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If They Could Just Get Some Kryptonite…
I predicted that Waiting for Superman would be controversial in Toronto. Well, I was not proved wrong. The former dean of OISE herself has come out swinging in an op-ed dripping with Kryptonite in today's Toronto Star.
OISE professor Jane Gaskell slams charter schools and asks that it is time "to stop importing American beliefs about education into Canada." Would that were true before we imported whole language, fuzzy math, and other constructivist and progressive fads, that had been first tried and then failed in American schools, yet still encouraged by the very institution she once headed!
What she sees as the challenge to improving education isn't making sure student teachers are trained in proven effective methods but to "attract great people to teaching, to build their capacity over a career, and to create public respect for their skills" and of course, spending more money.
She reports on the Ontario Edubabble, sorry Education, Summit that I blogged about the other day and asks, "What can Canada learn from Finland, Singapore, Australia and other high-performing systems?" Hmm. The Singapore math curriculum is considered one of the best in the world, but it lacks any of the constructivism that I blogged about yesterday. Finland students don't start school until aged six. Australia has a policy of local school autonomy. Ontario is hardly moving in their direction, but we will have to wait and see. (So far, allowing students to use cell phones in the classroom was the only newsworthy item to be mentioned by the Ontario Premier yesterday.)
Gaskell points out, correctly, that Canada outperforms the U.S. in international tests, but what she does not mention is that it is Alberta's performance that brings up the Canadian average. Alberta, the only Canadian province with the most school choice options in particular, charter schools, also partially funds some private schools and home schooling parents.
Moira MacDonald at the Toronto Sun has probably the most honest analysis of the documentary's effect on educators in the audience. MacDonald nails it when she writes:
"The film’s premise is for most kids living in the same desperate conditions, school could be the ticket out — but despite big spending increases, even their schools are failing them. The only option for the inner-city minority children the film follows (save one white middle-classer) is admission via an excruciating public lottery process into an independently-run, publicly-funded charter school.
"Great teachers are praised and their mission branded as courageous.
"Teacher unions take it on the chin for protecting crappy teachers and blocking efforts to evaluate, recognize and promote good ones while rooting out the bad.
"Charter schools are held up not as the solution but the only place at the moment where solutions are allowed to take root. In truth, not all charter schools are as successful as Canada's. And the film leaves out the fact Canada had already introduced a mass of community supports previously not provided by government before the school was started. But movies have never been a place to get into cumbersome details.
"Still, what might a film about the foibles of the American school system mean for us?
"Very little, I was told last Friday at the Ontario Public School Boards Association - except to reflect on how good we've got it and avoid made-in-America solutions. OPSBA, backed by the group People for Education, held a media briefing in anticipation of both Waiting for Superman's premiere and a Toronto speech Monday by U.S. education secretary Arne Duncan."
Probably the meanest comment in Gaskell's Toronto Star op-ed is this zinger: "This movie is made by a man who sent his kids to private schools, but feels guilty."
Gee, kind of like a lot of People I could mention...
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PS My letter to the Toronto Star on this issue was published Friday.
The Toronto Star sure is a left-leaning rag
Gaskell is bent on preserving the status quo. Personally, I think that she has a lot of work ahead of her, because this movie is only the beginning. If these educrats would just do the right thing in the first place, they’d probably have less work in the long run—stonewalling, writing columns contrary to what’s coming out there in order to dissuade the public, etc.—and perhaps even be happier people, knowing that they’ve actually given children the precious gift of a good education.