Ideas for Ending BC's 40-Year Public School War

The bitter conflict that has torn the public school community apart for the past 40 years formally began in 1972. At that time, the executive of the British Columbia Teachers' Federation (BCTF) unleashed its considerable financial clout and organizing abilities to defeat W.A.C. Bennett's Social Credit government, an old regime past its prime. The federation's ambitious economic and social aspirations, along with its political "conversion to partisanship" (as one scholar aptly termed it), marked the first formal declarations of a war that has raged ever since.

After four decades of public rancor and mistrust between federation executives and governments of all political stripes, the conversation about public schools has degenerated into simplistic and rarely useful discussions about resources -- or more often, the lack thereof. Year after year, the BCTF and some trustee boards insist that schools are badly underfunded. Year after year, the province parades out statistics illustrating increased levels of fiscal support, despite shrinking school populations.

Amid teachers' job actions, political posturing on both sides and the language of distraction that prevents true debate, one thing is clear: neither the teachers' federation nor government is really addressing the core issues confronting public schools, the things that really matter in the 21st century.

Here's where Premier Clark can make a serious difference with her "families first" agenda: by decisively addressing the fundamental problems of the schools and by providing a sound policy platform to go forward.

Putting students on a level playing field

Let's start with equity -- the ideal of providing all children with equal opportunities to succeed. The government has allowed the value of the Foundation Skills Assessment Program (FSAs) to be marginalized in the face of teacher resistance. This deprives us of the assurances we need that youngsters in Pouce Coupé or Atlin are receiving the same quality programs and performing as well as their urban counterparts in Point Grey or Oak Bay.

Perfect or not, the FSAs at least provide some measure of assurance about educational quality, particularly now in the absence of external school inspection and accreditation. Those, too, are always an option and should not easily be dismissed, even if it means resurrecting structures we threw away not so long ago.

Among other things, the FSAs show us that as early as Grade 4, schools can identify youngsters who fail to meet expectations. These children have a much smaller chance of completing high school than do those who meet or exceed expectations. We urgently need to know these things. Getting rid of such tests hides the facts, hides our failures and deludes us about how well we are preparing our children.

If we believe in giving even the poorest kids from the poorest regions of the province a level playing field from which to start their lives, we simply must have good information about their school performance. With this information in hand, schools must then be able to provide instruction to ensure the success of students facing difficulties. Educational equity is the cornerstone of democratic living and must be monitored and protected.

In the interests of equity, government could ensure that local education agreements (LEAs) are reached between First Nations and boards of education. After 17 years of talk, agreements have not been reached with all boards. As matters stand, we continue to provide targeted funding to boards for aboriginal children with no requirement that boards demonstrate improved performance on the part of these youngsters.

This kind of equity is only rhetorical. Why should we give resources to institutions without proper accountability mechanisms? Perhaps, in the interest of "families first," we might be better advised to give the money directly to aboriginal families and allow them to purchase high-quality compensatory school programs or services. In a nutshell, we should be supporting families, not institutions.

Attracting more international students

Government's recent cancellation of "exit" exams in high schools, a decision influenced by universities, should likewise be re-examined. Most high-performing educational jurisdictions around the world maintain such exams. They provide good curriculum guidance to teachers and students and ensure an equitable assessment of students, regardless of location, race or social class.

Exit exams also create an environment attractive to the parents of large numbers of international students who choose to pursue a high school education in British Columbia. Why would we want to forgo the long-term benefits arising from the interaction between our own youngsters and these foreign visitors (never mind the tuition and room and board they bring to B.C.)? Again, it simply doesn't make sense.

We should not reduce the controls that best symbolize the quality of our system; we should not enact policies that will reduce the number of international students coming here. If our own youngsters are to be strategically prepared for the 21st century, they need first-hand knowledge of its cultural diversity. This will enable them to engage in the spirit of internationalism in social affairs and commerce that is already transforming their lives.

Competing with the best in the world

Nor should we become too complacent about our recent successes in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), tests that indicate the scholastic performance of 15-year-olds. While 2009 results continued to show Canadian and British Columbian youngsters faring reasonably well, we appear to be standing still while jurisdictions like Shanghai and Hong Kong surge to the top. The competition is clearly getting stiffer. Without meeting higher standards of academic excellence, we will be unable to attract foreign students and, no doubt, the capital investment necessary to grow knowledge-intensive industries.

Critical though they are, matters such as equity and exit exams have generally escaped attention as journalists and the public have been subjected to a never-ending series of re-runs of the school wars drama. The plot lines never change, the script never changes, the actors never change, even the scenery never changes.

B.C. is refusing to let go of a past that imprisons us in old-fashioned ways of thinking and behaving. In the almost-always chaotic world of public schooling, we seem destined to relive the 1970s and '80s -- certainly all the bad parts. And here is where our new premier could stake out an important legacy that would really put "families first."

A horse and buggy school system

A good place to begin would be to reconsider the archaic structure of the current system and to face the facts. British Columbia in 2011 has an educational system designed in the mid-19th century. Almost all governance and administrative structures that support the delivery of public instruction are archaic. Classes are grouped into schools and schools are defined by grades. Schools are organized geographically into districts that are locally governed, provincially sanctioned and provincially funded.

Surely 21st century schools deserve 21st century pedagogy and technology. Last year, some 80,000 students signed up for at least one of more than 2,000 online courses offered by the province's "virtual school." This is a promising sign of a changing pedagogy. Still, we remain largely committed to an organizational system built for another age, and all the conflict that goes along with it.

Overseeing this system is an education ministry that is actually "a ministry without schools." It neither operates schools nor delivers school programs or services in any direct way. Although it is responsible for overseeing the K-12 system, connections between the ministry and schools are currently fewer and more tenuous than at any time in the province's history.

One hundred and thirty-nine years after its creation, the institution of public schooling is defined by three interlocking bureaucracies that serve -- intentionally or otherwise -- as agencies for the prevention of change. Public schooling, for the most part, is dominated by the Education Ministry, the British Columbia School Trustees Association (BCSTA) and the BCTF. Although rarely acting in concert, these organizations exhibit certain common characteristics. All are bureaucratic in nature, anti-visionary and unimaginative in outlook, prescriptive in behaviour, non-cooperative in manner, anti-technological in practice and committed to the status quo. Nevertheless, all three organizations rhetorically embrace the idea of change as long as it requires no actual alteration to their own organizations, or to the existing school system.

This organizational triad also projects an image of schooling as an institution that is quintessentially "public." In reality, however, the system revolves mostly around meeting the needs of insiders -- teachers, administrators, bureaucrats and trustees. The ministry's primary clients are school boards rather than students, and the school boards' chief clients are, in turn, teachers' unions, district bureaucracies and assorted interests, all claiming the status and legitimacy of "stakeholders." Students, parents and the public are rarely found near the apex of system priorities, or close to where decisions are actually made, despite torrents of verbiage to the contrary.

Not one of these three organizations appears interested in articulating a bold new vision for education, and no incentives exist for them to do so. All seem wedded to past practices through a mutual endorsement of what one historian has termed the "One Best System" approach to public school provision -- the singular and tradition-bound model that has historically defined state-supplied education.

Moreover, each organization -- at least publicly -- subscribes to an official culture of denial, maintaining nothing is fundamentally wrong with schools, as long as public coffers provide sufficient resources to satisfy annual professional demands.

For every problem -- pedagogical, social or political -- the solution is predictably and beguilingly the same: Just add more resources." In short, there is no point in going to these three organizations for solutions when they themselves are the system's greatest and most intractable problem.

No wonder, from any angle, the system now appears at odds with itself, a jumble of adversarial organizations and interests marked by discontinuity and discord. As it now stands, the system is fractured at its core and directionless. Put bluntly, we can't move forward without a fundamental reappraisal of our educational organizations and the toxic relationships that now engulf them.

If Christy Clark decides to open up the education file, she should be prepared to remain for the long haul. Despite the dangers, however, there are no better causes than British Columbia's families and children. It's time someone in government grasped the reins of leadership in public schooling and set us on a new course. All that is required is a will to do so.

[Tags: Politics, Education].