Stephen Hurley has certainly refreshed the conversations and questions about the purpose of education recently on his blog, as well as about what is quality in education/schools. As the consideration continues about what questions would be most effective in framing a conversation about purpose, I thought I would deport a post I wrote on my blog recently over to this site. It focuses on Ontario’s recent priorities and goals, of course, but I ended the post with a few questions about confidence and accountability that may help and relate to the conversation about quality and purpose of education in Canadian schools (or in general). No small task..!
Here is the original text cross-posted below:
I found it interesting how many times I saw The Atlantic article, “What America Can Learn From Ontario’s Education Success” (written by Michael Fullan) get tweeted this past week….from Ontario (where I am) to other provinces, to the US, and back again. I also checked on the comments on it from time to time. I read with interest about the three “non-negotiable” priorities referred to:
“Like many school systems, Ontario had too many “top” priorities. The Ministry of Education selected three–literacy, math, and high school graduation–with a commitment to raise the bar for all students and close achievement gaps between all groups. There are other goals, of course, but these three are non-negotiable and take precedence because they leverage so many other learning goals.”
Also interesting to me were the points about teacher accountability:
“By focusing on teacher development, Ontario was also able to raise teacher accountability. Decades of experience have taught Canadian educators that you can’t get greater accountability through direct measures of rewards and punishments. Instead, what Ontario did was to establish transparency of results and practice (anyone can find out what any school’s results are, and what they are doing to get those results) while combining this with what we call non-judgmentalism. This latter policy means that if a teacher is struggling, administrators and peers will step in to help her get better. (There are, however, steps that can be taken if a situation consistently fails to improve.)”
I am trying to understand what the differences may be between “measures of rewards and punishments” and “transparency of results and practice”, and “non-judgementalism”. Is this the key and desired accountability piece, “anyone can find out what any school’s results are, and what they are doing to get those results”?
So, off I went to the Ontario Ministry website. On their “What We Do” page, I found mention of three core priorities,
“Our plan to promote a strong, vibrant, publicly funded education system is focused on three core priorities”:
- High levels of student achievement
- Reduced gaps in student achievement
- Increased public confidence in publicly funded education
There are further specifics listed for each priority. I have been thinking a lot about the third:
Increased public confidence in publicly funded education:
“Our goal is to create strong community-school partnerships and to make publicly funded schools the schools of choice for all parents. We are promoting two-way communication with the public and strengthening the role of schools in communities. By engaging the public and working collaboratively with school boards across the province, we are building a supportive learning environment.”
Following that section, is a list of supporting conditions for all three priorities, “To achieve our three goals we must also ensure a variety of supporting conditions are in place.” The list included: Early Childhood Learning; Arts Education; Character Development; Student Engagement; Safe and Healthy Schools; Parent Engagement; Peace and Progress; School Buildings; Small Class Sizes; Professional Learning; Leadership. You can read some elaboration of these conditions on the link here.
So while I ponder these conditions and specifics more, I thought I would invite others to my thinking 
A few of my questions so far: Whose confidence should be sought after the most – public, parents, students, other? Is there stakeholder agreement on what accountability should look like? I have also been thinking a lot about what makes me confident in publicly funded education and ensures that they are, and continue to be, the “schools of choice” for me as a parent (not that I have been asked or have the right answers).
Recent decisions have school boards across the province making sure they offer full accessibility to students & parents with special needs. This would include things such as ensuring their website can be “read” by a program which is used by those are without sight. School boards across the province will not only spend hours, but also money, to make an appropriate policy. The passing of Bill 13 will be equal time and money required for this project. We have 40 + school boards all performing the same task.
Think of the money that the Ministry of Education would save if they had UNIVERSAL school board policies. These would be policies that would be fair, able withstand litigation, and have the input of various experts in areas such as child protection, fire prevention, lawyers, etc. Why does Children’s Aid Society have universal policies but school boards do not ?
I think many boards share formats/templates for their policies…or network boards that are similar when they are drafting policies….so that might save some time and money.
I am not sure about the comparison ot the CAS. Maybe we are back to the question/difference of purpose and mandates?
Thanks for your thoughts, Heather! Maybe others are familiar with these policy areas, but it is interesting to think about all the policies that are created and necessary and expected at the board level to let education happen.
Sadly, I think I’ve spent way too much time reading all the policies & procedures for school boards in Ontario. I get the feeling I might be the only one. Halton region for example has some impressive policies while Waterloo District Public school board has some of the worst policies. I’ve always taken the angle that that not having effective policies can hurt staff and students. It wasn’t until recently that I’ve looked at the cost saving benefits.
If you enter any CAS in Ontario they all have the same policies. As laws change, as protocol for say head injury, as fire prevention measures change to adapt to EMS and changing technology, it is important to have up-to-date policies that all Principals, teachers and students must follow. How can Moosonee have the same financial resources to make the same effective policies as say London Ontario ?
Imagine if half of all the policies of the school boards are completed by the Ministry of Education. This would free up some much needed time for the Admin & Trustees to focus on other pressing issues. It would ensure that such things as Bill 13 are applied properly into a policy form. If you have the time, and interest, open up and compare Waterloo public board & Halton region public board. Huge difference.
I am always a bit cautious when it comes to universal policies. The problem with ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy is the same one we saw in the ‘one-size-fits-all’ funding formula. Ontario is so big and so varied, I’m not sure that there is one set of universal policies that will meet the needs of all school boards. There may be some areas where there could be common policy, but in others, it simply wouldn’t work. For example, the transportation needs for those students in Moosonee are vastly different from those in London or Toronto. Each community has unique needs, challenges, and people. As we found out from the funding formula fiasco (nice alliteration for a summer day, eh?), one size rarely fits all.
Here are some which could work: communication between staff & students (what is appropriate, what things like email address can be shared, can a staff call a student at home, etc.)
Technology (what can be brought to school, used in the school, can a staff LEGALLY remove an ipad/ phone from a student, what happens if the removed item goes missing)
Internet bullying (examples of bullying, what authority does the school have to intervene and how) Possible family abuse (the phone numbers will be the local numbers for the area, but the step-by-step on how to deal with suspected abuse),
Custody issues ( how to legally deal with a parent who does not have fully custody what can be communicated, how is information shared, how is a child picked up, how does a school deal with
a parent where there is suspected high risk for the child being taken)
A student with allergies, the autistic child ( might be offer suggestions on how to ensure communication with parent on issues with the child. ) Bullying ( the appropriate steps where in each school they would show the latter of who you contact if your child is being bullied including)
Each school could apply for an exemption to a particular section where say in Moosonee the EMS (emergency response system) is set up differently and a disaster plan is changed in section B,C & D1 to remove or add something.
Setting standards province wide, will only create the conditions of more rigidity and inflexibility of adapting to the child with special needs. To used the CAS as an example is inappropriate, since the CAS acts mainly as a child protection agency, compared to the education system, which is the instrument and vehicle to the delivery of education.
As it stands now, school boards and their policies do not have enough flexibility to allow the individual schools to adapt for the best fit. What makes anyone think, universal policies of the province wide kind will be any better.
The call should be more flexibility at the individual schools to be able to obtain the best fit for their students, and where guidelines are not written in stone. Where it should be rigid, are the rules and regulations governing the legal aspects dealing with children. All done without the burden of more paperwork requesting an exemption. Let’s leave it up to the administrators, staff, students and parents of the schools to decide what is best for the individual schools, rather than forcing the school to adapt to ill-fitting universal policies/provincial standards.
As for savings, the universal kind may not be the best model. Research has shown that the more autonomy a school has, the better able the school can educate spending dollars wisely. Of course the studies hails from the U.S. but evidence is mounting that the best education model, are the ones that have decentralized with autonomy at the school levels. The upper levels above the school are there to serve the schools, and not as it is now, where the schools serves the school boards and all other levels above the school.
I have found two school boards (out of the two I looked at) where I found that they allowed for employees, including teachers to begin working without a criminal check being completed. That concerns me. Any employee should be able to open up a policy and follow it knowing it is accurate, not relying on verbal communication which can change.
I think the policies & procedures of some of these boards really speaks volumes and speak for themselves. Actually reading these polices and the lack of in many cases, shows that quite a few boards are far behind in maintaining minimum standards. My previous board had 17 policies that all relate to child safety that had NOT been REVIEWED (sorry for the caps) for the past 15 years !!! There will be students entering and leaving this board before any of these policies have been even looked at. (note: all polices will be dated when they were last reviewed).
I think school boards are also dealing with the safety of children just like CAS.
You mentioned to leave it up to the students and parents of the school but the school board does not have to follow ANY recommendations by either of them. I agree with you that students and parents should be involved but student trustees are presently frustrated by their lack of power and full voting rights. Parents while they can waste their time with PIC (parent involvement committee) some boards & Trustees fail to acknowledge them, and legally do not have to. So we have Trustees who presently are either leaving from frustration and state Bill 117 holds them back. Too much power for one CEO — The Director of Education.
Tedious work in reviewing policies of the school board kind versus the individual school policies. And Heather you are correct, that minimum standards are not being followed, but are the school board policies really meant to be followed by the individual schools and the staff within the school. Or as I have concluded riding the roller coaster of an education system as a parent, the school board policies and the school policies are meant for the students and the parents to follow to a tee.
Next time when you take another look at the school board policies, especially dealing with the safety of children or the security of the school – take note the red and yellow warnings pleading with parents to follow the protocols and procedures of the school and school board policies. They do not want students or parents to skipped any of the procedures dealing with the processes of protocols. The reasons and are big ones, to limit the liability of a school, to ensure compliance by the students and parents, and to prevent complaints from ever reaching first base, and beyond the school walls.Top-down approaches of the centralization kind, is always dependent on the compliance of the lowers levels to complied to the policies. This is more so for whatever groups are at the bottom and the two groups that are at the bottom are the students and then the parents.
To change it, have parents and students stopped following the protocols and processes created by others, within the education system, that always favours the ones working within the system. I am not advocating civil unrest, but a smarter way of dealing with ineffective protocols and processes that do not acknowledge and take into account the students and parents of the school.
Take for example, a parent who has been at the school two times within three weeks on bullying incidents. To the parent, the school did nothing, and the bullying continues. The third time, the parent phones up the police to file a complaint on the bullying student and the actions non-actions of the school. Watch the reaction from the school to the school board and see them move so fast to stopped the bullying. I found the police quite effective and to the point where school policies concerning bullying become more effective.
Another example is a school council filled with frustrated parents who are spinning their wheels. Go straight to the top – the ministry of education and have a nice chat on the phone of whatever is ailing the school council from doing their job acting on the behalf of parents and students at the school. Education ministries may not have the power to ordered the school board, but the education ministry certainly has the political influence and sway to tell the school board to change their ways, especially on not following the rules governing the education system. Bonus, the ministry of education is often a wealth of new information that the school and school board has neglected to passed along to the parents of school councils.
It is all about inserting your rights within a highly politicized structure, designed specifically for the employees of the education system, but not necessarily benefiting students, parents and the community. I had to learn this the hard way, and confrontation was never easy for me. But when I made the big leap, I learned a whole new set of skills that most parents lack because as parents, we actually do expect the school and the school board to take care of the education of their children, to follow their own policies and respect the needs of the students, parents and the community. On the flip side, schools and the school boards expect parents to trust the processes much of it created by the school board, and that they only have the best interests of the students in their hearts.
Would parents act the same shopping for goods and services that are the best fit for the family and its needs? Shouldn’t the education system be under the same scrutiny as other services and purchasing of goods, to where the consumer has some power, legal options and other non-legal options (such as taking their business elsewhere). As you have stated, parents and students lack the power, but as consumers they do not lack the power or options. Why are students and parents expected to complied and obey whatever comes down the pipeline of the education system? Heather has mentioned a number of legislative bills dealing with the education system on the provincial front, which is much different than the policies that are being crafted at the board and the school levels. Different, because the provincial legislature are laws, and school board and school policies are the rules/regulations based on interpretation of the provincial legislative laws. Hard to challenge the school board and school policy when the users of the schools do not have effective options, other than to stopped following the protocols and processes laid out by the school board and schools. Otherwise, it is expected that students, parents and the communities to complied and overlook the constantly shifting ground of changing policies and to ignore the non-enforcement of the regulations/policies by the employees of the school board and schools.
Trustees are caught in the same trap as parents or students are, but trustees’ power to governed has been systematically been reduce through the legislative arms of the sitting governments, to where they have become mere rubber stampers of the CEO of the school board, and whatever values he or she holds regarding the education of the youth. The trustees who start to revolt, swift action comes in the form of getting rid of the whole trustee council, and appoint new ones that meets the approval of the education ministry.
As for the classroom teachers, the same trap because there is heavy consequences to bear, if a teacher bucks the protocols, to advocate for their students. The teachers really do not have autonomy when it comes to looking after the best interests of their students. .
Sheila, thanks for the reflection on Fullan’s piece. I suspect that the further away from actual “life in a school” you get, the easier it is to talk like Michael and others do. It’s political talk and, while politics is part of publicly funded education, it doesn’t get us much further down the road towards discovering what the purpose of schooling should be…or does it. Perhaps it reveals more than I think about what is on the mind of politicians and policy-makers!
One comment that I wanted to make has to do what counts as a valid, worthwhile priority. It seems to me that we sometimes confuse trailing indicators of success with leading indicators. I realize that these are economic terms and ideas, but they speak to what I think sometimes gets us off track.
Parental confidence, I believe, is a trailing indicator. It’s what happens as the result of other things that we do. I think that, sometimes, we have worked too hard on trying to “create” confidence when, in fact, confidence comes as the result of doing well in other things.
The same can be said, perhaps to a lesser degree, with math and literacy scores. For the past number of years we have given direct attention in our schools to the scores and have looked for quick, easy fixes to the perceived problem of low scores. I think that concentrating, instead, on rich, well-conceived programs that allow students and teachers to spend more time on activities that will lead to true numeracy and literacy is a much better approach.
The “priorities” that you have identified show me how narrow-minded, politically motivated and short-sighted public education has become.
I realize that this doesn’t get us directly back to the conversation about what our purpose should be, but it does point to just how important the conversation is.
” It seems to me that we sometimes confuse trailing indicators of success with leading indicators. I realize that these are economic terms and ideas, but they speak to what I think sometimes gets us off track.”
The above is a topic that deserves a discussion thread. There is very little discussion within the education forums on the economic terms and theories being imposed unto the education system models. Stephen points it out aptly, there is confusion, quick fixes, and a lack of focus or an intense focus on short-term goals.
On the economic pages – a short concise definition of leading and trailing indicators. The term trailing is not general used, but the term lagging is the word used.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-leading-and-lagging-indicators.htm
On the education pages – the focus is on the leading indicators and not a whole lot on the trailing or lagging indicators. According to the economic experts, one needs a balance of both indicators to predict and measure growth. That said, the focus in education has been on leading indicators without paying any mind to the lagging/trailing indicators. Or as Stephen has stated – “The “priorities” that you have identified show me how narrow-minded, politically motivated and short-sighted public education has become.”
A study called Leading Indicators – http://annenberginstitute.org/pdf/LeadingIndicators.pdf
Leave it to readers, if this study is any indicator – the public education system will continue to be narrow-minded, politically motivated and short-sighted. Stephen has correctly pointed out, the intense focus of scores that leads to quick easy fixes, does not lead to the development of well-conceived programs that leads to true numeracy and literacy.
The purpose of education is not about students reaching benchmarks that satisfies the criteria and advancement of goals created above the school level. Benchmarks that are at the lowest possible standards, of where a 50 percent is the pass rate to maximized the greatest rate of return in advancement of the goal student achievement.
The purpose of education is to maximized the potential of each student, to reach their full potential. The time and expense in focusing on a few goals that speaks volumes on vagueness – ” High levels of student achievement
Reduced gaps in student achievement
Increased public confidence in publicly funded education” – leads to the handicapping of all students and their potential. Thus maximization of students’ potential, is controlled and micro-managed by others above the school level. via through quick fixes and low benchmarks of the 50 % kind.
As a parent, I only know it too well where vital access to SE services in reading were denied to my child, based on reported grades. My kid was passing in language arts and math, but barely and it did not help to see extreme grading on the sub-topics of language arts and math. A typical dyslexic trait, that is often used to denied the vital services in SE for reading,writing and numeracy.
The purpose of education is not to handicapped the students to prevent rising achievement and steady progress. The purpose of education is to maximized each and every student to reach their full potential. Idealistic? Perhaps, but in 1960s Ontario in a semi-rural community, it was the type of education that I received along with the other 800 students or so. In the school’s eye, the hard work of giving the students the skills, the abilities and the knowledge to steadily improve and achieve. How? Well-conceived programs that allowed the students and teachers in the classroom to truly focus on the skills, abilities and knowledge. The school did not have a bio lab, but the classrooms were large enough to conduct all kinds of interesting science experiments at the back of the classroom. Today, it would be against the rules, as our messy art classes would deem to be non-gratis in today’s classroom.
Is the answer not money ? I’m sure there are nurses and doctor sitting down trying to think if they too are accurately determining optimal health which would vary from patient to patient. The family would have a different view, and the health care professionals depending on their expertise would likely also have a different interpretation for optimal health for the patient. Who do we listen to ?
In our present healthcare system, like our education system it is money that allows for adequate equipment and resources to even come close to offering the best patient care. Money. I don’t want to see more money, just more accountability for money.
So many great thoughts and questions and points added here, Nancy, Stephen, and Heather! Some real food for thought regarding what is driving our education system.
Thinking on indicators….what/where conversations are needed….accountability vs. transparency….
Jacqui too! Thanks!