Topic
Partnership between education ministry and not-for-profit with billionaire partners raises concerns.
President of the Greater Victoria Teachers' Association Tara Ehrcke: 'You don't start with the tool and build your curriculum around it.'
Use kids' texting, Youtubing ways to their advantage, in classrooms that embrace new media.
The government is proud of using citizen engagement and best practices to decide what and how to teach children in the BC Education Plan. But it's also engaging at least one not-for-profit organization whose partners include technology corporations and private foundations that favour private market solutions to issues in the public education system.
British Columbia is one of 12 "jurisdictions" of the Global Education Leaders' Program (GELP), a not-for-profit social enterprise organization based in the United Kingdom that according to its website is "committed to using the power of innovation to solve social challenges."
"GELP's ability to bring people together to think collectively and intensively about important issues around transformation is the key," Rod Allen, B.C.'s superintendent of student achievement, says in a video posted on GELP's website last month.
"It will be interesting for people to learn from us and we learn from them, but it's what happens when you're in the room together actively discussing and thinking about those issues that, to me, is the real magic."
Run by the Innovation Unit, another not-for-profit social enterprise organization, GELP's partners include technology corporations Cisco Systems Inc. and Promethean, and private foundations The Ellen Koshland Family Fund and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the latter of which openly supports the growth of charter schools in the U.S.
The relationship between the province's Ministry of Education and GELP concerns Tara Ehrcke, president of the Greater Victoria Teachers' Association, a local of the BC Teachers' Federation (BCTF).
The government presented the BC Education Plan as a solution to the needs of B.C. students, but the partnership with GELP leads her to believe the plan is actually suited to the needs of technology corporations.
"I think [the Ed Plan's] goals are related to allowing companies to have a piece of the [Kindergarten to Grade 12] market," she said.
When GELP met government
The BC Education Plan, launched last October, promises improved access to digital technology for students at school and at home, and includes a partnership with telecommunications corporation Telus to connect all schools to the Internet.
The plan's online presence is designed around the idea of a continuous discussion with the public about what it would like to see in the future for education in B.C., but the ministry hopes to have a new BC Education Program by 2014.
A key part of the plan is personalized learning, also referred to as 21st century learning. According to the plan's website, this include identifying what makes an educated citizen and how the K-12 system can achieve that, a focus on the "core competencies, skills, and knowledge that students need to succeed in the 21st century," and flexibility regarding whether a student learns in the classroom or through online learning.
In comparison, GELP has similar goals. The organization's main objectives include advocating for 21st century learning and what it calls Education 3.0, a set of ideas outlined through a series of white papers co-written by software corporation Cisco Systems.
Elements of Education 3.0 include a focus on "holistic change" to the school system, "collaborative learning technologies," and "a transfer of ownership from teachers to learners."
According to a GELP case study on the BC Education Plan, the Ministry of Education was introduced to GELP when ministry officials met the organization's co-founder Valerie Hannon at the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement conference held in Vancouver in 2009.
The case study outlines stages of the BC Education Plan that are already underway, including redesigning curriculum, allowing school boards to set school calendars, and emphasizing school choice for parents. It notes the ministry has developed a team of 20 experts in order to deliver the plan, chosen by school superintendents, principals and vice-principals.
Future steps for the plan include a focus on reading -- which the ministry announced earlier this year with the hiring of Superintendent of Reading Maureen Dockendorf -- re-examining assessment, and a "decategorization of special needs education," after which student achievement superintendent Allen is quoted as saying "no labels and no medical model. In a 21st century personalised [sic] world, I'll tell you what a special education looks like if you can tell me what a 'normal' education is."
BC Teachers' Federation president Susan Lambert has concerns about the changes to special needs education, particularly since class size and composition, and the environment children live in at home, aren't addressed in the BC Education Plan.
"We know that those are the two key factors around teaching and learning that build success; the BC Education Plan is completely devoid of any kind of conversation or addressing of those factors," she told The Tyee.
"There's this sense now that if you can just teach children correctly, if we can find a best practice that will allow every child to learn and grow, then we'll be fine, we won't have to put in special services for children with special needs, we won't have to reduce class sizes so that children get more one on one attention. It's duplicitous, because in fact it is designed simply to reduce the need for funding a high quality system, and that will be at the expense of every child."
The Tyee contacted the Ministry of Education with questions about its relationship with GELP. A spokesperson told The Tyee the ministry consulted with several groups about the plan.
"The ministry staff talked to educators and other organizations in Alberta, Ontario, Finland, among other jurisdictions, and that was part of the research into the Ed Plan. The discussions and research into the Ed Plan began before the ministry engaged with GELP," he said, although he could not confirm when that was.
Both Ontario and Finland are listed as GELP jurisdictions on GELP's website, which outlines how much help they provide: "Each jurisdiction team is supported through six-monthly collaborative events, extended workshops, on-site and remote consultancy support, cross-country working groups and webinars. At the biannual Global Events, the whole GELP community meets in one of the participating countries to share leading-edge thinking and ideas. Teams work together to solve mutual challenges and offer critical support to one another."
In a follow-up email, the ministry spokesperson told The Tyee although the BC Education Plan was officially launched last year, government has been looking at education reform for the last 10 years.
"There isn't one moment in time when the research began, or research started with one specific organization – this has been an ongoing process. The ministry is always reviewing new and exemplary practices in B.C. and other jurisdictions across Canada and around the world that support students," reads the email.
Value from every dollar
Innovation Unit, GELP's parent organization, says in their mission statement they "have a strong track record of supporting leaders and organisations [sic] delivering public services to see and do things differently. They come to us with a problem and we empower them to achieve radically different solutions that offer better outcomes for lower costs."
The Tyee couldn't find a reference on the GELP website to the necessity of lowering the costs of education.
In an email to The Tyee, co-founder Hannon confirmed that working with finite resources is GELP's specialty.
"Resources available to education are not infinite. Rightly and reasonably, the need and demand from education increases. Therefore we need to get the most value out of each $ spent," Hannon writes, adding, "our sponsors have never attempted to exercise any 'editorial control.'"
Ehrcke, who wrote a blog post on the ministry's association with GELP, says Hannon's focus on saving money jibes with the B.C. government's history of closing down 176 schools in the last 11 years, citing a lack of funding.
She's concerned that an organization with private corporations for partners doesn't have the best solutions for a public education system in mind.
"It's not surprising if your perspective is profitability for Cisco Systems or whoever, that your point of view would be 'how do we expand into those markets?'" she says.
"I see public education as something that ought to be provided publicly with public funding and publicly managed, upholding principles of equity, and the private sector really shouldn't have a part in that."
GELP's partners aren't the only corporations the Ministry of Education has been linked to recently. Donald Gutstein, a School of Communications professor at Simon Fraser University, produced a research paper for the BCTF in June examining the BC Education Plan and speculating as to how the corporate aspirations of Pearson Education, a global education supplies and technology corporation, could fit with the ministry's plans for education reform.
Pearson purchased the Ontario company The Administrative Assistants Ltd., which produced the software for BCeSIS, the troubled Ministry of Education database, in 2010.
One of the links Gutstein points out between the BC Ed plan and Pearson's mandate is one that GELP shares: a focus on personalized or 21st century education. It's a framework both Lambert and Ehrcke find misleading.
"It's packaged under the guise of a love affair of technology and this criticism of the current system of not keeping up with the pace of change, which is so untrue," Lambert told The Tyee.
Ehrcke says she isn't against change in education, and acknowledges that all school boards will purchase computers. But she challenges the assumption that digital gadgets are necessary for learning, and believes the $346,326.66 her district spent on Apple products could have been better spent.
"From an educational point of view, you think about learning first, and then you think about what are the tools that we need to create the best learning environment. You don't start with the tool and build your curriculum around it," she says.
BCTF not consulted
Superintendent Allen says in the video on GELP's website the partnership with GELP isn't about answers to the ministry's problems, but rather the correct framing of the questions.
"One of the things that we like about GELP is that it's more about the questions than about the answers, because we're just trying to refine the questions. Once you get to answers, it feels like then the inquiry stops," he says.
"So we want increasingly interesting and engaging questions that lead us deeper and deeper into the work."
Lambert is upset, however, that GELP was consulted on education reform when, after two years of asking to be part of a revisioning of education in B.C., the BCTF was only asked to consult with government earlier this year after the BC Education Plan was announced.
"We were asked by the [then] minister [George Abbott] during job action," she told The Tyee.
"We declined during job action. We were at such huge odds at the bargaining table: we weren't able to negotiate class size and composition, we weren't able to bargain adequate salaries that would attract the brightest and best into teaching, we weren't able to bargain prep time, so we couldn't then go in with the minister and chat about education reform.
"It was hypocritical of them, I think, to ask us in after the development of the vision, even though they knew we had been demanding, asking, pleading to get in on the ground floor, they shut us out."
For more information, see the document below.
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Kreditanstalt
32 weeks ago
Play it again, Sussan...
"...it is designed simply to reduce the need for funding a high quality system, and that will be at the expense of every child."
This is the same argument we've heard from the BCTF for YEARS and YEARS now...one that knee-jerk fights any effort to control education spending because the REAL threat is to teacher salaries.
And it's always couched in the "best for the child" language...
Fiat lux
32 weeks ago
This is nothing more than the
This is nothing more than the return to the old system when education was strictly controlled by religions.
The universities have become the subsidiaries of mega corporations some 35-40 years ago and it is obvious that the next step toward world domination and mind control/brainwash has to start at the kindergarten level in the best communist/nazi fashion.
When I was in elementary school the walls of our classrooms were covered with battle scenes, brainwashing us into the love of war and to dream of "heroic death" on the battlefields.
Soon our classrooms will be covered with advertising, to brainwash kids into the servitude to "consumerism", "wealth creation" and to accept the multimillion salaries of corporate executives as the "earnings of their betters".
From the public's pockets, while they stand in foodbank lines.
Ed Deak.
Hakuin
32 weeks ago
Canadians aren't smart enough for democracy.
They prove it every election. Why should their children have futures?
sunshine coast girl
32 weeks ago
I don't want the BC Liberals
screwing around with our education system. Every, single thing they have touched has resulted in failed experiments which have cost us billions and billions of dollars, court cases and undesired outcomes. Tell them to leave it alone until after the election and the people can discuss any major changes BEFORE they occur.
alda
32 weeks ago
As Fiat says, this is
As Fiat says, this is appalling, reminiscent of "The Name of the Rose," where only a privileged few in the best private schools will receive a real education.
If parents don't protest this, in effect, they will be condoning the elimination of the arts, music, literature, most languages, and social studies in their children's future curriculums.
After all, in the real--a.k.a. "business"--world, aren't those merely relic arts, like tatting pillows or gilded sword-making? For that matter, why not just herd the kids like sheep into math and science only, tossing them just enough computer typing skills in symbol-recognition for text messaging? Better yet, why not let Kevin O'Leary or Donald Trump take charge of their new, streamlined education so they can understand early that the sole raison d'etre for learning is TO MAKE MONEY and MORE MONEY?
What dummies we have running things at the top. Incredible.
Skywalker
32 weeks ago
Education by Kevin O'Leary.
What a scary thought. So when the group that has the most direct connection with education; those who are in the classroom every day express their concern, we have the same old song and dance by the Kevin O'Leary club member.
I guess we should expect a young kid in school to be able to understand the implications of the scheme to their future. I guess we should expect parents to understand but they are often too busy just making ends meet. Can't have anyone in education speaking out because they always have ulterior motives. Whereas governments, particularly corporate friendly government always have the best interests of the people in mind. Yeah right!
irenebc
32 weeks ago
Uneducated people are easier
Uneducated people are easier to control. Take a good look at our neighbours educational system, a good example of divide and conquor. We can all bet that when Corporations get involved with anything "for the good of the peoples", were all in trouble. Leave our Educational System alone, and pay our workers decent benefits and salaries. Enough of the BS!
Talon
32 weeks ago
We don't educate, we train.....
Our universities in BC no longer educate students, they train them for employment, the cost of which is mostly borne by the taxpayers of BC. This allows large employers to externalize the cost of training staff and have the taxpayer do it.
There are many good comments on this topic and I must say I agree with all of them.
Cynic
32 weeks ago
Kids today are so badly
Kids today are so badly educated they can't spel properly, and there grammar suck.
sorry...
alvin54
32 weeks ago
speling
With all due respect cynic, it's not the fault of schools (and the traditional three Rs (although that's really an R, a W and and an A) ) that kids and adults are edging regressively toward illiteracy. It's six Ms: marketing, music, movies, media, ( (un)social) media, and meddling.
Tankenka
32 weeks ago
For Kreditanstalt
This is probably the one and only time I ever acknowledge this user, Kreditanstalt.
Reading you oppose spending on virtually every social program we have, I simply want to know what you think the government should be providing for the people who elect and fund it?
FatherTheo
32 weeks ago
Personalized means depersonalized
I've seen the personalized education idea before. We have to worry about it.
For one thing, if everybody's education is personalized, who's doing the teaching? Are teachers going to be teaching one-on-one? I don't think so. So we're going to teach the kinds of things that computers can teach. Mechanized feedback. Questions to which there are firm answers. But human give and take?--Not so much.
So personalized education means depersonalized education.
Fail.
I'm a fan of teachers because they work hard to little thanks and marginal pay, and, as a group, they care a lot more about the kids in their classrooms than they are given credit for. They are an essential part of an education, especially for children.
An education system with less teacher contact is an inferior education system.
Marysue52
32 weeks ago
exclusion and planned poverty
Hakuin is not entirely correct. 62% of Canadians were smart enough not to vote for Harper, despite the incredible pressure of the corporate-sucking media and the Fraser Institute, etc. Canadians as a whole remain a tad less gullible than Americans. Maybe it's because our young adults weren't forced into the army so that narrow-minded military mindset doesn't get installed. We go for walks in the woods often, so we get in touch with nature and reality more. Some do believe that planecrash-proof and asbestos lined buildings can implode without explosives planted in them first...and that belief tends to get re-afirmed with every Sept. 7th airing of that sacred cow.
DRP
32 weeks ago
Decategorisation of special needs education ???
As autism is on the rise with experts predicting that within the next 20 years autism births will be the "norm" rather than the exception.... How is the government planning on educating our future citizens?
gsarahs
32 weeks ago
Why does it always seem to be top down?
Having been involved on my subject area's IRP Curriculum committee, I am fully aware of the power of the Ministry of Education and its puppeteers in the government. There was no way that we were going to be complicit in screwing up our own programs and those of other teachers around the province, so we stood firm to prevent the degree of change that the ministry wanted. They refused to back down on certain things, and that has had a very negative effect on elective courses ever since.
If you remove labels, then all of the students can be treated as "average" students, when they aren't, and remove any class size implications. I remember teaching one class that had 8 labelled students plus one autistic boy, with no teacher aid, and then being chastized by the admin for refusing two additional students to an already 2 over full class without even recognizing the composition of that class.
This is clearly what the BC Libs want to return to. Having also taught a Skill Development class comprised of physically and mentally disabled teenage students, this made me very aware of the very individual abilities and needs of those students. I really enjoyed teaching that class, which made me very appreciative of the uniqueness of us all, even those with limitations.
pender paul
32 weeks ago
privatized education
Wow, am I ever confused! Public school teachers in BC (members of the BCTF) support private education through their pension plan, which is administered by the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation. But I guess that's different--the pension plan makes buckets full of money and allows the participants to play both sides of the coin.
Kreditanstalt
32 weeks ago
@Tankenka,
I think governments should be only local in nature and should be providing sewerage, water, courts, police & roadwork on a contracted-out basis. All taxation must be unanimously supported and for the benefit of those signing up to voluntarily pay those taxes.
Government's responsibilities (to those contributing to it) should be to protect such rights as freedom of speech, assembly, to bear arms, of the press as well as to protect private property and prosecute any use of violence in society or theft or fraud in the marketplace.
The guiding principles should be non-aggression and non-coercion. Actions that demonstrably harm others' rights in these areas should be prosecuted.
Of course I'd expect a government to go after those polluting others' lands or sending their pre-teenage kids out to work, etc....!
But not much more...
Fiat lux
32 weeks ago
I love this "volunteer
I love this "volunteer taxation idea".....
We have a local, volunteer fire dept in this community, with a yearly $100. assessment per home.
We could call it volunteer taxation because only about 60% of the people are paying, while sitting on properties ranging up to a million bucks.
Haven`t had a major fire for years, but I wonder how those who don`t pay would scream
if the fire dept wouldn`t answer their call when needed.
Welcome to the "conservative" dream world.
Ed Deak.
wvdk
32 weeks ago
any actual teachers out there? anyone?
Kreditanstalt: Wrong. You get what you pay for. BC's public education system consistently ranks as one of the world's best. foreigners pay big $ to have their children educated here. BC's education ascendancy from middle-of-the-road to world-leading coincided with the rise of the BCTF and teacher salaries/autonomy.
Ed Deak: Wrong: Relax. Schools mostly ban commercial endorsements and most teachers actively denounce consumerism.
Hakuin: Yeah, we're not that smart. But if anyone is working on it, it's your neighbourhood school (and the big, bad BCTF).
S Coast Girl: Right! Just biding our time and ignoring the Clark Cabal here in teacher land.
Alda: Relax. Haven't actually been in any classrooms, I'm guessing. As mentioned above, BC ranks among the world's best.
Skywalker: Relax. Teachers mostly ignore whatever government of the day's political agenda and do what they know best.
irenebc. Relax. Corporations and our govt. have been pushing to privatize education for a long time and have had little success. Too much hard work and skill required, and not much easy money.
Kreditanstalt
32 weeks ago
Not so simple, wvdk...
"you get what you pay for"
Then perhaps we could cut teacher salaries/benefits/pensions/perks by @40% and spend that money on the education of the KIDS?
How about longer schooldays?
How about ending the ridiculous monthly teacher "pro days"?
How about MORE, cheaper teachers?
How about smaller class sizes?
How about more, smaller schools?
How about school-tax rebates for homeschoolers?
How about more part-time teacher aides?
There are endless ways savings could be redistributed from the high-cost salary bill toward items CERTAIN to benefit STUDENTS.
B.C.'s closed-shop BCTF monopoly is an expensive, anachronistic obstacle to a better education system...
gsarahs
32 weeks ago
I guess hollow bells make more noise!
It is really unfortunate that this individual Kreditanstalt has such a loud mouth (or the equivalent in written form). As a recently retired teacher who experienced what has happened over the last decade of BC Lib rule, it is really too bad that someone who clearly has no clue as to the realities of education and teaching thinks that he is so knowledgable about something that he clearly knows so little about. The comments above clearly shows his ignorance of the realities, but he is clearly the type who would tell a brain surgeon how to operate on him, assuming of course that the surgeon could find a brain! LOL
JollyRoger
32 weeks ago
Pro-D
Kreditanstalt:
My top-ranked independent school has stepped up its Pro-D program to achieve our change in Strategic Plan. Today was a Pro-D for us and it was our SECOND since the start of the year if you don't count the spiel on the day before classes started. There's a THIRD Pro-D in two weeks. Also, the school hired a full-time Director of Learning to help with Pro-D. It makes the public school system look pitiful but what do you expect when tuition is $20k for each student? The public school system is doing an amazing job considering the drop in funding (adjusted for rising infrastructure costs like heating/construction) and the $1000 teachers pay out of pocket each year (like I used to until I got snatched up by a private school).
The reason why many families choose a private school is precisely to get away from those people who value education as a babysitting service. Unfortunately many don't have the finances to do that. So don't get in the way of those students who want to do great things in their life. The future is already more complicated, uncertain and unethical than when we were growing up.
JollyRoger
32 weeks ago
Corporations motivated by profit
Corporations are motivated by profit. They've gotten so unethical that there are now investment funds like Ethical Funds or RBC's socially responsible Jantzi Funds.
So naturally links to private corporations cause concern especially when there has been a lack of transparency, as in this case.
This revelation begs us to question the actions of politicians and bureaucrats. Why did the Minister of Education fire the Cowichan school board rather than talk to them? Why did he replace them with Mike McKay who appears in a Pearson video? Why did Mike McKay divert funds to the International Program? Why did the New Westminster School District not get censured for going $2.8 million over budget, part of which resulted from losses from their distance education program? Why weren't teachers and the BCTF solicited for input earlier?
21st Century Learning (and Character Education) makes sense to me but it should be led by educators, not corporations, because they are in the field. Students are not necessarily going to "buy in" (no pun intended) if their mentors have reservations. Local educators (including elected school trustees) know their students and their needs best. Ultimately, it's the sense of community and caring delivered by people, not by online programs, that is important.
RickW
32 weeks ago
Tankenka
He can't do it, because everything he lists are directly contrary to his claim to be a libertarian. By way of proof, all you have to do is look at his "answer" to you above.....
Kreditanstalt
32 weeks ago
@RickW
I'm curious...why do people on the "left" hate the idea of 'government-as-chief-villain' so vehemently?
They loathe anyone advocating smaller government even more than the do their arch-enemy, the small-'c' conservative...even though starving government would mean an end to military expansion and to the intrusive surveillance state, along with savings for taxpayers and a big dollop of economic freedom.
Are they afraid of losing some benefit they're receiving that they're not currently paying for? Of being forced to become more productive? Or are they terrified of free competition?
And what's all this European-style stuff about "evil corporations"? I'm finding it to be a big issue here in North America but nowhere else. If government weren't supporting with favours and subsidizing with tax breaks some of the largest companies, consumers could put them out of business in months by simply not patronizing them. But consumers have NO choice with marauding governments (and their taxation).
And the constant dividing of society into "victims" and "villains", into "classes", into "left" and "right", into "good" unions and "bad" jobseekers who would perform their jobs more cheaply...
And I'd be a hell of a lot more afraid of the "conservatives": these come with "fighting terrorism", military spending, religion, social intolerance AND budget-busting big spending.
Skywalker
32 weeks ago
You ask
"How about longer school days?"
Kids have a problem focusing on subject matter for as long as you can work on an assembly line. Any teacher knows that at the end of the school day they are not able to learn as easily.
"How about ending the ridiculous monthly teacher "pro days"?
These days were added to the school year by the government without an increase in pay and most teachers take part to for (get this) Professional Development. To make them better.
"How about MORE, cheaper teachers?"
Sure just lower the qualifications. Joe the plumber could do it. But wait he gets $90 per hour for knowing water flows down hill.
"How about smaller class sizes?" That takes more teachers hence, higher costs even with the warm body you wat to teach you kids.
"How about more, smaller schools?" Because they cost more to run than a large one. There is a critical mass required for efficiency. It is the same reason we don't have a hospital in every small community.
"How about school-tax rebates for homeschoolers?" How would that reduce costs if you make delivery of education inefficient (one-on-one) and pay the cost per student to the parent. The formula is set on the assumption that there will be x students per teacher.
"How about more part-time teacher aides?" Because they cost money and you are now contradicting your whole premise.
You know sometimes it is better to remain silent.
Kreditanstalt
32 weeks ago
Protecting the existing highly-paid jobs?
Just cut the teacher salary/benefit/pension bill by about a third...or open all teaching jobs to competitive bidding.
You could even allow the many, many unemployed teaching graduates to compete for those positions - on contract.
Then you'd free up money for the KIDS...
RickW
32 weeks ago
Kred....
Just listening about the so-called "drug shortage" hospitals are facing. Big Pharma has a virtual monopoly and is exercising it - no "govmint interferece" required. Or are you saying that the drug market should be opened up to anyone who says they can make a drug - no hold barred? Well, the police (a government/taxpayer funded agency) are putting people in jail for fraudulent drug claims.
But essentially, your problem lays in applying your ideals into reality. As I said somewhere, sometime before, the only egalitarian way of doing so is to erase everything that has come before and start over. Otherwise, you get the situation that arose in Russia when the USSR fell and where 6 people ended up owning everything.
gsarahs
32 weeks ago
Kred clearly has no respect for education and teachers!
"you get what you pay for" - EXACTLY!
Then perhaps we could cut teacher salaries/benefits/pensions/perks by @40% and spend that money on the education of the KIDS? -- Why put yourself through uni and rack up a lot of debt, for a career that pays peanuts? My son the electrician makes more than most teachers, and he was paid when he was doing his apprenticeship.
How about longer schooldays? -- Clearly, you have no understanding of the attention spans of children and even teenagers.
How about ending the ridiculous monthly teacher "pro days"? -- So you think that teachers have nothing more to learn after going thru uni, and nothing can make the school educational team operate more smoothly?
How about MORE, cheaper teachers? -- Do you really have a clue as to starting teacher wages after a 5 year degree and accompanying debt, and the 10 years climbing the increment ladder,... assuming that you can find full time employment, rather than couple or more years as a substitute teacher. Your attitude is totally out of line with cross Canada wages.
How about smaller class sizes? -- Send your kids to private school then, where they are funded properly.
How about more, smaller schools? -- In my district, those have already been closed due to budget cuts!
How about school-tax rebates for homeschoolers? -- So you think that this is going to strengthen the public school system? If parents want to go the private or home schooling route, this should not be at the public system's expense.
How about more part-time teacher aides? -- If you haven't heard, those were already cut earlier on in the last decade.
B.C.'s closed-shop BCTF monopoly -- United we stand, divided we fall. You seem to want to destroy the public education system, and your comments clearly show your lack of understanding of it. But let's face it, you seem to think that you know better than even the experts, and that is totally arrogant of you!
Kreditanstalt
32 weeks ago
@gsarahs
I feel SOMEONE has to inject a little common sense here. So I will:
Nobody pays employees based on how much time they spent in school. Or because they have debt. Or because other people are paid more, or the same. Or pays the employee's continuing education costs...
Employees are hired based on being able to produce a profit for the employer. That applies everywhere, even in government: it's an economic law.
Find me someone who makes his or her living by LOSING money, or breaking even, and you've proven your point!
A job is not a charity or a sinecure: there is no shortage of "qualified" teachers out there and a little job competition would ensure that quality work is performed at the best price for the taxpayers.
Or is something wrong with that?
freewilly
32 weeks ago
pick on kredit
"Employees are hired based on being able to produce a profit for the employer. That applies everywhere, even in government: it's an economic law."
Define profit, government isnt supposed to be in the business of making a monetary profit, but its nice when a crown corporation does. When that happens, the socreds (Liberals) sell it off. Exceptions being ICBC and a few others. (OLA was a victim of its own success, cant have a crown corp thats successful)
Hard to quantify a teachers 'value', efforts to do so ends up in a freaking war. In fact its really hard to quantify an employee's efforts in any job when a particular number of employees is exceeded. Easier when you have a small company with just a dozen employees, but when you get into the hundreds or thousands its a different matter. Some corps spend big bucks chasing metrics to put a value on their employees, only to find out their math is hooped.
In fact unions are better judges of their peers performance not the employers. The film (IATSE) union understands this concept.
wvdk
32 weeks ago
local govt. providing (-----)
"governments should be only local in nature and should be providing sewerage, water, courts, police & roadwork on a contracted-out basis. All taxation must be unanimously supported"
Kredit, you might just find that in your locally governed community there could be articulate misanthropes like yourself in possession of respectively: septic fields, wells, skepticism and guns who might veto the unanimous vote on respectively: sewers, water, courts and police. That leaves roads. I mostly walk in my community and burn less than a tank of gas a month. I might just veto roads. That leaves...?
Scientific research is my favourite govt. funded initiative. I suspect you have one or two, if you think about it.
Skywalker
32 weeks ago
Kredit.
You should work for 30% less and maybe more. Somebody else could take your place and do it for much less. That is quite obvious. You would be missed less than a teacher.
Bctaxpayerok
32 weeks ago
Education system to blame?
Teachers today are better equipped to handle the diversity of children's needs than ever before. The problem lies within the dysfunction of the modern family. No longer is there a parent home to greet their child after school and talk to them. No longer do families sit talk and play family games. No longer do parents read to their children before bed. Instead kids are plunked in front of TV's, computers, they own smart phones and ipads that think for them. They are raised by the media instead of their parents. Neuron based thinking is a thing of the past, todays kids are silicon chip thinkers and are unable to think and problem solve for themselves.
Alvin 54 did you come up with the six M's, I have not heard that one before.....It is so true.
Name goes here
32 weeks ago
Crisis? What crisis?
Who said our education system and our students and our teachers need an overhaul? There are some frayed edges, but the education system as a whole is currently sound. BC students do well compared to the rest of the world on international tests, and our Advanced Placement (AP) students are the best in the world.
Lets look at the motivation of 21st Century Learning before we jump into this.
I worry that technology becomes the curriculum rather than the delivery system; the technology sold to the education system by a for profit corporation. Fractions, brought to you by the good people at Cisco. Chemical formulas brought to you by the good people at Apple. English literature brought to you by the good people at Pearson.
In the USA, education companies through ALEC have written legislation in state assemblies to privatize online and distance education, special education and other things. These companies then take over the contract with no biding process. The corporation crafts the legislation that enables it to get the contract. I watched Bill Moyers last week-end.
Before we start dismantling the unions lets consider that the five lowest performing states in the USA are also five states that do not allow collective bargaining for teachers, so called "right to work" states. Now that doesn't itself mean the best education comes from the union, but it doesn't make the case against unions very strong.
macsasquatch
32 weeks ago
A couple of points...
On 'personalized,' several decades ago I browsed through some old numbers of "Manitoba Teacher" from 1903 to 1905. Some ads were trying to sell desks that each seated one student. The seat folded up for easier entrance and exit, the desk had a space underneath for books, each desk top had its own ink well opening...all for 'personalized' education.
The hi tech stuff reminds me of a cartoon circa 1970, a classroom - on the desk up front is a tape recorder running and delivering a lecture. On each desk (in straight rows and ranks) a tape recorder taping the lecture. You think our kids will figure out how to link into any hi tech delivery of info? and write the tests?
"T'other night I sat with 12 year old Grandkid, homework with Gramps time. No assigment so we reviewed her day's class notes on early middle ages in Europe. She didn't write anything down. I drew a few quick cartoons on things medieval. We talked for over 1/2 an hour. Through it all she used her hand held phone to look up info as we chatted (it has a dictionary that gives pronunciation orally - great stuff).
You want to do this grass roots, democracy style? Take the experts and big time contractors out of it. No huge gvt expenses (like turning BC Hydro to Accenture)! Be real careful about big long term contracts with hi tech hustlers. Let teachers and students know what's available ( pro days usually do). Teachers and students will reach for what they need.
By the way, Wilder Penfield, a few decades ago, offered that we might try to find out what learning- paying attention- actually is. How are we doing on that?
Kreditanstalt
32 weeks ago
@skywalker
"You would be missed less than a teacher."
My customers will decide that.
Unlike unionized public employee teachers.
We the public are forced to employ them, have no say in their salaries or conditions and cannot replace them with cheaper, more efficient teachers.
Skywalker
31 weeks ago
And we may be forced to be your customers....
...because you post anonymously. Without knowing it we might be financially supporting your views. So unless you post your views under your real name and show that you accept the consequences of your ant-union views it makes you a hypocrite. So be honest and really let your customers decide.
gsarahs
31 weeks ago
Kredit - you only think in terms of dollars and cents.
You really have issues that NO amount of reasoning will change. Your anti-union stance seems to consume your thinking, if you could call it that. If you lowered teacher wages like you propose, you would find that very very few people would even think of going through 5 years of post-secondary education to obtain the necessary qualifications. All for $40k a year if you could find a job, or would you be proposing $30k or even $20k?
And as I stated, my electrician son was paid while he worked on his 4 year apprenticeship, since he was working all of the time, except for the 6 weeks of classes each year. You can't do that if training to be a teacher.
I noticed that you only focussed on that one issue of wages, and none of my responses to your other idiotic suggestions. The only reason why the BC public education system is rated so highly even after the neglect and sabotaging crusade of the BC Libs, is due to the quality of our teachers and the education infrastructure that pre-existed before they came into power.
Do you not wonder why you seem to be alone here in your crusade against teachers and the BCTF. I am sure glad that you have nothing to do with the education system, as you would destroy it with your half-baked ideas!
Kreditanstalt
31 weeks ago
@gsarahs
All I'm essentially asking is that those jobs be opened to competition.
But someone, somewhere, is very terrified of competition...
Skywalker
31 weeks ago
@ Kredit
So tell us what business you run and we'll see if you like your competition.
Kreditanstalt
31 weeks ago
@Skywalker
You didn't answer the question. Why shouldn't unionized teachers face job competition?
Skywalker
31 weeks ago
@ Kredit
You have not answered the question to you. In fact you are like most business types I have run across. Secretly you bite the hands that feeds you. You beat on the very people you expect will spend their hard earned dollars in your business. You even go so far as to demand they will earn less so they can spend less. That is plain idiotic.
You now nothing about how the education system works. You don't understand that stability is necessary in a kids education, you don't know how teachers are hired from a long list of applicants and you carry the idiotic notion that anyone off the street can do the job cheaper and as a consequence it must be better. I suspect you are fond of telling your customers, when they complain about your charges, "You get what you pay for".
So again what business are you in so we can let you know just how your political views affect your competition. I guess you are terrified of your competition. Don't be such a hypocritical coward.
North of Hope
31 weeks ago
Competition
All teaching positions are open to qualified teachers. Kreditanstalt you don't know what you are talking about.
Geoff Johnson
31 weeks ago
BC Education Plan Linked to Corporations
A timely expose. Tyee should also expose the evil corporate funding from The Rockefeller Foundation (founder of Standard Oil) , William and Mary Hewlett, Tides Canada and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation ( Intel)which has gone to groups opposing the Enbridge Pipeline. Good thing that Federal Resources Minister has revealed their evil intention "to hijack our regulatory system".
Hakuin
31 weeks ago
How about everyone with an opinion on education
Come out and clearly state in simple terms just what they think education is for right at the beginning of their screeds?
Well? Just what do you think school is for?