Money, Money, Money, Money

 

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

The most frequently discussed topic in education is . . . school funding. Well, maybe mathematics and readings, but, after them, it is definitely school funding. Why? Scarcity. There is never enough money. Have you ever heard anyone in education say, “you know, we should give this money back because we really don’t need it”? No, never.

Raising funds for schools from local property taxation was quite common for most of the history of public schools – and in many places still is. That practice creates vast inequalities between school districts. Communities that have a large tax base can raise money that communities without a decent tax base – or communities whose citizens send their children to private schools – cannot or will not raise. In the United States, there is a $23billion dollar gap between school districts serving predominantly Black students and those serving predominantly white students.

Inequalities such as these affect the quality of schooling. From maintaining the buildings and equipment to paying teachers, severe inequalities affect student outcomes. Those who can, flee districts where conditions are poor and where teachers are poorly paid. The less affluent – families that cannot afford to move and whose children lack the advantages that money can buy – are left behind. However, children from economically disadvantaged families attending schools in relatively more affluent communities fare better that students who live in homogeneously poor communities.

Although there are inequalities among school districts in Canada, the inequalities are much smaller than in the United States because most of the basic funding that school districts receive comes from provincial governments. Provincial governments use formulas to ensure equity in the distribution of funds. The funding for school districts that are more remote is adjusted to account for the additional cost of transportation. The funding for school districts in northern climates is adjusted to reflect that fact that heating schools is more expensive and lights are on longer because there are fewer hours of daylight during the school year. As I have written in another blog, the outcomes students achieve in Canadian schools are better in part because of greater equity in school funding.

No matter. Almost everyone wants more money, and almost everyone wants new formulas for the disbursement of government funding. But there is little agreement about what they want the money for. It is hard to make a case for additional funding when jurisdictions want the money for different purposes or simply want more money and the discretion to use it as they see fit.  And, by the way, if there isn’t going to be more money don’t bother changing the funding formula because changing the formula will just take money from one district and give it to another – creating what are perceived as ‘winners’ and ‘losers.’  

Governments are typically unwilling to allocate funds for specific purposes without accountability for the use of the money. Thus, when funds are allocated for a specific purpose they are designated (‘targeted’ or ‘earmarked’) for that purpose alone. School boards don’t like designated funding because it fetters their discretion and requires them to be accountable for the use of the funding.

The acceptance of designated funding can produce unanticipated consequences. Consider special needs funding. Many local school boards receive designated funding for students who manifest special needs. Where this is the case, the number of students with special needs sometimes increases over time. It isn’t clear whether, in their attempt to get more funding for student needs, school boards identify greater numbers of students whose conditions attract funding or whether the funding draws attention to students with conditions that, though recognized, went unaddressed prior to the board’s receiving additional funding.

Money matters. In education, there is a natural desire to want to do more for students. No one wants to do less. Claims for additional resources sometimes try to paint a picture of students whose needs are neglected - ‘students falling through the cracks.’ But I have not ever seen evidence of neglected students.

Claims for additional resources for education would be easier to justify if (a) there was agreement on where those funds were most needed, and (b) those seeking the additional funds could show that the funding they received in the past made a visible (measurable) difference for students.

Rethinking Education for Mass Unemployment

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

 COVID-19 has caused business failures and high levels of unemployment. Many of the failed businesses and lost jobs will not return . . . ever. As deeply concerning as that is, Smart technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and algorithms (STARA) may also produce permanent, unemployment of unprecedented levels. Social policies such as guaranteed annual wages may help to mitigate the economic impact of mass unemployment. I think it is time to look ahead and consider the part that education should play in preparing successive generations for their responsibilities as productive citizens.

For much of its history – especially in the post WWII period – education has been associated with preparation for employment. Even when a smaller proportion of the population attended secondary school, those who did were often people preparing for the professions and the clergy. In the post war period, the link between schooling and work became stronger for the growing number of students. “Stay in school and get a good job,” parents admonished their offspring. Mine certainly did.

It paid off for most of us who stayed in school through to graduation. The booming post-war economy was fueled by consumer-demand for goods. The growing population needed more teachers, doctors, nurses, police . . . almost everything. Generous benefits made it possible for soldiers to attend school, obtain training and post-secondary education.

Those who heeded the advice about staying in school benefitted in direct proportion to their educational tenure. High school graduates were more likely to find steady employment and earned higher wages than those who did not graduate. Those who acquired training and post-secondary education did better than the high school graduates. That relationship persists today . . . for those who are employed . . . though not as strongly as it once did.

STARA has begun to change that relationship for many people and the trend is projected to grow exponentially. Most of the high school graduates who once found employment in the burgeoning industrial sector have been replaced by robots. The same is true in the resource sector. Fallers, miners, and derrick-hands are fewer in number because of mechanization of the work.

The post war service industry exploded as consumer wages increased. High school students once earned income from part-time work in drive in restaurants, diners, and service stations. Today many of those service jobs are performed by early school leavers and seniors who do not get the benefits typically associated with full-time employment. Those positions will also decline as the fast-food sector automates. Robots can work 24/7 (except for downtime for maintenance) and do not get benefits.

Some argue that “. . . automation displaces workers who are doing highly automatable work and tasks, but it does not affect the total number of jobs in the economy because of offsetting effects. . . . It is important to keep in mind that even though technology can be a net job creator, it does not mean that the new jobs created will show up right away, be located in the same place or even pay the same as the ones that were lost. All it means is that the overall need for human work has not gone away” [my emphasis]. As Statistics Canada analysts Marc Frenette and Kristyn Frank point out “. . .  even the most carefully chosen statistical methods can fail to accurately predict the future.”  

The dislocation of employment that may arise from automation and the difficulty in predicting the future suggest that it is prudent to anticipate and plan for an education for a society characterized by increasing unemployment and, possibly mass unemployment. What might such an education entail?

Literacy will continue to be important. People will need to read and the ability to evaluate media messages and images (media literacy). Literature courses should increase in number. There should be greater emphasis on poetry, composition, especially for artistic expression and written argumentation, i.e., rhetoric

History, economics, government, philosophy, ethics, sociology, and law will take a more prominent part in education because citizenship will become more active. People will take a fuller part in the affairs of their communities and societies. Scientific and environmental knowledge will allow citizens to understand the impact of their decisions. Languages should flourish, too, because the world will become increasingly integrated.  

Elective courses offered at the margins of a school career today will become more important in an education that takes into account mass unemployment. Music, carpentry, photography, painting and sculpture, electronics, and filmmaking will flourish.

These areas of study look familiar, but their priority in the curriculum and their focus will have been transformed. The cultivation of the human mind and its capacity for understanding will replace the cultivation of marketable skills. To the extent that there is a desire for the development of marketable skills, those courses will become the elective courses at the margins of the school curriculum.

Of course, I am no more adept at predicting the future than anyone else. But there is consensus that there is simply not enough work to engage everyone today and that STARA will increase unemployment, eventually on a mass scale. It is prudent to anticipate today what education for such a future might entail.

Will limiting Donald Trump’s access to social media make addressing cyberbullying easier?

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

It took a seditious incursion by an angry mob into the American Congress to limit Donald Trump’s four plus years of online deceit and cyberbullying. During that period, the world’s population was exposed to his use of social media to promote aggression toward almost everyone. His behaviour was egregious, providing license to behaviour for which children and youth are admonished by parents and teachers: name calling, demeaning characterizations, misogynistic rants, taunts, incitement of violence, and lies.

The last four years have shown that connectivity is a two-edged sword. Better and more rapid access to information on the one hand, increased susceptibility to manipulation and damage on the other. Online aggression – also called cyberbullying or cyberharassment – is a form of bullying that has serious negative consequences for the victim and for the perpetrator. According to a 2017 meta-analysis of factors predicting cyberbullying perpetration and victimization by Chen and her colleagues, those with greater access are more likely to become involved in online aggression.

Online aggression can lead to anxiety, stress, depression, poor self-esteem, negative school performance, a higher chance of dropping out, and suicide. Pediatricians, mental health workers, and social workers express concerns about the exposure that children and youth have to social media. It is common to find parents giving their smartphones to infants to distract or entertain them. Children and youth – like most of us - are rarely untethered from their phones.

Access to information and communication technology has given us enormous advantages and opportunities. Evident in the extreme from Trump’s behaviour, those same technologies can victimize. In a wired world, denying or restricting access are not realistic means of addressing the issue. In the case of children and youth, denying or restricting access encourages students to seek covert access. Children and youth are reluctant to disclose their victimization for fear that their access will be limited or cut off completely.

Technological solutions – apps that detect and prevent the transmission of negative language and harassment or apps that facilitate the reporting of harassment – are of limited usefulness. As is often the case, education is a more promising approach, but it too has limitations.

In 2019, my colleagues and I reviewed 35 programs designed to address cyberbullying among children (ages 6-11), youth (ages 12-17), and young adults (ages 18-25). The programs focused on: creating awareness of cyberbullying; developing knowledge about cyberbullying topics; equipping participants with skills to address cyberbullying (coping strategies, social skills, skills to form improved/respectful relationships, self-empowerment, and empathy); on creating safe, respectful, bullying-free school environments and policies; building teacher capacity to address cyberbullying and bullying issues; and increasing knowledge and awareness among parents.

We found that most programs have not been systematically studied. But we were able to formulate recommendations that ought to help educators think about selecting or designing programs to address cyberbullying. Not surprising, the first recommendation is that you need to know what you are trying to achieve and for whom. Are you trying to influence behaviour change among young children or youth? Develop empathy for others or specific skills for improved communication and better relationships with others? Is the program aimed at a specific segment of the population or the entire school? You get the idea.

Clarity of purpose is indispensable to the selection of the relevant practices and to ensuring that they are aligned with the goals. Programs aimed at increasing awareness of unhealthy behaviours differ from programs that seek to equip students with the skills they need to extricate themselves from situations in which those behaviours are present.

Some cyberbullying programs treat cyberbullying like ‘bullying with technology,’ but there are important differences between bullying and cyberbullying: the anonymity of perpetrators, the almost limitless opportunities for victimization, and long-lasting impact because the attacks are difficult to expunge. So, it is important to pay attention to the similarities and differences between cyberbullying and traditional bullying.

Making certain that the approach is age appropriate and sensitive to vulnerable populations (racialized students, LBGTQ2S, for example) is important. Equally important is developing the capacity of those who will implement the program. Most established programs go off the rails when applied to other contexts because those in the new context do not faithfully implement the program.

Trump makes me think of two significant challenges that cyberbullying programs must face. One is motivating behaviour change. The other is the example set by socially prominent models. Trump’s visibility and the position he occupied made his behaviour seem acceptable, and he has shown that he has no desire to change. I am guessing that it will be a bit easier to address cyberbullying when Trump is gone, but it still won’t be easy.

If you want brief descriptions of the 35 programs or a copy of the full  report that my colleagues and I prepared for Public Safety Canada, please send me an email at oneducationcanada@gmail.com

More effective online instruction during COID-19 and beyond

 

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

There is no doubt that the fall term was extremely challenging for everyone. Many of the teachers with whom I have talked or corresponded over the holidays are feeling guilty about the quality of their online instruction. They know that they have not been prepared for teaching online and believe that students are suffering as a result.

I have tried to explain to some of them that they know more about online instruction than they think they know. I’ve done this by asking them questions about their classroom teaching methods to get them to recognize and make use of what they already know. I have distilled those conversations into an interview format, calling upon what the teachers said in response to my questions. My questions are in bold with a composite of the teachers’ answers beneath edited for economy and clarity.

“What do you do in your classroom to reduce the challenges students face when they confront new material?

I check to see what students already know about the material. When I do that, I build upon what students know and can do and avoid asking them to engage with material for which they do not have the necessary prior knowledge or experience. I review with them what they know and can do.

I break the new material into small chunks or steps so that students are not asked to bite off more than they can chew. What I mean by that is that it is easier for me to check to see if they have mastered a small amount of learning before I move on.

“What do you do if there are students who are struggling to get to the next step?”

I build scaffolds and use cue cards or models to help them along. I create diagrams of the processes I am asking them to follow or a timeline or a chart. I use key terms or phrases as reminders of the ideas they are trying to wrestle with. I prepare lots of examples so that, if a student is struggling, I have a second or third or fourth example I can use. If I have checked for prior understanding, I can usually link the material back to something the student already knows or use an example within the student’s frame of reference.

If there is a process or procedure that I am asking the students to follow, I try to model it for them. As I am modelling the procedure, I talk about what I am thinking at each step. I try to phrase what I am thinking in terms that are familiar to the students. Linking to the student’s prior knowledge or experience reminds them of what they know and shows them they are being asked to make a small step up – not a big leap.

I try to build in frequent opportunities for practice for two reasons. First, it allows me to observe them working through the problems, checking their work for accuracy, and giving them hints or prompts that will help them to succeed at the task. It builds their confidence to see their own success. Second, if more than one or two students are struggling, I know that I haven’t been successful in communicating the ideas or the process that I expect them to learn. I need to go back and start that step again, but with a different approach, examples, etc.

“What do you say or do for the students who are on track to succeed or who have already succeeded in the task?”

I let them know that I recognize their success. But I try to avoid saying, “good for you.” Someone is always saying “good for you,” but that’s too vague. They need to know what specifically they have done well. I say things like “you were careful in following each step,” “you remembered to look for X,” or “you showed your work each step of the way.” If they are on track, but not quite there, I try to nudge them in the right direction. “Check to see if you have all of the steps in the right order,” “Where would I look to see X?” or “Here’s an example that might be helpful” are some of the things I say to give them a gentle push.

If they are working through a problem on paper or showing me their work on a white board, I sometimes say, “let’s mark each of the steps to see if they are all there.” Gently, but firmly providing little corrections and feedback goes a long way to building understanding and confidence. Asking students to use an assessment rubric that is familiar to them lets them check their own work. If they do that often enough, checking their own work may become habitual. That makes them more independent learners.

“What do you do when you are confident that students have achieved the next level?”

Even when they have achieved the next level, they need practice . . . and lots of it. I try to create opportunities for practice that allow them to represent what they know. “Draw a diagram or make a chart,” “Find examples that fit the model we’ve been working with,” “Teach [another student] or teach me how to do that.”

“Is there anything that you’ve said that you cannot do online?”

Not really. But when I teach online, I have tried to overpackage the experience and made a lot of other mistakes. I really haven’t checked for prior learning or broken things up as I would have in class. I’ve spent too much time talking at students rather than with them. The lessons are too long. Not enough examples. Too little practice. It’s hard to give feedback online. But, no, you are right. In the classroom I have done what I described. Now I need to put it into practice online.

Managing student behaviour, technology, and the learning environment is very difficult in an online situation. My hunch: Online teaching and its technologies threw teachers with sound teaching practices off their game. If they did what they do with their students – inventory what they know – the task might be a bit easier . . . but not easy.

Post COVID Educational Recovery

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

 [permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

The re-opening of schools and the provision of online learning amidst COVID-19 has been – let’s say – uneven. Well, yes, it has not even been that good and, yes, almost everyone knows that. British Columbia’s Premier has acknowledged that in the mandate letter to his newly appointed Minister of Education.

In his mandate letter, the Premier establishes his expectation that over the course of the Government’s mandate he expects the Minister to make progress in supporting COVID-19 recovery “by fast-tracking improvements to online and remote learning, including investing in more computers and tablets, more training for teachers and support staff, and new ways to improve social e-learning to promote group interactions between students and teachers.”

I expect that premiers across the country are saying pretty much the same thing to their ministers of education: “Fix online learning.” There is little doubt in my mind that there will be improvements made to online learning, including improvements to e-learning that promote social interaction between students and teachers and among students.

Such improvements will be time-consuming and costly, especially if they are pursued by each province and territory on its own. Yet, I expect each province will attempt to “go it alone.” I also expect that the Government of Canada will remain aloof from such efforts, though it should not and need not. The Government of Canada should be using its leadership role and its spending power to assist provinces that are willing to cooperate in developing a pan-Canadian approach to online learning.

By this point some readers are saying, “can’t be done. There’s no way that the Government of Canada can engage with the provinces and territories to improve online learning or do anything else in education. That’s the domain of the individual provinces.”

It is true that the provinces have the jurisdiction to make laws in relation to education, but there is nothing in the Constitution Act that prevents the Canadian government from using its leadership role and spending powers to work with the provinces on something such as the improvement of online learning.

In fact, when the Government of Canada has wanted to influence public schooling, it ­has not been shy from doing so. In fact, the Government of Canada has supported or undertaken many initiatives in the realm of public schooling.  For example, the Government of Canada provides funding for PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) and, based on agreements with the provinces and territories, it also provides financial support for minority language education and second-language instruction.

The COVID-19 recovery in education and the improvement of online learning will take longer and be more costly if the provinces “go it alone” without the benefit of the leadership and financial resources that the government of Canada can mobilize. The federal government could help to coordinate the work of the provinces and the various federal departments and agencies that engage with public schools and provide leadership and funding to public elementary and secondary schooling in this domain.

I am mindful of the sensitivity about the role of education in nation-building – a topic that is extremely sensitive for the province of Quebec. But if the provinces retain their jurisdiction in education and can establish the limits to their cooperation, I do not think the relationship I am describing would intrude on provincial autonomy.

The establishment of a pan-Canadian online learning infrastructure and the development of courseware for mathematics and science should pose no threat to provincial autonomy. Cooperative work in languages, literature, social studies could take place among a coalition of willing provinces. Quebec could provide substantial leadership in French-language education across Canada which would strengthen French language and culture throughout the country.

Cooperation would be voluntary and would extend only so far as any jurisdiction is prepared to go. What I am describing is cooperative federalism, the provinces, territories and federal government working together to achieve common goals.

Resources are scarce. Planning for a post-COVID educational recovery that includes improved online learning is an opportunity that should not be overlooked . . . but I fear it will be.

 

Best wishes for the holiday season and the New Year - Charles

Institutional Racism and Inequality in Canadian Schools: Part 3 of 3

 

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

 [permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

I wrote a blog last year about discrimination in education that reported the results of a study that a colleague and I undertook to see if British Columbia student teachers discriminated against Aboriginal learners. We found that pre-service teachers led to believe that students were Aboriginal were more likely to place them in a remedial program, even though their performance was identical to students whom they were led to believe were not Aboriginal.

 Another colleague studied the factors associated with school completion for children and youth with behaviour disorders and mental illness in BC. She found that “students of Aboriginal ancestry were grossly overrepresented among students with behaviour disorders and mental illnesses and at a significant disadvantage with respect to high school completion in comparison to all other peers.” When I say our assumptions are baked into the system, I mean they are habitual and often codified in the policies and procedures we follow. This is what the colleague wrote about the implications of her findings:

The designation of special education categories for distinguishing students with moderate to severe behaviour disorders and mental illnesses has not resulted in supporting this population of students with intervention strategies leading to successful high school completion. Current definitions for students with behaviour disorders and mental illness in the Special Education Services: Manual of Policies, Procedures and Guidelines (Ministry of Education, 2016) are subjective, putting heavy emphasis on the attitudes and opinions of schools and school districts to determine the status of the students. The vague definitions and subsequent inconsistent identification is problematic and does little to determine if the services are focused on the appropriate students (p. 234-235).

Schools separate students into courses or programs according to their perceived ability or interest levels. Students are often encouraged to “choose” a pathway the school thinks will produce successful outcomes for the student. This separation (called tracking or streaming in different places) often finds students over- or under-represented in a stream or track in relation to their overall proportion in the student population. Black students in Toronto streamed into courses below their levels of performance prompted the Ontario Minister of Education to refer to streaming as a "systemic, racist, discriminatory" practice and announce that grade 9 streaming will be eliminated by the 2021-2022 school year in Ontario.

Streaming and tracking occur whenever there are alternatives that appear to be the same but are actually not. Two or three different mathematics courses at the same grade level may not be called streaming, but the separation often provides opportunities to some that are denied to others. The nomenclature used to refer to Ontario’s grade nine mathematics tells the story. One pathway is academic mathematics, a requirement for entrance to most universities; the other is applied mathematics, an alternative to the more rigorous academic pathway. 

A factor associate with lower graduation rates is student mobility. Students who change schools are at greater risk of not graduating. Schools do not adapt well to students who enter school once the academic year has begun. It is not that schools are unwelcoming to the individual. They usually are. The problem is integrating the newcomer into an existing instructional program. Albeit unintentional, this impediment to learning most often affects students from low income families among which racialized and Indigenous Canadians are over represented.  

Could institutional racism be one of the reasons that the teaching force does not reflect the demographic variety in the population? It might be difficult for individuals who have seen the subtle and not so subtle racism in the system to work within that system, even if they believed that being part of the system would help to change it.  Harold Johnson, author of Peace and Good Order: The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada, was recently asked why, after serving as an Indigenous defense lawyer and prosecutor in Saskatchewan, he believes that having more Indigenous lawyers will not lead to better justice or outcomes for Indigenous offenders and victims. To which he responded:

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.

There are numerous structural and operational practices that fail to consider the demographic diversity of the students enrolled in Canadian schools. Many of those structures and practices arose during a period of colonial settlement. Slavery was an approved practice and the extermination and mistreatment of Indigenous people were accepted when colonial institutions, like public schools, were developing.

It took until the late 1960s for Canada to begin to talk about racism. It revised its overtly racist immigration policies and strengthened human rights and anti-discrimination legislation. But the justification for its revision of immigration policy was often discussed in terms of the advantages that diversity would bring to Canada’s economy. Few were willing to speak about racism and consider how it was embedded in all institutions.

Social segregation sometimes occurs without intention. In the return to school this fall, an Ontario school board decided to distribute students to online classes alphabetically. By doing that students were inadvertently grouped by their ethno-linguistic backgrounds. It was some time before the school board learned that it had formed groupings that did not reflect the racially diverse nature of its district. A spokesperson for the board acknowledged the concerns parents had expressed about the groupings but said that reorganizing the classes “would have delayed the start of the school year.” The decision of the board to keep the alphabetical groupings leaves the impression that bureaucratic expediency takes precedence over ensuring diversity.

Canadian society is increasingly willing, even if reluctantly, to talk about racism and consider its impact on its institutions and its population. That is a good thing. But willingness to talk about racism and consider its impact on Canadian education is only a first step in addressing the institutional racism and inequities that are perpetuated.

Institutional Racism and Inequality in Canadian Schools: Part 2 of 3

 

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

 [permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

 

We speak about whether children are “ready for school.” This often means that we expect children entering school to know their colours, letters, and numbers, and can arrange objects in a prescribed order. These abilities are the foundation for much of what they will learn in school. We expect that most children entering school will be school-ready and assume that the children who are not manifest deficiencies that will need to be addressed. We often assume that children from specific sub-groups in the population are less likely to be school ready.

We could consider entry to school from another perspective. We should ask: are schools ready for the range of children for whom they will be responsible? Other related questions are: what strengths do children entering school possess upon which the school can build? How might we recognize and validate the knowledge that students do bring to school?

I do not dispute the desirability of children learning their colours, letters, and numbers and being able to arrange objects in a prescribed order. But, taking the perspective of school readiness, we should plan that some children will not have learned those skills prior to coming to school, but also expect that those children almost certainly will know and be able to do things that other children do not know and cannot do.

Recognizing and validating a broader range of knowledge does several important things. It says that what you know and can do is important here. You should be proud of what you know and can do. As almost every teacher knows, children who believe they are successful are more persistent learners because they recognize that they have already learned things of value. Students’ expectations about their own success also influence learning. Having been successful learning in the past engenders confidence in learning things that are new to them.

The children who are ready for school in the conventional sense will learn that the knowledge they posses is not the only knowledge. They will see that there is a broad range of knowledge recognized and valued by the institution. True education is leading people (or learners) out from what they know to master things they do not know.. Those children will be less likely to stigmatize children who do not have the same skills at school-entry because the institution values the knowledge that all their peers bring to school.

Now, here is the tricky part. Schools cannot be content to simply recognize and validate the knowledge some children have and continue to prize the knowledge children who are ready for school possess. There is no question that those skills are important, but they are not the only valuable skills. The following anecdote illustrates the impact of false assumptions and one of the many skills people have that are not recognized in school.

On a trip with my spouse and friends, I was persuaded to go white-water rafting, an activity I would normally avoid. We assembled at the designated place and a young woman asked us to sign a release. After we read and signed the forms, she introduced herself as our guide. I did not expect that, imagining she would pass us along to her father. We boarded the raft. She gave a safety briefing and asked, “any questions?” I said, “this is my first time white-water rafting” and asked, “how old are you?” “16,” she replied, “but don’t worry I have been guiding since I was 12. I’ve made hundreds, maybe thousands of runs with newbies, and have never lost one.” At the time I was focused on my survival, but, in retrospect, was embarrassed about the assumptions I made about white-water rafting with a 16-year-old female. Moreover, it is illustrative of knowledge that people possess that is not typically recognized and valued in school.

Assumptions like mine are baked into the structure and practices of our schools, and into the perceptions about the students and families they are supposed to serve. The assumptions we teachers make influence how we teach and, in turn, the performance and the assessment of performance of the students for whom we are responsible.

Institutional Racism and Inequality in Canadian Schools: Part 1 of 3

 

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

Trustees in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) voted unanimously to make completion of an Ethnic Studies class a high school graduation requirement by the 2023-2024 school year. In addition to the course requirement, the motion approved by the School District made the Superintendent of Schools responsible for ensuring support for educators to integrate Ethnic Studies into the Pre-K to Grade 8 curriculum. 

The decision will affect many students.  LAUSD, the second largest school district in the United States, serves more than 600,000 students, about the same number of students as attend public schools in British Columbia or maybe a few more.

The trustee who introduced the motion said “. . . recent protests calling for equality across the nation have shown us the value in education in dismantling institutionalized racism and inequity.” She also said, “The majority of the students we serve in L.A. Unified are Black and Latino, and it’s important for them to learn about their history and see themselves reflected in our curricula.”

There is much to applaud in the decision of LAUSD. Infusing the curriculum with what LAUSD calls ethnic studies will ensure that the subject matter becomes part of the course of study rather than an add-on. In assigning responsibility to the Superintendent for ensuring teachers have the needed support sends a signal. Educators need assistance in learning how to teach about the history and contributions of the groups who have suffered from institutionalized racism and inequity. It is one thing to include a body of material in the curriculum, but something entirely different when it comes to teaching about it without perpetuating racist stereotypes and stigmatizing the people whose history and accomplishments are being taught.

One could ask why a special motion is necessary to ensure the inclusion of this material? Why is it not already part of the curriculum being taught today? The answer is racism, the institutional exclusion, marginalization, and denigration of the groups whose history and contributions are now to be included.

There is one place I disagree with Kelly Gonez, the trustee who introduced the motion. Part of her argument was that it was important for students to learn about their history and see themselves in the curricula because Black and Latino students comprised a majority of the students in the district. I disagree. Even if there were no Latino or Black students in the district, it would be important to include knowledge of the history and contributions of Latinos and Blacks. The knowledge is important not because of their physical presence but because excluding it makes students less well educated and more likely to perpetuate institutional racism and inequality.

I raise this California initiative in my blog, which is principally about Canada, because the curricula in Canadian school jurisdictions largely ignores the history and contributions of Indigenous people and their systematic mistreatment by settlers. When Indigenous people and people of colour are included in the curriculum, they are represented in a superficial way that stereotypes them and makes them seem foreign or exotic. The exclusion and misrepresentation are manifestations of the institutional racism that pervades Canadian education.

I think referring to “ethnic studies” is also a manifestation of unconscious institutional racism. Gonez and her colleagues want to draw attention to groups that have been excluded – particularly Latino and Black Americans. But the term ethnic has negative connotation. At worst it is often taken to mean racial, tribal, or folkloric. At best, it is taken to mean cultural.

Using the term ethnic, as Gonez does, unintentionally implies that there are traits or cultural practices that are the essence of the people to whom the term is applied. This inadvertently ignores the diversity among the individuals who may choose to identify with the group to which reference is being made.

Speaking about curricular inclusion requires serious, continuing, and difficult conversations that are just getting started in the Canadian context. But eliminating institutionalized racism does not begin and end with curricular inclusion. There are other features of the system that need to be addressed. From school entry to graduation, there are structures, practices, and assumptions that need examination and change. 

British Columbia’s educational advantage is eroding

 

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

 [permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

During the summer I was interviewed by an international panel that was studying British Columbia’s education system. The panel was trying to determine if high performing jurisdictions such as British Columbia shared common characteristics that helped to account for that high performance.

There were two major questions to which the panel sought answers. The first question was: why has British Columbia performed at a high level internationally and how did the province accomplish this?

I divided my answer into two categories: social factors and education system factors. I chose those categories because most of the differences in student achievement can be attributed to social factors. About 70% of the difference in student performance is affected by social factors and about 30% to education-system factors.

On the social side, I said that, in comparison with most countries, Canada exhibits high social equity. For example, there is less income inequality in Canada than in the United States. Canada has roughly 70% of the income inequality of the US. Or to state it another way, inequality in the US is about 30% greater than in Canada.

Although there are persistent inequalities between men and women, there is greater social equity for Canadian women than in many other countries. At the negative extreme, in some countries females are denied education and have very restricted opportunities.

Selective immigration is a factor in social equity. In polite discussion, people say that Canada skims the cream from other countries, accepting migrants with significant educational, social, cultural, and economic capital. A more pejorative description for Canada’s immigration policy is “asset stripping.”

Canada possesses a social safety net that helps to reduce more radical inequalities. Our health system is one example of the services provided to Canadians that in other countries is much more restricted. Parenting leave, employment insurance, and old age security are others.

Another social equity factor is a balance between individual and group rights. Over time, Canada has developed what I describe as a social justice infrastructure that has contributed to social equity. While it is by no means perfect, that infrastructure includes human rights legislation, immigration reform and control, employment equity, anti-racism and multicultural initiatives, and acknowledgement of the mistreatment of Japanese, Chinese, and, more recently, Indigenous Canadians.

The second set of factors that has helped students in British Columbia to achieve comparatively high levels of performance in education can be attributed to the education system. Before describing the features of the system that have made a significant contribution, I should point out that I am taking the long view because I think that there have been challenges to those features in the past decade or so. To put it bluntly, many of the factors that contributed to high performance in the past have been eroded or eliminated.

For much of BC’s history the education system has benefitted from a strong ministry of education staffed by individuals with knowledge of teaching and learning. That pattern has been less true for the past two decades and much of the expectation of leadership has been devolved to the district level. However, capacity at the school district level is not uniform across the 60 public school boards in British Columbia. In the absence of a strong Ministry capable of providing expert guidance, some districts, and the students for whom they are responsible, suffer.

British Columbia once had a strong, detailed curriculum and curriculum support upon which teachers could depend. A common curriculum and common, provincially approved resources provided a foundation for teaching. Recent revisions to the curriculum, with its emphasis on big ideas and the diminution of subject-specific knowledge, provide less support for teachers.

About twenty years ago, the Ministry produced performance standards for numeracy, literacy, and social responsibility. Those performance standards set out grade-level expectations for student performance and, most important, gathered, and published samples of student work that fell below, met, or exceeded the standards. This was enormously useful to teachers because it helped guide professional judgment about grade-level expectations and provided them with example that they could use with students and parents to talk about the standards.

Another of the factors that contributed to student performance was formal, provincial assessments. The assessments were typically administered at the senior secondary level to ensure common outcomes, certify that achievement standards had been met, and determine eligibility for provincial scholarships. The scores on those tests were factored into the student’s final grade by weighting the provincial examination score and the score assigned by the teacher based on the teacher’s classroom assessments. Those provincial assessments are largely no longer administered.

BC once employed school accreditation, a practice that sought to encourage the members of a school to engage in self-study, to set goals for improvement and the means for achieving them, and to monitor progress toward the goals established over time. Although there was provision for external evaluation, the primary benefit of school accreditation was the self-study component.

School accreditation sought to inculcate among educators an ethic of self-regulation rather than externally imposed regulation. But, teachers’ union opposition to school accreditation diminished its potential as a means of collective self-study and self-improvement and reinforced the impression that teachers are disinterested – if not opposed – to improvement. BC no longer uses school accreditation.

A strength of the BC system is its comparatively well-educated and well-prepared cadre of teachers. The post-war improvement in teacher education helped to improve student performance but that trend has stalled in the past 30 or so years. There are many things that a teacher must know and be able to do to promote student success. They need subject-specific pedagogical knowledge, the ability to manage the classroom and student behaviour, and contextual awareness and understanding of their students. The amount of time devoted to preparation in these areas has eroded in the past 30 years.

A factor in British Columbia’s success relative to other countries is that, for the most part, the learning environments across BC schools are similar in the way that they influence student performance in core subjects. In technical terms, the proportion of between-school difference on PISA is around one-tenth of the OECD average. Provincial, rather than local, funding of education and an allocation model that considers cost differences among school boards are two factors that help to produce similarity in learning environments.

I would be remiss if I did not point out that British Columbia is fortunate that these conditions are present to a greater degree in BC than jurisdictions where these two factors are less well developed. However, as other jurisdictions improve, British Columbia’s status among school jurisdictions will diminish.

Yet, I am not particularly concerned with British Columbia’s performance in comparison to other countries or provinces. Schooling is not a horse race. I am concerned about British Columbia’s performance in the future in comparison to its current performance. The future I  foresee is not so rosy: the diminution of a common curriculum (big ideas without underlying consideration of the evidence in support of them are like headlines without the story); the fragmentation of prior knowledge; and a decline in conceptual and procedural knowledge that PSE and employers ‘count’ upon when a student earns high school graduation.

I am mindful that “things are not like they used to be and never were.”  In other words, the past was not as rosy as one might infer from what I have written. There were and are significant gaps among groups of students. Several exogenous factors prevented better performance. Poverty and racism are among the most potent of those factors.

I am worried about increasing inequities. The income gap is growing, inter-group hostility appears to be on the rise, COVID-19 has revealed holes in the social safety net, but more specifically COVID-19 has also revealed inequities in educational opportunities that more advantaged parents and guardians can provide their children that less advantaged ones cannot. These are troubling developments and over the long run will likely detract from the positive record of student performance in BC.

COVID-19 magnifies long-standing tendencies

 

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

Last week, a teacher turned broadcaster asked me if I would reflect on Failing Our Kids: How we Are Ruining Our Public Schools, a book I wrote in 2003. He was interested in the extent to which my appraisal had changed in the intervening years.

Most of what I wrote in 2003 is unfortunately applicable in 2020. COVID-19 has acted like the steroids that some body builders use, helping to define and magnify the themes and tendencies.

It would be an understatement to say that COVID-19 has sparked public – and especially parental – anxieties about public schooling. The media tap the vein of anxiety swollen by COVID and social media, far more powerful today than in 2003, have amplified those anxieties and injected significant misinformation.

Some elected representatives have traditionally manipulated public anxieties about education for political and ideological advantage. Some have misrepresented the data about the successes of public schooling as well as its shortcomings. During COVID-19, most have sought to deflect parental anxieties about the response to the pandemic to local boards of education.

A lack of provincially coordinated responses to COVID and the deflection of attention to local school boards have played into the hands of those politicians eager to abandon public schooling in favour of a market-driven private system. They would thus rid the public purse of the burden of preparing the next generation of Canadians. But even where there is no such political agenda, lack of coordination and deflection of responsibility will encourage some to abandon public schools.

Teacher unions have often exploited parental anxiety to improve their working conditions and membership by overdramatizing the impact to changes in education. Though the concerns of teacher unions about the welfare of their members is genuine, their public expression of those concerns is likely a contributing factor to parental anxiety about, and some flight from, public schools.

Canadian parents fuel anxiety about public schooling, their own and the anxieties of other parents. They hold competing and sometimes incompatible ideas and demands about public schools. This is particularly evident during COVID-19. Some parents demand that schools operate as they did prior to COVID, but with precautions to minimize the pandemic’s impact. Others demand online instruction of the same quality as can be achieved face-to-face. Others seek a blended approach, but one that is easily coordinated with parental responsibilities.

In the meantime, public schools are struggling to respond to the extraordinary demands that COVID-19 has imposed. The response has been uneven and imperfect. That should surprise no one. When we describe something like COVID-19 as novel and unprecedented, we must temper our expectations.  That is not to say that we should have no expectations, but the expectations we hold should be reasonable. So, what is reasonable?

Schools and school boards vary significantly in their capacity. They would benefit from greater coordination from provincial ministries of education. This will require more than the production of guidelines. Online learning is in most jurisdictions in a sorry state, but provincial – if not pan-Canadian – coordination and cooperation would improve its quality dramatically. Regulations about the uniform and open reporting of COVID cases by school would likely provide some comfort to the anxieties of parents.

Teacher unions and parents should try to look beyond the horizon of their own interests to work for the common good. One cannot address an extraordinary event by maintaining past practices. There will inevitably be some dislocation for everyone.

Employers and unions will need to modify, albeit temporarily, existing contracts to allow for different staff deployment. I am not suggesting abandonment of the existing contracts but some time-limited accommodations.

By way of illustration, it seems unreasonable to me to expect that teachers who are largely unfamiliar with online learning should be assigned those responsibilities. Those teachers who are conversant and comfortable with the kind of performance online learning demands should undertake the responsibility for developing units, lessons, and modules. The development of the material should be coordinated by the teacher specialists most familiar with the contents of the provincial curriculum. The material should be able to be accessed by classroom teachers from a provincial repository to fit their own timetables. They should be able to create a schedule for the students for whom they are responsible and complement the pre-recorded on-line modules with opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning and receive assistance in the form of small group, and individual, tutorials.

As I hope I have made clear, there are places where I think things need to be better coordinated. However, I think it is important for everyone to cut everyone else some slack at this difficult time.

Seeing learners in a different light

 

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus of Education, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

 We moved to a new residence about a year ago. The walls in our previous home were primarily cloud white. The ones in our new home are three shades of blue-grey in the light to mid-grey range. When we hung the artwork from our previous home in the new one, we began to see the paintings and photographs differently. The blue-grey walls provided a different context for the art. And, because our new home has more and larger windows, we saw the art in an entirely different light, literally.

Seeing the art in a whole new light started me thinking about how the way we have ‘framed’ certain observations in education have propelled us in directions that would be different if we had framed them in a different way.

Consider the observation that some children begin school without knowing some shapes, colors, letters, and numbers, etc. There is a commonly held expectation that students without such knowledge find learning more challenging. The problem is often labeled “lack of school readiness”: that the knowledge that some children possess when entering school makes them “school ready” and other children’s lack of such knowledge prevents them from being seen as ready for school. This leads to judgments and action that are different from ones that one might make if the observation was framed differently.

Instead of framing the problem in terms of what children lack, it could be considered as a problem with schooling. Why do schools define some knowledge as valuable and its absence as a problem? Framed in this way, one might ask: are schools ready for the range of children for whom they will be responsible? Other related questions are: what strengths do children entering school possess upon which the school can build? How might we recognize and validate the range of knowledge that students do bring to school?

I expect that a change in our frame of reference would help us to make the school environment more welcoming to Indigenous students, to children for whom English is an additional language, and to students with special needs – and their parents, too. And I expect that appreciating various types of knowledge would lead to greater success because that framing would lead us to a different course of action.

Recognizing and validating a broader range of knowledge conveys the message to learners that what they know and can do is important in school and that they can be proud of what they know and can do. This may make the transition of children from cultures where, although they do not have the expected “school readiness” skills, they possess other important skills such as listening to elders, making observations, and sharing – skills that are also important for successful learning.

As almost every teacher knows, children who believe they are successful are more persistent learners because they recognize that they have already learned things of value. Students’ expectations about their own success also influence learning. Having been successful learners in the past engenders confidence in learning things that are new to them. The children who are ready for school in the conventional sense might learn that the knowledge they possess is not the only knowledge. They might see that there is a broad range of knowledge recognized and valued by the institution.

Just as I came to have a different appreciation of our artwork when it was seen in a new context, recognizing what children know and can do at school entry might prompt us to treat them differently. Seeing and appreciating what they bring would create a more welcoming environment for them and help to increase their success.

Don't confuse devolution with democracy

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

In his Globe and Mail opinion piece, Paul W. Bennet tries to make the case that “Canada’s bureaucratic school system needs a top-to-bottom overhaul.” His argument for giving greater responsibility to local schools seems superficially attractive if one ignores that the inadequate school system response to the COVID-19 pandemic was a product of doing exactly what Bennet recommends: devolving the responsibility for responding to the pandemic to local school boards. 

Bennet claims that “the centralized and over-bureaucratic school system proved to be vulnerable and ill-equipped to respond to the massive pandemic disruption.” I, on the other hand, argue that the ill-equipped response to the pandemic was a result of the improper delegation of responsibility from provincial ministries of education  to school boards, most of which lack the capacity to respond to the demands of providing online learning that they faced in the spring and continue to face in the fall In turn, many boards delegated responsibility to individual schools.

Rather than exercise their ability to coordinate the educational response to the pandemic, provincial governments promulgated guidelines for local school boards to apply as local conditions warranted. As circumstances have shown, neither school boards, nor the schools to which they in turn delegated discretion, had the capacity to exercise that delegated authority because they lacked expertise, resources, and, of course, experience.   

I agree with Paul Bennett’s assessment of the inadequate response to the pandemic, but not his analysis of its origins. There is no evidence that, in vesting control in local schools and communities, schooling would be better – and plenty historical evidence that it would not.

Delegating authority from provincial to local authorities is a convenient reflex for many provincial authorities. Such delegation provides political cover when things go awry as they often do when the course is uncharted, and even when they do not.

Long before Confederation, Egerton Ryerson, the Methodist minister who vigorously advocated for free, universal schooling, expressed his reservations about local school authorities and argued for a strong central educational authority vested in the hands of government. Ryerson’s concern about the capacity of school boards to govern in the public interest was justified. Provincial ministries of education often found it necessary to dismiss local boards and replace them with an appointed trustee when the boards were unable or unwilling to govern in the interest of the citizens they are supposed to serve.

Local control of education has a superficial appeal to those unfamiliar with its history. Local school boards were established at a time when Catholics and Protestants were deeply fearful that, if one or the other gained control of the local school, it would be to the detriment of the group that was not in control because, at that time, school curricula were imbued with religion. The solution was the creation of small, local school boards largely separated by religion. Religious segregation sounded more benign when it was dressed up in the cloak of local democracy.

Bennet opportunistically uses the admittedly inadequate educational response to the COVID pandemic to attack the education system, implying that the quality of public education is poor because of the way the system is organized.  Though it has its shortcomings, Canadian public education is – relative to other nations – a high performer when it comes to reading, mathematics and science - the domains for which there are international comparisons.

The shortcomings of the Canadian education system are not ones that would improve by dismantling the system and “reinventing it from the schools up” by giving more responsibility to “those closest to students.” Such a change would erode one of the system’s strengths, namely that the very small differences between schools do not appreciably affect student achievement.

Canadian public education does not need institutional disaggregation. It needs greater institutional coordination in things such as online learning. Given the comparatively small curricular differences among the provinces and territories, cooperation among ministries of education should be able to produce much higher quality courseware than any that a single province could produce on its own, and at a lower cost. If anything, reform of Canadian public education should involve more, not less, cooperation and coordination.

Why the Government of Canada will NOT appoint a temporary Minister of Education during the COVID-19 epidemic

 

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

Adhering to the dictum “never let a good crisis go to waste,” Irvin Studin has proposed in The Globe and Mail  that Canada needs a temporary Minister of Education to address what he calls “Canada’s postquarantine education crisis.” I do not dispute that COVID-19 has produced an unprecedented crisis in education. In fact, I recently published a blog addressing the question: “Will Public Schooling Withstand the Disruptive Impact of COVID-19?” 

Studin’s opinion article begins by clarifying that lawmaking in education is the exclusive responsibility of the provinces and declaring that he is “not calling for any constitutional change whatsoever in this regard.” He makes clear that the establishment of a Federal Minister of Education would not require a constitutional change.

Although the provinces were granted the jurisdiction to make laws in relation to education, there is nothing in the Constitution Act that prevents the Canadian government from using its leadership role and spending powers to influence public schooling in Canada. Whenever the Government of Canada has wanted to influence public schooling, it ­has not been shy from doing so. In fact, the Government of Canada has supported or undertaken many initiatives in the realm of public schooling.  For example, the Government of Canada provides funding for PISA and, based on agreements with the provinces and territories, it also provides financial support for minority language education and second-language instruction.

Like Studin, I have argued that Canada must use its leadership position and its spending power to ensure that Canadian public schools remain the strong institutions they are. A federal department of education could provide leadership and funding to public elementary and secondary schooling in areas central to the interest of all Canadians and coordinate the work of the various federal departments and agencies that engage with public schools.

Such a department could: sponsor research about the effectiveness of various approaches to education; develop policy papers to stimulate public debate about the directions that public schooling might take; coordinate the collection and interpretation of data pertinent to such issues and decisions; and report periodically to the Canadian people about public schools.

There are several specific areas that I think demand the attention of the government of Canada. First and most important is the education of Indigenous learners. Significant achievement gaps between identifiable groups detract from the promise of Canadian public schooling that the outcomes of schooling should not be determined by one’s background. The gap between Indigenous and non-­Indigenous students is a national disgrace that requires immediate, coordinated attention which the federal government seems reluctant to provide.

Sympathetic as I am to a federal department of education and to using the post-quarantine crises in education instrumentally to achieve such a goal, the immediate appointment of a temporary minister of education is not prudent.

The introduction of a federal department of education would be a delicate matter for any government at any time. Ensuring the provinces – and especially Quebec – that the Government of Canada would play an entirely facilitative role would be essential.

Education is, in part, about nation-building – a topic that is extremely sensitive for Quebec. Building the French Nation in Quebec is an enduring project in which Francization – the integration of immigrants to French language and culture - plays an important part.

 A temporary minister of education would not be able to earn sufficient credibility and muster the resources necessary to produce a short-term impact. The uneven response among provinces and school boards thus far is in great measure attributable to the reluctance of provinces to do more than set guidelines. If the provinces were to take a more prescriptive approach, they would “own it” when things go awry – as they inevitably will.

Much groundwork would be required were any federal government prepared to attempt to formally establish a permanent Minister (and Ministry) of Education.

How the school system can [almost] stifle a student’s initiative

 

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

 [permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

As readers will know, many school jurisdictions closed schools and shifted to online ‘learning’ in March 2020. I put quotation marks around learning because the application and success of online learning was and continues to be – let us say – uneven.

One 17-year-old sought to repeat Grade 11 because he wanted to improve his already strong academic standing so that he may pursue a scholarship to a high ranking university, and the possibility of earning a place on an NCAA baseball team. He felt that time missed due to medical absences prior to COVID-19 and the educational situation during COVID-19 deprived him of the solid foundation for further study and the pursuit of his goals.

The counselor said that she thought that would be fine, but that she wanted to check with the school’s administration. Two weeks later, the parents received an email informing them that their son’s request to repeat grade 11 was denied. The parents sought a review of the decision by the school’s principal. The school reaffirmed its decision to deny the student the opportunity to re-enroll in grade 11.

In denying the opportunity, the parents were told their son’s grades were “good enough” and that they “will not go down” [from the 87 average he had earned based on the work he had completed prior to the shutdown]. They were also told that, if their son had been afforded the opportunity to repeat grade 11, it would be unfair to other students. When they reminded the school that he seeks admission to a highly competitive school, the school said, “we’re not in the scholarship business.”

I tried to discuss the matter with the vice-principal of the school. I made clear that I was planning to write a blog about the issue and wanted to understand the situation from the perspective of the school’s administration. I stressed that is was not my intention to name the student, the school, or the school board, and that I had the parent’s consent to discuss the matter. I said that “I would be grateful if you would confirm the school’s decision and its reasons for the decision before I write and post the blog.”

In an e-mail exchange with the vice-principal, he informed me that “the [School Board] does not share or discuss matters related to individual students, even with parent permission, for privacy reasons.  As such, I cannot provide comment.” The vice-principal is wrong. Privacy protection does not prevent a parent from authorizing someone to discuss such situations with school officials. If they could, that would prevent a parent from having the assistance of an advocate or a lawyer.

I did not correct the vice-principal. I thanked him for his reply and asked about the grounds for denying anyone under the same circumstances the opportunity to repeat. If there is policy, please refer me to that policy.

He replied by sending me a link to the board’s policy that, in essence, said the decision was subject to the exercise of the discretion of the school administration. I had already obtained the board’s policy and learned that it leaves such matters to the school’s administration.

The parents never received a written decision stating the reasons for denying the request. The reasons provided to the parents verbally seem arbitrary and unreasonable in failing to give sufficient regard to the student’s educational plans. Moreover, the failure to provide written reasons for such a decision is a breach of procedural fairness. To appeal such a decision, there needs to be a written reason explaining the grounds for denying the student the opportunity.

The decision of the school struck me as inconsistent with the mission statement in the mandate statement for the school system in British Columbia.

The purpose of the British Columbia school system is to enable learners to develop their individual potential and to acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to contribute to a healthy society and a prosperous and sustainable economy.

It is also inconsistent with section 1 of the School Act that defines an educational program as one “designed to enable learners to become literate, to develop their individual potential and to acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to contribute to a healthy, democratic and pluralistic society and a prosperous and sustainable economy” (emphasis supplied).

It is also at variance with the practices common in many school districts to offer specialty programs to enable students to pursue their interests and abilities, subject to the school board’s capacities and fiscal circumstances. For example, in addition to French Immersion programming and alternative schools of various kinds, there are public schools that offer programs for high performing athletics or arts students that allow those students to combine a half-day of schooling with a half day in a gymnasium or concert hall.

According to my reading of the provincial regulations and subsequent verification with the Ministry of Education, there is nothing that would prevent a student taking or seeking to repeat classes at a particular grade level as long as the student is of school age. Moreover, there is no limit to the number of credits a student can earn toward graduation. In this light, the reasons given to the parents verbally seem capricious and to my way of thinking mean-spirited.

The student was determined to repeat the grade. Undaunted by the absurdity of the school’s decision, the young man will pursue his desire to further his education at an independent (private) school even though it requires sacrifices by his family.

I was impressed by the student’s mature judgement – something I lacked at his age. I was dismayed by the decision of the school to deny him the opportunity to further his education and by the lack of procedural fairness. He has shown persistence in the face of small-mindedness. When he told me the story, he was unfailingly polite about the school’s decision and personnel, exhibiting maturity of another kind. An equally determined student whose parents did not have the ability to use part of their retirement savings for an independent school would probably have had his or her initiative stifled.

There are four take-aways for parents and educators. One is that decisions must be supported by written reasons. Without them, a parent is unable to effectively appeal under Section 11 of the BC School Act. A second is that parents are entitled to authorize others to assist them in pursuing matters of this kind. The school board has no ability to limit disclosing information if the parent consents. A third is that there is nothing in regulation or legislation that would prevent a student taking or seeking to repeat classes at a particular grade level as long as the student is of school age. Fourth, there is no limit to the number of credits a student can earn toward graduation.