SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Becuz its crewel, innit?

The Writing’s On the Wall

HT to Jo-Anne for this sobering article from the Telegraph in the UK.  The great phonics debate continues over the pond, despite some of the most convincing evidence from UK reading research showing that systematic phonics instruction is the way to go.  SQE has often cited the Clackmannanshire study, and other similar studies, for example.    Diane Pearson’s article is a response to a white paper has just been released in the UK which calls for a complete overhaul of how teachers are trained.   UK Education Secretary, Michael Gove, proposes, for instance, that teachers be trained outside of the usual faculties of education and do more in-school, hands-on training similar to how medical interns train.

Diane Pearson, recalls her own experience as a novice teacher thirty years before who was instructed during her teacher-training days not to help her student sound out words.  “We don’t do that here,” she was told, but was to encourage “kids to ‘become active constructors of their own learning.”  Of course we know the disastrous results that ensued decades later.  Fast-forward thirty years and she notes that the current crop of novice teachers who learned under the same ineffective methods are now not even aware of their own ignorance when it comes to language.  It’s a case of the blind leading the blind. 

Pearson adds her solutions for teacher training in reading instruction: “Rid the Education department of anyone clinging to discredited theories.  Make the failure to teach phonics in primary schools illegal.”   SQE says, hurrah to that.

While most educrats wring their hands over why boys don’t like to read, Pearson writes, “Point out to your critics there is nothing that puts a child off reading quite as much as the inability to read.”  She concludes, “At long last, the writing is on the wall.  The tragedy is that so many cannot read it.”

Problem is, it’s the educrats who can’t see it either.

More Money Is Not The Answer

There are those who blame the poor performance of Ontario schools on under-funding, even though it is very easy to demonstrate that the amount of money schools boards receive has little or no correlation with their students’ achievement. 

Here’s an article from the North Bay Nugget showing a wide disparity in the amount of per-pupil funding among the four local boards: Near North ($12,474), Nipissing-Parry Sound Catholic ($13,809), Catholique Franco-Nord ($16,831), and Nord-Est de l’Ontario ($20,728). Yet on the Ontario Literacy Test, the pass rates at the same four boards bore no relation to the amount of money they were receiving: Near North (81%), Nipissing-Parry Sound Catholic (75%), Catholique Franco-Nord (79%), and Nord-Est de l’Ontario (68%). 

All of this information (and much more) is available at our Sunshine on Schools web-site. H/T to Chuck.

Are Canadian Parents Done Waiting Yet?

In the wake of the film “Waiting for Superman”, a national bi-partisan coalition of more than 200 grassroots education groups has formed in the US. Called “Done Waiting”, their first initiative is a petition that demands the following:

• Expansion of proven models, such as charter schools
• More professional and better-treated teachers
• Priority to kids’ interests over the politics of special interests

It will be interesting to see what Done Waiting does with its petition once it gets enough signatures. (H/T to Chas)

A Progress Report on Report Cards

You can access information about Canada’s murky policies on reporting to parents, especially the evolving situation in Ontario, on Educhatter’s blog, along with a number of pertinent comments. H/T to Peggy for the video, which kind of sums up most kids’ report cards.

Do You Know What Your Child Is Watching At School?

Some parents may not be aware of this, but it is very common for teachers to squander hours and hours of class time showing movies to their students. Here’s a refreshing counterpoint to this practice. 

The Rich Get Richer - Literally

Two-tier education is alive and well in Ontario, as this article from the Real Estate section of The Globe and Mail demonstrates. It seems that Toronto homes in the catchment area of an International Baccalaureate school are selling faster and for more money than homes in other areas. In many cases, the bidders are people from other parts of the world who are seeking an international standard of education for their children.

As is often the case, it’s the well-heeled and savvy parents who score a good education for their children, adding to their already-considerable advantages, while the children of less-affluent and less-educated parents have to settle for whatever comes their way. Current education policies are contributing to the perpetuation of class differences. 

Now That’s Parent Power!

HT to Tunya for this one. After almost 15 years of discussion of advisory school councils and whether or not parents should even be partners in their children’s education, this goes beyond the bake sale and newsletters. How would you like the ability to take your underachieving school and turn it into a charter school or demand that the administration be changed? Well, that’s what is happening in California since a new law called the Parent Trigger law has been enacted.

In California if 51 per cent of parents at an underperforming school petition, they have the power to make significant change to failing schools. That ability is spreading across the country with five more states ready to pass a similar law. The video explains the process for parents and future parents of a failing school how to organize and take action.  Kind of like a union for parents. 

Of course, the California Teachers’ Federation opposes it, with their head calling the parent trigger a “lynch mob provision”.  Forget that parents and students have been more or less held hostage in failing schools for years.

“The concept recognized a truth that school officials often discount: Parents are in the best position to make decisions about what’s right for their kids.”

Now THAT’S real parent power!

Calculators: The Path of Least Resistance

The latest addition to our lending library is The Equation for Excellence: How to make your child excel at math by Arvin Vohra. Math is important because it develops students' ability to analyze and solve problems, apply logic and reasoning, and generally develop cognitive architecture. As the title promises, this excellent book teaches parents the fundamental principles and techniques they can use to make their children excel at math. Written in an easy-to-read style, the book demonstrates how everyone can be good at math, given proper teaching, and shows what parents can do to improve their children's math skills. This excerpt (p. 51) is from the chapter "Incentive and Struggle: The art of developing the mind" and deals with the question of whether or not to give students calculators.

"I have worked with hundreds of high-school students from the best public and private schools in the washington, DC area who can no longer add fractions by hand. They were able to manually add fractions at one time, but after 5 years of chronic calculator use, the skill has completely atrophied. Since students who cannot add fractions by hand cannot do several types of advanced problems (adding rational expressions, partial fraction decomposition, etc.), they eventually find themselves completely stuck and frustrated.

"This principle does not apply only to fractions. In most situations, the mind takes the path of least resistance. It learns the easiest available method to solve a specific problem type, and forgets the rest. The other skills quickly atrophy.

"It is important to note that students do not want their skills to atrophy. Similarly, an athlete who is bedridden for several months does not want his muscles to atrophy. It just happens. The human mind and body do not waste resources maintaining or developing unnecessary abilities."

Another look at Waiting for Superman

HT to Jay Greene's blog for this video from a Taiwan, China animated report on Waiting for Superman.  It is a quite funny interpretation, but an eye-opener as well.

Also, to answer some of the more outrageous comments about the teachers' unions in a previous post, this excerpt from The Cartel director,  Bob Bowdon's column in The Huffington Post provides the REAL meaning to the usual cliches.

       "So when I hear excuses from defenders of the establishment, I can't help thinking to myself, don't they know what the rest of us are thinking? Don't they know how we're finishing their sentences for them?
        There will be the public part of their statement, then the other part they believe, but intentionally leave out.

             • We wanted to be treated like professionals, but we want job guarantees that no other professionals have.
             • We support teacher accountability, provided it virtually never results in actual dismissals for tenured teachers.
             • We should implement policies to prevent burnout of young, hard-working teachers, as long as the most talented, hardest-working teachers are never individually rewarded for the exceptional efforts.
             • We believe in developing fair methodologies of teacher evaluation, but in practice we'll declare that any particular evaluation plan is unfair.
             • We all want to reform public schools, provided reform is defined as 'good for jobs.' 
             • Not enough money reaches the classroom, but we won't publicly criticize excess administration spending because one of those jobs might be ours some day. 
             • We all want better schools, provided that "better for kids" and "better for adults" are never distinguished.

        "And if they do know how the rest of us have been completing these sentences, I've wondered, shouldn't they have been addressing the perceptions of these second halves of the sentences, rather than only repeating the first halves?...

            "Teachers unions just announced that they're going to hold the first ever 'Summit to Stifle Education Reform.'  Or the 'Make it Look Like We're For Reform, While We Come Up With Ways To Kill Reform, Summit.' Okay, I made those up. But they've actually acknowledged the need for a for a big national conference on education reform. Have they finally understood the shifting winds? Have they finally gotten a clue? Or is it a publicity stunt? For more information you can read the announcement.    Excuse my cynicism. But teachers unions have had many years to reform themselves and their approach to education, and they never have. Now we're supposed to believe they're on board? Right. I think it's more likely they'll pass something like a 'Teacher Accountability Plan' that contains 50 new ways to prevent teachers from being held accountable. We'll see" 

So, as Malkin said in her last post, real accountability comes from having a choice.

Less Government, Not More, Is What’s Needed

Yesterday, a member of the Ontario Legislature introduced this private members’ bill to expand the ombudsman’s power to investigate additional government agencies. If passed (and private members’ bills almost never are), the ombudsman could look into parents’ complaints against school boards. This article in the London Free Press discusses the role of London-area anti-bullying groups in encouraging an expansion of the ombudsman’s powers. 

To me, this looks like a real long shot. Even if the bill passes (perhaps a one percent chance), and the ombudsman becomes very active in sticking up for parents whose concerns are being ignored by their school boards (say a fifty percent chance), I strongly doubt that the parents will get satisfaction. The school boards have become very expert at dodging and weaving their responsibilities, and I just can’t imagine that they would all of a sudden change their attitude. And it is highly unlikely that they can be forced into compliance. After all, what could the ombudsman do to them? Fine them? Put them in jail? Make them send their own children to failing schools?

We’ve seen this before. The Ontario College of Teachers was going to deal with bad teachers. School councils and the Ontario Parent Council were going to empower parents. The new curriculum, the reformatted report cards, and the provincial tests were going to make schools accountable. The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat was going to raise standards. Nothing has worked.

The real road to accountability is to make it possible for parents to withdraw their children from unresponsive schools and transfer them to better schools. Failing schools are unlikely to change unless they are at risk of losing so many students that teaching positions will be lost.