What terrific resources Malkin! I’ll be sharing with many colleagues and parents alike.

You do realize though that this is all just too much common sense for tender egos in Ontario to absorb?

In the end what matters is what works on the ground and for each and every child.

Pretty soon the more money mantra will reach the tipping point where users will want to see value for the truckloads of money going out the door and the system will come with more empty rhetoric.

“It is a huge concern for the CTA when anybody - trustee or not - who has no educational background, training or experience at all in schools is make curriculum decisions,“ Katharin Midzain is quoted as saying. “We have experts, specialists in education, who do that job.“
Teacher unions, have no intention of losing their powerful position, for policies that would dilute their influences on curriculum and education policy. In my own experiences, the school did everything in their power to discourage practices at home, that brought much faster results, and in some case permanent learning changes, than any of the policies at the school level. In many cases, some of the best practices, are very easy to follow, and is not based on the education levels, or skills of the parents.

Some things were not made clear in the articles or in this post. Keda Cowling’s “Toe By Toe” program is not based on the Clackmannanshire work or the research of Johnston and Watson, although it may have been influenced by them; it predates their work by at least a decade, and was inspired by the work of Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham, who developed some of the earliest programs for students with severe reading disabilities.  These are widely used in private clinics and by tutors, but so far there is a lack of empirical data showing their effectiveness in school situations (the International Dyslexia Assiciation is organizing research on these methods but results will not be finalized for some time).

“Toe By Toe” is a 1:1 tutorial program, not a classroom teaching tool. West Dunbartonshire introduced it to catch older struggling readers who were falling through the cracks. They do use a program similar to that featured in the Clackmannanshire study, but teachers use it in the regular classroom with all students in the early years. The Clackmannanshire program also featured a special module in Year 4 (our Grade 3) to teach students to apply advanced word-attack skills and use morphemes and word parts to decode multisyllable words which become increasingly common in expository text. “Toe By Toe” also addresses multisyllable word decoding, but not, IIRC, the morpheme aspects which greatly increase a student’s receptive vocabulary and assist with spelling patterns. 

It appeared that some of the opposition to Ms. Maah’s presentation was based on a supposition that “Toe By Toe” is a classroom program.. In fact, although it *can* be taught by teachers, in the public system 1:1 tutoring by teachers during the school day is rarely feasible. Thus, paraprofessionals, volunteers, parents and older students are often good resources for the intensive support needed by some students. Some districts organize types of co-op programs where students in Grades 7 and up (usually in high school) can earn credit for service as a 1:1 tutor for 20, 30 or 40 hours over a school year. Effective programs of this type provide training and the materials to the secondary student, and monitor the progress of the younger student.. 

These can also be organized by community groups as an afterschool program (an outstanding example, run by an expat Canadian, is READ NYC – see http://www.readnyc.org.)
West Dunbartonshire uses “Toe By Toe” with middle-grade students who need to catch up on word-level reading skills; a variety of ways could be found to institute something similar in our schools without in any way undermining teachers’ responsibilities . As it is, teachers cannot provide much 1:1 in-depth remediation for students due to the amount of time required and the number of students who need this help. Creative thinking and use of other staff and students is needed.

There is good evidence for the effectiveness of training students to be peer coaches for each other, during class time, in literacy and math skills. “Peer Assisted Learning Strategies,” (PALS) lends itself to customization by local boards or schools. Windsor-Essex and several others have made a very promising start in using this to reach struggling students in K-4, with excellent results. The teacher is in charge but supervises the student pairs who work together in a carefully designed format of interactive mini-lessons and guided practice to develop mastery of basic skills. Along with better academic outcomes, research shows that PALS fosters classroom community, equity, inclusion and motivation in all students. 

There are programs similar to “Toe By Toe” that can be used and are more compatible with Canadian English. It’s less the exact program that matters than the commitment to ensuring every student who needs intensive, empirically proven intervention receives it.

Thank you TDSBNW for clarifying what Toe by Toe is all about.  You are right, it was not well explained in the articles.

PALS is also being used in the Thunder Bay Catholic Board with good results. 

I absolutely agree with your final paragraph—that is what is crucial and often not happening.

“Although Maahs said Toe-by-Toe costs are only $40 per student, director of instruction Ruth Wiebe said there would be other costs - to customize the program, administer it and analyze results - that would raise the bill at a time when the district is looking for spending cuts to balance its budget.”

Malkin this is the exact thing that started to happen when I began teaching the SE students (at one of the KPRSB schools here in Ontario) Stairway to Reading . My husband and I showed S&R to our child’s teachers (all 3 of them) and they were dumbfounded, they had nothing as good as S&R. We managed to convince them to try S&R last fall. The principal set a 6 week trial run with there test running benchmark for reading as the determining factor of continuing with S&R after 6 weeks were up . I agreed but to make it fair use S&R reading test and then you will have an accurate assessment.
The princapal refused my offer to volunteer (for free, even willing to provide rewards, dry erasers, anything needed to successfully implement program) three days a week for one hour. Principal didn’t feel that stickers or rewards such as pencils or other small things were necessary the fact that they were learning to read was a reward in it self. Give me a break, these poor helpless children need everything they can get that makes them feel smart and empowered to continue with wanting to even try to learn. They have been made to feel stupid and inferior since kindergarten. Please do not get me going on their self esteem issues. 
I assisted the SE with the first two sessions to demonstrate the scripted learning of S&R
with our child.  SE was impressed and felt she had several other students in different grades who would benefit from this program.
The SE was able to run the program with 4 children, I volunteered one day a week and the SE worked with them as often as she could. 

Bottom line is we never knew the results of the testing due to confidentiality, but I could see
that they were finally getting the basic sounds. Imagine not being able to tell the difference between e, u, a, i .  (out of order on purpose These were higher elmentery grade students.

Lack of any “professional” remedial English and math is the reason we home school, that and some bullying issues but that is a whole other thread….
We can teach Stairway to Reading and Jump Math, it’s not very hard.

Just think of the boost to alleviate our unemployment crisis. How many would jump at chance to become a properly trained remedial EA. Their all kinds of literate adults that would love to teach in small groups and would welcome $18 / hr into their households.
Teachers jobs would be safe as the EA’s will require trainers and leaders and for the most part it would only be needed in K-6

Win/win but I can hear Doug’s union whining already…A literate adult is not smart enough to be trained to be a “tutor.” How could they be expected to read from script? After all they probably only have an OSSGD. My opinion is if they can not properly train an adult then they have no right being in a classroom.

And Doug no one asked me! I’ll take 1 hour 1:1 or even 4:1 with a trained remedial EA over an hour in class with a teacher! Teachers are needed but so are properly trained remedial EA’s.

Mark H, that is a wonderful idea, and it does happen more often in the United States, than in Canada. It is prefect, in the small rural communities where there is little to no private services and is a way to bypass the schools. In fact, in the rural locations people would be willing to work for a lot less than $18.00 per hour. Often when a parent takes it into their head to start a small tutoring business in rural areas, it fails because of the lack of support coming from the school, They have a tendency to discourage parents from using the service, especially when it is successful in reading problems.
Perhaps, it can be started from the grassroots, where it will start in the rural areas, and funding for training could be offered through literacy agencies. Just a thought, since our literacy centres, do little for the children, and are run by volunteers for the most part.

Doretta`s comment-the Ministry creates their own-based on their opinion and thoughts-as individuals.Defer to research??????

My former union also represented EAs so I have no institutional problem with more EAs.

I could refer you to the STAR research from Tennessee which found that compared with having extra EAs in the class, using the same money to cut class sizes even if it meant only the teacher was the most efficient way to spend educational dollars.

I personally advocate more teachers and more EAs. People will say, Doug acts as if there is no limit whatsoever on educational expenditure. It is not a zero sum game. The nature of education is investing in people so, provided you spend with some wisdom, the more you spend, the more the government saves. If you want to slash the deficit and create a surplus for the government then you spend much more on education because it ups your productivity, causes an inflow of investment, creates your human capital, slashes your criminal justice budget, reduces your welfare and EI budget all at the same time. We have never yet even approached the optimal point on the cost benefit analysis.

Doug, if that was true spend more money on teachers and EA, without changing the systematic structural deficits in the education system, plus governing of the education system, why would anyone expect to see changes in achievement scores that would impact crime, productivity, and reduced welfare and IE benefits?  Unless there is a major overhaul, it is questionable to increase expenditures that is directed at teachers, unless there is accountability measures imposed on the teachers.

Nancy, we do not have the Americans problem with uncertified teachers all over the place. We need to increase the standards to become a teacher like Finland and then relax and leave it to the professionals. It is almost impossible to spend too much on education. Misspend sure that is easy but spend too much nosiree. We have what now an almost $21 billion education budget in Ontario? We could spend $26-27 billion on education and the province would just move well ahead of most provinces but many US states would still be spending far more. We would be well advised to do so.

Relax and leave it with professionals? Good luck with that! BTDT the reason we home school!

I am sympathetic to the elementary teacher, I always know that they are only one person, but half of their time is spent being a high paid babysitter.  Get a few EA minion’s scurryingng around teaching English and math skills in small groups and maybe your kiddo’s would have a frickin’ clue when the teacher was discussing something interesting.

Sorry, but you do not train your EA’s properly, in fact most teachers shun them and give them the old mushroom treatment.
You only use them for problem children who are disrupting the class. In fact one of my daughters teachers suggested (wink, wink) that if she was to be a disruption she might get an EA. My daughter is a rule follower, she was always lunch monitor, yard monitor, etc. to suggest that she act up on purpose to get an EA was insane.

My grade 5 couldn’t read, write or do simple math like whats 2+2. She had no clue how to count on her fingers properly, I realized neither did I. Do you know how easy it is to count properly on your fingers Doug? Do you know how easy it is to memorize the times tables counting properly on your fingers?

My friend is a 60yr/old machinist raised in Malta, he told me “of course I can count on my fingers proper…how else would you do it?” and then he showed me exactly how you are taught in JUMP Math.

Middle class Ontario Doug, I missed the memo on counting on your fingers Doug. Missed it the first time around when I was a kid….missed it again with the girl….dang… I must of missed the memo on it from the boy’s teacher too.
I’m sure I read everything, I do have an OSSGD.

MarkH makes some good points, but he overgeneralizes. Some schools make good use of EAs (and SNAs – Special Needs Assistants).  In general, EAs/SNAs lack effective training, which is not their fault.  The boards organize some training sessions for them, and they are sometimes included in teacher PD sessions, but data show that very little (2%!) of what is “learned” in PD-type “workshops” is effectively translated into practice.  Real learning occurs on the job, and EAs who get paired with effective teachers become very skilled over time.

In one school setting, we had several EAs trained to use effective interventions in reading, written language, oral language (not speech, but oral comprehension and expression, vocabulary,  semantics etc) , and less often, math. Teachers identified students needing support, assessed the students and grouped them and monitored their progress, but the EA provided most of the supplementary instruction.  These were “regular” kids, not “special ed” kids, but many would have ended up with special ed labels had early intervention not taken place.  For this kind of situation to work, the school administration has to support it and be a buffer against intrusions from MOE and board personnel who would have opposed it. 

Even if a school gets effective procedures in place to help all students early on, this can all be out the window with a change in administration.  Successful schools are bottom-up phenomena, not top-down phenomena, and too often the local leadership needed is in short supply. There is a far, far more critical shortage of excellent administrators than there is of excellent teachers. That’s why site-based management only works in a minority of situations. Data from the Educational Testing Service show that people who get graduate degrees in Educational Administration have very low verbal and mathematical ability, on a par with day care workers (as a group) and significantly lower than teachers (about 1 standard deviation).

MarkH is quite correct in challenging the “Just leave it to the professionals” canard. Middle class and upper-SES families do nothing of the kind. Extensive after-schooling and private tutoring has been called the “dirty little secret of the suburbs.”  One principal in a very high-SES Ontario school was heard to announce on Curriculum Night, “We aren’t going to waste time teaching beginning reading, printing, cursive writing, math facts, spelling and arithmetic. That’s YOUR job! We will focus on higher-level thinking, media literacy, curriculum integration….”  More than 90% of the students in that school at the time had private tutors.  It’s a booming market, and source of extra revenue for teachers in less affluent areas, who can moonlight in the ‘burbs for $60-80/hour. I know colleagues who do this (I am sure they are good tutors, too. But the families in our catchment area cannot afford this kind of thing).

In one very low-SES middle school I was in, I had a student who had been passed along (not a “special ed” kid) with Bs and Cs every year, and I discovered that in Grade 7 he still did not know the alphabet – no kidding. He couldn’t name the months of the year, either. He was a native English speaker with college-educated parents and a fairly high IQ. The family was undergoing many medical and financial challenges at the time,  but the mom came in and I told her, Your son is at a Pre-K level in reading. She burst into tears and told me she had been trying to get the school to believe that for years. I admitted we had certainly failed her son, but I loaned her “Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons” and showed her how to use it. She took it home and taught her kid (she needed a structured approach, she didn’t know how to help him). I couldn’t do it in a middle school class situation.

I have a library of materials to loan to parents who can use them, but language challenges and other factors prevent many from being able to take advantage of the opportunity. The bottom line is that we must provide those learning opportunities for students *in school* and “business as usual” will not get us there.  The MOE’s practice of funding “tutoring” in some schools, with no parameters on effective practices or progress monitoring or instructional grouping is a perfect example of how the system wastes millions that could be spent on effective small-group assistance for students in their neighbourhood school.

Parents need to be vigilant. The support available for students is extremely variable (this is a huge equity issue in my books), and money is only part of the problem. It is unfortunately true that families may have to do it themselves (as the rich school principal admonished), and they can find a number of helpful sites, discussion boards and listserves online.

Doug reading failure can be eliminated, along with failures in basic arithmetic, basic writing skills which are the basic skills needed to express, reason, and to do advance math, with ease. If the EAs were allowed to do their jobs, without following the script, the teacher’s instruction, and the numerous parameters of what should not be taught or taught, life in school would improve, and it would be a happy place to go to. Take for example, learning to count properly with your fingers, a technique that has its place in the European and Asian countries, but not here in Canada. It is why we have students in grade 9 and 10 still counting with their fingers, much like a kid in grade 2. My daughter learn how to count properly, and I remember the day well, she came home all excited that she can count without using stick figures. Compliments of an EA. Than she showed me the proper way, and than we hit the computer, and found out the history, of counting, and historical speaking, a technique that actually comes from the Asian culture.
A lot of things in education, have been thrown out, including basics needed to do advance work, in favour of certified teachers, scripted curriculum, and instruction. Why you think teachers are opposed to such help, is beyond me.
But I did have an interesting chat at the second level of the ministry of education, apparently I spoke of things that the ministry was not aware that it is regular practice, that actually impacts the new initiatives and policies of the education ministry, The problem is how the school board sets up the design of the new program, where the parameters are narrowed, and over-defined, that fewer children benefit of the new changes. It is where teacher unions, the top part of the board, make sure that it is designed like this, so accountability, and success of any one change or program, is the measure of making a pass of 50 % or more, and NOT the measures of improvements starting from a base line of the individual student. If measuring from a base line of the individual student was the reality, we would not have the variance in the different levels of achievement as we do today. In fact, my daughter would be an accomplished reader, with good reading strategies.

Oh boy, another miracle cure held back by the public school conspiracy to keep people stupid. Zzzzzzzzzz.