Society for Quality Education

Vol. 20, No. 2, June 2011. ISSN-1201-215

FROM THE PRESIDENT

In this issue, you'll find the usual great information. There's a book excerpt that documents the worrying shortfall in math skills in Canada, and another excerpt that looks at the baleful effect of the powerful American teachers' unions.That should get your blood boiling! Aunt Malkin gives advice to a parent on how to make the IEP process work for her child. And, as always, there's something completely different at the end (this time, a cool way to teach history).

We've been very busy since I wrote you last. Doretta, our executive director, has been all over the media (click here for details) - newspapers, radio interviews, TV - she's the latest media darling! And Doretta has taken maximum advantage of these soapboxes to promote education policies that will help Canadian students learn more in school. She's speaking up for your kids! Go Doretta!

If you want to put some more gas in Doretta's tank, you can find out how to do this by clicking here.

We'd also really like it if you would join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Thanks for your support!

Best regards, Malkin

SQE ACTIVITIES

We had a terrific conference in April. We may not have totally solved all the problems with public education at the conference, but we certainly got lots of good ideas about how to go about grappling with them. The Canadian première of The Cartel was a huge success, garnering rave reviews, and we had some great speakers - Michael Coren, Gerry Nicholls, John Snobelen, and the list goes on. Plus there were lots of new faces willing to pitch in and help us fix Ontario education. Hurrah! Here is the text for an interesting talk by Dr. Paul Bennett - interesting because of the perspective he provides on the progress of education reform in Ontario over the last 15 years or so. You can watch a video of a particular section of our conference by clicking on any of the following links: Welcome and Introduction to The Cartel Documentary (Doretta Wilson and Gerry Nicholls); Opening Remarks (Malkin Dare, SQE President); Morning Panel: Response to The Cartel (Panelists: Bob Bowdon, Virginia Walden-Ford, Andrew Thomas, Spider Jones; Moderator: Gerry Nicholls); Keynote Address: Theo Caldwell; Afternoon Panel: Are Ontario Schools Accountable? (Panelists: Paul Bennett, Andrea Mrozek, John Snobelen; Moderator: Michael Coren). To all those who participated - thanks for coming, it was great to meet you, and thanks for your input. We will be using it (see this month's poll , for example).

If you are marking a life passage, like a funeral or a birthday, you might like to consider making a donation to SQE in the name of the honouree. This was recently done by long-time supporter PC Choo in the memory of his mother-in-law Yong Pu-Kiew. Choo's mother-in-law believed strongly in education and sent her two daughters to an English middle school in Malaysia.

We have updated our Sunshine on Schools website, which has all kinds of great up-to-date information. Did you know, for example, that Ontario Catholic schools are on average delivering a far superior education to their students? Would you believe that kids in smaller classes aren't learning more? Or that school boards that spend more money don't get better results? It's all there on the Sunshine website - and lots more!\

The results of our home page poll (scroll down to the bottom) show that a clear majority (42%) of respondents want schools to prepare their children for work. But every option received some votes, suggesting that people's expectations of schools are diverse and that it is setting schools up for failure if we expect them to be all things to all people. Thanks for participating!

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

Because my daughter was struggling with reading in school, I took your advice (in How to get the right education for your child ) and arranged for her to be tutored by Dr. Grant Coulson in Maple, ON. You were right - he is wonderful, and my daughter is progressing nicely. But her reading improvement doesn't show up on the school's assessments (possibly because they don't assess decoding ability), and the school is now insisting that she be tested and put on an Individual Education Program (IEP) - even though I have told them that I think the situation is under control and I'm worried about my daughter's reaction to getting a label slapped on her. Do I have to accept the testing? Do I have to accept the IEP? Alexandra, Hamilton

Answer

First of all, I'm delighted to hear that my advice is working out well for your daughter. That's great!

With regard to testing, the school does not have the right to test your daughter without your permission. By refusing testing, you make it impossible for your daughter to be officially labelled "special education" (which requires a formal IPRC process). I suggest, however, that you do your best to refuse permission tactfully, perhaps saying something along the lines that you're confident that her outside tutoring will deliver benefits over time, and thus a long-term special education placement or program is not something to consider at the moment. Any testing ought to be deferred until the results of the tutoring can be seen (and of course, it can be "deferred" forever).

With regard to an IEP, you do not have the right to refuse one. The Ontario Education Act states that an IEP is "required" if a student needs accommodations on a regular basis, or modifications (changes to the grade level of expectations), or a reduction in the number of expectations that will be assessed. The school does have to "consult" with you about an IEP, and your input does have to be considered and included in some fashion.

You can, however, refuse to have the IEP included in your daughter's Ontario School Record. You must put this request in writing to the school principal.

There is a lot of information in the most recent IEP guidelines on the Ministry web-site . I suggest you study the IEP booklet and see what an IEP should look like (there are numerous samples given) and then submit your own ideas for the "strengths" and "needs" part, as well as assuring that the instructional goals are explicit and measurable. The IEP can be a powerful tool for parents to get better instruction for their child. Click here for another helpful ministry web-site. As well, the Learning Disabilities Association of Ontario offers a free online IEP workshop which offers excellent support, including a very user-friendly IEP checklist.

You have the right to request specific types of instruction (such as systematic phonics), but you cannot request specific commercial programs, like Direct Instruction or Saxon Math. Of course, it's not at all likely that the school will honour your requests, but you will improve your chances if you frame your requests in such terms that the programs you want, or similar ones, will be the path of least resistance for the school.

Regards, Aunt Malkin

MAIL BAG

Where Does the Money Go?

Few people are aware of the incredible rise in the amount of money being spent on learning services/social workers in schools. A typical high school has several on-site social workers that deal with substance abuse and other forms of counselling. The ratio of teachers to learning services students in the classroom is amazingly low - guesstimate 1 teacher per 5 students. Special needs and vocational programs abound, with taxis or public transportation being provided, and there are dozens of educational assistants floating around. The new no-fail programs, like Credit Recovery and U-Turn, also increase costs. Guelph, ON

Phonics is an F Word

After 40 years of campaigning for phonics in England, I have found that there is no accountability for education (compared with such things as police or health services). Furthermore, there appears to be a total absence of professional curiosity, at all levels. The drill is that you conform to received wisdom, no matter how low achievement falls. Illiteracy is now front-page news in England, with 40% of children leaving school with low literacy levels. I have created a very simple - yet effective - way to teach young children to read, and it is available free at http://www.phonics4free.org. Merseyside, UK

Plus Ca Change

After fighting the education wars on behalf of my children 35 years ago - and winning - just when I thought I could relax, the wars are back! My grown-up children have - happily for me - produced kids of their own. But now that my grandchildren are in school, I'm learning - to my horror - that nothing much has changed and schools are just as unresponsive and unaccountable as ever. Plus another horrible element has been ratcheted way up - bullying: one of my grandchildren is actually afraid to go to school, and nobody at the school appears to care. When will the agony end? Ottawa, ON

How to Get the Right Education for Your Child

I laughed, I cried, I nearly died.... Your free book, How to Get the Right Education for your Child is wonderful. Not only does it capture the essence of the problems in modern public schools, but also it provides excellent advice on how to cope with them. Furthermore, the book is so readable and funny! Thanks a lot. Red Deer, Alberta

Informed School Choice

In the Food for Thought column in your last newsletter, you point out the unfairness of a system that forces low-income kids to stay in their failing public schools because their parents can't afford private school tuition. But it's more complicated than that, unfortunately. My family is in the fortunate position of being able to afford private school tuition, but even so it has taken several tries for us to identify a private school that meets our children's needs. It's a jungle out there, and it's really difficult to tell the good private schools from the bad private schools. I wish there were some way to make private schools transparent, sort of like www.ratemyteachers.ca. Claudine, Toronto

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The Heart of the Matter

Canadians tend to really like the concept of public schools (as opposed to actual public schools). Canadians like the idea of kids from all walks of life rubbing shoulders in the same classroom, and they like the idea of no child being denied an education because his parents can't pay. And we like these ideas too - as long as the children are rubbing shoulders in a classroom where they are learning a lot. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Some children are learning very little, because their assigned public school is offering a poor service.

It doesn't have to be like this however.

Most people assume that universally-accessible free public schools can happen only if they are run by the government. But if you think about it for a minute, you'll realize that the only essential component in the above scenario is that the government fund the schools. There is no reason why the government has to run the schools as well. In the health care arena, for example, the government pays for the services delivered by family doctors - but these doctors are private-sector practitioners.

In fact, governments are not all that great at running things - especially when it comes to keeping costs down. Look at the LCBO, for example, or VIA Rail. Of course, there are some serivces that have to be run by governments but, wherever possible, we should prefer to have our services provided by the private sector. Their service is usually better, and it almost always costs less.

There is really no reason why this principle can't be extended to schools. Once a government establishes the cost of educating each category of student (according to grade level and teachability) and then organizes things so that the appropriate amount of money follows each child to his or her chosen school, it really doesn't matter who is running the schools: the government, charities, universities, or private companies. As long as the school is providing a good education to its students and satisfying their parents, then the administrative details really make no difference. A school is a school is a school.

There are a number of advantages to a policy of letting a thousands flowers bloom, including the increased probability that parents and teachers will find schools that are a good fit for their particular talents and interests. As well, the increased competition among schools would spur improvement in all schools - public and private. Lastly, schools providing a poor service would not survive, because they would be chosen by too few parents. This is the heart of the matter, in more ways than one.

WHAT'S NEW?

Go to our blog, School for Thought, for up-to-the-minute education news and helpful teaching tips.

BOOKS OF INTEREST

Campus Confidential: 100 startling things you don't know about Canadian universities. Ken S. Coates & Bill Morrison

Though ostensibly written for students, this book contains a great deal of information that will surprise many parents, teachers, taxpayers, and even professors. Canadian universities are vastly different from the way they were 25 years ago. Here are a few little-known facts: a university degree is no longer a golden ticket to landing a job; the university one attends matters very little; university administrators' top priority is filling spaces; cheating is rampant on modern campuses; and nearly half of the students at many universities fail to graduate. The excerpt (pp. 56-57) deals with the shortage of Canadian math students in Canadian universities.

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"Canadian thirteen-year-olds are ranked eighteenth in the world in both math and science by the Trends in International Math and Science Study. In a different study, we ranked tenth in math skills in 2009, down from seventh three years earlier. Results are not even across the country. Alberta tops the Canadian rankings, and urban schools do better than rural ones.

"But the major issue in Canada is that not enough students are going into math-based undergraduate and graduate degrees. An astonishingly high percentage of Math PhD candidates at North American universities are international students. Would you have guessed more than 90 per cent? There is an ethnic twist to this issue as well. Students of Asian ancestry, particularly new Canadians, dominate the enrolment in Canadian universities in math."

Lowering Higher Education: The rise of corporate universities and the fall of liberal education. James E. Côté and Anton L. Allahar

The authors are professors at the University of Western Ontario. In their book, they chronicle the modern trend in universities towards de-emphasizing liberal arts and science education in favour of credentialism and job training. Lowered standards, inflated grades, poorly-prepared students, and disengaged professors - the fall-out from the corporatization of universities is far-reaching and disastrous. This mission drift, coupled with misguided leadership, has resulted in confusion and a lack of coherence in today's universities. The excerpt (pp. 79-80) discusses students' general lack of readiness for academic engagement.

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"A precursor to disengagement - in the sense just described where the bilateral contract is not honoured - is a lack of readiness of a student for the rigours of the liberal form of higher learning. The reference point here is learning in which standards require active engagement of the student in the subject matter. This active engagement is not only during class time, but also in preparing for classes in order to partake in meaningful interactions during class time and afterward in out-of-class conversations with classmates and others.

"The readiness for active engagement is not only a matter of developing intellectual acuity, which can be broken down to intelligence and prior learning. It also involves motivation, which comprises self-management skills, like time-management. Students who self-manage take responsibility for the courses they enrol in to ensure there is a match of their abilities and interests with a course's demands and content. Both of these aspects of readiness - intellectual acuity and self-management - are essential if students are to meet university standards of performance."

Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America's Public Schools. Terry M. Moe

The author is a Stanford professor of political science whose specialty is the study of government and political institutions. When he set out to find out why American public schools were falling so far short of the mark, he discovered that their administration is characterized by "bizarre forms of organization ... that no one in their right mind would favor if they were simply concerned with what works best for children. The schools are organized mainly to benefit the adults who work there." And the principal reason behind the bizarre forms of organization, according to Professor Moe, is the teachers' unions. The excerpt (p. 287) is taken from the very end of the book.

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"In the political process, the unions block or weaken reforms they find threatening, however helpful those reforms might be for schools and kids. This is obviously true for major and eminently sensible reforms, such as accountability and choice, which, if seriously pursued, would bring fundamental change to the system. But it is also true for extremely simple easy-to-accomplish reforms, such as getting bad teachers out of the classroom.

"Think about this last point for a moment. Why is it, after decades and decades, that the nation has done almost nothing to get bad teachers out of the classroom? What possible excuse could there be for inaction on something so incredibly basic and obvious? There isn't any excuse. There is only a reason: the teachers unions are extraordinarily powerful, and they are in the business of protecting the jobs of their members. That kids lose out when bad teachers remain in the classroom is just collateral damage, a cost of doing business.

"Children should always come first. But in America's system of public education, governed as it is by power and special interests, they simply do not. And in the near term, they will not. As things now stand, we have an education system that is not organized to be effective for children, can't be productively reformed in their best interests, and is powerfully protected to ensure that the interests of adults prevail. This is our reality."

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

Here's a cool teaching tool for introducing famous people from all different times and spheres. If you set your cursor on a particular individual, a pop-up message will tell you who he or she is. If you click on the individual, you will be linked to his or her Wikipedia biography.