Thanks Doretta,

This article actually backs up what we have been saying about the PISA results for some time.  A while back, a certain contributor kept referring to Finland’s success and thought that we should be paying teachers $125,000/year and that would get us up to their level of success.  Several of us pointed out that there were most likely other factors involved - especially Finland’s population.  If Canada is 85% white, Finland is much higher than that:

Ethnic groups (from Wiki)

Finnish 93,4 %
Finland-Swedes 5,6 %
Russians 0,5 %
Estonians 0,3 %
Roma 0,1 %
Sami 0.1 %

In fact, Finland is about the closest to homogeneous that any country on earth will be.  Not just in terms of ethnic background, but religion as well - 79% of Finns belong to the Lutheran Church.  Therefore, if we use the thesis posited in this article, Finland’s success may well be more a result of its population, rather than its amazing education system.

Point taken Wayne.  I think Reynolds was trying to say that Canada shouldn’t be so smug.  We are probably much closer to the U.S. than we think, which still isn’t so great overall. 

Stay tuned for information about our upcoming symposium on school accountability and the Canadian premiere of The Cartel April 26th.
Many of these issues will be discussed.

I would hazard a guess that most followers of education know when they’re being sold a bill of goods.

The trouble with most media is that those people are not their target.

It’s those same people who are convinced that all is well with the public education system because there are no teacher strikes and all is lovely between the unions and the government of the day (provincially that is).

I read this article this morning and had always wondered why the U.S. was so much more open about the clusters that struggle in their country ;we have our own gap in achievement,namely First Nations-our very own soft bigotry of low expectations.Over and above this segment we have all those kids left behind that are instructionally disabled.

Sorry to offend but it`s true.
TDSB puts a positive spin on EQAO scores when they achieve 50% success in Reading in Grade 3 and the papers print it-why don`t they get the same scrutiny for that as the ‘poor school” at DSBN.

I have a friend on the inside who says ‘Jo-Anne,it is worse than that,they aren`t even counting special ed kids who don`t have to write.With all the research saying if you don`t learn by Grade 3 you have a 75% chance of not learning,why is the reading score so high by Grade 6?

I will never understand that one-makes no sense!

I often wonder why some provinces do not include the SE population in achievement results. It would seem to be of interest, if the reading and other curriculum also benefits the SE children as well. If anything, they are the ones with the reading, writing and numeracy problems. Improvement in this group, would certainly tell if the school board and ministries are on the right track. I think of them as the canaries in the school.

Nancy,

I guess the answer to your question lies in finding out what bureaucrats want to use these statistics for.  Undeniably, if we were to use such information as a diagnostic tool to see where the system is lacking, then it would make sense to track all students.  However, people seem to simply want to crow about how well we are doing.

We are not alone in this fudging of the results.  George Bush did the same in Texas with his ‘No Child Left Behind’ policy.  I have referred to a 60 Minutes story before, and I have finally been able to dig it up.  Here is an interesting quote:

“Houston also won national acclaim for raising the average scores on a statewide achievement test that was given to 10th graders. Principals were judged on how well their students did on the test.

But at Houston schools, Kimball says, principals taught addition by subtraction: They raised average test scores by keeping low-performing kids from taking the test. And in some cases, that meant keeping kids from getting to the 10th grade at all.”

Here is the link to the full article: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/06/60II/main591676.shtml.

Certainly, Houston was an extreme example.  Their problems were caused by making principals jobs dependent upon improving the statistics.  If you read the article, you would see that one school reported a zero dropout rate, even though over 400 students left the school that year - but the principal’s job was dependent upon lowering the dropout rate.

Although we have not gone that far here, you have noted that there are several groups involved in education that have a vested interest in reporting the best numbers possible.

Cooking the numbers. In my province, the LD children with a criteria number behind their name, do not have to take the CRT in grade 3 and 6. Children without a criteria number, but still identified as having LD have to take the test, without the accommodations and are treated as regular students. A criteria means that their LD is more severe than the ones without the criteria number. During those years the criteria LD children are not counted at all. Which leaves children like mine taking a test that most will do well on reading, but all will do horrible in the written portion. In grade 9, the criteria LD students take the CRT with accommodations. The other LD children without a criteria number do not have accommodations, or even the luxury of taking the CRT in an alternative setting. This is where the number of children falling below a 3 or more decreases to a very low amount. What is even more telling, who is falling below the 3. It is the LD kids who did not received the accommodations for the CRT, but are sitting in the regular classroom with accommodations.

First exclude, than have all counted making sure the ones with criteria are provided with accommodations to ensure that all will pass, but leave the other group of LD children sitting in the regular classroom being treated as part of the regular population. It is rather bizarre to see a student that is less capable than my child do well in the CRT, especially in the written portion and than turn around only to hear how well all students are doing by the educrats. Bragging about boosting achievement between grade 6 to grade 9…....and you know the rest of the tale.

“...and you know the rest of the tale.” - sadly, all too well, Nancy.

Reading your post reminded me of a conversation during a staff meeting many years ago.  We were discussing making the students more responsible.  A science teacher was discussing how the students had failed to do the homework required to do well on a unit test - and how nearly all of them failed the test.  Our VP at the time (who later became the wonderful director I have told you about) asked the teacher if he knew before the test that the students hadn’t done the work.  I’ll never forget her answer when he replied yes, “Why would you give students a test you knew they were going to fail?”

Interesting that we don’t apply the same rules to standardized testing.  From what I understand from your post (and correct me if I misread it) - students who have been identified as requiring certain supports are allowed to have those supports - except when they need it the most, like on a high-stakes standardized test.  Kind of sounds like a bank - they keep pushing credit cards and loans on people - except when the customer really needs the money (ever tried getting a credit limit extended?).

Yes, take away the support when it is needed the most. It is hard to take a test, without knowing what areas will be tested, that might be significantly different than the course material at school. Throw in the language of the CRT, with a child who has difficulty in decoding, they will usually get the wrong answer. One year I took it upon myself to search for the people who are responsible for the content of the CRT. It certainly took months to find them, but no one ever picked up the phone or returned my phone calls. Than I went after the people who are in charge of the stats, same results. Finally, I decided to write down my concerns, include copies of tests and report cards of my child throughout the years to the head of the union, board and the ministry. Now there I finally got some reaction, but not from the board. The board was peeved at me for doing so, and they really did not like the union head and the top level of the ministry nosing in their business. It took another month for the board to respond, by coming out in full force at the IEP meetings to defend their position. By the end of grade 7, accommodations was finally approve, and I signed the papers. The following year, the school was aware of her status, but did not have the paper work at the school. Of course, it made teachers’ lives difficult to help my child, when her file was sitting at board level. My next move was to make the teachers aware of her report cards, her assessments, and tests over the years, and to show what she really needed was the correct instruction in reading, and how it impacted her writing. So accommodations were given in a hit and miss fashion, because the last papers I signed for accommodations were at the end of grade 7.  Finally, in the early part of January of this year I received a phone call for an IEP meeting. Of course, I said yes and this was a first, a school phoning up for a meeting. While being in this limbo, I was quite please with the teachers and how they were working to improve core basics in language and math, that complement what I was doing at home. Steady improvement in writing and her reading was starting to improve in little ways, where fluency was the major improvement. Last week I had a meeting with just the teachers, where the IEP and accommodation list was already filled out. As they read it to me, I knew that a lot of careful consideration and thought towards my child’s learning needs by the teachers as a group. And the VP was very surprised that I was eager to signed the papers, and the first set that actually met her needs without dumbing it down. So, the moral to this tale work with the teachers, because 9 times out of 10, if there is board staff present at the IEP meeting they are working against the best interests of the student.  So my child is sailing through her mid-terms being in an alternative setting minus the noise factor in a gym. Besides the usually stress associated with important tests, she is stress free, and is focus on her studies and the writing of her mid-terms.

The IEP accommodations will be enforce until my child finishes high school, and I no longer have to deal with IEP meetings until the last year, for my child’s last assessment that would be required for university. What I want to make clear, there is a sub-group of LD students sitting in regular classrooms, who rarely do not received the core reading and writing instruction they need, because they are not seen as being in need of this kind of specialized instruction, nor in accommodations at the board level. But the individual teachers do see the need, but their hands are tied because they are passing, and the system really does not have the flexibility to tend to the needs of LD students who are not severe in learning problems. This is why the board staff was not there at the IEP meeting, they probably would not have approved of the IEP because my child is sitting in the academic stream, and not the applied or basic streams.