Johnson's latest attack is deliberately irresponsible

This was written by Jonathan Teghtmeyer who is with the Alberta Teachers' Association. Jonathan tweets here. This post first appeared on the Alberta Teachers` Association website.

by Jonathan Teghtmeyer

Education Minister Jeff Johnson has continued his attack on teachers and the teaching profession. While he will publicly suggest that he has no intention of splitting up the ATA, his tactics are designed to undermine the capacity of the Association to perform its professional functions. The only intended result is to create support for splitting the ATA.

His actions bring his words into question.

In late May, the minister pushed out into the media four reports on cases of unprofessional conduct in which he overturned the decision of a hearing committee of the Association’s Professional Conduct Committee. While the hearing committee recommended teaching certificate suspension in each case, the minister believed that the appropriate penalty should be cancellation of the certificate.

The minister is apparently within his right to make these arbitrary decisions, because he holds the certificate-granting power, and that is why the committee only makes a recommendation on that penalty. If he has concerns about the penalty, I can see why he would reject the recommendation. What I find interesting is that instead of taking the issue up with the Association he ­decided to splash it onto the front pages of papers across the province.

The minister did this intentionally, knowing that salacious stories grab attention and sell papers. He did this while intentionally leaving out key information about the other eight cases that crossed his desk where the hearing committee recommended cancellation. He did this intentionally, knowing that explaining the truth through media channels would be virtually impossible against a sensational and sticky story.

The public was reasonably and predictably disturbed. MLAs publicly accused the Association of wanting to put perverts in classrooms, and others accused us of protecting pedophiles.

The minister did not underestimate the vitriolic reaction—he set out to create it.

Unfortunately, as a result, the Association is smeared, the profession is smeared and, frankly, the entire system is smeared. This was simply irresponsible.

This attack was clearly motivated by politics and has not only served to undermine the Association, but it has undermined the minister himself and it has undermined acting Premier Hancock, who as education minister reviewed suspension and cancellation recommendations without overturning them.

If there is such a fundamental flaw with the process, why has the Government of Alberta allowed it to continue for 78 years? Why have successive PC ministers signed off on the precedent reports that informed these decisions for 43 years?

The answer is less about the truth and the reality of the situation and more about the ideological vindictive drive behind this minister.

At the end of the day, the Association-managed process is good. It is free from political interference. It has worked well for 78 years. And it ensures that teachers who are not fit for the classroom never teach again.

Misinformation about Alberta Teachers is dangerous

This was written by Jonathan Teghtmeyer who is with the Alberta Teachers` Association. Jonathan tweets here. This post first appeared on the Alberta Teachers` Association website.

by Jonathan Teghtmeyer

Misinformation is a dangerous thing. Put in the hands of the masses it often can be used to reinforce previously held biases.

Unfortunately, the report produced by the Task Force for Teaching Excellence is chock full of misinformation that is now being twisted to and fro in the daily public discourse.

The report suggests, for example, that there are currently “no regular evaluations of teacher performance.” This tidbit of misinformation completely disregards the Teacher, Growth, Supervision and Evaluation policy, which includes processes for teacher growth and teacher supervision.

As well, the report notes, “In the past 10 years there have been no cases in which a teacher’s authority to teach has been cancelled due to incompetence.” Perhaps the reason the task force found this statistic “almost inconceivable” is because it sidesteps two facts: 1) the ATA has run the competency process only since 2009 and 2) superintendents (not the ATA) are the gatekeepers responsible for reporting incompetency.

The statement should read: In the past five years no complaints have been filed by school superintendents. So, now which bit of information is inconceivable? Big holes emerge when the statement is being used to justify returning responsibility for policing conduct and competency to the minister of education.

As my colleague Margaret Shane noted, the ATA has been standing in the batter’s box for five years and we have yet to receive a pitch.

Both of these pieces of misinformation appear in the “Assuring teaching excellence” section of the task force report, a section that is a stockyard of misinformation – you don’t have to walk far before you step in a patty. Notably, the section continuously mixes the terms practice review and conduct. For those in the know, this is laughable. The Association runs two separate processes: discipline, which monitors teacher conduct, and practice review, which monitors teacher competency. One recommendation even suggests that the processes for conduct and competency be separated, even though they already are separate for over 95 per cent of teachers.

Perhaps the reason the task force made this blunder is because they didn’t ask the Association about the processes for practice review or teacher conduct. The terms of reference for the task force state that the group needs to consider “what processes and mechanisms are in place to ensure there is consistent excellence in teaching and that there will be assurances in place to maintain that excellence.” Yet, contact and consultation with the Association was almost nonexistent, even though we perform and work on many of the functions that are under review.

The task force did not meet with the coordinator of Member Services.

The task force did not meet with the secretaries of our professional conduct committees.

The task force did not attend any of the public conduct hearings that occurred as the group was conducting their “research.”

True, the ATA did meet with the task force two times. Each meeting lasted about one hour and, between them, involved only three different members of the task force. The meetings focused primarily on the progress that the task force was making and the process they were using—not on the pertinent work conducted by the Association.

Our public opinion polling shows that three-quarters (73 per cent) of Albertans are either not very familiar with or not at all familiar with the processes used to regulate teacher conduct. The poll also shows that 75 per cent of those who are familiar with the process have confidence in it.

Unfortunately, the task force decided that it wanted to remain unfamiliar with current teacher conduct processes. By doing so, it ensured that the group would not gain confidence in it.

The entire task force process, from launch through consultation and rollout has had an inherent anti-ATA bias. This bias is clear in the report and even in the intent behind the task force’s existence.

This obvious bias is not merely the result of misinformation; it amounts to wilful ignorance.

Time to weed out bad idea of merit pay

This was written by Jonathan Teghtmeyer who is with the Alberta Teachers` Association. Jonathan tweets here. This post first appeared on the Alberta Teachers` Association website.

by Jonathan Teghtmeyer

I guess it’s that time of year. Much like treating an infestation of dandelions is part and parcel of lawn care in June, it seems like throwing herbicide on the bad idea of merit pay is becoming a regular part of public education maintenance in February.

Around this time last year, Minister of Education Jeff Johnson floated the threat of merit pay in the midst of collective bargaining. He didn’t want it to be part of negotiation; rather, he wanted to discuss it afterwards. After all, why would we negotiate it when he could simply include it as a package of reforms designed to support a concept like teacher excellence?

Minister Johnson isn’t the current flag bearer for the issue, possibly because he has already experienced the backlash from both teachers and the public. This year, the misguided notion is being raised by others.

In the ATA News on January 14, Task Force for Teaching Excellence member and Cold Lake area principal Ron Young said that we need to recognize excellence in teaching. “Whether it is merit pay or enhanced PD opportunities, we must reward the efforts of extraordinary teachers,” he writes. Providing additional PD for those who already apparently excel is a real head- scratcher, so I am left to assume that the more probable suggestion being advanced is merit pay.

The second group promoting merit pay lately is a group representing Canadian CEOs. The Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) released a report last month entitled Effective Management of Human Capital in Schools, which, among other things, calls for three different forms of merit pay. The first recommendation says that movement on the salary grid should be linked to teacher evaluations—which, by the way, should also include student feedback. The second recommendation is to create “career ladders,” in which different classes of teachers are created with the top tier being given added responsibilities and added pay. The third concept would create financial incentives for teachers to take on the most difficult teaching assignments.

Unfortunately, instead of rightfully dismissing these competition-inspired notions as antithetical to the goals of collaboration espoused by Inspiring Education, Minister Johnson has invited CCCE President John Manley to address his invitational conference on Inspiring Education.

There are so many sound arguments against merit pay (simply visit teachers.ab.ca and search for merit pay) that it is hard to choose one to advance in this editorial. The halls of American education reform are littered with failed and abandoned models. So instead of getting too technical, I think the best way to respond right now is to look at the issue in a very general sense.

The problem with merit pay schemes is that they start with one big faulty assumption: that teachers need to be extrinsically motivated.

To teachers, and most members of the general public, this notion is absurd. The reality is that, by and large, teachers are intrinsically motivated because they want to make a difference. As previous ATA campaigns have aptly communicated, the future is why teachers teach.

Merit pay, therefore, creates unwanted and disastrous side effects by taking intrinsically motivated professionals and compelling them to focus on an external, contrived target. If the target is to be fair, it would need to be objective and measurable; but if it is objective and measurable then it simply would not reflect the complexity of modern teaching practice. Instead, most merit pay schemes have targets that are both unfair and too narrow.

The impact of incentivizing a narrow target is a system full of teachers with blinders on who are so focused on that target that they lose sight of the other important aspects of teachers’ work. Or worse, we get a system that entices people to cheat or step on their colleagues in pursuit of the goal.

Unfortunately, once again we need to weed the garden of public education of this awful nuisance by reinforcing what it is that teachers actually need in order to achieve excellence. Teachers need professional respect and they need appropriate supports for students. Professional respect comes in the form of meaningful professional development, adequate professional time and the freedom to exercise their professional judgment. Supporting students includes smaller class sizes and fully resourced inclusion of students with special needs.

If the task force for teaching excellence is committed to supporting teachers, they will address these issues and ignore bad ideas like merit pay.

New challenges, new thinking, new math

This was written by Jonathan Teghtmeyer who is with the Alberta Teachers` Association. Jonathan tweets here. This post first appeared on the Alberta Teachers` Association website.

by Jonathan Teghtmeyer

I’m a self-confessed math geek and proud of it!

In Grade 4, Mark and I would challenge each other to solve long division questions that stretched across the entire blackboard. In junior high and high school, when we were allowed to use calculators for math, I’d often forget or lose mine. Rather than borrow a calculator from a classmate, I got into the habit of doing arithmetic calculations by hand. When I was in high school, in the years before graphing calculators were mandatory, I begged my father to buy me one of the $100+ behemoths. When he refused, I used my hockey referee money to purchase one.

I understand, appreciate and value the importance of strong computation skills in mathematics. Yet at the same time, I’m dismayed by growing calls for a back-to-basics revolution in math instruction, simply because of Canada’s backslide in one international test.

Alberta physician and parent Dr. Nhung Tran-Davies has launched a petition calling on the minister of education to abandon immediately the “new math” curriculum and to embrace the basics “so that our children can be empowered by mastering the fundamentals of mathematics.”

Let’s be clear: no crisis exists. In 2000, Alberta’s raw score in math on PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) was 550 and placed third in the world; in 2012, it was 518. We’re still statistically tied for 10th best in the world; a 6 per cent decline over 12 years is a reason to take notice, but it isn’t a disaster.

Countries that bettered Canada’s students on PISA tests have a culture of rigid and regimental skill-and-drill instruction in large schoolhouse factories; when students leave school for the day, many head straight to large-scale tutoring boot camps. We shouldn’t be surprised or concerned, therefore, that these countries outperform us on simplistic international standardized tests that aren’t designed to measure the outcomes that we desire for our education system.

I recognize the frustration that Dr. Tran-Davies must be experiencing as a parent when she sees children being taught new and unfamiliar mathematical operations with which to compute and reason. Many students will have difficulty with mathematics and will inevitably ask their parents for help. Parents likely find these new techniques and algorithms daunting and wonder why we don’t teach math the old-fashioned way.

It’s not that the old ways aren’t taught; it’s that they are included as one of many strategies that can be used. The emphasis today is on the idea that it’s more important that students understand what information they are gleaning from an operation and how to apply the right operation in a situation than simply arriving at the right answer.

This approach makes sense to me. In my time as an academic high school math teacher, I had students who could perform an algorithm and obtain the right answer to a clear question, but they struggled to explain what that answer was telling them. Similarly, they struggled with determining which algorithm to use or how to apply it when faced with a new problem-solving situation.

The new challenge facing many is the plethora of innovative tools students have at their disposal for answering questions (spreadsheets, the Internet and powerful calculators). Students are adept at using various tools to find the information they need and applying that knowledge.

Our public education system needs, therefore, to set its sights higher on the ladder of Bloom’s taxonomy. Number sense and numeracy are more important than number operations and computation. Don’t get me wrong—as I said earlier, I understand how fluency in mental math and strong fundamentals support good mathematical thinking, but we need to find a balance, and it seems the new curriculum provides that.

Standardized tests like PISA focus only on narrow assessments that measure what an international economic organization wants our school systems to achieve. Let’s push back and focus on what we want our own public education system to achieve. I want students who think critically, work collaboratively and solve meaningful problems. To achieve that, they need tools that allow them to think about problems in a variety of unique ways.

Editorial: Doing it with us or doing it to us?

This was written by Jonathan Teghtmeyer who is with the Alberta Teachers` Association. Jonathan tweets here. This post first appeared on the Alberta Teachers` Association website. I also wrote about Alberta's new Task Force on Teacher Excellence here.

by Jonathan Teghtmeyer

If Education Minister Jeff Johnson is serious about educational change, he could learn something from past experience—Johnson served as cochair of the Inspiring Education committee.

In 2009, then education minister Dave Hancock embarked on an ambitious project to listen to Albertans about their hopes, dreams and aspirations for public education in the 21st century. The project generated rich conversations about the goals and purposes of public education to create a vision for education, which is articulated in the Inspiring Education Steering Committee Report.

Many of us were at the table during the regional consultations—we completed the online survey and participated in open discussion boards on a variety of topics. The engagement process took time, but it was meaningful and authentic. When I read the steering committee’s report, I heard my voice in it and I heard the voices of others, some of whom I don’t necessarily agree with but the voices were there. In fact, if there’s one criticism, it’s that the report is so broadly worded that everyone can find ways to support competing ideas on where to take education.

However, it’s precisely because of careful and purposeful engagement that the process and the resulting document enjoy so much support. Minister Hancock (now Alberta’s minister of human services) is a coalition builder; he ensured that a variety of people and organizations would commit to the process and champion it. To that end, one of the first groups to guide the process was the Inspiring Education Working Committee. This group of 29 diverse people represented 13 ministries within the government and 12 education stakeholder organizations. The diversity of voices included government officials, ranging from a deputy minister to a crown prosecutor. Stakeholders, sometimes with competing interests, were brought to the table, including private schools, school boards, superintendents and teachers. These people found a way to work together on a project they all believed in.

I suspect that at the time, Minister Hancock realized that educational change could only happen if the people most responsible for implementing changes were actively engaged in the process.

The Inspiring Education Working Committee defined the processes and provided input into the tools needed, and committee members reported to their representative groups on the success of the initiative.

The open-arms invitations, collaborative spirit and clear window into process that stood as hallmarks of Inspiring Education stand in stark contrast to the approach adopted by the Task Force for Teaching Excellence.

First, information about the task force isn’t readily available. What is available is housed on the servers of a private contractor that does marketing and branding work. Second, stakeholders weren’t invited to participate in developing the project and were told about it just days before it was publicly launched. Third, information about dates and times for regional consultations were released less than a week before the first public meeting occurred. Last, the survey tools and focus group questions were developed without any input from stakeholders.

It’s puzzling why the Task Force for Teaching Excellence would exclude the voice, input and buy-in of teachers. It’s unconscionable that ATA President Ramsankar was excluded from speaking at the launch of the task force, yet the president of the Alberta School Councils’ Association was invited to bring greetings. Puzzling indeed—after all, this isn’t the Task Force for School Council Excellence.

The absence of clear and readily available information raises many questions, the first of which is, “Is the Task Force for Teaching Excellence about bringing about change with teachers or bringing in changes toteachers?”

40 is the new 30. #classsize

This was written by Jonathan Teghtmeyer who is with the Alberta Teachers` Association. Jonathan tweets here. This post first appeared on the Alberta Teachers` Association website.

Classes have started up for the new school year and up is the operative word, as in class sizes are up!

In 2002, if you had 30 students, that was a “large class.” At that time, teachers took labour action to protest, among other things, larger classes. Although teachers reported that their classes were becoming larger and increasingly unmanageable, the provincial government believed otherwise. However, the outcome of the labour dispute included a report from the Alberta Commission on Learning (ACL) that recommended class-size averages of 17 students for K–3, 23 for 4–6, 25 for 7–9 and 27 for 10–12. Teachers felt vindicated that the ACL, an impartial body, had concluded that classes with more than 30 students were too big for optimum learning.

What happened to those recommendations? Today, 40 is the new 30 (I want to thank Twitter user @RyanDunkley for this editorial’s headline). Last year, it was common to see a few classes at the high school level with between 38 and 41 students. That was last year, before the Alberta government cut school board budgets by $14.5 million and before 11,000 new students entered the public education system without any additional money to support them. What’s the story this year? In the first week of school, we’ve already heard about a number of high school classes with more than 40 students, and teachers at all grade levels are reporting classes that are unacceptably large.

The government shifted its class-size-initiative funding to focus on K–3 classes because that’s where smaller classes have the biggest impact, where the population increase is greatest and where school boards aren’t meeting their targets. Has that funding made a difference? Not really if we have parents saying their kids are the lucky ones because their kindergarten class size is only 24.

Alberta Education’s website features a page entitled “Class Size Is Important.” The page of information espouses the value of small classes in “laying a foundation for a positive learning environment for our students.” However, even though school boards are obligated to report annually on class-size averages, the government hasn’t updated its report since 2010/11. That school year, three-quarters of the boards exceeded the targets at the K–3 levels, and we know it’s worse today.

On the first day of school, Education Minister Jeff Johnson said he doesn’t believe we should have problems with class size. He said, somewhat incomprehensibly, “There should be more classroom teachersas a proportion of teachers out there” because “we put as much or moremoney into the base instruction and the class-size initiative.”

The minister’s comments are masterfully crafted talking points designed to hide the reality. More classroom teachers as a proportion of all teachers just means that cuts made in central offices were more severe—the truth is we have fewer teachers, fewer in the classroom and fewer in division offices. As much or more money in base instruction and class-size initiative hides the fact that school board grant cuts elsewhere will affect classroom conditions. Sure, some small grants got increases, but others were cut and the big ones stayed stagnant. At the end of the day, more kids and less money means larger classes.

If the minister believes that class size shouldn’t be a problem, perhaps teachers would do well to educate him on this matter. I suggest that you (and the parents of the students you teach) e-mail your stories about class sizes to Minister Johnson at Education.­Minister@gov.ab.ca.❚

Hitting the target, but missing the point

This was written by Jonathan Teghtmeyer who is with the Alberta Teachers` Association. Jonathan tweets here. This post first appeared on the Alberta Teachers` Association website.

by Jonathan Teghtmeyer

Lance Armstrong is a cheater.

If I had written that a few months ago, I’d have had the pants sued off me. But since Armstrong admitted to doping in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, the chances of a lawsuit have greatly diminished.

Armstrong doesn’t believe that he is a cheater. He explained to ­Winfrey that the definition of cheating is to gain an advantage over a rival and he didn’t view his actions that way—he viewed it as a part of a level playing field. Armstrong attributes his actions to a ruthless desire to win at all costs; a desire that served him well on a bike but ultimately caused his unceremonious downfall.

Cheating is common in a world that focuses on winning. For ­example, in 2000, in the U.K., Tony Blair’s government allocated money to the British public service based on agreed-upon targets. Inquiries into this so-called “target world” found examples of “creative compliance.” In its 2002 report, the UK Commission for Health ­Improvement related the case of one particularly creative hospital, in which too many patients were waiting too long in emergency wards and, conseque-ntly, the hospital was in danger of missing its target for finding beds for patients in a timely manner. The hospital met its target by turning gurneys into beds by removing their wheels. A senior civil servant characterized this incident of cheating as “hitting the target, but missing the point.”

In another case, in 2010, Georgia’s State Department of Education ­suspected rampant cheating after it analyzed erasure marks on test bubble sheets and found that changes from incorrect to correct ­answers were inexplicably high in some schools; the state ordered an investigation.

Of the worst offenders, 21 of the 27 were from the Atlanta Public School District, where in four schools 80 per cent of classes were flagged for cheating. Could the $2,000 cash bonuses (aka merit pay) given to teachers at schools that met improvement targets have had anything to do with this?

Daniel Pink, a renowned academic on motivation and the author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, says that traditional if–then rewards tend to produce the opposite of what they were meant to achieve. A rewards system extinguishes intrinsic motivation, diminishes performance, crushes creativity, fosters ­short-term thinking and encourages cheating.

The more a system is based on rewards and winning, the more people will cheat. Armstrong didn’t feel bad about cheating because he saw it as part of the system—part of a popular culture that ­worships winners.

Cultural values are incredibly powerful, so we need to be very ­careful about the types of cultures that develop in our schools. ­Cultures based on ruthless competition divide people into winners and losers. Some will win by cheating, and people who lose in the system can become disenchanted and quit. Such a culture damages the core task of public education—preparing all learners for life.

Although some welcome increased competition in education, ­teachers must focus on collaboration and reject a culture of competition and the bad ideas, like merit pay, that come with it.

Funds spent on teachers good for real learning

Jonathan Teghtmeyer

This was written by Jonathan Teghtmeyer who is with the Alberta Teachers` Association.This post first appeared on the Alberta Teachers` Association website. 

A troubling narrative is emerging from school boards. According to some superintendents and school board trustees, 80 per cent of education spending goes to employee costs—salary, wages and benefits. The subtext of this narrative is that employee costs are out of control, they have increased over the years and if only we can control employee costs then more money can be directed toward students.

Not only is this narrative damaging to the teaching profession and others in the education sector, but the figure on which it’s based is inaccurate.

According to Alberta Education’s 2010/11 audited financial statements, $4.5 billion was spent on salaries, wages and employee benefits against total expenses of $6.7 billion. In other words, 67 per cent of funds was spent on people.

Other ways of calculation might increase that figure, but none drives it up to 80 per cent. If you look at the expenses of school boards, they spent $4.4 billion on employee costs out of a budget of $5.9 billion—a ratio of 74 per cent. Digging deeper, we find that school boards spent $3.2 billion of $5.9 billion on salaries and benefits for certificated staff—showing that teacher costs are only 54 per cent of school board expenses.

A few people have stated that not only are employment costs rising, but that 10 years ago costs were 20 per cent less. Actually, the proportion of board expenses related to employees has remained largely stable over time.

This troubling narrative implies that the portion of the budget not spent on salaries is what makes a difference in the level of education that students receive, thus suggesting that money spent on employees doesn’t make a difference for students. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Money spent on employees puts teachers in classrooms and funds teaching assistants who work with students with special needs. It pays for librarians, counsellors and support staff, who ensure that schools operate smoothly and meet the needs of our students. It shouldn’t be surprising, therefore, that employee costs are significant. Education is a service industry delivered by educated professionals and qualified support staff. The best investment for students comes by adding to the employee cost side of the budget.

While some of the remaining 20 per cent is spent on textbooks or technology, it’s also spent on transportation, energy costs, provincial testing, governance and system administration. But surrounding students with tools (pencils, paper, textbooks and computers) doesn’t guarantee meaningful learning. It is the adults in the school who spark the fuse of learning and ensure that inanimate tools become instruments for discovery. The role of the teacher as catalyst is critical to learning.

More than anything, in a world of infinite information from a ­multitude of sources, the skills to search, sort, filter, adjudicate and analyze information become paramount. While students may be able to access information without the direct instruction of teachers, they will require more guidance, supervision and mentorship than ever before. Teachers will be required to plan curriculum objectives, guide students by implementing learning strategies, assist with the synthesis of information and evaluate the learning outcomes. As these activities become more personalized, students will require more one-on-one time with teachers, which is money well spent. And that is good for education.

I welcome your comments—contact me at jonathan.teghtmeyer@ata.ab.ca.

Inspected by No. 24

This was written by Jonathan Teghtmeyer who is with the Alberta Teachers` Association.This post first appeared on the Alberta Teachers` Association website.

Alison Redford’s campaign platform for leadership of the ­Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta included a pledge to eliminate Grades 3 and 6 provincial achievement tests.

Elimination of the tests will come as welcome news to teachers, who have advocated against them for more than 20 years, but much work is required before Redford’s campaign pledge becomes government policy. Pressure from the Alberta School Boards Association and the Fraser Institute, both of which look for measurable results, could convince the government to keep the tests.

High-stakes standardized tests view education as an assembly line and treat students like boxes to be stuffed full of facts and figures. The provincial achievement tests are like inspectors at the end of the assembly line who open the lid and look inside the box to ensure that all the pieces are present. The statement of results sent to parents might as well come with a slip that reads: “Inspected by No. 24.”

Such a view of education is appropriate if you want your education system to push out identical cogs that take their place on some assembly line. This model is fantastic for ensuring high productivity when pushing out widgets. But how valuable is it in creating the 21st-century thinkers that we spent two years envisioning as part of Inspiring Education and that we’ll need for our future generation of leaders?

The Alberta Teachers’ Association has a vision for public education in which students are presented “with opportunities to develop ingenuity, creativity, critical-thinking skills and a strong sense of citizenship.” These attributes can’t be stuffed into a box and can’t be evaluated by simply lifting the lid and peering inside. They need to be assessed over time by a professional with an ongoing relationship with students, and they must be reflective of students’ individual circumstance and educational needs.

The Association’s vision of public education is neither confining nor uniform; rather, it is an organic process, similar in nature to a garden, which makes teachers gardeners who ensure that soil conditions are ripe for growth and that the plants get the right mix of sunlight, water and nutrition to grow healthy and strong. The serious gardener observes each plant’s behaviour, tracks its progress and makes adjustments when needed to encourage growth.

At a time when we want to create engaged citizens for a rapidly changing world, we also need to examine the tools we use to assess our students and to evaluate the public education system.

The proponents of achievement tests have an oft-repeated mantra: "If it matters, measure it." I agree to a certain extent but only if you add, "Measure what matters, because what is getting measured soon becomes what matters most." If we do it right, we’ll no longer rely on a tired model of assessment that churns out cogs; instead, we’ll nurture citizens for the 21st century.