Society for Quality Education

Vol. 20, No. 4, December 2011. ISSN-1201-215

FROM THE PRESIDENT

At SQE, we want to ensure that every child succeeds in school. In working towards this goal, we do two things. First, we provide authoritative information about educational governance and methodology to decision-makers. Second, we help parents help their own children - by making available free remedial programs (such as Stairway to Reading and Stairway to Math) and free advice (such as my book How to Get the Right Education for your Child). Our blog, Twitter, Facebook, Sunshine on Schools , and our newsletter are other examples of how we help parents.

If you have a specific question, please feel free to write to Aunt Malkin (see regular column below). You never know, you might see your name in lights!

SQE is the the only group in Canada fighting to improve the quality of education in this country. We exist solely because of the generosity of people like you who care. You can help SQE continue its important work by contributing right now online or by forwarding this newsletter to your friends or business associates. Together, we can make a difference.

Regards, Malkin

SOCIETY ACTIVITIES

We're holding our annual general meeting on Saturday, November 26 at 11:00 am in Mississauga. We don't have anything special planned but, if you're interested in finding out more about us and our work, you would be most welcome to drop by. We promise to be nice to you, and we will give you a free lunch. For more details, apply to Doretta.

Over the last while, we have been surveying our readers. Here are the highlights of what you told us. The majority of you are parents, with a sizeable percentage being grandparents as well. Most of your children/grandchildren attend(ed) publicly-funded schools. You are overwhelmingly interested in teaching basic skills. Your political affiliation is primarily Conservative, but runs the gamut. The majority of you would like to see SQE pursue research studies, and so we will plan to do this (we are hoping to fund a comparison of Edmonton students with the rest of Alberta, for example). And very few of you suggested topics for our newsletter, alas.

Our new poll concerns the bizarre Ontario phenomenon of "victory laps". You can find it on our home page (scroll down to the bottom).

ASK AUNT MALKIN

A veteran of the school wars herself, with the scars to prove it, Malkin Dare has had lots of experience dealing with education problems. If you want some been-there-done-that advice, give her a call at 519-884-3166 or e-mail her.

Question

My grade 2 son is really floundering in school. I have to help him with his homework, as he hasn't got a clue. So I help him the only way I know how - showing him how to sound out words using phonics and helping him to memorize his number facts. But yesterday my son's teacher asked me to stop using these old-fashioned methods at home. In the very nicest possible way, she told me that my interference is just confusing my son and hindering his progress. What should I do? Sally, Ottawa

Answer

This reminds me of the old feminist joke about how the early male astronauts didn't want female astronauts in space with them because zero gravity would make certain parts of their anatomies bob around in distracting ways. To which the feminists replied - too bad, we'll miss having men in space with us.

In other words, it is you who is doing the right things to help your son, and it is his teacher who is confusing him with her interference. However, it is also true that we women can joke all we want about keeping male astronauts on the ground, but the reality is that men did go into space en masse and it was a long time before a female astronaut was permitted to join them. Just like NASA, your son's teacher is running the show.

In my free book, How to Get the Right Education for your Child, I give detailed instructions on the best way to approach your son's teacher about meeting his needs. However, your chances of success are not great, for reasons I explain in my book. In the likely case that your son's teacher is unable or unwilling to make the necessary changes, my book also outlines your options - changing teachers, changing public schools, switching to a private school, or home-schooling. I would be happy to send you a free copy of my book on request.

The bottom line is - don't delay. Your son gets only one crack at grade 2, and he is already at least a year behind. Time is not on his side!

MAILBAG

Living in La-la Land

You won't believe what is happening at my board. The powers-that-be have allowed Facebook on school computers, the purpose being so kids will learn how to use Facebook responsibly. Dream on! In addition, students are to have "guest" access to the board's wireless network and there's no telling what they will access, upload, or use. And of course now we're bracing ourselves for a rash of laptop thefts. The school board bureaucrats who are imposing these policies are totally out of touch with reality! Barrie

Check It Out Yourself

Aunt Malkin's response to Christie in the last newsletter prompted me to go to the EQAO site to learn more about the provincial tests. The EQAO actually makes available sample test booklets and sample student responses here. I must say I found the students' work to be appallingly low-level. Windsor, ON

Socially-Engineered Schools

On Friday, this weird little woman from the Ministry of Labour came to our school to inspect the shops and science wing. (This is part of a "safety blitz" which is of course an oxymoron to anyone who knows his history.) The woman spent hours talking to anyone who would listen, and then eventually justified her existence by finding three safety violations: 1) the adjustable work stations on the grinding wheel were not in the horizontal position, 2) there was sawdust in the woodworking shops (I was astonished when she didn't cite us for grease in the auto shop), and 3) an obvious custom-made vacuum system was described as tampering by our staff). Clearly, schools are an excellent platform for the government to act out its social engineering program. Toronto

Things Are Deteriorating

As a teacher, I was distressed that no political party was addressing any of the pressing problems in schools during the recent election in Ontario. Here are a few examples. Classroom teachers are expected to teach every kind of student - ESL, special education, severe emotional, psychological, and behavioural problems - all together in the same classroom. Over the years, the curriculum has become ridiculously overburdened and the elementary report cards have become a nightmare for teachers, with separate marks for 16 different subjects. The number of students in the primary grades has been capped, but this means that the other class sizes are bigger. I have 30 students in my grade 5 class. I grew up and was educated in this province, and I have seen a marked decline in the quality of education over the past few years. Ottawa

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

If you were asked to start from scratch and set up the very best school system in the world, would you:

Make it almost impossible to fire bad teachers?
Impose an undemanding curriculum?
Pay employees so well that there is not much money left over for operations?
Allow bad schools to continue in operation?
Pay bad junior kindergarten teachers the same as stellar high school physics teachers?
Minimize objective testing and reporting?
Pay teachers on the basis of credentials unrelated to student achievement?
Employ armies of consultants and bureaucrats of various kinds?
Force students to attend unwanted schools?

As you know, these conditions prevail in most Canadian school systems today - characteristics of systems organized for the benefit of their employees, not for their customers.

It would actually be better if school systems were organized for the benefit of their students. Spread the word.

BOOKS OF INTEREST

Class Warfare: Inside the fight to fix America's schools. Steven Brill.

This tells the story of the education wars currently raging in the United States, along with some history. The author uses the Race for the Top competition (to which he attributes the recent tectonic shifts in state legislation) as the narrative structure. No dry historical tome, Class Warfare is full of personal information and anecdotes about the various individuals who are trying to reform American education - a widely-assorted cast of characters indeed. With each chapter short, typically only two or three pages, reading the book is like eating salted nuts – you read one chapter and you just have to read one more. The excerpt (p. 86) kind of epitomizes the book.

"August 19, 2002, was Joel Klein’s first day on the job as the New York City schools chancellor. Making his way to his office after navigating through the security process at the Board of Education headquarters in Brooklyn (which, after cleaning out two-thirds of the staff, he would soon abandon in favor of a building next to City Hall in Manhattan), Klein saw that a light on his phone console was blinking. ‘Don’t we need to answer that?’ he asked his new assistant, a veteran of the office he had just assumed and someone who, he recalls, looked at him as if certain she’d still be there when he, like the chancellors before him, had departed. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘That’s just some parent on hold who called complaining about something. If you let it blink long enough, she’ll go away.’ It was probably that morning that Klein began using a phrase that he would still repeat to friends multiple times a day eight years into his job: ‘You just can’t make this stuff up'."

The Good School: How smart parents get their kids the education they deserve. Peg Tyre.

Written in a very chatty style, this book caters to parents who have the ability to choose their children's school. The author offers parents some sophisticated methods for assessing classrooms and schools, also providing a great deal of research-based information about how to help kids do better in school. The chapters on class size, testing, reading, math, and curriculum are particularly valuable, but the last chapter offers bad advice about leaving kids in sub-standard schools while their parents try to make things better. The excerpt (p. 70) outlines what the author calls “the four Silver Bullet questions that test designers say you should ask when you are looking at test scores”.

“Ask to see scores broken out by subgroups. A mean test score - even if it is rising - means almost nothing. Really. Nobody who knows statistics would find a mean score for an entire grade of students meaningful.
“Make sure you look at long-term trends. A one-year test score change, even when it is going up, also means next to nothing.
“Scores (not means) for subgroups still rising over the long term? Great. Now it is time to find out what’s creating that upward trend. Ask the principal these two questions: what are the three decisions that you’ve made in the last two years in an effort to impact student achievement in your school? What are the results?
“Still want to get a better measure of the school? Ask this: What is your intervention plan for the lower-quartile students - the bottom of the class? And how are you progressing with that plan? Even if your kids are not in the lowest quartile, this matters to you. If the school has a solid plan for hard-to-teach kids, they are likely to have a solid plan for your kid, too.”

Willpower: Rediscovering the greatest human strength. Roy F. Baumeister & John Tierney.

Drawing on cutting-edge research, the authors explain that willpower has a physical basis and operates like a muscle: it can be strengthened with practice and fatigued by overuse. Willpower is fueled by glucose, and it can be bolstered simply by replenishing the brain's store of fuel. As a result, proper nutrition and adequate sleep actually help people resist temptation. And while there are natural limits to our self-control, these boundaries can be manipulated. Once one establishes the right habits and techniques, willpower gets easier, requiring less conscious mental energy to avoid temptation. Filled with fascinating anecdotes and vignettes, the book draws lessons from the lab as well as from the lives of entrepreneurs, parents, entertainers, and artists. The excerpt (p. 199) deals with what parents can do to build their children's self-control.

"Whether you're giving a time-out to a toddler or revoking a teenager's driving privileges, there are three basic facets of punishment: severity, speed, and consistency. Many people associate strict discipline with severe penalties, but that's actually the least important facet. Researchers have found that severity seems to matter remarkably little and can even be counterproductive: Instead of encouraging virtue, harsh punishments teach the child that life is cruel and that aggression is appropriate. The speed of the punishment is much more important, as researchers have found in working with children as well as with animals. For lab rats to learn from their mistakes, the punishment generally has to occur almost immediately, preferably within a second of the misbehavior. Punishment doesn't have to be that quick with children, but the longer the delay, the more chance that they'll have forgotten the infraction and the mental processes that led to it.

"By far the most important facet of punishment - and the most difficult one for parents - is consistency. Ideally, a parent should quickly discipline the child every single time he or she misbehaves, but in a restrained, even mild manner. A stern word or two is often enough as long as it's done carefully and regularly. This approach can initially be more of a strain on the parents than on the child. They're tempted to overlook or forgive some misdeed, if only because they're tired or because it may spoil the pleasant time everyone else is having. Parents may rationalize that they want to be kind; they may even tell each other to be nice and let this one go. But the more vigilant they are early on, the less effort is required in the long run. Consistent discipline tends to produce well-behaved children."

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