Who’s Minding the Store?

The Ontario Government has released a discussion paper around Bill 177 asking for input from "stakeholders" (translation: the usual school boards' associations and teachers' federations) on how the Ministry of Education should take over school boards if they don't meet their responsibilities, particularly those related to improving student achievement.  Moira MacDonald at the Toronto Sun has written about it in her column today. She outlines more problems in the making with some of the proposals.

While we at SQE are not considered one of the worthy stakeholders, we have managed to get a look at the discussion paper and we have some serious concerns as well.  To begin with, input is being solicited from the very people that will be under scrutiny from Bill 177's regulations in the first place.  This is almost like asking a naughty child what their punishment should be and when it should be meted out.

In the regulations, boards will be required to plan and set multi-year goals and report annually (maybe) on a number of indicators which will include, for example: suspensions, graduations, and student achievement outcomes.

The paper then outlines a series of criteria termed "triggers", which may cause the minstry to intercede in a school board.  The most troubling are two proposed triggers that "may" cause a ministry response, "if a board ...iii) has 40% or more if its schools in the bottom 20% of the schools in the province based on EQAO Grades 3 and 6 scores in reading, writing, and math; iv) has 40% or more of schools with 35% or more students that earned less than 8 credits in Grade 9, and 40% more of schools with 35% or more students that earned less than 8 credits in Grade 10."  The stages of minstry response range from a letter of concern to outright take-over and supervision of the board.

First of all, criterion iii) is way too high.  If a board has this many poorly performing schools, they've long been in crisis.

School for Thought has lots of questions.

Who exactly is being taken to task here?  The board of trustees?  The director of education? Other board staff?  Who is going to be held responsible?

Where is the political accountabilty for locally elected trustees?  Or, conversely, what happens if the problem is that board staff are not carrying out policy?  Why should local democracy suffer when a take-over under supervision happens?  Will anyone ever be fired?

How is this all going to be audited?  There is reliance that school boards will be honest in their reporting.  As MacDonald points out in her column, "When there's more pressure on schools to hit numerical targets, there's greater temptation to cut corners or fudge the numbers." There is already pressure on teachers to pass kids with the "no-fail" policy.  Will this get worse?  Will we see more cheating?

This is a far cry from the minister's Citizen for Local Democracy days. Seems to us more and more that local control of education is being slowly eroded away. School boards are becoming irrelevant as bodies of local representation.  Will the future of school boards be the education version of Local Health Integration Networks?

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