The sky is [is not] falling

 

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]  

What people want always exceeds the available resources. That’s true in all aspects of life. There isn’t enough truth, justice, equity, or education to meet the demand – even in affluent societies. That’s why we have boards of school trustees. It is the responsibility of boards of school trustees to decide what the district can support among things that people want.  

I wrote last year about the gloomy outlook for school board budgets. The COVID fiscal recovery and an aging population make it unlikely that the school board budgets available will make it easier to provide for the many things people want from their schools. In that blog I said that school boards with sound strategic plans have an advantage in making such decisions. Strategic plans provide a framework for determining the priorities that a board has for its budget.  

The boards with strategic plans that included an assessment of risks, such as changes in funding, are in a better position than boards that have not assessed what could go wrong in pursuing their strategic plans. And in a much better place than boards without strategic plans.  

Boards that evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of their programs are in an even better position to manage and deploy the resources at their disposal. Knowing whether programs achieve the outcomes called for in the strategic plan (effectiveness) is pivotally important. It is also important to know whether effective programs are having maximum effect per dollars spent (efficiency).  

Very few boards are attentive to effectiveness and efficiency. The ones that are realize that school districts are a business with a unique mission. The concepts of effectiveness, efficiency, and economy (acquiring needed resources at the lowest cost with due regard for effectiveness) apply to school districts as they do to any business. The complexity of the educational business makes evaluation more challenging than even the most complex multi-national corporate entities, but an important – though too often overlooked – activity.  

Strategic plans and program evaluation afford advantages to boards that have and use them. They can determine the cost-per-student of effective programs of choice, schools, and different approaches to instruction. Few boards calculate such costs regularly, some calculate cost-per-student episodically, and many do not calculate them at all.   

If you have read this far, I am guessing you can figure out which school boards think the sky is falling and which boards can manage with the resources available to them.

What is the role of a school board trustee?

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

There were several interesting articles in the January 2022 issue of the Canadian Journal for Educational Administration and Policy (CJEAP) including ones devoted to racial justice, the incorporation of Indigenous content in curricula, and public school funding. But the one that prompted this blog was about public expectations of school boards.  

I was struck by an apparent contradiction between the first sentence in the article and one of the key findings of the study. The article’s abstract begins with the assertion that “School board trustees play an important role in the education of children throughout Ontario.” I take a slightly more nuanced position: school board trustees can play an important role in the education of children.  

At the core of the study was the open-ended question: “What do you see as the role of a school board trustee?” More than 2500 Ontarians over the age of 18 responded to an online survey in which parents with school age children were over-represented. The most frequent response to the question was “don’t know/unsure.” The second most frequent response was a cluster of random thoughts that the authors coded as “irrelevant.” And the third most frequent responses were a set of seemingly random comments that the authors classified as “other.” When the most frequently occurring responses were combined with those that indicated that trustees have “no role,” they accounted for more than one-third of the respondents to the survey. The remaining two-thirds focused on administrative and educational oversight, and advocacy. One of the general conclusions the authors drew was: “. . . it is clear that about a third of the respondents do not have a clear concept of what trustees do.”  

Later in the paper, the authors draw two inferences from their data that are a bit of a stretch. One is that the role of school trustee is not relevant to many Ontarians because many do not appear to understand the role. And the second is that the lack of understanding is evidence of why provincial governments have considered abolishing school boards and, thus, the position of trustee.  

I’d argue that lack of public understanding of the position of trustee (even of the magnitude revealed in this study) does not mean that trustees cannot play an important role in the education of children. Provincial governments have contemplated and even attempted to abolish school boards not because a large segment of the public lacks understanding but because school trustees and boards do not have substantial constituencies that will oppose abolition.  

Whether there is a future for school trustees and the school boards upon which they serve depends upon how well trustees adhere to their main responsibilities. The most important responsibility of school boards is the recruitment and employment of a superintendent (director of education, chief superintendent). The only employee the board itself hires and the school district’s principal educational leader, the superintendent, is responsible for ensuring that the board’s goals and objectives are met.  

The second most important responsibility is the board’s annual evaluation of the superintendent.  Because s/he is responsible for the achievement of the board’s goals and objectives, the performance of the school district is synonymous with the performance of the superintendent.  

Improving student outcomes and ensuring compliance with the board’s obligations should be the focus of the superintendent’s annual appraisal. Key to a board’s effectiveness are the metrics it develops for the assessment of student progress, well-being, and equity. Effective boards collect data regularly, often annually, and chart the trends in performance over time.  

In the absence of evidence that its one employee, the superintendent (director), is improving educational outcomes and equity, school trustees cannot claim that they play an important role in the education of children – a role they should make better known.

Under-representation of Indigenous employees in the education system

 

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

Last school year, I asked whether institutional racism might be one of the reasons that the teaching force does not reflect the demographic variety in the population? I quoted the response of an Indigenous defence lawyer and prosecutor who believes that having more Indigenous lawyers will not lead to better justice or outcomes for Indigenous offenders and victims. He wrote:

To get through that education, you have to allow yourself to be colonized. You have to become one of them. And once you become one of them, then you’re outside of your own community. If you believe in that system, then you’re put outside. You’re going to struggle to connect again.[1]

It is nonetheless the case that Indigenous individuals who have seen the subtle and not so subtle racism in the system are willing to work within that system. The teacher preparation programs in all Canadian faculties of education are open to Indigenous applicants, and many are specifically designed for Indigenous learners. Indigenous enrollment has grown, though not as much as one would have hoped.

Professional preparation is a prerequisite to employment in education, but employment is not certain. Collective agreements are among the challenges that Indigenous people face in getting hired. Most union contracts have provisions that require employers to hire the most senior qualified applicant for a position.

Few, if any, doubt that Indigenous people are underrepresented in education in all employment positions. That recognition on the part of the employer and the employees’ union is what has given rise to agreements to submit joint applications to Human Rights Tribunals for the creation of special programs designed to recruit Indigenous employees. Sometimes such agreements include provisions to provide layoff protection to Indigenous employees who, in a system of strict seniority, might be the first to be laid off.

In British Columbia, the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation has signed a memorandum of understanding with the BC Public School Employers’ Association to encourage local school boards and local teachers’ unions to enter into such agreements regarding Indigenous recruitment. Those who administer human rights codes in a particular jurisdiction will determine whether prior approval of a special program is necessary to implement such a program and avoid claims of discrimination. In BC, prior approval is not required, and formally approved programs cannot be considered discriminatory during the period the approved program is in place.

Over time about half of the 60 school boards in BC and their local unions have requested special program status from the BC Human Rights Tribunal. Some school boards (School District 23 in Vernon, for example) have obtained approval to give Indigenous applicants hiring preference for all its positions. In others, the specifications are more narrowly defined. School district 50 (Haida Gwaii) has approval to give preference to new staff of Haida or other Indigenous ancestry who have “demonstrated knowledge and experience of Haida culture.” In Richmond (School District 38), approval was granted to give preference for hiring and layoff protection to persons of Indigenous ancestry in teaching and other professional positions.

There is clearly a need for Indigenous personnel in all positions in school districts. However, in reviewing special program approvals, I notice that not all districts have sought approval and that the approvals sought are a bit of a patchwork. I am doubtful that any public school board in BC or elsewhere in Canada has proportional parity between its Indigenous staff and the composition of its student or community population.

It is encouraging that Indigenous individuals who have experienced or know about the systemic racism in education are willing to seek employment in the system. And it is also encouraging that many employers and employees recognize the underrepresentation of Indigenous people in the system and are willing to agree to do something about the situation.

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[1] Johnson, H. (2019) Peace and Good Order: The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada, McClelland & Stewart.

What’s in a school’s name?

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

As every parent knows, names are important. It is also true when applied to schools.

Some school boards are renaming schools that were named after people who, by today’s moral standards, did things society no longer finds acceptable (slave owning, support for residential schooling, for example). The attention this has received recently prompts several questions for me.

Is renaming a school consistent with the educational mission of public schooling?

The sensitivities and considerations that apply today may not have been considered at the time that a school was named. However, because schooling is dedicated to the education of the next generation of citizens, schools and the boards that govern them have an obligation to model careful and deliberate thought about the names given to its schools. This includes the names applied in the past that may not conform to the sensitivities and moral considerations that apply today.

Consider a school named after a politician who was instrumental in defending the rights of French-speakers at the time of Confederation but was also an architect of the residential school system. Residential schools were government and church run schools established to eliminate parental involvement in the intellectual, cultural, linguistic, and spiritual development of Indigenous children - a value that is in direct opposition to the values which we hold today.

I do not think renaming the school alone would meaningfully address the harms caused by residential schooling and would not fulfill a school board’s broader educational responsibility. In the spirit of reconciliation as expressed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), we might use the renaming process to raise awareness of residential schooling and its long-standing effects on Indigenous people.

I think that, for instance, a school board should engage and consult with leadership of the First Nation(s) on whose territory the school board is situated. The purpose of the consultation would be to seek the advice of the First Nation(s) about whether the name of the school in question should remain or be removed from the school. In either instance a plaque explaining the politician’s role as an architect of the residential school system in Canada should be placed prominently on the school and a companion lesson or lessons about the politician’s role developed for use in that school as a way of educating students about residential schooling and its impact. 

What behaviour merits reconsideration?

Determining what behaviour merits consideration for school renaming is challenging because good people can do bad things and vice versa. Perhaps the politician who was the architect of the residential school system was also a defender of the rights of French-speakers at the time of confederation. His behaviour should be used to educate students and the public about residential schooling because the horrors and impact of residential schooling were so abhorrent.

Consider a school named for a politician considered a hero for preventing his country's invasion by another country intent on exterminating Jews. He was also a winner of the Noble Prize for literature.  And he was a racist and eugenicist as well.  Should his name be removed from the school? Who should make such a decision? Does his objectionable behaviour over-ride his positive behaviour? What standard should apply in making the decision? Do we not make such judgments every day?

Expunging names from school buildings is fleeting. It does not absolve the education system of its enduring responsibility to educate about, and carefully consider, the complexities of making historical and moral judgments.