School reform

Debate about education funding, the perpetual cycle of front-line cuts and concerns about education quality have all fuelled debate about system reform in BC, with critics charging that our public schools are wasteful, ineffective and unresponsive.

Despite chronic under-funding, BC’s schools still deliver top results and a world-class education for most students. But no one denies that too many students are still being left behind, or the existence of gaps requiring urgent attention.  Advocates cite the pivotal role of public education in building a stable and cohesive society, a responsible citizenry and a healthy economy. This, we argue, presents a solid rationale for greater public investment in our public schools. But irate taxpayers and fiscal conservatives continue to press our schools do more with less (in real, inflation-adjusted dollars), or to shift decisions about how much to invest in education onto individual families via privatization.

BC’s Education Minister has been hinting at ambitious plans to reform public education in BC, with frequent references to work underway to develop a”21st century learning” agenda that will dramatically change schools and “personalize” student learning. But these notions remain fuzzy, along with the rationale for and goals of reform, and the absence of public consultation and debate about the proposed changes have led to growing skepticism. Imposing top-down reforms, in an atmosphere of mistrust, hostility and fiscal austerity, and without broad engagement and buy-in, will be doomed to failure as key partners dig their heels in and devote energy to opposition instead of cooperation.

By sharing a variety of ideas on this page (not all of which we agree with), we hope to encourage education partners to come together in a spirit of mutual respect to seek consensus around shared goals for public education and what’s needed to ensure that all K-12 students meet individual targets for personal success within that broader framework. 

What’s at stake matters to all British Columbians and we believe therefore that successful reforms will require a bottom-up approach in which citizens and communities, along with students and educators on the front lines, take the lead in driving change.

Websites

Interesting ideas from people who make education reform their lives’ work:

• SFU’s Centre for Education Research  and Policy
• Canadian Education Association
• ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development):  US-based organization with an international membership dedidated to promoting best practices for individual learning.

Reports, News articles & scholarly publications

New York Times: Coming together to give schools a boost

David Bornstein

Mar. 7, 2011

A group of leaders in the Cincinnati area are improving school systems by using data for progress, not punishment. Read article

Kevin Drum

Mar. 4, 2011

We are obsessed with education in America. We are obsessed, in particular, with the notion that our schools are failing and have to be fixed. We need to test kids. We need to identify and fire bad teachers. We need merit pay. We need charter schools. We are all waiting for Superman. Philanthropists and the federal government spend billions of dollars per year on programs to promote better schools.

James Heckman doesn’t quite say that this is all a waste of money. But he comes close. In a new essay summarizing his recent work on skill formation in children, he says the chart below tells you most of what you need to know about educating our kids:

The chart shows achievement test scores for children of mothers with different levels of education. Children of college graduates score about one standard deviation above the mean by the time they’re three, and that never changes. Children of mothers with less than a high school education score about half a standard deviation below the mean by the time they’re three, and that never changes either. Roughly speaking, nothing we do after age three has much effect:

[These] gaps arise early and persist. Schools do little to budge these gaps even though the quality of schooling attended varies greatly across social classes. Much evidence tells the same story as Figure 1. Gaps in test scores classified by social and economic status of the family emerge at early ages, before schooling starts, and they persist. Similar gaps emerge and persist in indices of soft skills classified by social and economic status. Again, schooling does little to widen or narrow these gaps.

Heckman argues that these achievement gaps—between black and white, between rich and poor—are today less the result of overt discrimination than they are of skill gaps that open up very early in life and persist in the face of a wide variety of both good and bad schools. What’s more, these gaps aren’t purely, or even mainly, the result of differences in cognitive ability. At least equally important are soft skills: “motivation, sociability (the ability to work with and cooperate with others), attention, self regulation, self esteem, the ability to defer gratification and the like.”

In the face of this evidence, Heckman recommends that we abandon a scattershot approach toward education and instead focus far more of our resources on intensive, early interventions:

A strategy that places greater emphasis on parenting resources directed to the early years is a strategy that prevents rather than remediates problems. It supplements families and makes them active participants in the process of child development.

Read more

Why the standards movement failed: An educational and political diagnosis of its failure and the implications for school reform

Lawrence C Stedman

January 2011

Abstract: In the first paper, “How Well Does the Standards Movement Measure Up?,” I documented the movement’s failure in diverse areas—academic achievement, equality of opportunity, quality of learning, and graduation rates—and described its harmful effects on students and school culture.   

In this paper, I diagnose the reasons for the failure and propose an alternative agenda for school reform.  I link the failure of the standards movement to its faulty premises, historical myopia, and embrace of test-driven accountability.  As part of the audit culture and the conservative restoration, the movement ended up pushing a data-driven, authoritarian form of schooling.  Its advocates blamed educational problems on a retreat from standards, for which there was little evidence, while ignoring the long-standing, deep structure of schooling that had caused persistent achievement problems throughout the 20^th century.  Read more

The Globe and Mail: BC Liberal leadership candidate Kevin Falcon’s plan to reform schools using teacher merit pay

Dawn Steele, BC Education Coalition, Letter to the Editor

Jan. 7, 2011

Those promoting teacher merit pay don’t seem too clear on what exactly needs fixing in BC’s schools.

Unlike India or the US, our students consistently perform admirably in international math, science and literacy tests. We also have Canada’s lowest K-12 dropout rate. Strong union and financial disincentives notwithstanding, BC’s teachers already out-perform in their field.

So what’s the problem? Our 6-year school completion rate hasn’t budged over 80% for a decade and Provincial stats show a consistent demographic profile for under- performing students: they’re overwhelmingly Aboriginal, poor and/or have special needs.

This suggests a more pervasive, complex problem than one of teacher competence or union disincentives — unless BC’s incompetent, lazy teachers are aggressively choosing the toughest classrooms where these groups predominate.

Instead of encouraging government to waste millions on misguided “silver bullets,” BC’s political and opinion leaders should sit down with teachers, parents and other education partners to discuss targeted solutions to real problems.

2010 Archives

Maple Ridge school trustee and education blogger Stepan Vdovine asks: ‘Is the 21st century learning a cover for the radical efficiency agenda?’

November 2010

(The Vancouver Sun’s Pete McMartin published an excellent 3-part series in November 2010, examining shifting enrolment patterns in Vancouver and how the “school choice” agenda punished schools and students in poorer neighbourhoods. That series is particularly relevant in light of incoming Premier Christy Clark’s re-stated commitment to “choice” and to more support for private and faith-based schools as a key driver of education reform. Below are two of the articles.)

Vancouver Sun: The struggle of inner city schools extends beyond the inner-city

Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun

November 10, 2010

In the first two columns of this series, I discussed the growing disparity between “inner-city” eastside Vancouver schools and more privileged westside schools, and some of the possible reasons for that disparity.

 But that disparity is not confined to Vancouver. By several accounts, it is happening in other municipalities around the province, even in communities so well-off or so suburban that the idea of an “inner-city school” seems ludicrous.

 Take, for example, the experience of Marilynne Waithman.Read more

Vancouver Sun: A public system going private: A choice of venue leads to decreasing enrolment east of Main Street (Note: Link is to a PDF as the Vancouver Sun link was deleted)

Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun

Nov. 9, 2010

In the Vancouver school board’s October report, Schools Considered for Possible Closure, the fact that the vast majority of underutilized schools are east of Main Street is never mentioned.

The only representation of this phenomenon is in the report’s map, Elementary Utilization Capacities, which shows a stark and alarming disparity.

Of the west side’s 35 schools and annexes, 19 are operating at greater than 100 per cent of capacity. Nine are operating at greater than 90 per cent of capacity. None are operating at less than 70 per cent. On the west side, it’s all good.

On the east side, it’s a radically different picture. Only six schools are operating at more than 100 per cent of capacity, and two of those six are small that have less than 50 per cent of the student population they did a decade ago.

 Not surprisingly, all five of the schools the VSB nominated for closure in its report are on the east side.

 This east-west disparity in school utilization is the elephant in the room, yet the VSB report ignores it. Reasons given for the decline in student enrolment are never geographic-specific in the report, but are attributed primarily to the changing “demographic profile of residents” and “fewer children living in our communities.”

This is, in fact, not the case. Read more

CCPA Policy Note: Why incentive pay won’t fix hospitals or schools

October 14, 2010

Iglika Ivanova, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

It turns out — surprise! — that it’s really hard to measure quality in complex social systems and that employing simplistic quantitative measures can backfire.

That’s the take-home message from a recent talk by UC Berkley economist and public policy professor Jesse Rothstein who came to SFU to present his latest research on using standardized test scores to measure teacher effectiveness in the US.  Read more

Educational Leadership: Interventions that work

October 2010

A series of articles on school reform and strategies to address educational challenges. Read more

‘Waiting for “Superman” ‘: A simplistic view of education reform?

In the eyes of some education observers, ‘Waiting for “Superman” ‘ oversimplifies the problems facing US students and implies an education reform silver bullet for struggling public schools.