Fair enough but since OECD has declared competition in education a failure don’t expect it to go any further.

http://www.saveourschools.com.au/choice-and-competition/oecd-says-that-competition-in-education-has-failed

Oh Doug, charter schools like KIPP have been a huge success, and the rest are improving dramatically. 

Charter schools are a recent invention, half of the charter schools in New York are less than 5 years old.  They are improving quickly, and the two biggest reason for that is that they can throw off the bureaucratic shackles that the public schools have layered on, and that failing schools are soon closed down.

OECD is also crystal clear that Ontario’s once-great school system is failing.  In 2000 we were the best in the world, in 2012 we were half-way down.  http://cheeseandcrackers.ca/pisa2012.JPG  Next year our 16-year-olds write the PISA again, and based on the recent EQAO results we can expect the downward spiral to continue.

Parents (and taxpayers) should be marching on Queen’s Park with pitchforks and torches after looking at that ‘roadmap’.  Charter schools offer the best (and most economical) hope for rescuing our system.

What an excellent idea to just give the $$ to the parents.

Tell the OECD Tom who have declared it a failure.

Our private school uses ever trick used by KIPP to compete.

KIPP uses smaller classes

KIPP uses much longer hours Saturdays shorter holidays.

KIPP weeds out or fails to admit SE ELL or misbehaving students.

KIPP uses corporate top up money.

This formula is guaranteed to improve on regular public schools but
is not scalable to large systems. They are hooked on corporate money and a supply of constantly churning teachers from TFA.

They burn through teachers very quickly. It is not a sustainable model.

You need to look at NATIONS Tom not a school here or there. Those who adopted the competition model are stagnating or falling rapidly and in the process of unwinding competition Chile, Sweden, Australia.

The SDP just won in Sweden so hopefully this hastens the end of the failed competition policy.

Not only Australia. This article documents the total failure of the competitive system in Sweden.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/swedish-elections-cracks-showing-nordic-model

Oh my, how we get off track following the crumbs of Doug. Wonderful road map for parents to follow that will ultimately protect the rights of students and parents.  That said, there should be another road map for parents who have children who are not identified as having special needs until the children are in school. If one thinks how very complicated the first map is for children who are already identified as special needs at the pre-school aged, the second map would be even more profoundly complex.

For example, preschoolers who are identified as having a speech delay, receives intensive speech therapy are not classified as having special needs by the K to 12 establishment. Even though, a speech delay there is a 97.27 percent chance the child will have major difficulties in learning to read and write according to the research. The children are seen by the education administrators as normal. Hence, the documentation of the child is rejected by the school’s principal.  Only a psycho-educational assessment is proof, and just to obtain an PE assessment may take 3 years in today’s public schools or it may never come.

2014 – OECD – Wonderful graphs on the weaker foundational skills of students across the globe.
http://www.slideshare.net/OECDEDU/education-at-a-glance-2014-key-findings?utm_source=slideshow&utm_medium=ssemail&utm_campaign=weekly_digest

You sound like a true believer Tom. As a true believer it will take more evidence to convince you that you are barking up the wrong tree. Take look at the systems based on competition around the world. Australia, Sweden Chile. They are leaving their supporters bitterly disappointed.

Canada of course as you know Tom has the world’s best education results so we have few lessons to learn from anyone.

I have zero concern for Ontario or Canada’s educational future with ADJK and ECE spreading slowly nation wide.

Charters Tom are not part of the picture in any successful nation.

Doug:  I don’t much care about schools for the rich or the middle class (much to the chagrin of Malkin and the others).  Those kids get educated by their parents, they learn to read in SK and will live pampered lives.

But I’m offended by the crappy schooling we deliver to the poor.  I see what the no-excuses charter schools like KIPP achieve, and I’m outraged.

As recently as 50 years ago, history moved very slowly - you knew your station in life, and if you were born to poor parents then you would be poor too.  There weren’t many opportunities for the anyone who wasn’t lucky to be born white and rich, or preferably both.

That’s the environment that our current school system evolved in.  And it continues today, even though a good education opens the door to escape poverty.  But iour government-run education system is DESIGNED to keep the poor down.  It is an institutional mission - to keep the good jobs for the wealthy by denying poor kids a decent education.

Oh, we don’t actually say that.  We say “We’ll give them the SAME education we give the middle class.” even though we know that is a formula for failure.  We know those kids, counting on their fingers and unable to read, will be lucky to get a job as a gas station attendant And that’s just fine - that’s the way it was when history was slower.  The poor have always been with us, and always will.

There mostly aren’t any evil people doing this.  The teachers, unions, school boards, parents, publishers, and bureaucrats are all following their incentives.  It’s like the tragedy of the commons, no one is at fault.

EXCEPT THE POLITICIANS.  They have a duty to address poverty, and they choose instead to pander to the unions and middle-class parents. 

Allowing no-excuses Charter Schools to take over the worst 50% of public schools are our best option for resetting the terrible incentives that keep the poor ‘in their place’.  It’s an easy choice for politicians - it doesn’t cost the taxpayers a penny, and it doesn’t lay off teachers (they retire faster than charter schools can pop up).

So yes, I believe.

Schools for the poor in public schools can improve Tom but the formula is:

Very small classes, very early beginning, nutritional support vision and dental support many similar reforms

BUT

We will only make giant strides when we make the poor not as poor.

Don’t worry Tom, Doug will soon have competition of his own. A very tough competitor with lots of money. Namely the Chinese Education Ministry. “The Ministry of Education in Henan, China, had been looking to start a school in Canada.
They found the old Victoria School, a 117-year-old building on Richmond Street, and purchased it for $600,000 from the Grand Erie District School Board.”
Read more: http://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/something-great-for-brantford-china-eyes-school-space-1.2005704#ixzz3DRypi7eb

No doubt the first students to be enrolled in the private Chinese high school, will be the the number of Chinese high school students enrolled presently in Ontario’s private high school, that can be woo over with cheaper tuition rates and experiencing Canadian small town living.

By the way Doug, choice is coming down the track. It will arrive, and there is nothing that the K to 12 crowd can do to stop it.  The latest from the TDSB, the whacky spending of trustees. “Hastings also claimed a $205 oil sands chartered air tour, and said it was related to the high school curriculum.”
Read more: http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/28-giant-cookie-among-charges-expensed-by-school-trustees-before-new-guidelines-passed-1.2007864#ixzz3DS1bnqlU

Doug has a tendency to look at the tree bark, forgetting that the tree bark are part of individual trees and a collection of trees makes a forest. The same is for the K to 12 education system. Doug, only selects the variables that best matches his version of ‘zero concern’. In so doing, the K to 12 public education system is underway in self-imploding by the hands of the narrowly myopic and nay sayers of the K to 12 crowd.

Doug, we agree on how to do it (although KIPP doesn’t have particularly small class sizes). 

Although too early to tell, KIPP seems to disprove your claim that we have to wait.  Your formulation perpetuates the current system and blames the poor for the boot on their neck.

Given the lack of cost to the taxpayer, the lack of harm to the teachers, and the horrible outcomes from our current system. it is obscene that we delay charter schools.

- - -

Nancy, that’s a school for rich kids.  Parents will swarm to send their kids, and those with the biggest wallets and sharpest elbows will get in.

Competition is the rising tide that lifts all boats. If pushed, Doug’s school will ‘welcome’ the new schools by improving services and sharpening processes.  His already-advantaged students will do better than ever.

Sadly, the gap between Doug’s outstanding school and the ones in Regent Park will widen.  Those crappy schools have a state-granted monopoly, the boats of the poor have been carefully spiked.

An update - http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/2014/09/12/victoria-school-sold-to-henan-education-canada-inc

I am not at all sure if the private high schools for foreign students will urge competition,  if the private Chinese schools on Canadian soil are just another gateway for citizenship papers. As for the state-run school monopolies, there is more than enough evidence the public K to 12 in Canada and the US are operated according to the social-income status of communities, zipcodes and physical location such as rural versus urban.

I do agree whole-heartedly that Charter schools should be the new reality in Canada. The K to 12 monopoly as we know it,  is in its dying days.

Upside down Nancy. The poor and rich schools are the very same in Canada. It is the children that are different.

Since the introduction of charter schools in Alberta, the province overall has not improved. In fact it is going backwards.

Sweden falling miles behind Finland dates exactly to the intro of voucher style system.

Chile will abandon support for voucher/private education.

Australia the focus of OECD report privatization has failed again.

Voucher-charter style reforms impede forward progress by nations.

They are no answer to what ails education.

Model the successful nations not the losers.

A 1998 paper called, A discriminatory practice of Western Education - Concludes - “Considerable evidence indicates that child-directed teaching methods have a detrimental effect on the education of diverse learners (handicapped and disadvantaged children). Sociologists and ethnologists in England denounced child-directed learning (progressive education) as a form of radical conservatism that served to maintain the class structure of society (e.g., Sharp, Green, & Lewis, 1975).  “
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~bgrossen/pubs/cdp.htm

One of the reasons why the K to 12 progressive crowd is calling for the elimination of standardized testing, because the data makes it possible to study the inequities according the social-economic status of the students. As one goes down the social-income ladder, the crappier the education quality is.

Radical Conservatism is what is being push by the K to 12 crowd, using radical progressive education theory as the means to educate children according to their social-income status. Charter schools counters radical conservatism by providing quality education for the diverse student population that has not been served well by the public K to 12 schools.

The reason that the more affluent have children who do better in school is because they can afford tutoring, plus they’re usually better educated so they can help help their kids. 

Children from lower income families most likely have neither of the above resources, so the kids and their families end up being victims of dreadful curricula that does not teach students how to read,  hold a pen, spell, parce a sentence, no times tables, nor algorithms.  What they will teach is explicit sex, and they’ll indoctrinate these students with extreme leftist ideology.  On top of this, schools don’t address bullying, therefore sexual assaults and violence happen right in school.

Doug, when our state-run educational system is finished with these children, what do you think that the end product is?

Breakfast programs I fully support, but starving the mind only perpetuates the problem.

I guess educrats have never heard the saying, feed a man a fish and he’ll not be hungry; but teach him to fish and you’ll never have to feed again. 

Doug, I agree with you.

“The poor and rich schools are the very same in Canada.”
In all of them relatively little gets taught in school.

The children’s results are different because children in the “rich schools” get taught outside the school by parents or tutors.

I am running my own informal survey among parents that I know.
Any child that is still doing well in grades 5-6 has has been taught outside the school. Most commonly Kumon for math and a parent or Kumon or a tutor for reading.
Parents “help” and “teach” heavily in order for the children to be able to do good projects and to “discover” the concepts they are supposed to discover naturally on their own.
A lot of weekends and late evenings are nighmarish with the parents both trying to get the project work and then attempting to teach their children how and why they did it that way.

It is total nonsense that Canada provides a lower quality of education to the poor than to the rich. It is true in the USA.

The problem is in the STUDENTS themselves not being school ready.

Middle class kids arrive at school with 2x the vocabulary about 1000 vs 500 words.

The very 1st day of school poor kids are miles behind.

Ever since Colemen researchers have known that outside factors (class race nutrition vision dental FAS environment role models books in the home) are the reasons poor kids are behind.

It has almost ZERO to do with what happens INSIDE schools.

We know this does not fit with a rightwing

Blame the government, blame the teachers, blame the union, blame the curriculum, blame the pedagogy ....ideology but it happens to be the facts of the matter.

Your analysis is just plane wrong on almost all fronts.

Back on topic. 
Fabulous job on the Special Education Road Map.  Every school board employee involved with special education, principals and teachers should have a copy.  Speaking from experience, special education is an extremely cumbersome, bureaucratic process in Ontario.
When my child was diagnosed with a learning disability a few years ago, I made it my mission to learn the special education system in Ontario.  I read every bit of policy from the Ministry of Education to the school board.  After spending countless hours pouring over document after document, I discovered I knew and understood the system better than the principal and special education teachers at my child’s school.  The school wasn’t following proper policy and procedure. After escalating this to the school board to absolutely no avail, I pulled my child out of the public school and moved him to the local Catholic school.  My child is much happier and doing very well.  I believe ONGOING quality training in special education is a REQUIREMENT to keep your teachers licence.  This training would benefit EVERY child in the class.

‘Blame the government, blame the teachers, blame the union, blame the curricula, blame the pedagogy…
Yep, all are at the very least are partly to blame, Doug.

When Doug talks about the middle-class, he is talking about the professional middle-class. It holds true when the K to 12 establishment talks about the middle-class.

Take away the tutoring, and other educational aid by parents, the higher income schools are left with the same dismal student outcomes as the lower income schools. Doug, states the problem is the students. If so, why in 2014 if a child had a speech delay, had intensive speech therapy, went to a top notched nursery school, and took swimming, gymnastics, dance and music activities; the child will not be identified as being high risk in the typical K to 8 classroom. Eventually, the child will become part of the low achievers of a grade 3 classroom. The complexity of accessing special education services and as well as the education and pedagogy practices of the K to 12 crowd are the main factors in causing low achievement.

The learning science is ignored. The K to 12 crowd blames the children and parents. And parents continue to produce roadmaps for the education labyrinth for parents to navigate so their children can access the higher tiers of education quality.

The student outcome data streams tell a different story of educating according to the social-economic rankings of students.

Mr. Doug, please re-check, I agreed with you.
Bev agreed with you too.
Tom pretty much did.

We all said that the “rich” students’ BETTER ACHIEVEMENT is mainly DUE TO THEM BEING TAUGHT OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL by their parents or by tutors that their parents are aware their children need and they can afford.

For reference
>>
Doug, I agree with you.

“The poor and rich schools are the very same in Canada.”

In all of them relatively little gets taught in school.

The children’s results are different because children in the “rich schools” get taught outside the school by parents or tutors.

<<

Right Mr Europe and it produces a result not just better than any nation in say Europe but any nation on this Earth. Over 60% have post secondary education. Next countries Israel and Russia not yet over 50%.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/09/27/and-the-worlds-most-educated-country-is/

Doug, it is 51 % according to the OECD. Another set of data points that are not be track by the education crowd. http://www.oecd.org/edu/Canada_EAG2013 Country Note.pdf

Doug, I take it you like the cozy setup of wealthier parents to pick up the costs on education that the K to 12 will not provide or provides very little as Europe has pointed out. Doug’s statement proves that the K to 12 has multi-tiered education quality. If parents want something better, they need to purchase it.

Doug comment about post-secondary education is technically almost-correct but intentionally misleading to the point of being an outright falsehood.

Canada is a leader in college attainment, but not university attainment.  And we are a leader because our older citizens (36-64) were well educated.  Our current education system is not on the leader-board, we are only 15th of 34 OECD countries looking at 24-35 year olds. 

It is not that our kids aren’t doing better that their parents, but rather that other countries started from a lower base.  Their poorly-educated parents pull down their national averages.

And even in that very limited metric of college attainment across all ages, yes we were #1 in 2010, but Korea has since passed us.  OECD predicts we will steadily drop in the rankings as older uneducated generations die off in other countries.

That’s hardly world-beating excellence.  Our schools are failing and our kids are in deep trouble.

Did someone say university? Not me. It is far more important to lead in total post secondary than total university.

The 50% number is out of date and growing even higher with under 44 years of age group.

Time Magazine - Canadians the most educated people on Earth. Period.

You cite Time Magazine which does its best to confuse CEGEPs, post-secondary training, and university.

Here’s the OECD data for 2010.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888932661478 which makes it clear that we only lead because of our older generation.  We have been falling ever since.

No Doug, the 51 %  are the 2011 number. For 2014 it is below 51 %. As Tom has stated, it is set to decline as the baby boomers leave this Earth. One can’t talk about post-secondary, by leaving the university numbers out.

Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators is the authoritative source for accurate and relevant information on the state of education around the world. It provides data on the structure, finances, and performance of education systems in the OECD’s 34 member countries…”
http://www.slideshare.net/OECDEDU/education-at-a-glance-2014-key-findings?utm_source=slideshow&utm_medium=ssemail&utm_campaign=weekly_digest

It boggles the mind that no one has mentioned our ridiculous math curriculum yet. Could it be that our entire approach to teaching and learning math is wrong? The scores seem to indicate as much. I say the Emperor has no clothes. Let’s take a good hard look at how we teach math and the hard data that does or rather doesn’t back it up.

Doug says,

“Schools for the poor in public schools can improve Tom but the formula is: Very small classes, very early beginning, nutritional support vision and dental support many similar reforms.”

Doug, my mother taught Grade 1 many many years ago. She always had between 30 and 40 kids in the class. She proudly proclaimed - until the day she was no longer cognitively able - that she NEVER had a SINGLE kid who left her Grade 1 class who couldn’t read and write properly.

I defy you - literally - to take me into any Grade 1 public school classroom in Ontario of your choosing and show me the same results. Just make sure you don’t decide to do it in June, because they’ll all be on field trips and watching movies all month long. Or should I say “theylle ol be washing muvies and goin on feeld trips druing joon.”

Also, your assertion that the USA has more of a problem with education for the poor is out of date by about 30 years.

My sister (who grew up in Ontario) teaches in California. She is APPALLED at the education standards in Ontario now. She compares her REAL LIFE Grade 3 curriculum (and results) to various Ontario friends and shakes her head in disbelief. Of course, there is a larger group of extremely poor people in the USA than Canada, but after you account for that anomaly many areas of the USA have moved ahead of our education.

You have no idea my friend. And your studies and “proof” are a bunch of third rate research from what I’ve seen.