you a look at the column? Unless you’re subscribed and paying for it that is.

I told Kathkeen Wynne myself, the program is very expensive so why dont you just start with poor kids and working class kids, split the difference say the bottom 20 or 30% from an SES POV. If the economy is roaring in a few years you can gradually add to it.

I believe they thought Liberal supporters are mainly middle class and they did not want to anger their supporters.

The program is incredibly popular but DMc threw away all of his popularity with Bill 115.

For this program the evidence has been in for decades, Perry Study, Fraser Mustard, tons more.

Chuck there is a way around the walls. Don’t want to spell it out, but the hint is the Chrome browser. Built-in, but perfect for anyone that doesn’t want to deal with sandboxes.

Joe, do you think the low income are hanging out in one or two schools out of a school district? I can see why the government did what it did. Doing it your way, would have tacked on another billion for administration to policed it. And more so in places like Toronto, where some would be tempted to take advantage of free daycare or greatly reduced when they do not qualified.

All the benefits of pre-schooling of two nursery schools, a water baby since 6 months, tots gymnastics, soccer plus intensive speech therapy for two years up until my child was 4, all went down the tubes at the beginning of grade 1. Prior to entry into grade 1, my child could add and subtract, print out her name neatly, and well advance in her knowledge on science topics.

She started to flounder due to the reading and numeracy instruction. My child was not alone, over half of the class was floundering in reading and numeracy. Joe, gains made in pre-school can disappear in a blink of an eye, due to faulty instruction methods and poor curriculum. No amount of the bells and whistles can overcome it. Unless the educators, along with the board staff rolled up their sleeves to have students reach mastery and proficiency. But if the school’s intention is to ensure a certain percentage of students are below grade level at the end of grade 3, then they get an A. The data streams have shown consistently, approximatel 40 % at the end of grade 3 are below grade average, and are not prepare for grade 4.

What middle class Joe? The professionals versus the average working person?  Another observation I have made, public education system employees have biases and misconceptions about both groups, that in the end causes harm to the children’s education futures. But perhaps it is intentionally on the school’s part, because it sets the conditions to divide and conquered, putting parents in the social pecking order of the ones least likely to offend the sensibilities of the staff and not likely to rock the boat.

The very ideal of day care to all day kindergarten really bothers me. There is no way, an education system can offered what my children had, and especially for my youngest child. Nor the time, to offered the opportunities to promote speech for my youngest child. Nor the informal 30 minute discussions of what could be done between pre-school and at home. My children went in the morning to kindergarten, and in the afternoon had things to do, such as dance, physical activities over at the local YMCA, and other activities such as story hour over at the local library. For my youngest, although I did not know it at the time, was very important in developing the cognitive networks to open up. However, by grade one the gains made disappeared, because of the education and pedagogical practices that do no enhance the building of cognitive pathways to connect to the open networks. That job landed in my lap, while I was lectured on my poor parenting skills, and what I did not do for my child, by the people with education degrees.

Rather odd, when I was paying for children services and activities, never once was I lectured. All of them were genuine interested in the individual child, and to me that is important, compare to the 2 billion plus EC plan in Ontario, and one sized-fits-all, and if your child does not fit in the one sized-fits-all, than the child will be force to fit in, regardless of the child’s individual needs.

Nancy,

So far in Ontario everything below grade one is still voluntary. If people like you don’t want ADK, they don’t have to use it. BTW in cities the poor DO pile up in a very obvious number of schools.

According to the stats, Toronto is hollowing out the lower middle income and low income groups. The people have moved to the suburbs. Number one reason cost of shelter. The average rent is $1200 for a one bedroom, and condos of the post stamp size are as high as $1600.

As to your suggestion, only low-income schools are entitled to ECE, which would represent an unfairness for the thousands upon thousands of low income students in schools that are not classified as low income. And it represents the majority of schools and not the low percentage of low-income schools. Data streams may be able to tell the number of students that are low-income, but try to find the number of schools that are low-income.

Further more, the suburb teachers are already warning the alarm bells of their low-income students, and can’t get funding for this set of students. It is left up to the school council, to fundraise for the extras for these students. Such nice extras as paying for the school field trips and other fees that are imposed by the school administration and school board.  Another set of teachers, are ringing the alarm bells, on what is denoted high-risked students. Getting really crowded with the students with disabilities, the gays, the ESL students,low-income and other groupings of students that are at high-risked. Some are being tossed out, to make room for other students.

The difference between ECE programs being run by the public education system, and the private ones is that the state-run operations are inclined to make it one-sized-fits-all, encased in a heavy bureaucratic speak and operates in a management style that penalizes the little tots for simple not being the norm.

As for state-run ECE, it is impossible to fund without watering down such things as speech therapy, and other therapy a small child. One of the bone of contentions, in the all day kindergarten, the health professionals are not going to change their ways of setting appointments to please the education system. Intensive means intensive and not the 15 minute version of intensive found in the Canadian public schools. You ought to read all the court documents of the Moore case, it is an eye opener of a public education system, more or less any program will do as long as it is so many minutes per week. Outcomes don’t matter, nor do the effectiveness of the programs matter. Just as long as the public education system is delivering programs.

If it was not for the universal health programs, Canada’s education system would be in the same state as the American version, complete with the ghettos.

After 3 years of ECE plus 12 years of public schooling, if a child does not come out with decent literacy and numeracy skills - the public education has failed to lived up to the standards of a basic education. All that democracy and social talk being sprouted by the public education system is not at all effective, when one looks at the outcomes in adult society. A good place to start is in the lower income neighbourhoods, and as Toronto Chief Blair has said, it starts when they they are young. The readers were allow to conclude, and I concluded that public schools should be concentrated on the business of academics by giving the kids a firmed foundation to stand on, rather than listing the many reasons why the kids are hard to teach.

State-run ECE operations by the public education system, like the Head-Start programs often have a watering down component that renders the effectiveness having no staying power. I give credit to the pre-school programs and other related activities including the intensive speech therapy of two years as helping my child to eke out a promotion and not being socially promoted in the primary grades. Without them, she would have been socially promoted, but still would not qualified for outside help until the end of grade 3.

I know only too well, of the cries of the mothers in my old Ontario neighbourhood, who thought I was going overboard with all the activities that my child was attending. It wasn’t until the Christmas of 2000, when I happened by chance to meet them in separate instances, and all of them wanted to compared notes with me. Suffice to say, they regretted not to follow the pathway that I took, nor really listened to why I was doing it. One mother was in tears, describing the school’s actions and the insufficient programs and supports for her son, concerning language difficulties. I may not have known a lot back then, but she did take my advice to go through her family doctor, and if you have to change schools. I have no idea how they fared, but I do know the Ontario public education system does not have the capacity to undertake ECE nor all day kindergarten plus fulfilled all their pie-in-the-sky promises to the taxpayers and the parents that send their children to ECE.

Something has to break…...

Your positions are interestingly inconsistent. First you say the state should not deliver child care but then turn around and say it would be unfair to aim it at poor schools. If you were more aware of education in cities has aimed special supports of all kinds at schools where poor kids pile up, smaller classes, pathways, extra resources,, and many other resources. There aee massive public housing projects in Toronto Nancy which keeps thousand of poor kida downtown. In medium size cities, the poorer schools are also easy to identify.

Here is the basic difference between the parents of some special education children with moderate to severe learning problems. The parents ask “when does my child catch up to the rest of the kids?” The system believes, “it is unlikely that your child will ever catch up to their peers, they have learning problems. The SE system does not really exist to sliminate learning problems but to mitigate them.”

Not at all inconsistent. I just pointed out, that aiming funding at the low-income schools, is unfair way funding for low-income students. In Canada, low income are spread throughout the schools, and not confined sitting in one or two schools. So what happens to the 30 students sitting in a high income school, who happen to have parents working as the live-in maids and nannies? Lots of rich material on the net about it. It is all about the policies and how the funding is spent. Doug’s version will morphed into the typical versions of designated funding for high-risked groups or special consideration,  where the bulk of the money is spent on salaries, the administration operations,  and in the end may have no positive or a neutral impact on the students.

The second problem, who are the high risked students. It is becoming awful crowded under this high risked category, that also includes the SE students. If low-income kids are entitled to special funding, to provide what the home cannot provide, are they entitled to education services of the 3Rs? Parents have asked this over the years, because it seems that only kids who are part of each classification - meaning that the bi-racial, native status, gay, a learning disability, a physical disability, transgender,low-income and has red hair is entitled to full funding and full access to the education services available. Should it not be universal and evenly applied. To which offered it to one child. offered it to all the children. The only solution and more even-handed solution, is to offer ECE to all school boards, and let the school district decide which schools they will begin with. To which, school districts did start off with schools of the greatest need and the greatest benefits.

But here comes the third problem, school districts do not have the capacity nor will they ever have the capacity to do ECE as well as the private and non-profit sector. The public education system is thoroughly institutionalized and bedded in their pedagogical approaches to shift their focus away from the one-sized-fits all. Coupled with it, is the public education system disdained for health professionals and other professionals dealing with learning and cognitive aspects of children. Lots of American stories of speech therapists partnering with the public education system, only to find out the administration and educators are asking the speech therapists to shortened their therapies and to watered them down, to rendered them ineffective. There is no shortcuts, with children, and the way the Ontario ECE is laid out and designed - it is obvious that the ECE fits the needs of the educational staff and its stakeholders, at the expense of the children’s cognitive development.

And the fourth problem, as outlined in the Sun article, are the costs related to the lack of capacity in the public education system. There is no contest, the public education system, cannot offered the quality and the professional staff needed to addressed the concerns of the children in the ECE program. All the public education system can do, is offered a ECE program that is limited in scope and hours of operations. Sure it might suit some parents’ parameters, but on the whole it should be just one of the many different types of choices that should be offered to parents, and their families.

So is state-run ECE all about daycare or the education of children?

As for affordable housing in Toronto, what about the 4 year waiting list, and the other list just to get on the waiting list. A bureaucratic nightmare and more so because the make-up of the low-income has change drastically as the lower-income families move to the suburbs.

Joe writes - “The SE system does not really exist to sliminate learning problems but to mitigate them.””  Translation - SE kids do not received a quality education on the same standards as the kids within the norm. What is really scary, the teachers’ unions want to do the same thing with the little tots that come in all shape and sizes, to offer poorer quality and watered down programs for children who are not within the norm. Scary to think that a young tot, who is not progressing in verbal speech, will entered grade 1 with major language difficulties because the child did not received the intensive speech therapy needed to correct the problem. The young tot will be seen through the lens of the SES variables, and his behaviour will be managed, but the root problem will never be corrected.

The fact is that the poor are highly concentrated in certain schools. Tgis has been well known for 50 years and those schools get extra supports.

The private sector does not do ECE well. The wages are too low to attract quality workers. These are now all leaving private childcare to get higher paid public sector union jobs. We call this social justice.