World wide data shows SES overwhelmingly congruent to education results. SES is not the same as income.

Someone has to be last.  But all shall get prizes.

Nobody in education takes Fraser I, Frontier, CD Howe, Atlantic I, Heritage, Cato AEI. Toronto Sun, Post or Globe seriously. Seen as privatizing enemies with an agenda. Not credible.

Only Toronto Star CBC public universities have credibility.

Its much the same situation with the PeelDSB clowntrust.They had 11 schools in the top 100 with the highest ranked 24th in Ontario. PeelDSB is the second largest educracy in OntarioThe trustees run it more like their personal fiefdom backed by teacher union fellow travelers They have started a #fixtheformula campaign to demand more money from the government to fix what they perceive as underfunded speced programs.What they fail to note is the campaign is nothing more a redherring designed to cover up their inept financial mis-management of their secondary schools. When will they ever learn

Ask the parents if they want the board to have more money. Ask the parents if they want smaller classes. Ask parents if they want ADJK?

You are swimming upstream against public opinion.

Ask the parents if they want their kids to learn to read?

RACE TO THE MIDDLE

Congratulations, TDSB!  Flat is in!  Right in the middle!  Is this happenstance as TDSB apologists claim or is it deliberate dumbing down?

Was this a leadership project guided by graduates of the FLAT CURRICULUM PROGRAM?

Consider this:  Al Gore comes to Toronto for some coal fumes alleviation ceremony with Kathleen Wynne, Ontario Premier.  See the headlines for Nov 21, 2013 Al Gore and Kathleen Wynne to hold love-in.

But, is it a coincidence that a day after Al Gore’s visit, Wynne announces: “Ontario education needs to move beyond focus on 3Rs to foster skills like creativity, collaboration, community and critical thinking.”? http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/11/21/premier_kathleen_wynne_ontario_education_needs_to_move_beyond_focus_on_3rs.html

Why do I mention Gore?  Because he connects with the movements that want to curtail prosperity in aid of sustainability programs.  Because he has connections with the Fabians, the 130 year old organization dedicated to spreading global socialism — incrementally and irreversibly — motto:  Educate, Agitate, Organize.

I was alerted to the global agenda last year when an education official from our Ministry of Education spoke to parents.  This was one month before our provincial election May 14, 2013. The message was to this effect:  Be prepared for a shift in education, a transformation, from content to competencies.  We must test what we value — the competencies: collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking.  It doesn’t matter who wins the election. The changes are going ahead. It’s international.

Coming back to the FLAT CURRICULUM.  Is this a joke?  No.

It’s a full-fledged program originating with a professor in Australia, Julie Lindsay, providing credit courses and presentations on global education and related to UNESCO programs.  Here is her book:

“Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds: Move to Global Collaboration One Step at a Time (Pearson Resources for 21st Century Learning). 

So does TDSB fit?  For those of us outside the TDSB orbit, will there be a “flattener” come to our town soon?  Remember what I keep saying about Alberta education — the tall poppies needed to be cut down.  Alberta’s former exemplary international school performance rating has now suffered significant slippage. The gurus have left town and the levelers carry on.

Ask the parents if they want testing. Yes

Been around the system many years. Have not yet met parents opposed to their children learning to read. Parents see the list above as a big part of the way to have excellent readers.

The more I get to peek inside the institutions that are funded by hard-working tax payers, the more I realize that I am a Libertarian—in other words, dismantle these self-serving institutions and begin again from scratch.  Public education is an obscene waste of taxpayers $$.  Children are not benefitting, and emploiyees have absolutely no respect for the waste of $$.  Absenteeism is staggeringly high (teachers at TDSB averaging 15 days, when they’re only in the classroom for 8.3 months/annum, or less time if you teach high school).  While observing the whole amoral, unethical mess one can only conclude that educrats have no sense of commitment whatsoever; only a desire for better salaries, less work and no accountability.

Nothing wrong with being a Libertarian Bev if you are happy with less that 1% of the vote. Also lots of Liberterian types WITHIN the Conservatives.

Thanks, Doug, but I’m aware of the percentage of people who are Libertarians.  Cheers!

Yesterday, I went on a journey of number crunching. It turned out to be a 5 page report, a massive dig in looking for data on Special Education dating back to 2001 and in the process learning a few new things, that in Ontario, special education and the education of SE students has not change much since 1985. All written in black and white on the Ontario government pages. I will only give my conclusions, since the bulk of the 5 page report is the supporting evidence that backs up the conclusions and the numbers of 12 and 15 %, for special education and English Language Learners (ESL) respectively. Note, for the ESL data - all came from the EQAO reports. Unlike the SE data, that I was force to expand beyond EQAO looking for the missing SE data that is not being reported. Not the fault of EQAO, but that is another story to be told on another day.

“Conclusions: The Fraser rankings aids to exposed the outliers of individual schools while the EQAO strives to hide the outliers in their reports. The EQAO reports masks the data of the SE and ESL student
population by diffusing and hiding the total numbers of the SE and ESL students at the provincial, school board and school levels. The only numbers that are seen, are the SE and ESL students taking the EQAO for grade 3, 6 and 9. This allows the opponents against EQAO and the Fraser rankings to used the SE and ESL students as one of the reasons for low scores or ranking. And like the Sun article, one never moves beyond the rhetoric, and look deeper at the numbers.

I have concluded, like I did a few years ago in my province that there is caps and limits placed on the number of SE students that are fully participating in the EQAO at the individual school and classroom that works out on the average no more than 12 %  with an IEP or an IPRC or both of the total SE student population at the individual school and classroom levels that are fully participating in the testing. As for the ESL number, on average no more than 15 %  with special provisions of the total ESL student population at the individual school and classroom level that are fully participating in the testing.

I personally seen it in action at youngest child’s school, and than I started to crunched the numbers because all data of the SE student population is published, and broken down to the various subgroups under disabilities. I essentially did the same thing using Ontario numbers, by working backwards crunching the numbers. I was not surprise to see the 12 % and 15 % numbers in the SE and ESL categories in the testing, because I detected the same pattern in the Ontario EQAO data as I did in the Newfoundland’s CRT testing. I thought I put my hypothesis to the test egged on by the comments in the Sun article,  by this article - http://www.simcoereformer.ca/2014/03/02/report-card-ranks-norfolk-high-schools and this article - http://allontario.ca/2014/02/fraser-institute-rankings-for-ontario-schools/

To end - Correcting Doug - Doug writes - “SES is not the same as income” The definition - “Socioeconomic status (SES) is often measured as a combination of education, income, and occupation. It is commonly conceptualized as the social standing or class of an individual or group. When viewed through a social class lens, privilege, power, and control are emphasized. Furthermore, an examination of SES as a gradient or continuous variable reveals inequities in access to and distribution of resources. SES is relevant to all realms of behavioral and social science, including research, practice, education, and advocacy.”  http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/factsheet-education.aspx

Now for the best part on how the public education establishment would like parents to view SES -  as stated above - ” It is commonly conceptualized as the social standing or class of an individual or group. When viewed through a social class lens, privilege, power, and control are emphasized.” 

They would love to see the parents to see themselves as having less power than the professional educator class. Accept the edicts of the public K to 12 education establishment without questioning the edicts.

Doug, income is very much part of SES and as such - the K to 12 education system educates children according to their social-income status, by denying education services beyond the classroom. It is on display in its full glory in the data outcome streams of SE students and in the EQAO data outcome streams.

Well done, Nancy.

The biggest category of SE students are those who simply can’t read.  They usually account for more than half of SE students. 

There is nothing wrong with most of these students that cannot be corrected with an intensive, systematic, one-on-one program of phonics and reading instruction.  Torgesen et al. took the worst grade-3 kids they could find from LD classrooms in Florida and gave them 8 weeks of 2-hours/day instruction.  http://www.fcrr.org/publications/publicationspdffiles/intensive_remedial.pdf  He estimated that only 1% of the population would fail to respond to his protocol treatment, and subsequent studies have improved on the treatment. 

If the SE fraction is 12%, and we guess that half (6) are reading-related problems (it’s probably higher), then 5 out of 12 kids are in the SE category only because of the school’s failure to teach them how to read properly.

There is no unfairness to the schools when these students are included in their ranked scores.  And these kids are the low-hanging fruits for any school or board that wants to improve their ranking.

I could have made it a ten page report, to give further weight of the 12 and 15 % cap for SE and ESL respectively, that would have expanded into the area of funding SE and ESL areas. I saw a lot of Ontario numbers and data yesterday, that indicates how funding is redirected from the SE students in need of solid instruction in the 3 Rs to the special programs for ESL students learning English to another special program, acting as a school club to meet other English language learning students. In another area, concerning the 12 subgroups of special education, the removal of funding for the largest SE subgroup at 43 % , learning disabilities funding to tend to the corrective remediation in the 3Rs are removed to tend to the ESL students learning English and other disability subgroups for specialized programs. What do the LD students received? Watered down corrective remediation that will not correct the reading problems geared to the ESL students, but will learned some grammar and spelling rules based on the ESL learning English programs.

My estimated numbers for the SE K to 12 student population in Ontario. Keep in mind, the Ontario K to 12 education establishment and the EQAO do not published the breakdown of the 12 subgroups, and I extrapolated the numbers by searching the government files in the areas of legal and SE documents.

“For all of Ontario,in total there is approximately 365,617 SE students.  There is 157,215 LD students or 43 %, there is 43,874 Autism students or 12 % and there is 164,527 students in the remaining 10 subgroups of disabilities that would include the blind and the deaf that would have similar accommodations to the LD subgroup.

Tom, the LD and Autism groups are in the greatest need for intensive, systematic, one-on-one program of phonics and reading instruction or small group instruction. The percentage is now at the 55 % mark, and only two of the 12 SE subgroups are covered, and according to the American data, the SE subgroups - approximately 80 to 85 % requires correction in the 3 Rs in all three or in some aspects of the 3 Rs. One must appreciate the SE subgroups, are diverse in their learning needs, their strengths and weaknesses.

I also have the numbers for Toronto and the York school districts for SE. For Toronto -  46,620 SE students and for York District - 21,651 SE students. The percentage has been determined by the 2001 number of 14 % of the Ontario K to 12 SE student population.going up 4 percentage points to 18 % for 2013. It is to reflect the increase of students being identified formally, and legally are entitled to accommodations under the disability legal framework based on the improved changes made since 2001.

The reasons for the caps to participate fully on the EQAO testing, for the SE and ESL groups who meet the criteria to received SE services and have the correct documentation beyond the classroom is for two reasons. The SE student population represents the wild cards that for obvious reasons the school district and schools cannot reasonably predict the number of SE students, in what subgroups as accurately as the school boards can predict the ESL numbers. Hence the 15 % cap for ESL students is higher to reflect the ability of the school board to bring a greater number of ESL student up to snuff to take the EQAO testing, compared to the 12 % cap for SE students.

However, the 12 % and 15 % caps are not onerous for any Ontario school board to meet, and the individual schools because EQAO testing occurs only for the grades 3, 6 and 9. Hence in the biggest school board, Toronto and the GTA school boards are on average at the 12 and 15 % mark due to the higher numbers of SE and ESL students.  In the Sun article, “Cary-Meagher said TDSB is heavily weighted in special education students and deems the Fraser report too narrow a scope in its rankings.”

After checking the Northern School board in question, suffice to since it has zero ESL students, the focus of the board are the SE students. On average since 2009, the percentage of secondary SE student in and around the 19 % mark. The bright spot, are the EQAO grade 9 academic math results - steadily increasing for the pass 5 years.

You sure can compare a Northern School board to the Toronto school board, since the EQAO is standardized. The results are valid to compare schools or school districts. Cary-Meagher should perhaps study the results dealing with the SE population of both districts, unless he thinks that the Northern School board is of inferior quality compared to the well funded and resource rich Toronto school board. At least the Northern school board has very small classes compared to its counterparts in Toronto.

Nancy - those are scary numbers.  It sounds like an out-of-control system, cascading to a collapse.

Proper reading instruction for LD kids is the low-hanging fruit for improving EQAO scores.  Given the costs of the legal disability framework, getting these kids fixed and out of LD classrooms at an early age is also the low-hanging fruit for reducing expenses without cutting services.

It’s also a far better situation for the child, a consideration that we don’t seem to value.

That’s the school model in Finland - if a child is behind then teachers jump to catch him up, because they don’t stream students, and cannot afford to have a lagging child in the next grade. 

Mississippi seems to have figured out the benefits of identifying and fixing problems early:  http://djournal.com/news/new-law-draws-focus-to-dyslexia-programs/

In my travels of looking for numbers, I ran across in the legal files starting in the year 2001 - of undue financial hardship in looking after the diverse needs of the SE population. It is absolutely fascinating that in 2014, in the light of the 2012 Supreme Court Moore ruling, instead of providing effective programs to improve SE students academic achievement and bring them up to grade level, they tossed a laptop in lieu of academic remediation.

Crazy eh?  The public education K to 12 education system do not want to prevent or remediate in the areas of the 3 Rs. The top K to 12 education wonks are insisting it cost too much. The sad reality is that the public education establishment are acting like their counterparts in the late 19th century, the SE students are not worth the time and effort to merit the expense.

Or as my dyslexic 18 year old would say, the K to 12 education establishment think we are too dumb for school. My 18 year old has heard some horror stories by other students with a disability, sharing their stories that help put my child’s story in the proper context. Only 30 % of the first year university LD students actually pass the first year. So far she is passing by a good margin but she found she needs to study 3 to 4 hours, plus her homework and going to school full time. In the second semester, she left her new found friends who have LD and must repeat the semester. She felt so bad in the new year, where she met the next set of LD students congratulating her for passing the first time around. If only the LD students received the help way back in the primary grades, to correct and bring them up to grade level in the 3 Rs. The knowledge part is easy if one has a good set of set of skills in the 3 Rs, and learning new knowledge becomes a fun task.

Mississippi better figure out something. They compete with Louisiana for last place in USA.

P4E has their two cents, and no doubt dictated by the union brass.  http://www.peopleforeducation.ca/pfe-news/school-rankings-dont-add-up/?utm_source=E-Newsletter&utm_campaign=81474cd579-News_mar_5_&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_422aeb3dbd-81474cd579-18776265

I was wondering how P4E got the numbers for gifted students, since it is not published by the education establishment, in the same way it is not published for the SE students and the breakdowns. “An examination of Ontario’s school rankings for 2014 shows that the majority of the top 20 elementary and secondary schools have two things in common: a significantly higher than average proportion of gifted students and a significantly higher than average proportion of parents with a university education.”

So I went to the Fraser report to check - the closest I could come to and it is a far reach - is number of OSSLT - OSSLT count 261 - http://ontario.compareschoolrankings.org/secondary/London_Central_Secondary_School/London/Report_Card.aspx

I also check out the schools in the top 10 - and seen no evidence that the numbers are published for the gifted students. I can only assume that P4E are using the OSSLT counts as part of their supporting evidence. Gifted like other categories such as LD are protected under the law, and as such schools and school boards don’t published the numbers. However, the upper levels of the education system, the bureaucracy does keep track of the numbers.

“Schools in the Fraser Institute’s top 20 have markedly different populations from the provincial average.

In Ontario, on average, 1% of elementary students are designated as gifted. In the Fraser Institute’s top 20 elementary schools an average of 15% of students are gifted, with some as high as 43%. In the top 20 secondary schools the average is 4%, with some as high as 10%.”  I bet a few more than the 1 %, but why quibble P4E has bigger fish to fry - “It is interesting that the Fraser Institute includes the gap between boys’ and girls’ achievement in its scoring system, while leaving out other gaps, for example the gap between special education and non-special education students, or the impact of socio-economic status on students’ achievement.”  P4E should be asking EQAO rather than the Fraser Institute since the Fraser Institute obtains their data from the EQAO results. I am sure the EQAO staff, will provide the correct answer.

But if P4E keeps pressing the issue, we could always published the number of SE students in any of the 12 subgroups are that are achieving at the top 20 or 30 %. My my would that not be a picture to behold in some SE subgroups such as LD, the largest SE subgroup that makes up 44 % of the SE population. One will find only at the very best 4 to 6 % sitting as top achievers. The majority would be found sitting at the bottom of the achievement charts and that is anywhere between 94 % to 96 % of LD students. Of course this set of numbers are not published either, but rest assure the gatekeepers of the public education establishment duly record the counts in their record books. Only to be used in the events such as the Fraser rankings that questions the public education system and their ability to educate students. By leaking certain data, whispered in the ears of the public school supporters.such as the numbers of gifted students in a school. Please tell us, how many of the gifted students have LD or autism?

P4E,we know ,PR machine for MOE

She is subtly trying to get rid of EQAO.

About Fraser Report-their excel sheet formula is not working,I`ve never looked at it closely before.

Here`s why I don`t like,who cares about me and I agree;),the Fraser Report.

Sometimes they`re trying very hard to improve things,there are many good people in schools,they`re just misinformed,the way teachers are..they are teachers with management positions.

I`ve seen schools get a 20 percent improvement in EQAO in a year and yet,they`re on the Fraser Report list as not having achieved that.

First time I ever analyzed it.
You can`t bash people that are trying.
Also,have you ever spoken to the guy that does it?

Not a good idea:).

Take care,nice post!

Hi,about Doug`s post number 2 up there..

I recently did a public seminar,we were looking for media support.

It is so true what he says.We are indeed a socialist country against capital endeavours.

The Star said,oh we`d never do a story on that,you`re for profit.

It`s all up to you,in Canada;),Malkin.
I have to admit,I was shocked.
Wake up and smell the coffee:).

Last time I looked,Torstar was a for profit corporation.

Joanne, perhaps the other two will do the story, since education curriculum/instruction is a huge industry built for a steady stream of profits. In one area alone, literacy, reading instruction for the K to 12 and now adults. the K to 12 education establishment are the advanced troops to lay the groundwork, who are working collaboratively with the K to 12 curriculum publishers to ensure a steady stream of profits and steady work and jobs in the K to 12 education system.

However, Joanne is correct in the Canadian situation….and she is not alone. Their voices have been muffled by the K to 12 education establishment. The only reason one sees Jump Math stories in the Canadian news media is because of its non-profit nature that represents less of a threat to the K to 12 education establishment compared to other profit companies whose owners do not hold an education degree. The best place to see it in action, is the area of e-learning and educational software. One will find the CEOs and management all have close connections to the education establishment.

I stumbled upon it in 2005, while I was trying to obtained a copy of a math software program, I went into the world of software, licenses and companies only selling their wares directly to the K to 12 system, but not to the general pubic. It is why Jump Math has not taken off, because the non-profit offers their wares to the parents. It be another 10 years for Jump Math, while Marian Small has become the first choice for supplementary math material of the fuzzy math that don’t make sense. Marian Small, after her first career as a dean of an education faculty,  is now making a healthy income and ensuring lots of jobs for other teachers to remediate and upgrading math skills/knowledge for young adults.
http://www.nelsonschoolcentral.com/cgi-bin/lansaweb?webapp=WAUTHOR+webrtn=author+F(LW3AUTNAM)=mariansmall

As a parent, Small represents the worse because she is ensuring that the bottom 50 % stay at the bottom 50 %, while Mighton (Jump Math) or Joanne represents the best lifting the bottom 50 % to the top 50 %.

Joanne writes - “It is so true what he says.We are indeed a socialist country against capital endeavours.” 
If so, its a strange socialism, a mutant kind that wears the mask of a socialist while in behind the scenes the capital endeavours are in full swing at the expense of the children and their education.  .

Thanks Nancy,for sure.

Look at the damage the Fullan gang has caused in this country of which Ben Levin and CEA were in full collaboration.

The OISE gang as advisors to MOE completely ignore the findings of the NICHD reading study.

It is what it is.