A Message From Education Action: Toronto

February 9, 2010

Dear Friends,

     We hope you will check out three pieces on the Education Action: Toronto website - Dudley Paul on Education Ministry micromanaging in Bills 177 and 157 and David Clandfield's study on how we might build the basis of a successful HUBS program in our neighbourhood schools. Then catch Anthony Marco's analysis of the Education Ministry's "Achievement Agenda" and Doug Little's comments on streaming and dropouts. There's also notice of an important discussion of Children and War with Shahrzad Mojab.

     Finally, we want to remind you that School Board elections are coming up in October. Please make a promise to yourself that you will help us support progressive candidates - with money and time. If there was ever a moment to have the Board stand fast against increasingly oppressive government policies - against cutbacks and school closings, against growing provincial control, and against an approach to curriculum and testing that denies a future for so many of our young people - this is it.

     In solidarity,

     George Martell and Faduma Mohamed
     Co-chairs, Education Action: Toronto

    

From a Sow's Ear to a Sow's Purse:
Liberals Amend Bill 177
Dudley Paul

"The Student Achievement and School Board Governance Act that received Royal Assent on December 15 is not quite as bad as the original. But that's a bit like saying losing your shoes isn't as bad as losing your shirt.... Overall, the Ministry's big thumb is not much removed. The Minister may still make regulations requiring and detailing board codes of conduct along with sanctions should trustees misbehave. Details, such as what ought to be rules, are left to the imaginations of school boards under the guiding hand of the Minister. Directors of Education must still inform the Ministry on boards that continue after she has told them not to, to breach any part of the Education Act, its policies, guidelines or regulations.... Under Section 218 of the amended Education Act trustees must still " support the implementation of any board resolution after it is passed by the board, " and while the government may have assured worried trustees that this isn't just a gag order to discourage dissent, what else could it mean? Does the Government think that disgruntled trustees are likely to engage in sabotage? The wording of this requirement is still vague enough to be interpreted as ruling out dissent after a board resolution has been passed. It's still bad legislation.... (for more: www.educationactiontoronto.com)

Safe Schools By Decree: The Ministry Micromanages Caring in Bill 157
Dudley Paul

".... It is like using a hammer to turn a screw. Not wanting to leave it to school boards to do what they do anyway: raise concerns about specific discipline problems and deal with these through principals and school staffs, the Ministry has chosen once again, to legislate the minutiae that comprises common sense. Though unclear how this might be enforced, the legislation empowers the Minister to apply the same rules in future to non-board staff. It also enables principals to delegate their authority to teachers whether accepted voluntarily or not. This opens various cans of worms including violating collective agreements, teacher liability, questions about how to exercise authority and so on...." (for more: www.educationactiontoronto.com)

David Clandfield has reworked his Hubs piece

(www.educationactiontoronto.com), which can also be found in the latest issue of Our Schools/Our Selves (Winter 2010, see the CCPA website: www.policyalternatives.ca)

The Education Ministry's "Achievement Agenda"
Anthony Marco

Anthony Marco is a high school teacher and the acting OSSTF President in Hamilton, Ontario. He makes a number of good points in a recent analysis of Ontario's "achievement agenda" in the latest issue of Our Schools/Our Selves (Winter 2010, see the CCPA website: www.policyalternatives.ca).
     He writes of the "self-referential and self-justifying logic that has pervaded public education over the past few years. Try to come up with working, concise definition of Student Success," he says, "without self-referencing the term. Try to explain Student Achievement without using achievement in the explanation. Apparently, it cannot be done, or, if it is attempted, it is done by including other terms that themselves have become quite nebulous and open to interpretation - terms such as credits and diplomas and pathways. Increasingly, when we speak of "student achievement," very rarely does one speak of education...."
     Marco reminds us of People for Education's position on this matter: "In order to measure for a broader range of factors, we must first decide what our goals are for our education system. What kinds of students do we want to graduate? What knowledge and skills do we want them to possess, and are there some qualities we want them to have?" Instead of contemplating these questions, this government 'focuses on test scores and graduation rates as the two measures of success in provincial education policy.' With the EQAO as their own private hit squad, the government has lined up schools against the wall in order of their scores. Students have absolutely no input into a curriculum that paints them by numbers. Such a system has a driven top-down production line paranoia that is more akin to industry than education."
     Marco goes on to note the work of the "School/College/Work Initiative [which] is a group composed largely of college administrators and corporate professionals who have a vision about how best to train students for the future economic needs of Ontario. The group's sole endeavour is having young people lined up to enter the workforce as soon as possible. They advocate specialized education pathways [or streams] starting in grade seven and have little concern about a comprehensive approach to education that will allow for student choices after high school."
     He reminds us that the "proposed templates for the Principal's Performance Appraisal would tie a principal's evaluation to student achievement with clauses like "Increase the percentage of students in grade 9 passing all of their courses by 10% over two years," and "Increase the percentage of students achieving Level 3 on the EQAO test by 5%.' Every education worker knows that a principal's problems don't end in the principal's office; they mean downloading, internal pressures, and often harsh criticisms of staff."
     Finally, he points out that "the Achievement Agenda, in its most ominous mantra state, is slouching toward a collective agreement near you. It has been a poorly-kept secret that an overriding statement about student achievement is the goal of the Ministry of Education for every new collective agreement in education. Such a statement would tie all monetary items and working conditions of a contract to student achievement; essentially all negotiated contract items would be in a constant state of flux depending on what the ministry or board decided student achievement would reflect...."
     Marco concludes that "Student Achievement as a collective statistic should never take the place of an individual student's education or be defined at the expense of it. By sliding the achievements scale to whatever suits current political needs, the Ontario government has side-stepped real discussion of the inadequate funding that plagues our education system. Further, they have deflected the public's attention from improving social programs to improving test scores."

Bottom streaming means more dropouts
Doug Little

"The 'official' streaming system in high schools consisting of Academic/Applied courses in grade nine and ten or the "Workplace, College or University" grade eleven and twelve streams are only the tip of a streaming system which consists of Special Education, French Immersion, and 'Gifted' programs in the elementary panel. The documentation on the dropout effects of the streaming system is so well known that it constitutes a slam dunk but many educators still don't see it because once again it is counter-intuitive. How could the placement of students into programs "they can handle" possibly contribute to increasing the dropout rate when it is designed to do the exact opposite? Radwanski in his late 1980s report for the Ontario government actually got this question when he looked at the streaming data. For many students, the stigmatization felt due to their placement in lower stream programs overwhelms any educational value that the student could receive in a low stream program. The programs again are of such low status that students are humiliated when placed in low stream programs and dropping out is actually a relief from this daily humiliation associated with being "in the dumb class." It is mainly for these reasons that more students stay in school longer in de-streamed systems. If full de-streaming is too much 'straight up' then less streaming, as little as possible, is a good interim policy. Boards could be told, for example, that they will only receive funding for smaller Applied classes for 15% of their grade 9-10 population. Students above that threshold would be funded an Academic rate with slightly larger classes in order to give incentives to keep bottom streaming low...." (see The Little Education Report -- www.thelittleeducationreport.com -- Jan. 17, 2010)

 


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