Private schools should not be publicly funded

The Alberta School Board Association (ASBA) announced a new policy calling for the end of funding private schools with public dollars. 

The Alberta Government funds provides public funds to private schools with 70% of the per student basic education grant that public school boards receive.

Newly-elected president of ASBA Helen Clease made a statement that included:

• We don't have an issue with there being private schools. But we believe that the public dollars should go to public schools where every child can have access to that education.

• At a time where every bit would help in the public education system, whether it's substantial or not, I think we have to support public education.

• We're there to take every child and we have to make sure that we can meet many, many diverse needs with our children in our communities.

We all would like to believe that education is the great equalizer. Some even go so far as to say that the antidote to poverty is education.

However, without mindful and purposeful policies that fund and support public education in pursuit of equity for all, schools will merely perpetuate and reinforce the worst injustices and inequities of our society. Funding private schools with public money is a kind of pyramid scheme that benefits the wealthy few and is ultimately unsustainable.

Too many private schools have selective admissions -- which means private schools get to use public money to select which children will and which children won't attend their private school. In his article Whom We Admit, What We Deny: The Meaning of Selective Admissions, Alfie Kohn explores the ugly truths behind schools with selective admissions. Here are some of Kohn's key points:

• When schools deny a student admission by saying they are "not a good fit", they are really saying that the child is "not good enough for this school."

• There are two assumptions driving the admissions process: (1) Schools falsely believe that they can predict which students will be academically successful in the future -- standardized tests make this assumption even more damaging. (2) Schools come to see their primary role as sifting out all but the most promising children and then persuading their parents to enroll.

• Because accurately predicting a student's future successes can be very difficult to do, schools often end up evaluating children on their past successes which usually is a reflection of the student's affluence and opportunity and the family's socioeconomic status. This is how private schools with select admissions privilege the privileged and reproduce it in another generation.

• The troubling truth is that selective schools help to perpetuate the deep inequities that define our society, not just failing to make things better but actively making them a little worse.

If we are to believe those who like to rank schools according to their standardized test scores, then many private schools that have select admissions are the best schools in Alberta. And if these private schools with select admission are the best schools, why would we only admit the most capable students to these schools? If these private schools with select admissions are the best, shouldn't we populate them with students who need the most help?

The sad irony is that Martin Haberman was right when he said: "The children we teach best are those who need us least." 

David McLelland put it another way: "One would think that the purpose of education is precisely to improve the performance of those who are not doing very well." 

James Moffett coined the (unofficial) mantra of private schools with select admissions to be: "Send us winners and we'll make winners out of them." 

Alfie Kohn puts it this way: "Institutions that get to choose whom to admit tend to look for the applicants who are good bets to succeed: those who seem smart and compliant, will require the least time and effort, and are most likely to make the school look good. And that means those who most need what your school has to offer are turned away."

As bad as schools with select admissions are, I can think of few things more morally bankrupt and intellectually indefensible than publicly funded private schools with select admissions. 

I've been an outspoken critic of the Alberta School Boards Association. Despite my affinity to the idea of locally elected school board trustees, I've often wondered whether the Alberta School Board Association is relevant.

And yet, I'm fully prepared to give credit where credit is due. The Alberta School Boards Association may have just taken a step towards being relevant by rightfully rejecting the idea that private schools should be publicly funded.

Well played, Alberta School Boards Association. 

Well played.

Is Alberta changing their standardized tests?

Alberta's Education Minister Jeff Johnson has talked for some time now about how Alberta's Provincial Achievement Tests (PATs) are going to change. Information about how they will change is hard to come by and only occasional musings in the press from Minister Johnson provide any insight. Expectations are high but details are scant.

Here's what we know so far:

• These new provincial tests (replacing grades 3, 6, and 9) will evaluate students' abilities more broadly. The shift is being described as a change from evaluating content coverage to something vaguely defined as "competencies" with a focus on numeracy and literacy.

• No changes will be made this year but prototype tests could roll out as early as next year. It is likely that grade 3 PATs will be the first to change.

• "We don't want to abandon standardized testing. We just want to modernize it," says Minister Johnson.

• The new tests would focus less on regurgitating facts and more on providing students with an opportunity to show how they can apply what they understand. In other words, the new tests would care less about what students remember and care more about what students can actually do.

• Parents want quality information on how their child is learning.

Here are my thoughts:

Assessing Competencies

The move from assessing content coverage to competencies is a sound one backed by research. Alberta Education and former Education Minister Dave Hancock should be applauded for such a move. However, Minister Johnson's somewhat confused messaging regarding sound assessment practices becomes glaringly evident when he asks for standardized tests that assess competencies. No matter where one looks where competencies have taken hold (now a twenty year old idea that Alberta claims is 'new') - there is no such thing as a standardized test that assesses competencies. The best way to assess competencies is via performance assessments collected in learning portfolios, and The Alberta Assessment Consortium and Alberta Teachers' Association have some excellent research on this topic here. Hopefully some of this thinking will inform the ministry.

Reporting Real Learning

Authentic accountability means that the public can access the information they need to know about their schools. In other words, accountability is really about transparency; and yet accountability begins and ends with standardized test scores which are anything but transparent.

If 70% of tax payers in Alberta do not have children in school, will they take the time to look beyond the limited and superficial information that a standardized test score can provide?
The best feedback parents can receive about their children's learning is for them to see their children learning.

No reductionist data or convoluted edu-jargon required. When we are offered the choice between the inconvenience of spending the time and effort required for observing the messiness of real learning with the arbitrarily convenient tidy test scores, I fear we are too often seduced by the spurious precision of the numbers.

Instead of moving beyond standardized test scores in favour of more authentic alternatives, we get Education Ministers who settle for merely "modernizing" standardized tests -- after all, it's safer and easier.

Inspiring Education and Standardized Tests

Through Inspiring Education, Albertans told the Alberta Government that they wanted "to inspire and enable students to achieve success and fulfillment as engaged thinkers and ethical citizens with an entrepreneurial spirit within an inclusive education system." Firstly, there are no standardized tests that assess engaged thinking, ethical citizenship and/or entrepreneurial spirit. 

Secondly, Albertans made it clear that they don't just want to "modernize" their education system -- Albertans want to transform it, and this requires courageous and collaborative leadership.

Ignoring The Profession

There is a big difference between keeping teachers passively informed and encouraging them to actively participate in the changes to Alberta's Provincial Achievement Tests.

The best decisions for the child are made by the child in collaboration with a safe and caring adult who actually spends time with them. Those adults are not bureaucrats or politicians -- they are the classroom teachers. Now is the time for the Government to work with teachers to develop alternatives to Provincial Achievement Tests. Again, here are two brilliant documents: Transforming Education in Alberta and A New Look at Public Assurance: Imagine the Possibilities for Alberta Students.

Johnson is Reckless

Trusting the profession means the minister must change his messages regarding the profession. Too often it appears Johnson tries to make change by imposing his will on those who have less power. First, he threw around the idea of merit pay (the bad idea that won't die). He threatened to remove teachers' collective bargaining rights with legislation. Using the teachers' registrar certification contact list, he sent an e-mail to 30,000 teachers, and now is being investigated by the privacy commissioner. He orchestrated an agreement with Alberta Teachers without including School Boards. And now Johnson thinks that Inspiring Education and transformation can be achieved by merely "modernizing" the government's current standardized tests.

Like his predecessor Thomas Lukaszuk, Johnson's strategy for transformation seems to be at best whimsical and unsophisticated and at worst inept. If aliens landed to observe Johnson's leadership, they might assume his strategy for enforcing his ignorance with the force of law to be: ready, fire, AIM!

Thanks to former Minister Hancock who set the stage for Inspiring Education, many of the conditions that will support informed transformation are now in place. What Alberta needs now is an Education Minister who is courageous enough to collaboratively create the conditions provincially so that local schools can be inspired and empowered to construct great schools for all.

Is the Alberta School Boards Association relevant?

Today the Alberta Government and the Alberta Teachers' Association have tentatively agreed on a four-year contract.

Before the details of the deal were even available, Alberta School Board Association (ASBA) President Jacquie Hansen warned that this deal will have "serious negative impacts" on classrooms. She went on to say that this agreement was made with no input from school boards.

In this morning's press conference Education Minister Jeff Johnson explained that the Tripartite talks evolved into two bilateral tables with the government facilitating the discussion.

Why is it that after 2+ years of Tripartite negotiations no agreement could be found, but the moment the Alberta School Board Association is bypassed a deal could be reached?

67 meetings over 2 years time and Tripartite talks make no progress between Alberta Government, Alberta Teachers' Association and Alberta School Boards Association. Keep in mind that while the Alberta Government and Alberta Teachers Association made proposals during the Tripartite negotiations, the Alberta School Boards Association made none. And now the ASBA are complaining that they weren't included.

While teachers are prepared to take zero pay increases over the next three years, it is the Alberta School Board Association that is objecting to a deal that they were incapable of providing productive input.

The Alberta Government and the Alberta Teachers' Association have a potential contract built on cost certainty, labour peace, stability and a serious look at classroom conditions and yet the Alberta School Boards Association still object.

At this point I have one question:

How relevant and legitimate are the Alberta School Boards Association in transforming and improving Alberta's education system?

Ranking and Ruining our Schools

When it comes to the Fraser Institute's Schools Rankings, there is little disagreement between the Alberta Government, the Alberta School Board Association and the Alberta Teachers' Association. Talk to a politician, school board trustee or teacher in Alberta and you are likely to hear why it is wrong to rank and sort schools via standardized test scores. In fact, in 2001, the Alberta Government, Alberta School Boards' Association and the Alberta Teachers' Association released a joint statement that said:

Alberta Learning, the Alberta School Boards Association and the Alberta Teachers' Association do not support comparing schools exclusively on the basis of test scores because this provides an incomplete picture of the education provided in any given school. As groups committed to education, we believe strongly in ensuring that parents and students are provided good and complete information as they make the important decisions about which school to attend—how well students do on achievement tests is just one piece of the puzzle.

Years ago, Alberta's then Education Minister Gene Zwozdesky said that it's, "patently unfair to make comparisons between schools based on scores," and last year, Alberta's then Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk said, "The Provincial Achievement Tests were suppose to inform the province about how well the curriculum is taught, but there are third parties who use the results to rank and sort and blame and shame schools."

If there is so much agreement over why it is wrong to rank and sort schools via standardized test scores, why is the Fraser Institute allowed to continue misusing test scores to mislead the public with their rankings?

It's true, the Fraser Institute is not doing anything illegal, after all, the Provincial Achievement Test scores are public information. But just because something isn't wrong doesn't make it right. 

The Alberta Teachers' Association has been an outspoken critic of standardized tests and has fuelled the argument for more authentic alternatives to public assurance. 

What is the Alberta Government and Alberta School Board Association doing to make sure schools like Braemar are not victimized by school rankings?

Why does the Alberta Government and Alberta School Board Association pursue policies that help third party organizations rank and sort our schools? The silence you hear from the Alberta Government and the Alberta School Board Association is a combination of assent for the rankings and a betrayal to our children.

To paraphrase Edmund Burke, all that is necessary for the misuse of test scores to prevail is for good people to do nothing.

Expiring Education in Alberta

The Alberta Government has rejected the Alberta Teachers' Associations' (ATA) final proposal to reach a province wide deal between the government and Alberta teachers which means that the ATA's offer to freeze salary grid increases for two years and limit increases to one per cent and three per cent for the following two years is now off the table.

ATA president Henderson said, "We worked really hard to address the fiscal and stability concerns of government, and the government came back not offering any real, measurable improvements to teacher conditions and practice, and it was just something we couldn't take to teachers." Henderson also said, "So we believe that the minister and the premier have missed an enormous opportunity to improve classroom conditions for children, to contain their costs and to guarantee labour peace for the next four years."

Through out the province wide Tripartite talks, I've seen action and proposals from the Alberta Government via Education Minister Jeff Johnson, and I've seen action and proposals from the Alberta Teachers' Association via president Carol Henderson.

But what about the Alberta School Boards' Association (ASBA)?

Stephen Murgatroyd wrote an excellent blog titled The Missing in Action Premier Redford, and I think the same could be said of the Alberta School Boards' Association. While I'm one of the strongest supporters of public education and locally elected school boards, I'm disappointed by how little the ASBA seems to have contributed to these province wide negotiations. I have yet to see or hear a proposal from the ASBA from province wide negotiations. What have they tabled during these negotiations and how did they propose to address teachers' conditions of practice?

ASBA president Jacquie Hansen commented on the ATA proposal that was rejected by the government, "We’re not necessarily going to throw the terms of that agreement out. It’s certainly an excellent document to work from and it will just have to be hammered out locally now, rather than provincially.” Such a comment is at best naive. Local bargaining will now begin from scratch as none of the pieces (including the proposed salary concession) carry forward to local bargaining.

Hansen's comment leads me to believe that the ASBA has little understanding about what they helped convince the government to reject. If the ASBA and the government think that teachers locally will agree to 0%, 0%, 1% and 3% pay increases over the next four years and no measurable improvements to teacher conditions and practice they are dreaming.

We all want Inspiring Education to become a reality in Alberta.

We all want to make learning more personal and individualized for students, but this requires us to move beyond our content-bloated, top-down mandated, scripted curricula and standardized testing. Truthfully, there are bold teachers and courageous schools who have already made moves to try and make Inspiring Education a reality, but these pockets of progressiveness are fuelled by the blood, sweat and tears of teachers which are ultimately unsustainable due to the lack of systemic support from government and school boards.

Teacher's working conditions are students' learning environments. As long as teachers remain on the farside of education reform by being the last to hear, the last to know and the last to speak, and the Alberta Government maintains their 19th century Command and Control politics, Inspiring Education will remain nothing more than an initiative.

What's worse, if the government tries to push "any pace, any place, any time" down the throats of teachers without teacher input on how such transformation will drastically alter teacher workload, Inspiring Education will very quickly become Expiring Education.

Teachers, Contracts and Change - Time for Courage in Alberta

This was written by Stephen Murgatroyd who is an author, consultant, imaginer - engaged in a wide range of activities around the world. Fun, imaginative, witty... and available for consulting and writing assignments. This post first appeared on his blog here. Murgatroyd tweets here and blogs here.

by Stephen Murgatroyd

Alberta's education system is generally regarded as amongst the best in the English speaking world, at least using international assessment measures such as PISA and TIMMS. While there are significant challenges - equity for First Nations, the challenge of inclusion, funding, securing and retaining teachers - the baseline from which the Province starts is strong and sound.

This is about to be eroded. The Government of Alberta, the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) and the Alberta School Boards Association (ASBA) are engaged in bargaining to secure four years of labour peace to build on the five years of peace which ended in August. The hope has been that a framework agreement would be reached Provincially that all could agree to, within which local bargaining on implementation could take place. These talks started under two previous Ministers (Dave Hancock and Thomas Lukaszuk) and are due to be concluded under Minister Jeff Johnson by 31st October. It’s not likely to happen.

The ATA offer with respect pay, according to street talk, is 0% (2012-13), 0% (2013-14), 1% (2014-15) and 2% (2015-16). Given that inflation is running at app. 2% in 2012 (and assuming no change over the life of the deal, even though inflationary pressures are high, especially with respect to energy costs), then teachers are offering an effective reduction in the buying power of their pay by (app.) 5% over four years as well as enabling the government to budget for a predictable budget. You would think the ASBA and the Government would be leaping tall buildings and popping Champagne, but they are not.

The sticking point is not salary, but what is referred to as "the conditions of practice" or hours and nature of the work.

The ATA see changes in the conditions of practice as an essential condition for the curriculum transformation, social inclusion and pedagogy agenda both they and the Government have been working on collaboratively for some time. Going from 1,326 objectives at Grade 7 to say 150 - 200 with teachers doing more of the curriculum design work locally so as to better engage students requires more quality preparation time. This could be found by reducing the "ministrivia" (admin and paper work driven by the Government) and "administrivia" (admin work driven by the school district) teachers are asked to do and by focusing on quality time for effective preparation and professional development.

The ASBA argument is that all this costs money - more teachers would need to be hired to create system wide capacity for more PD and more preparation time. The Government appears to be supporting the ASBA with the "mantra", coming from Doug Horner, "that there is no new money". Caucus, who seems to have more authority and power than would be normal for a Government at this stage in its mandate, also does not want to “give in” (sic) to teachers. This is the same caucus that supported a 6% over three year raise for nurses.

The ATA has used a demographer, Linda Duxbury from Carelton University, to look at the work-life balance of teachers. It is not a pretty sight. Teachers are working on the basis of 1.5x their contracted hours or more (up to 62 hours a week) to support the learning needs of students and the administrative needs of the system. This is leading to faster departures from teaching as a profession and the more rapid transfer within the system of teachers - all of which is a significant real cost to the system, both financial and emotional. It is more difficult to recruit, retain, develop and sustain a teacher and to enable their appropriate role as professionals in the system.

The response of the Government is cynical. More money will be spent on health care over the next four years since it is politically unacceptable to cut health care. Yet most health care costs are sunk costs, with the exception of costs associated with effective prevention. Educational expenditures are investments in the future of the Province.

There is new money to be found. Alberta's administrative system for the support of education - the number of school boards, the size of the support infrastructure in central offices and in the Department of Education seems profligate relative to value created. The abolition of Grade 3 Provincial Achievement Testing (promised by the Premier and previously agreed to by the House in a free vote) would reduce costs as would the abolition of all provincial achievement tests.

I know Jeff Johnson, our Minister of Education, and I k now him to be a smart and intelligent Minister. I also have met the Premier on more than one occasion and see her as the best hope we have for a new kind of progressive Government in Alberta. But I don’t see courage, leadership or imagination in what is happening now.

Leading experts from around the world look at this conversation - they don't see it as just about pay or work, they see it as about the transformation of our education system. They see it as enabling major change to happen by creating the right conditions for change to occur. Transformation of our school system along the lines both government and teachers have agreed will not occur by tweaks and twists - courage and change are needed.

So, some free advice:

1. Madam Premier: do what your predecessor did and "make it so". Show courageous leadership and real foresight and agree to the ATA proposal. Simply tell the ASBA (who actually don't represent all school boards and are simply a sample of opinion) that the future is about transformation and that teachers need the quality time they are asking for.

2. Minister Johnson: reduce the number of school boards in Alberta through amalgamation (force the issue) and reduce the size of the Department of Education so as to enable transformation to take place nearer to the student. Accelerate the path for curriculum reform to begin in 2013-14 school year. Abolish immediately all aspects of Grade 3 provincial achievement testing. Use new revenues (see below) to fund a major change in the conditions of practice. Show courage.

3. Minister Horner: Raise provincial taxes. There are a variety of ways of doing this, but it must be obvious to you that you have both a revenue problem (not enough to cope with balancing health care cost growth versus the needs in Alberta for other services) and a cost management problem (profligacy and bureaucracy). Deal with both, but it is not just about costs. The current Results Based Management approach (RBM), while the right thinking, is poorly executed. Keep at RBM, but do it more rigorously and liberate substantial sums from the process. Everyone knows RBM is about reallocation. Take up the suggestion of halting any more expenditure on CO2 capture and storage and use this to fund the teacher deal. Show courage.

4. The Alberta Teachers Association - Engage the people in Alberta in understanding the opportunity that is being missed because of current conditions of practice. Champion the idea that liberating teachers from the drudgery of administrivia and restoring balance to their professional work will have benefits for students, community, employers and Alberta. Don't focus on the stress for teachers of the current situation and don't get sucked into the cost argument. Focus on what Alberta is missing by its current practices. Show courage.

5. Members of the ASBA - tell your representatives to do an analysis of the costs of recruitment of teachers, attrition, stress and health related costs and the impact of demographic changes within and on the profession (including length of stay in the profession) over the next 25 years. Suggest to your colleagues that these costs far outweigh the costs of the change in conditions of practice now proposed by the ATA, both in terms of money, time and impact on quality of learning experiences and learning outcomes. Its time for trustees to be champions for teaching and teachers not their adversaries - without high quality and focused teachers, we will have no world-class education system at all. Show courage.

6. Journalists. The coverage of the bargaining by the ATA, ASBA and the Government has focused on the costs of implementation. Wrong focus. What should be looked at is the costs of not implementing a change in the conditions of practice - on teachers, learning, students and costs - especially given the demographic shift we are in the midst of. We are in a global war for talent and teachers are front line troops in this battle. Show courage - take an in depth look.

I look at my granddaughter, who loves books and is already a critical thinker at just two (why, what, whom, where, how…) and hope that we get this right. Transforming our schools, most's agree, is mission critical for Alberta. Without enabled and empowered teachers we will not make it. Show courage and make it so.

Educational Transformation in Alberta via Collaboration

On September 22, I had the pleasure of representing Red Deer Public Local #60 teachers at Alberta's Fall Education Transformation meetings. This meeting hosted three parties who play an intricate part of public education in Alberta: Alberta Teacher's Association, Alberta School Boards Association and Alberta Education.

I spent the day at Barnett House in Edmonton, the home of the Alberta Teachers' Association, sitting with my school district's superintendent, two school board trustees, two members from Alberta Education and two other teacher representatives from my local.

The day was spent discussing these three focus areas:

 FOCUS AREA #1: SHARED UNDERSTANDING/SHARED OPPORTUNITY
OUTCOME: SUPPORT FOR THE IDEA OF TRANSFORMATION AS A SHARED PROCESS

• What's the most important characteristic of education transformation for you?
• If transformation is about moving from one reality to another, what does this entail (e.g., is this about learning outcomes being different, is it about the classroom, is it about how education is governed?)
• Discuss the relationship enhancements that articulate a new way of working together -- what do we have to change about how we relate to one another?

FOCUS AREA #2: MOVING FORWARD TOGETHER: WHO DOES WHAT?

OUTCOME: SHARED COMMITMENT TO PRIORITY ITEMS / ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• If we are to collaborate on transformation, what's most important to work together on?
• How do we define our respective roles and responsibilities in taking on these topics?
• How do we hold one another accountable for our mutual success?

FOCUS AREA #3: NEXT STEPS

OUTCOME: SUPPORT FOR MOVING FORWARD TOGETHER

• What are some ways Alberta Teachers' Association, Alberta School Board Association and Alberta Education can start taking action for transformation?
• Is a plan required to guide the process? If so, what types of plans/planning are needed and who should lead their development?
• How, when and at what levels (local/provincial) do we involve other stakeholders in the process?

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I walked away from this event thoroughly impressed with the level of commitment each of the three organizations (teachers, school boards and government) showed for rethinking how we can work together. There was no finger pointing or blaming. 

Not once did we discuss test scores. 

Not once.

I can only imagine the legacy of hard feelings and grudges that have developed in Alberta between teachers, school boards and government, however, in spite of any potential desire to accuse, blame and criticize each other, there seemed to be a real commitment in the room to move forward together.

So what's next?

On November 4 & 5, The Alberta Teachers' Association and Alberta Education are hosting a Combined Professional Development Area Conference and Invitational Curriculum Symposium. This is remarkably cool because the government and the teachers together will collaborate on rethinking curriculum in Alberta schools. Essentially this event will provide the teachers and government an opportunity to work together to rethink curriculum with a focus on our partnership with Finland.

Perhaps the only hesitation I have with this opportunity is to ask what role the Alberta School Board Association will play in this rethinking curriculum process? Seeing as how they aren't invited.