School Soon...
Being the parent of a two-and-a-half year old, it's come to my attention that I'll actually have to start paying attention to the public education system, and by definition: teachers.
But considering that Ontario is following California into the big black hole of Class Size Reduction (CSR) it's a good thing we're moving to British Columbia: there all we'll have to deal with is the annual strike for whatever damned cause of the moment Organized Labour comes up with...
Colby Cosh gave me some material to chew over:
...Dalton McGuinty is actually going to follow through on an election promise. On Thursday, the Premier gave an outline of his strategy to reduce class sizes in Ontario schools, capping the student-teacher ratio in classes from kindergarten to Grade 3 at 20-to-1. An interesting number, 20. According to the best current research, that's about where the modest educational benefit from reducing class sizes seems to kick in.
Smells more like a smokescreen. We're not going to actually deal with the real challenges facing the education system: we'll just latch on to an arbitrary idea that's simplistic enough to catch on with the
...The McGuinty plan is a lot more like California's gargantuan Class Size Reduction (CSR) project, implemented in 1996. California introduced a 20-to-1 statewide cap, like the one Premier McGuinty proposes, in the same grades. The final "keystone report" on the CSR project was released in September, 2002, and might make Ontario parents a little nervous.
The research consortium in charge had to confess, in the end, that the statewide cap had yielded no measurable effect on student achievement. Moreover, "CSR was associated with declines in teacher qualifications and a more inequitable distribution of credentialed teachers." Wealthy school districts presented with the state's brute class-size targets worked harder to snap up experienced personnel, so by the program's second year, the poorest schools had suffered a sevenfold increase in teaching staff with "emergency credentials" or none at all. Mr. McGuinty presumably has some method in mind for churning out new teachers without relaxing Ontario's credentialing requirements, but there will be a Darwinian struggle between districts just the same. Some parts of the province, to put it euphemistically, already face special challenges in retaining intelligent, dedicated staff.
The research consortium in charge had to confess, in the end, that the statewide cap had yielded no measurable effect on student achievement. Moreover, "CSR was associated with declines in teacher qualifications and a more inequitable distribution of credentialed teachers." Wealthy school districts presented with the state's brute class-size targets worked harder to snap up experienced personnel, so by the program's second year, the poorest schools had suffered a sevenfold increase in teaching staff with "emergency credentials" or none at all. Mr. McGuinty presumably has some method in mind for churning out new teachers without relaxing Ontario's credentialing requirements, but there will be a Darwinian struggle between districts just the same. Some parts of the province, to put it euphemistically, already face special challenges in retaining intelligent, dedicated staff.
So in other words, the rather simplistic assumption that small class sizes yield better results than hiring better qualified staff is an idea that doesn't hold any water.
The big warning sign flashing in my head is "emergency credentials." Yes more stopgap, underqualified staff to fill the 20-1 cap is just what Ontario needs.
Now I have to do research into what's wrong with B.C.'s education system. Any commentators out there want a soapbox to climb up on?
The one point on which CSR was successful was in improving parents' general satisfaction with their children's education, even though there was no objective benefit. In sum, it basically ended up being a ploy to placate freaked-out, superstitious middle-class parents at the expense of minorities, the poor, and those facing barriers to learning. That couldn't possibly be why the Premier of Ontario finds the idea attractive -- could it?
Jeez, not like Dalton would make an expensive promise just to win an election, would he? Could someone tell me what promise the Ontario Liberals have actually kept? To be honest I think he should break this one, too. Considering how much this will cost for dubious benefit, he should instead adequately fund the schools and make the boards TRULY accountable for their decisions.
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Having Boo & Punkin' become tri-lingual wouldn't be such a bad thing.
It isn't that the wealthy schools are paying more as the article you've quoted suggests -- the teacher's unions wouldn't stand for that.
What happened was that there were suddenly more openings at the safer, less crime-ridden schools and the more qualified teachers jumped at the opportunity to get the hell out of the bad schools. Wouldn't you?
Teachers who work in the gang area schools are given "combat pay." They actually earn more money than more qualified teachers who work at the better schools.
There are ads running on TV here right now trying to recruit teachers for a community in my area with a bad gang problem. No credential needed. Just wear your Kevlar.
Thanks for the insight from someone actually living there. Is anyone grumbling about the cap being useless?
Teachers are being relocated to other schools and they don't have adequate numbers of classrooms. It is a horrible mess.
Of course, poor neighborhoods are complaining that their schools are being closed first. That's because those schools are often older and smaller and it wouldn't make sense to close the larger campuses. What you end up with is overcrowded classrooms with two or three teachers and kids going to school miles away from home.