SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Butting heads against a school board wall

Further to yesterday’s posting about school boards and democracy, here’s a telling story from upstate New York. You have to read all the way to the end, because the plot contains more twists and turns than The Perils of Pauline. In this episode, though, the bad guy wins.

The True Role of School Board Trustees

The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board has clarified the fundamental ambiguity surrounding the role of school boards by passing a resolution requiring trustees to "represent the board and its officers in a positive light". This means, for example, that from now on it will be impossible for a Hamilton-Wentworth trustees to bring foward a constituent's complaint since, by definition, the complaint would cast the board in a negative light. The new policy makes it clear that the role of the Hamilton-Wentworth trustees is henceforth to represent the school board to the public - as opposed to representing the voters who elected them. 

The trouble with removing trustees' ability to represent their constituents is that school boards were invented in order to inject an element of democracy into an education system that offers no other access point to voters. Muzzled trustees remove any pretence of democracy. In fact, I guess we should be give a vote of thanks to the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board for making it crystal clear that there is no need to elect trustees any more, since their only role is to represent the board to the voters and there are no doubt plenty of paid staff members who can do that job just fine.

And, since I am writing this from Japan where my son has just married a Japanese girl, I offer you this depiction of the three wise monkeys as carved on a mural in Nikko, Japan.

Convocation At Last!

Today is my daughter's convocation.  It is a proud day for most parents and no less for our family as well.  Readers who know me know it was my daughter's elementary school education experiences that brought me to the education reform movement many years ago. 

She wasn't learning to read very well in the primary grades and yes, I got the same treatment and heard the same clichés as parents still do from their public schools twenty years later. A fateful letter to Malkin Dare and OQE at the time opened my eyes to the possibility that things could certainly be better in our school system.  I learned about "school-proofing", direct instruction, systematic explicit phonics and more.  I vowed I would not stand by and let another child suffer setbacks to learning.  One of the most heart-wrenching moments in her learning was when she confided to me that she wished someone had taught her how to do fractions properly in the first place so that she wouldn't have had so much trouble in math.   This, after we sent her to a girls-only high school.  She won the award for most improved student in grade 10.  I cried that awards night.

Last night I attended the Donner Canadian Foundation Lecture.  The guest speaker was Tiger Mother, Amy Chua.  What an eye-opener!  Dr. Chua spoke eloquently about her book and how she had been absolutely misrepresented in the press.  Her book was meant to be a memoir and not a parenting manual--although she says in China she is looked upon as a "cuddly" mother, not a tiger!  She gave us the real story about her family and her struggle to ensure her daughters lived up to high expectations, avoided materialistic pop culture, achieved honest goals, and true self-esteem.  She says that there exist too many false dichotomies such as drill and knowledge vs. creativity.  Why can't there be both?  Creative minds must have a solid foundation of skills and knowledge.  The full talk will be broadcast on CBC Radio.  

I think most of us who support SQE would not disagree too much.  And yes, I'll probably cry when my daughter gets her diploma today as well.

[Footnote--Lest readers think that all of us at SQE are "drill and kill" tiger-mother monsters who don't value or nurture creativity, my daughter is graduating from Ontario College of Art & Design University.  She is an illustrator and award-winning graphic designer.  So there.]

The devil and the deep blue sea

The Ontario Conservative Party (the favourite to win the coming election) has released its platform. Click here for Moira MacDonald's commentary, in which she observes that - for the most part - the Tories propose to leave things pretty much the same as before. Moira's take on this is that the Tories are hoping to appease the province's powerful teachers' unions, one of which has already collected $60 from each of its members in order to build an anti-Conservative warchest. 

It will be interesting to see how the teachers' unions react to this gambit. On the one hand, there's no question but that the unions could expect even better treatment from the provincial Liberals, if elected. But, as mentioned above, it's beginning to look as if the Liberals will not be elected. So would the unions be smarter to face reality and start building bridges to the Conservative Party? I'm sure the debates are raging within the union offices even as we speak. I'd love to be a fly on the wall!

Too bad, by the way, that the best interests of kids and parents don't appear to be a consideration........

Texas and the 49 dwarves

Not really an education story perhaps - although Texas has been working hard to improve its schools - but the story told by this graph is so amazing that I wanted to share it with you. Go west, young man!

New Poll Question on Accountability

Sunday at the Movies (Math Miseducation II)

Here`s more on the fuzzy math problem. (YouTube link)

School for Thought reaches the Second Year Mark

As we celebrate our second anniversary of ruminating on the state of education in Canada, I'd like to share this piece (c/o our friend and director Gerry Nicholls) from the Morning Bell:  School Choice is the New Normal.

Well, at least in the U.S. it is. 

      "School choice, which saves taxpayers money and simultaneously offers children a higher quality education, is sweeping the nation. And it's an idea whose time has come. Instead of funding school buildings, the philosophy behind school choice says we should fund students instead and allow education dollars to follow a child to the school of his or her choice.
      In places like Washington, D.C. [SFT note - spearheaded by Virginia Walden-Ford who spoke at our Measuring Up Conference], where the now-revived D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program is providing low-income children with vouchers to attend a private school of their choice, dramatic results have been achieved. These children, who once attended the poorest-performing public schools in the country, are thriving in schools chosen by their parents - not assigned based on their zip code. Academic achievement has risen, and impressively, students who received a voucher and used it to attend private schools of their choice had a 91 percent graduation rate."...
   ..."And yet, education special interest groups - teachers' unions - are dead set against such options for children and the state as a whole. They consistently lobby to stop the school choice movement in its tracks, because they know it poses a threat to their power. But the union stranglehold over education is beginning to crumble - thanks to efforts in Wisconsin and elsewhere - and policies that are in the best interests of children - not adults - are being pursued."

The task ahead of SQE is to achieve the same for Canadian children.  

You can help us do this by supporting the Society for Quality Education with a DONATION, joining Friends of SQE on Facebook, or following us on Twitter. 

Zap that App in the Bud

Following up on Malkin's post about "smart" phone use in the classroom, I came across this editorial written by an IT teacher.  What may surprise you is that he is against the idea because he knows that they will be a distraction and a time-waster:

"The simple truth is adolescent students overwhelmingly use personal electronic devices as entertainment and a distraction away from their duty to concentrate and learn in school.

I have never confiscated an iPhone or BlackBerry in the classroom and found the student was taking in a few lines of Chaucer or trying to get the latest news on what is happening in the world.

But I have certainly stumbled on material completely and utterly unrelated to what was going on in class.

I have caught students cheating on tests by trying to access classroom notes from their iPhone."

and he points out:

"Whether it be at the local fast-food restaurant or clothing store, I have never seen any of my students text message, access their iPhone apps, or listen to music on their mp3 player while on duty at their part-time jobs. Could it be the "real world of business" also believes these devices are counterproductive and a distraction?"

I would add, when videos of teachers in various unflattering situations pop up on the web, you may see this policy zapped faster than you can text the words  "dumb and dumber".

Wednesday at the Movies (The teachers’ unions)

This short video exposes some of the contradictions in the positions taken by teachers' unions. YouTube link