REINVENTING OUR SCHOOL SYSTEM:
Why a Business Voice is Critical
in Improving Public Education
Paul W. Bennett, Ed.D.
Director, Schoolhouse Institute, Halifax, NS
Atlantic Chamber of Commerce, Annual General Meeting
June 6, 2017
Summerside, PEI
Ten Ways to Build a
Canada That Wins
The Chamber of
Commerce Vision for
Canada at 150
In a year of political and economic uncertainty, the
Atlantic Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with
the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, has identified
Ten Ways to Build a Canada That Wins, a list of key
opportunities Canada can seize right now to regain
its competitiveness, improve its productivity and
grow its economy.
Competitiveness, productivity and growth are the
three cornerstones of that vision for Canada at 150
and this much is clear - It cannot be done without a
K-12 and Post-Secondary education system capable
of nurturing and sustaining that vision.
Who’s in Charge of
the School System?
Today’s business leaders --like most
citizens--also find themselves on the outside
looking in and puzzled by why our provincial
school systems are so top down,
bureaucratic, distant and seemingly
impervious to change.
Being on an “advisory committee”
gives you some access, but can easily
become a vehicle for including you in a
consultation process with pre-determined
conclusions determined by the system’s
insiders and serving the interests of the
educational status quo.
Diagram: “Insiders and Outsiders in
Education,” from Jennifer Lewington and
Graham Orpwood, Overdue Assignment
(1993), p. 42.
Reclaiming Our School System
Finding that Business Voice:
Standing Up for Quality Standards
Provincial education authorities,
pressed by concerned parents, business
councils and the Atlantic Institute for
Market Studies (AIMS), have embraced
standardized testing in the drive to
improve literacy and numeracy,
fundamentals deemed essential for
success in the so-called “21st century
knowledge-based economy.”
Student testing and accountability may
be widely accepted by the informed
public, but they are far from secure.
Provincial teachers’ unions remain
unconvinced and continue to
resist standardized testing and to
propose all kinds of “softer”
alternatives, including
“assessment for learning,” “school
accreditation,” and broadening
testing to include “social and
emotional learning.”
Finding that Business Voice:
Embracing a Broader Reform Agenda
A change in focus and strategy is
in order if the business voice is to
be heard and heeded in the
education sector.
Our public school system is
simply not good enough.
Penetrating the honey-coated
sheen of edu-babble and getting
at the real underlying issues
requires some clear-headed
independent analysis.
Five significant issues that should be elevated to the
top of the education policy agenda are:
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declining enrollment and school closures,
the sunk cost trap,
the future of elected school boards,
the inclusive education morass, and
the widening attainment-achievement gap (i.e.,
the quality of high school graduates).
In each case, there is a critical need for a business
voice committed to major surgery --educational
restructuring and curriculum reform from the
schools up rather than the top down.
Who Sets the Educational Agenda?
Provincial education is totally
dominated by what St. Francis-Xavier
University political scientist Peter Clancy
aptly termed “the core interests,”
namely education’s insiders -- educrats,
superintendents, principals and inhouse consultants.
Reforming the K-12 education system
involves, to a surprisingly large degree,
reclaiming it back from these interests.
For most provincial politicians, it’s
easier to take the path of least
resistance in education.
Public School Indicators:
Student Enrolment and Class Size
Canadian Provincial School Systems, 2001-2011
(Richard Saillant, A Tale of Two Countries, Halifax: Nimbus, 2016)
Confronting the Big Five Issues
Putting students first should be
our highest priority and
improving working conditions for
teachers should not be an end in
itself.
Accepting those assumptions
means settling for ‘good teacher
relations’ and conceding that
mediocre student results and
poorly educated high school
graduates are good enough.
Where might we
begin in reinventing
our school system to
better serve students
and communities?
Issue 1:
Declining Enrollment
and School Closures
Children are disappearing in Atlantic
Canada.
Take Nova Scotia, for example, and you
will see that the release of the 2016
Census points to bigger problems
ahead over the next five years. Some
51,255 students, ages 15-19 years, will
leave the P-12 school system, and
42,005 will enter, a net loss of 9,250
children. The demographic trend is
similar in the other Maritime
provinces.
Closing small schools imperils hundreds
of small towns and villages.
Issue 2:
The Sunk Cost Trap
Investing more in P-12 education sounds
appealing until you follow the money and
begin to ask -- what return are we getting
from such injections of education spending?
It’s a complete fallacy to keep “throwing
good money after bad” at every conceivable
education problem and to continue funding
programs with little evidence that they are
working in the classroom.
Issue 3:
The Future of Elected
School Boards
Sweeping aside elected school boards
seems to accomplish little and serve to
further weaken local democratic
control in public education.
Adopting ‘corporate governance’
models has blurred the lines between
the elected members and senior
administration. Since the Canadian
School Board’s Association warned
elected trustees in 2012 that their “role
definition” problem was a crisis and
only major reforms would right the
“sinking ship,” little has been done
Issue 4:
The Inclusive
Education Morass
Special education is a special case where
teachers are beginning to speak out and
to address the “elephant in the
classroom” – inclusion of all student in
increasingly unmanageable regular
classrooms.
New Brunswick is a bastion of “Inclusive
Education” but cracks have emerged and
the NBTA is lobbying to “protect
teachers” overwhelmed and physically
threatened in their own classrooms.
Nova Scotia’s special education system,
built in bureaucratic increments since
1996, badly needs a complete rethink and
an overhaul.
Issue 5:
The Big Disconnect:
Student AttainmentAchievement Gap
How can students showing declining
academic performance be graduating in
record numbers?
Since the elimination of the last Nova
Scotia Grade 12 exams in 2012, we have
no system-wide reliable measure of the
achievement or competencies of
graduates, nor are any results reported
to the public.
So, incredible as it may seem, reported
student results either languish or decline
while graduation rates have gone
through the roof, rising from 86.1 per
cent in 2009-10 to 92 per cent in 2015-16.
It’s time to blow the whistle on the
widening student attainment (graduation)
— achievement gap.
Addressing the Five Big Issues:
A Proposed Plan of Action
1. Community Development: Hub
Enterprise Schools
2. Sound Education Policy:
Research-Informed Practice
3. Education Governance Reform:
School Community Councils
4. Curriculum Reform: Effective
Teaching & Sound Fundamentals
5. Graduation Standards:
Preparedness for College and
Workplace
Proposal 1:
Community Development:
Hub Enterprise Schools
Community hub schools are a part of the
ultimate school-centred community
development plan for the future.
While they emerged out of the local battles
over school closures in the Maritimes and in
small town and rural Ontario, hub schools
are sparking local entrepreneurship and
ingenuity. Community-minded businesses
are beginning to come forward.
The ground-breaking initiative of Chapman’s
Ice Cream in its home town of Markdale,
Ontario, is a concrete example of a local
business demonstrating civic leadership and
social responsibility.
In our own backyard, Louisbourg Seafoods in
Cape Breton has stepped up to the plate and
is now a principal player in the George D.
Lewis Community Hub School Society
project.
Proposal 2:
Sound Education Policy:
Research-Informed
Practice
Growing numbers of serious education researchers,
including practicing teachers, are looking for evidence of
“why works” before jumping on the latest educational
bandwagon.
The Organization of Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) ‘s Education Office, managers of
the Program of International Student Assessment (PISA)
tests, recently reported that only one out of ten
education initiatives is ever properly assessed for its
effectiveness in improving student learning.
British teacher Tom Bennett’s 2013 book, Teacher
Proof, was a direct hit on educational orthodoxy
supported by flimsy explanations resting only on
questionable social science theories.
Proposal 3:
Education Governance:
School-Community
Councils
Elected school boards are slowly dying, mostly because of structural
difficiencies and restricted mandates rather than self-inflicted
problems.
Public confidence is already badly shaken, but it is not too late to
change direction. It’s time to remove the muzzle and to learn from best
governance practice.
Community-School Governance deserves a chance and would be far
better than the current mish-mash of school governance models.
School-based management and governance combined with District
Education Councils, populated by trustees and municipal appointees
from the community and business, is the best hope for the future of
local democratic control in public education.
Putting the “trust” back into the “school trustee” role and giving them
back the right to speak up for parents and school communities is a far
better way to restore vitality to the whole system.
Proposal 4:
Curriculum Reform:
Effective Teaching and
Sound Fundamentals
Improving the quality of teaching is critical to improving the
acquisition of fundamental skills among students and turning
around student achievement at higher levels.
Without provincial testing and international assessments,
parents, taxpayers and employers would be completely in the
dark. Resist any initiative to remove standardized testing or to
“broaden the scope” of assessment to include “social and
emotional learning” until it passes the legitimacy test.
On provincial advisory panels and in official submissions, be
attuned to “fuzzy logic” and honey-dipped “invest in
education” initiatives that do not include significant reform in
mathematics curriculum and early reading instruction.
“Whole language” reading methods and “Discovery Math”
teachings have produced the very graduates that present
problems for you as employers in the workplace.
Proposal 5:
Graduation Standards –
Preparedness for College
and the Workplace
Universities and colleges are major public
policy players in the Atlantic region and
exercise an inordinate influence.
Raising high school graduation rates and
churning out enough graduates to fill seats in
universities and colleges has a way of skewing
policy in favour of increasing the numbers of
students qualified for admission.
Solid foundations matter in bridge building
and the preparedness of the current crop of
graduates is absolutely critical to finding
success in the workplace.
Closing Words:
Signs of Hope and Optimism
It’s time to light a candle – and look for signs of hope.
Leading educators and business advocates know that our provincial school
systems are in need of improvement. Comparing how Nova Scotia students do in
comparison with their counterparts in New Brunswick, Newfoundland/Labrador,
and PEI is largely passe when we all recognize that our students continue to lag
behind those of the leading education provinces, British Columbia, Alberta and
Ontario.
“Doubling down on educational mediocrity” is not a winning formula for our
region, especially during our Canada at 150 year of celebrations. Raising high
school graduation rates boosts student attainment levels but only conceals the
widening student achievement and competency gap.
Informed parents are concerned but easily marginalized in the public domain.
Without a supportive business voice, they are unlikely to be heard by provincial
education bureaucracies.
A strong, independent and engaged business voice is needed, as never before, to
help turn the K-12 school system in the right direction. Test the water and join us
in that project.