I leave John to defend himself, but I had a good chuckle, the education systems of the Asian countries, there is not much of a chance for a migrant worker’s family, to reach for the dream of being an engineer, or higher aspirations. Some will sacrifice, and most of their income will go toward private tutoring for their kids. However, most of the kids in the lower income groups, are out working by the age of 16. In Asian countries, senior high and post secondary education, is mainly for the growing middle-class and of course the 20 % of the population who are considered the elite in the Asian societies.  As for the Nordic countries, it is starting to crack, and what is being seen in Greece, will be seen in Nordic countries. Just a matter of time, and Doug, quite a few ordinary working people have lost their pensions, or it has been drastically reduced, due to the economic crisis, and no laws protecting pensions, from money grabbing CEOs. Just think of Nortel…........
News flash, cut backs are taking place on social items such as special education services, literacy programs, lunch preparation, narrowing of the criteria to qualified for unemployment insurance, welfare benefits, or for that matter federal tax credits. The paving over green spaces, or removing the playground equipment, to save on maintenance. Affordable housing has been sadly neglected for years, at all levels of government. You don’t have to be a socialist, to note cutbacks. God, the 1960s sure looks good, compared to the present. At least back than, schools were producing good readers, writers and they even had a firm foundation in arithmetic. Now, we have a bunch of specialists coming out of the high schools, with one student knowing a whole lot of one subject, but not so much in other subjects. A while back I was at the store, looking for my discount, that I did not received because the store’s system were down. The clerk had to do it manually and than key it in the system. I was nice as pie, knowing her calculations were wrong, and she was going to refund me only $3.41, when it should have been $11.41. I taught her a math lesson, without her feeling dumb, and she said I was never shown how to do it. She also told me, now she will be able to estimate discounts in her head, before she proceeds with the calculations. We talk more about the lousy math instruction, and it is her words not mine. The clerk was only out of high school for one year, working as the assistant manager for the store.
It goes to show you, how well the public education system, prepares the student. Don’t you think, being well versed on arithmetic procedures, is in the best interest of all students and customers?

Not much to defend against, Nancy!

  Being lectured by Doug is rather akin to be gored by Bambi; it might happen but you wouldn’t really notice.

His schtick is to bombard us with the same worn out old claptrap that investing in “education”, he never actually articulates much beyond an all-encompassing and hazy defintion, even if done at the expense of all sorts of other “progressive” ideas
is key.

Rolling the same old twaddle and hoping for a different result isn’t the sign of a serious intellect.

Ya John because your ideas are so deeeeep.

Reminder to all commenters:
Before this starts to degrade to school yard, “nyah, nyah, nyah”, lets keep the debate civil please.  If there is nothing left to debate, move on.

Everyone’s opinion is welcome.

People will view your post as anti-teacher raises and therefore anti-teacher.

It is not a zero sum game as many here like to characterize it as being.

We need higher teacher salaries
AND
smaller classes
AND
more beautiful buildings well equipped in every way
AND
better teacher training and in service training
AND
More support staff
AND
free first year tuition post secondary
AND
An ever expanding ECE program earlier in life
AND
More parent involvement
AND
more high tech schools

These are not trade offs. If Canada wants to have the very best education system in the world in order to create the most productive high standard of living, equitible, happy society we must do ALL of these things rapidly. Our competitors are doing this because they are well aware that the only real competitive advantage a society has is its brain power fully developed. Get with it people.

Nonsense Doug, I never stated anti-teacher, but what I did state, is that teachers receive raises, and the overall budget for resources directed at the students are either reduce, or disappear.
Doug, you always neglect one important factor in your list, actually two, research-based curriculum and increase resources that are directed at the students. These are the two items that are often neglected or ignored, for the beautiful building, well-paid staff, in favour of asking parents to pick up the slack when it comes to curriculum and resources.

Nancy,

When you insinuate that teachers wages are a problem, teachers stop listening and place you in the enemy camp. Some of you will find this one difficult I’m sure but teachers feel substantially underpaid compared to people with similar education, engineers, architects, pharmasists etc. They don’t even make $100 000 yet at the top of the grid.

If teachers were paid in the same way as engineers, architects, pharmacists, I would expect them to be as professional using best standard research-based practices that have proven to work and are effective, Furthermore to compare teachers withe the three professions that are mentioned, are all professions that take a greater numbers of years to become duly certified, compared to a certified teacher, where 4 years is the norm.

Funny that you mentioned the professions, for they are strong opponents of the math curriculum being taught at our schools, and their greatest complaint is the lack of a strong foundation in basic arithmetic.

If any of the teachers reaches the pay scale of $100,000, I would fully expect each and every student to become accomplished readers,writers and skilled in numeracy. In our society, we fully expect our engineers, architects and pharmacists to be as professional as possible,  because they often do hold our lives in their hands. Much like teachers who hold the education cards for our children.
And Doug if you have done your research, most parents object to the obscene salaries and bonuses being paid out in the upper levels of the education system, and where most senior staff have not seen the inside of a classroom for a very long time.  Yet their policies impact all that are below them. Lets not forget the education consultants, and outside experts to teach the latest curriculum, that often are connected to the publishers of education products, or in some cases, work for them.

But still overall, education budgets for teachers salaries have now reach the share of 53 % of an education budget, according to StatsCanada, 2005. I am sure, that share has increase since than, and probably is well above the 55% mark.

There are very few sectors of society, groups or individuals who wouldn’t happily settle for more of everything.  Sadly, the reality is that the resources must be allocated to fund things identified as highest priority. 

A more useful analysis would compare just how much of our national resources we’re already spending on education.  Claiming that our “competitors” are ramping up spending quickly doesn’t mean much if we don’t have any info on how spending relates in the first place.  It may well be that they’re simply ramping up spending to levels we’ve already achieved years ago.

I suspect we’d never be able to spend enough on education, or anything else,  if the goal we’re trying to reach is “more of everyhting, all the time”.

Then there’s the issue of how well the money already allocated is being used…

If there is evidence that Canadian spending is substantially lower than our comparables I’d like to see the numbers.

Readers who want to know the portion of Ontario school board budgets that are devoted to salaries and benefits are invited to visit:  http://www.sunshineonschools.ca

My mistake, the salaries have take a bite from the overall revenue of the the boards, to creeping well pass the 60% mark, where Toronto is at the 73% give or take a few percentage points.
What is interesting, how expenditures increase in salaries and transportation to some degree, the student expenditures have remain the same percentage overall, but has not kept up with inflation and other cost factors. Very little of the increase in budgets have been directed at the students, and where the bulk of the increase have been directed at salaries. If this is the pattern, within the next ten years, school boards will be paying well over 75 % of their revenue to salaries, where the Toronto board will be well over the 85 % mark, if all factors are the same.
The smaller rural boards seem to be doing a better job at managing expenses, in comparison to the Toronto board, and where more money is directed at the students, comparing the ratio spent toward student expenditures and overall revenue. This could be related to cost factors, such as property taxes, where the Toronto board and other heavily built up areas, will have higher expenses, compared to their rural counterparts. It also includes higher wages found in the cities, as opposed to the rural boards.

The TDSB is in a state of perpetual “budget crisis”.

In the past the Liberals would step in and bail it out however, given the budget problem it has, that may not happen anymore.

Years of not taking steps to live within the money available are coming home to roost; witness the torturous path to actually dispose of unneeded space.  That meant diverting funds out of other parts of the school budget to carry the unused space.

1) The proportion of the boards’ budget that is teachers and support staff has always been in the same area, it is a labour intensive business.

A huge expansion of education John, is actually self financing or FREE since the productivity gains radically outstrips the cost. It is as if you brought in a high efficiency expert to look at your society and he/she said spend as much as you possibly can on education because it is the only way to rapidly upgrade your society. Education is very expensive. Ignorance is much more expensive.

At the TDSB as well as many other boards only a fool would say they have anything nearly close to enough money to provide quality education. It is simply stupid and false economics to cut education. It is like a corporation that fires its R&D operation.

Canadian society really has 2 choices

1) radical increases in educational expenditure at all levels.

2) A falling standard of living falling behind more and more nations year after year.

For #1 to happen, #2 surely will. 

Health care spending is almost half of all government spending, and as the boomers retire, that number is sure to increase.  Some estimates put that number up to 70% or more.  In order to keep education spending at its current level or to increase it, taxes surely will have to increase significantly. 

Again, considering that most boomers, the bulk of the current wage earners, are retiring and school enrollments are dropping, I cannot see how such spending can be sustained.  Something has got to give.

Doug, self financing or free???  If that was true, federal and provincial government, are discovering another money pit, in the adult schools, and retraining schools, where the majority of adults are taking remedial courses in reading, writing, and numeracy, before they can even begin to take retraining.

In the political circles, they are questioning the increasing amount of monies, being funded, and are questioning why. Some, if not all are coming to realization, that our public education systems as you put it, are not doing their job in the basic ABCs of education. Perhaps this is the reason of the conference that Ontario’s premier is holding with the American education secretary, Duncan.

It is not only in the adult and retraining schools, there is also remedial courses at the colleges and universities for first year students. Colleges have taken it one step further, by introducing a first year prep course, for upgrading in literacy and numeracy skills, before a student is allow to take their chosen studies. Here is where parents, who are paying the tuition, are questioning their local politicians as to why this is happening. Than you have parents like me, who have LD children are questioning why the schools do not provide effective programs for reading, writing and numeracy issues, and that is after they have paid a great deal of money to tutors, or do it yourself at home
.
Schools are very laboured intensive, but they are certainly not intensive in areas of their teaching methods, nor does the public education system keep up to date with the advances that have been made in learning and how one learns. Nor does removing resources, such as art, music, or not buying the curriculum part, that is directed at the students. Such niceties as CDs, or workbooks or manipulatives in many cases do not exist. The downgrading of the science labs, wood shops, home economic rooms, and other hands-on-experience, have now reemerged in courses that is a poor versions of the old. The use of high-tech devices, including computers is all over the place, and where it is used the most, are at the schools in the upper middle-class and high-income range. But the school down the road, will be lucky to get a smart board in each classroom.

Education has to be cost-effective, not expensive. Cost effective, where no child graduating out of high school, will ever have to take remedial courses in reading, writing, and numeracy. And in today’s world, the bulk of jobs are working jobs, where the requirement for reading, writing and numeracy skills are much lower, than the professional jobs as a surveyor, or an engineer. The bulk of the jobs, are at a high-risk of termination, disappearing forever in industries such as the fishery or forestry or even the auto industry. What governments are discovery, for retraining to occur, one needs the basic sub-skills of reading, writing and numeracy to learn new knowledge. Just ask any lay-off worker, who has gone through retraining, they will tell you a tale of remedial learning in the basics ABCs. Some will even go much further, and state I was never taught those things at school. It is not that they cannot read, write or do basic numeracy calculations, because they can do these things. But not very well, because they were not taught in the first place.

It really would be great to see the numbers to actually support the claim that we need a “massive increase” increase in education funding to stay competitive with anyone else.

As has been stated previously, unless there’s evidence beyond the anecdotal it doesn’t “prove” much of anything.

There’s been no effort made to support the claims being made with anything in the way of rigourous analysis.

Then you have the claim that a massive increase in education spending would be “free”.  A lttle background to support such assertions would be useful.

The Perry study outlined the financial gains from serious investment in ECE like the ELP. The STAR study from Tennessee shows the gains from low class size. The OECD outlines the gains that its member states can make from heavy investment in education.

John, some day you need to understand that education spending does not go on the expenditure side of the ledger. It is an investment that ALWAYS returns many times its expenditure.

To put it clearly for you, the more money you spend on education, the higher your productivity is which means the higher your government revenue grows from productive companies which means the faster your deficit shrinks.

The Star study, was done using primary grades, like the many showing class size.

“The results of Project STAR show clearly that average pupil performance in the primary years can be increased (with reduced class size) by approximately one fourth to one third of a standard deviation without the introduction of new materials or curricula and without retraining the teachers.“ They also stated that in contrast to other education reforms that focus on specific subject areas and generally require some reorganization of course content, teaching strategies, and/or class scheduling “the effects of reduced-size classes were found on every achievement measure administered in Project STAR… To realize performance gains as extensive as this through any combination of student grouping, individualized instruction, or tutoring would be both difficult and expensive, if it were even possible to implement or maintain such an approach”. In summarizing their fourth grade findings, the authors stated that “Significant achievement advantages in a broad range of content areas were maintained one full year after the small classes were disbanded. Further, there is evidence that pupils who had attended small classes became more assertive in classroom participation behavior in comparison to their peers who attended regular size classes”.
http://www.heros-inc.org/star.htm

As for the Perry study, “Lifetime Effects: The HighScope Perry Preschool Study Through Age 40 (2005)
This study — perhaps the most well-known of all HighScope research efforts — examines the lives of 123 African Americans born in poverty and at high risk of failing in school.

From 1962–1967, at ages 3 and 4, the subjects were randomly divided into a program group that received a high-quality preschool program based on HighScope’s participatory learning approach and a comparison group who received no preschool program. In the study’s most recent phase, 97% of the study participants still living were interviewed at age 40. Additional data were gathered from the subjects’ school, social services, and arrest records”
.
http://www.highscope.org/Content.asp?ContentId=219

I do not object to either study Doug. The studies were conducted under the protocols of the science method, and designs are excellent. Of course, this is coming from a parent, that has prior knowledge that was taught at the high school level, without it, I probably would have a difficult time with the language and would not be able to tell a bad study from a good one.

As I was searching, I bump into the Eric site. Easy to understand language, talking about the benefits of Preschool Programs.
http://www.ericdigests.org/1994/lasting.htm

All my kids were enrolled in nursery school. The first one had the Montessori one, and the other two had other nursery schools that was more structured, but well-suited to their needs.

That said, I know the value of pre-school programs. What I question, can the public education provide the same quality as I have seen over the years?  Will the public education system, begin to educate the parents, and the general public, why pre-school programs are important?  And here I am talking about the whys, and detail explanations that public education systems are loath to give at any time. The stuff that has been delivered to my door from my children, I sometimes shake my head, filled with busy info, but not new information.
Until parents become full partners in every sense of the word by the public education system, the parents will not be fully engaged, and ELP that is planned for Ontario, will a pale comparison to what is happening elsewhere.

Keep in mind the STAR study was done in one of those, as one of our more prolific posters puts it, educational backwaters in the American south which may or may not have much relevence for Ontario.  As Doug likes to point out the American “experience” and the Canadian “situation” are very different things.

The Perry study of poor African-American kids in Detroit will, once again, raise the issue of how applicable the results are to Ontario.

Unless one allows for a myriad of other issues it’d be very nearly impossible to isolate one component of the study and claim it has relevence to Ontario, especially when it was done in an environment almost entirely unlike ours.

Doing apples to apples studies would be more useful.