Ontario has more political agitators per capita than any place except Brussels.  And its biggest newspaper is all over education like white on rice, with progressive writ large.  I.e. extension of preschool services and whatnot.  Anything except time on task, that sort of thing.

I was working for OSSTF at the time and my job was working with the polling firm. We asked our firm to test JT’s plan and only 15% wanted it. This was not a push poll because it was not for publiction. We shared it with the Libs and NDP and it confirmed what they also polled. Everyone just looked at each other s if ” why is he doing this when zero liberals and NDP and less than half of PC voters support it` Anyway McGuinty went on to beat JT over the head with it and it cost him the election. It is just not popular east of Manitoba. 

When we asked people in polling the reasons ranged from ``it is divisive`it is too expensive` are you kidding giving my money to certain religions I have a very low tolerance for``

there is the expense- one reason why N L dropped their system (they had 4 systems)

also the public good in that public schools is where students learn about the messy thing called democracy and its cousin- pluralism

interesting there is some US data from the census about the harmful effects of their system on people’s choices for friendships
the areas where people are MORE likely to have friends from other races, cultures, etc. are in areas with large military bases, likely because you learn teamwork to trust your comrades in combat

so
‘there is empirical data which took a decade to collect and a public good- values component-

surely we have learned enough about the challenges to getting along in this smaller globalized world
not to reinforce bad ideas

Expense is a red herring.  Ontario has amalgamated school boards and education spending is as high as ever.  Bureacracy seems to have this rule of thumb to maintain the spending levels regardless.

Expensive is NOT a red herring.
It is the least important of my points.

Bureaucracies exist everywhere.
They can be more efficient.

Choices For All With Fair Funding

Here is yet another essay trumpeting some exciting new approach for 21st Century students. “The Education Reform Paradox and the Extinction of Higher Level Thinking Skills”. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-zini/the-education-reform-para_b_1161527.html

The disturbing content is firstly, very anti-testing, and secondly, promoting some constructivist method which would lead to critical thinking.  Disturbing because our BC Ed Plan seems to favor constructivism, which is a disaster waiting to happen.  It is an invention of progressive university-types and itinerant gurus who do not believe in basic skills or “food for thought” as essential foundations.

What is needed is fully-funded vouchers that follow the child to the school of choice.  Choices would include wide ranges of approaches — from home education to private schools, to religious–based. Plus specialty academies to special needs schools, and Oh Yes, constructivist progressive government schools run by teacher unions!

Plus, of course, the opportunity to start new schools where needed and supported.

They can be more efficient and they should be, but more often they are not.  They usually act like The Blob.

http://mises.org/Books/bureaucracy.pdf
“The inefficient expert will
always aim at bureaucratic supremacy.”

“Are Ontarians more xenophobic than other Canadians?”

Big bureaucracies, that allows the formation of the few, calling the shots in policies, the direction as well as the ideology/dogma, Whatever Ontario is doing, it is sure to be followed by the other provinces in some form, and in variations of the same hues and colours, maintaining the rigid dogma.

The public education systems across Canada, may vary in different intensities, but what is share is the same dogma and ideology that shapes the values of citizens in their respective provinces. Ontario leads the pack when it comes to shaping their citizens values and culture, along with the growing army of bureaucrats needed to shape the values and culture that reflects the current dogma and ideology of the Ontario public education system.

So Doug is correct to state, that Ontarians do not want funding to go to non-Catholic religious schools. But is he correct to state, that this remains true today in Ontario?  Saskatchewan, is on their way to fund non-Catholic religious schools, and dropping the dogma only publicly state run schools are the best for students. In Ontario, Ontarians hear the message over and over again from the over grown beast called bureaucracy, and is it no wonder why Ontarians reacted the way they did, saying no. Ontarians have been well-schooled to think in terms of public schooling is the best and only type of school to be funded by tax dollars.

A line in the article, “But while Alberta’s copious funding model stems from a conservative bent against government intervention, Saskatchewan’s seems to stem from embracing multicultural diversity.”

Ontario embraces multicultural diversity, but not the kind that embraces respect for the values and cultural norms held by the individuals, and as groups. The kind of multicultural diversity that only the few in the Ontario public education bureaucracy, who are calling the shots, who is opting for assimilation, rather than respecting and embracing the diversity of their citizens.

Most Ontarians believe as I do that the state should not fund religion. It is a private activity. Polls show most BC voters want their program cancelled and school boards are demanding the end of private funding if publio is cut. Quebec and NL eliminated funding. Sask shoved it down peoples throats with no consultation. A vote would never approve it.

Need I remind you Doug, Ontario throughout its history had a hard time in accepting Catholics, their values, and of course the idea of funding Catholic schools was just not on, until the federal Constitution Act of 1867, and in many Protestant quarters, the idea of sitting beside a Catholic, may indeed be harmful to the Protestants souls. As the stories that were told to me, being Catholic it was best to live in Catholic communities, rather than to live among the Protestants and put up with the daily discrimination. But Ontario was the hard guy among the provinces, compared to the other provinces. Below a government link on the history of the separate school, that shows clearly the different ways each province went, and often on political lines, to satisfied the powers to be.

“The extraordinary growth in the past 3 decades of enrolments in separate and nonpublic denominational schools and the increased political power of denominational groups attest to the importance parents attach to schooling as a means of preserving religio-cultural values and improving economic position. Other groupings of parents with language, ethnocultural or educational interests who are not currently served in public or grant-aided private schools are likely to emerge and demand support in a version of Canadian educational pluralism unmatched since the prepublic-school era of the mid-19th century. By the mid-1990s, denominationalism had gained an educational prominence few would have predicted 30 years ago. “
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0007290

Interesting, that Ontario may indeed be the last hold out, in funding other non-Catholic religious schools. I just don’t think the allowing of Muslim services during the school day is going to cut it, at the expense of the non-Muslim students. Or the other small allowances being made under religion, ethnic and cultural considerations at the expense of the Christian, ethnic and cultural values. Merry Christmas Doug. Oops, sorry - Happy Holidays.

Some in the reform movement believe public funding is an “individual” right. They need legal advise. Individual rights to public funding is NOT in the constitution, would not pass at the Supremes and is therefore a political right, not a basic right. If the majority says you can’t have it then you can’t have it.

Nancy, we are to some extent “stuck” with a catholic system that would never pass a referendum. Our polling says 70% would vote against catholic funding in a straight up or down vote. This includes 20% of catholics. None of the 3 parties will take this on because of the wrenching bloodbath that would follow.

I expect that the increasing secularization of the catholic system with “Rainbow” clubs etc will lead to day that people recognize there is little difference between systems. Immigration is mainly non-catholic, catholics are having smaller families, their % of Ontario is shrinking, and they are secularizing. I fully expect the catholic system to die with a whimper not a bang which is fine with me.

The first generation immigrant is panicky to preserve their right to indoctrinate their children with one religious view instead of allowing them free choice. This weakens with each generation, intermarriage and so on. The big story in religion is the number of empty churches across the nation.

The catholic church has not exactly endeared itself to the flock in recent years. You can fill in the blanks.

Parents As Enemies Of Parent Choice

As we’ve mentioned before, sometimes it’s so-called parent groups or articulate parents who are our biggest challenge in reform!

On the Sask story our newspaper blog mentioned this news.  I wrote the following:

“Choices For All With Fair Funding

Here is yet another essay trumpeting some exciting new approach for 21st Century students. “The Education Reform Paradox and the Extinction of Higher Level Thinking Skills”. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-zini/the-education-reform-para_b_1161527.html

The disturbing content is firstly, very anti-testing, and secondly, promoting some constructivist method which would lead to critical thinking. Disturbing because the BC Ed Plan seems to favor constructivism, which is a disaster waiting to happen. It is an invention of progressive university-types and itinerant gurus who do not believe in basic skills or “food for thought” as essential foundations.

What is needed is fully-funded vouchers that follow the child to the school of choice.”

A very articulate parent who really knows the ropes had this to say about vouchers:

“John Puddifoot   12/28/2011
The problem I see with vouchers is that most parents are ill equiped to make an informed decision as to what constitutes a good school.

The problem is threefold. Firstly it is very difficult to compare schools as accurate information that allows this comparison is difficult to find. (The FI rankings are certainly not accurate.)

Secondly, parents are often pressed for time and are unable to devote the extensive time it would take to do a proper analysis.

Thirdly, most parents do not have the training to do the analysis.

If we go to vouchers, parents must have the ability to find reliable information quickly and have the skills to properly evaluate it to make a fully informed choice.

We aren’t there yet.”

My quick reply so far was:

“To John Puddifoot:

Thanks for opening a “can of worms” John, you Machiavelli! Divide and Conquer! Don’t trust parents to make their own decisions, do you? What is your style of child-raising, then? Self supporting kids or always dependent on Big Daddy?

Will get back on this topic. Some of us reformers have always bemoaned the fact that often the biggest obstacles to education reform are not “the system people who naturally want to keep captives to feather their own nest” but parents who willfully or unknowingly cast parents into “good” and “bad” parents.

We will never get life-long-learners with that attitude, John P.!”

Doug, your thinking is a bit passé, and a lot of water has gone under the bridge. What remains, are the values and morals to live by, and not the trappings of a religion. One does not have to be a practicing member of any faith, to have values and morals that reflects the faith of the previous generations in a family. In today’s world, and in countries like Canada, there is a growing backlash in values held by secular policies in the public education system, that are not in keeping with the values and morals of people, who no longer regularly attend church, but still are very much attach to the values and morals. The values and morals are passed down to their children. The simple wisdom of the various faiths, are the foundation to live by, to get along with people, and as some Catholics might say, hedge your bets if there is a heaven and hell.

Don’t bet on it Doug. The Catholic separate system will still be in Ontario for the next 100 years, along with new faiths that will be publicly funded. Oh yes, I can see the Muslim school, the Jewish school and the Seven Day Adventist school in places like Toronto. because of the values and morals that is passed down from one generation to the next. It is the public education system that is going to change, if they want to survived in the 21st century.

One reason vouchers and charters and choice are not popular in Ontario is the general satifaction parents have with the system. In fact, parents are more satisfied than the public at large. Check page 6 of this study. When asked about satisfaction with the school of their oldest child, parents were very satisfied. This creates a very uphill struggle for Corporate Reformers.
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/retrieve/1724/report2000.pdf

The catholic theologan Gregory Baum addressed a meeting I attended. He was asked to outline the reasons for the rise of fundamentalism among Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus among others.

He described it as the death struggle of a dying beast losing control of the world to the forces of modernism, secularism, urbanism, and corporatism. The real story he pointed out is the number of churches for sale across Canada since they are empty.

The best description is in Jihad vs McWorld by Ben Barber. There is an updated version.

The sad part for the religious is the idea that without religion there would be no values.

As a history teacher, when one looks at the history of religion one sees the persecution of women, the Witch craze, the Holocaust, the Crusades, the Inquisition, The Boers, colonialism, wars of succession, Galileo, anti-Darwinism, residential schools, the problems of priests, anti-abortion bombings and assassinations,  and an endless series of brutal massacres.

Naturally this is what is taught in public schools. History is history. One can see why some might want religious education but eventually one must confront history.

The only good thing about the Corporate Reform movement is that it is doomed to fail because it is not based on evidence but on ideology and profit seeking.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6939/obama_sides_with_corporate_attack_on_teachers_instead_of_new_war_on_po/

Funny thing Doug, at the top of the 2000 report, are the key findings.

One of them is: “General satisfaction with schools are now at a low point although there is more
satisfaction with teachers’ performance.”

I bet 12 years later, general satisfaction is still at a all time low point. However Doug, don’t take this one to the bank, since the number of participants was just a little over 1000 people. Ontario is a big province, with lots of contrasts and inequities increasing since the year 2000,

And Doug, isn’t the ideology and dogma within the entire education system a wonder to see in action. The dogma concerning kids with reading struggles, and the beliefs insisting it is behaviour, it is attention span, it is poor parenting ability, or the kid is labeled developmentally slow, and sentence to 12 years of low achievement. Or the kid, who is not engage in the classroom, and all the wonderful excuses that arises from the dogma, ideology and misconceptions. But the kid is never asked why by the school or the teacher, and if they did, they might discovered, the student wants his own book, but the school board screw up again, and only delivery half of the books needed. Real treat Doug, going through the literature of the public education system, sorting out the bits and pieces of science and the ideology. Only to discovered policy formation is based on the ideology, to where the science is fitted in the ideology and dogma.

As for profit making, school boards, schools, union headquarters, as well as the ministry, are all into making profit off the back of the students they serve.

So if public education is based on evidence, than why is math achievement so low, and the waiting lists for private tutors have a growing waiting list, for remediation in math? 

Big difference between empty churches and the values held by individuals. I read a essay on the values of people who were raise in homes with religious convictions, but as adults no longer practicing their faith with any kind of vigour. The values remain, as guides for their adult lives, and may indeed keep them out of trouble with the law, and having easy relationships with their families, neighbours and work. The values are passed down from one generation to the next, and unlike an empty church that can be sold, the values are not up for sale. If they could be sold, the consumer market would have figure it out to sell them as having value. If the public education and its educrats had that magic elixir, to transform students and parents values that are more in keeping with the dogma, ideology and the newest fads of the education system, the public education system would have no more problems dealing with parents who do not like what is going on. But personal values held by people, are resilient, hard to change, and even history will show it, that values held do not change, but the reaction of the individual changes,depending on what is being asked of the individual.

The values being held by the individual, becomes part of the decision process, and where public education systems, do not account for the personal values of the students and parents, as they do in independent or private schools. As a result, in public education, decisions are being made for students, based on the subjective assumptions of the educrats, assuming a single white mom follows the typical pathway in education levels, background and all sorts of subjective layers imposed by the decision maker in the school. Or what happened to me in the early days with one educrat, his decision was based on purely subjective and judgmental observations, without ever asking the questions that would have lead his decision making in another direction. If he asked, he would have found out that I am well versed on literature and very fond of the classical literature, as well as high ability in math, And I might add, at that time I had well over 2000 books in the home, including children books. What he did dismissed me, determined that I was a parent who did not read to her child, nor was I qualified to speak on matters on reading and math.

How many parents get dismissed in the public schools today Doug?  How many get dismissed, because they do not meet the perceived subjective standards of the school? One thing about religious schools, the values that parents hold are discussed first, and are used as a way to engage parents into changing practices at the home front that are more in keeping with the school practices. A flow emerges, which is so unlike the public education experience, where there is the constant tug and war cause by the school, for not acknowledging the personal values held by the students and their parents.
Doug, public schools would have far less problems, if they took the time to see people and the students through the personal values, rather than the SEC numbers, that is devoid of values, and filled with assumptions made by the educrat.

,

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/education/local_schools/article_4f083f0e-59a7-11e0-8d74-001cc4c03286.html

http://newswire.uark.edu/Article.aspx?ID=15183

http://www.uaedreform.org/SCDP/Milwaukee_Eval/Report_28.pdf

The Milwaukee MSCP is a study of the famous longest and largest voucher program in the USA. Conclusion? No academic gains, waste of time.

Here are the major findings of this study.

The MPCP (Milwaukee Parental Choice Program) remains popular among Milwaukee families, as evidenced by consistent and at times dramatic
growth in MPCP enrollments over the past 12 years.
•  The Choice program saves the government money—nearly $52 million in fiscal year 2011—although not all types of Wisconsin taxpayers bene t from the savings.
• Both the MPCP and the MPS (Milwaukee Public Schools) have succeeded in denying public funds to, or closing, a substantial number of low-performing schools over the past four years.
• Attending a private high school through the MPCP increases the likelihood of a student graduating from high school and enrolling in college.
• Students in the MPCP appear to be performing at lower levels than MPS students in the younger grades but somewhat higher levels than MPS students in the older grades. When similar MPCP and MPS students are tracked carefully over time, however, their rates of achievement growth are statistically similar after three years.
• MPS students themselves are performing at somewhat higher levels as a result of competitive
pressure from the school voucher program.
•  The MPCP has had no discernible effect on the racial segregation of schools or housing costs across neighborhoods.
• Independent public charter schools are generating significantly higher rates of achievement growth
for their students compared to similar students in MPS.

“No academic gains, waste of time” 

Nonsense.  In addition to what Malkin summarized above, the study (still ongoing) also concluded that a rising tide raises all boats.  The competitive influence of choice actually improved the regular public schools.

Goodness knows how bad things would have been for all Milwaukee children without vouchers and charter schools.

http://www.uark.edu/ua/der/SCDP/Milwaukee_Eval/Report_28.pdf

The general conclusion south of the border is that the study means no justification for vouchers as no sugificant academic benifits were present, sometime a little behind, sometimes a little ahead.

The study did so much damage to the voucher myth that voucher advocates have quit claiming academic gains and started stressing cultural benefits “ie religious”.

Naturally when you move some poor kids to private schools they pick up on the “going somwhere” attitude but ask the elite private schools if they favour free tuition and government support an they recoil in horror at being swamped by poor kids.

Wisconsin standardized testing also showed no advantage voucher vs public for same SES.

All I know is that the voucher crowd, who paid for the study was devistated by the academic results followed by the Wisconsin testing results.

Diane Ravitch uses the study at every speaking stop.

U of A says vouchers no gain.

Stanford says charters no gains.

http://otlcampaignblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/voucher-programs-fail-to-deliver.html

http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/6/43/48482894.pdf

Doug, the PISA link is simply stating that parents will work towards the best interests of their children in providing education advantage.

“The bottom line: Private schools – and public schools with student populations from socio-economically advantaged backgrounds – benefit the individual students who attend them; but there is no evidence to suggest that private schools help to raise the level of performance of the school system, as a whole.”

As will students from disadvantage backgrounds, who seek options other than the public education system. An article from the New York Times, reflecting private schools in the low-rent districts of India and the empty classrooms of India’s public education system.

“Many of India’s Poor Turn to Private Schools”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/31/world/asia/for-indias-poor-private-schools-help-fill-a-growing-demand.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=education in India&st=cse

So it is not only the socially-economic advantage backgrounds Doug, but the socially-economic disadvantage students and their parents that will seek out education advantages to their children.

India?