staffroom confidential: Victoria School Board debates Outdoor Kindergarten Program of Choice

I was pleased this week to see some healthy debate at the Victoria School Board meeting about the continuation of the Outdoor Kindergarten Program of Choice. While I strongly support outdoor time and learning, I have said publicly before that I believe this should be provided for all children, not a select few. My commentary appeared when the program was first introduced as an Op-Ed piece in the Times Colonist.

Here is Trustee Diane McNally’s report from her blog about the debate on renewing the program. While the Board did agree to one more year, the discussion is clearly beginning on the nature of programs of choice, and how they are, in essence, anti-equity – diverting resources away from students with learning disabilities or in other equity seeking groups towards those whose families have the resources and wherewithal to enrol and (sometimes pay for) a program of choice.

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Recommended motion (Recommended by District Principal, Learning Initiatives): That the Board continue to provide the Coastal Kindergarten Program of Choice at James Bay and South Park as supported by Staff, parents and the community. / Carried as amended : To provide the program as a pilot program for one more year, 2015-2016. / For: Ferris, Nohr, Orcherton, Paynter, Watters  Against: McNally
October 7/13 Ed Policy initial proposal: In public seats were Principal Jeff Mitchell from South Park Family School [a “school of choice” with no catchment area: if you can afford to drive your child here, your child can attend], a member of the South Park Parent Advisory Council,  Principal Elaine McVie of James Bay Community School, Tiffany Carlyle, Co-Chair of the School Parent Advisory Council , and Bonnie Davidson, founder the Victoria Nature School: ” For the past 14 years Bonnie have [sic] been passionately using music to help children create a strong foundation for learning to read and write, first as a music therapist and then as a classroom and learning resource teacher …Creating the Victoria Nature School and a community of collaboration focusing on shifting the current eduction [sic] system alines [sic] with Bonnie’s passions and values perfectly! “
McNally: When the initial proposal came to Ed Policy in October 2013 to vote on the Program of Choice Application: Coastal Kindergarten to begin September 2014, the motion carried 8 for 1 against . The same vote occurred at the November 18 2013 Board meeting.I was the one vote against.I like this idea : children outdoors, connecting with the environment and with the traditions and language of the people whose traditional territory we’re on.   But these activities should be offered District-wide.On many occasions a teacher, administrator and class will present their school-developed activity / program at an Education Policy or a Board meeting. This  program concept could have been developed that way, and as a great idea it is being emulated in other schools as parents and staffs collaborate.However, other schools and school communities don’t require that an education assistant be assigned to the class specifically to support the outdoor activities, when that EA could be supporting children in classrooms that demonstrably  need EA support.   Salt Spring schools do these activities with parent support. As a special education teacher for 22 years in this district I have seen the provincially instigated erosion of support to children with designated special needs. I saw children with very different needs put in groups of two or three or more in one classroom so one Education Assistant could do what he or she could to meet all their needs with resulting untenable schedules for CUPE workers. I can’t support taking  an Education Assistant away from critical support needs of students n another school  in order to support this program when students in some schools are struggling to survive at whatever level you’d care to define “survival”. The BC Ed Plan emphasis on “school choice” creates competition amongst schools for the $6,900 per student funding that comes with the student. Schools that lose “customers” lose that  entire per pupil amount though the school’s infrastructure costs remain the same. In SD61 13 “Programs of choice” and 155 Board authorized courses are scattered around various schools. Middle schools and Secondary Schools schedule exciting and glitzy open houses early in the New Year at which they showcase their “brand”, to entice customers. Are we going to see this in K-5 schools as well? Until the current BC government changed Sections 2 and 74.1 of the School Act students were expected to attend their neighbourhood school, anchors of their communities. Obviously, there is an issue of inequality of access and opportunity: families that  can afford to drive to programs across town can attend these “programs of choice”, while others face barriers to access. Highly respected US education writer Diane Ravitch  has written extensively on the negative effects of the “choice” movement on public education. The  “Dr. Greg Forster” quoted in  the supporting document is a Republican Evangelical who works for the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, and is a senior fellow of  the Kern Family Foundation that funds Charter Schools, obviously working toward privatization of the public school system.  Is this the kind of support SD61 wants? 

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staffroom confidential: The Mind of Christy Clark

My colleagues and I were somewhat perplexed at the lunch table this week to grasp the motivation behind the latest decision of the BC Liberals to end funding for adult graduates to upgrade their high school courses.

OK yes, it is obvious they want to fund less and charge more fees. But how does this fit with the grander scheme of grooming BC’s youth towards a life of resource extraction? Surely getting those extra credits in Math and Science are part and parcel of the path to trades school and the LNG highway?

It is easy to forget about Christy’s earlier life as Minister of Education (yes, those are dark days we educators try to block from memory). But her failed attempt to overhaul the graduation program provides some insight into the broader program she is pushing today.

Back in the early naughts, Christy tried to create a fully streamed graduation program, complete with eight distinct pathways and different degrees. Starting in grade 10 (age 14 or 15), students would choose a pathway and each would lead to a different place – be that university, vocational school, or perhaps right out into that service sector job at Walmart. At the time, she denied that this was a form of streaming, yet the proposal came at the same time as the introduction of provincial exams starting in grade 10 – essentially a high stakes barrier to some of these pathways for children as young as 14 (see BCTF report on page 8).

The original pathways proposal was never implemented, but the curriculum and graduation program was changed to reflect a similar approach. The graduation program now includes grade 10 – meaning decisions are made one year younger than the previous graduation program. Courses in key academic areas such as Math and English and Science that are included in the program include lower level curriculum which is not accepted for university entrance. For example, Math essentially has three pathways – what was first “Essentials”, “Applications” and “Principles” and is now “Workplace”, “Foundations” and “Pre-Calculus”. Regardless of the titles, one is for graduation only, one is for vocational program entry, and one is for university entry.

Christy left government shortly after these changes. During Gordon Campbell’s tenure, the focus of government education disruption was somewhat different. Entranced by technology and the Global Education Reform Movement, Campbell’s year were more closely aligned with the project for 21st Century Learning (see my critique here). But Christy is back and her original vision has come with her, albeit with a heavily shifted focus not to any old vocation, but towards vocational training primarily in the trades and resource sector. Thus the government has mostly abandoned Campbell’s BC Education Plan (whatever it was), the “vision for 21st Century Learning” from the BC Technology Council, and replaced these with the BC Skills for Jobs Blueprint.

If you haven’t had a look at the Blueprint yet, you should. It aims to redirect students from a comprehensive senior secondary program into a trades training program that will merge seamlessly from secondary school to college. Many of the pieces are already in place, and a student can already begin their trades training in Grade 10 and be taking dual credit courses at college in Grade 12 and be ready to work shortly thereafter. Passport to Education grants, which gave some grants to graduating students and were applicable for all subjects, have been replaced with much larger grants covering only trades programs.

Like every other Christy policy extolling the virtues of “choice”, in the case of trades training, this is nothing but a smokescreen. The illusion of choice always comes with institutional barriers that will in fact direct some students down one pathway and leave choices only for a select and privileged few. It is therefore fitting that general upgrading for post-secondary entrance is out, while the new trades path from grade 10 is in. Upgrading for adults allows for mobility between pathways – a genuine choice and opportunity.

Christy’s program is noticeably similar and in line with the push by the Federal Conservatives for a national trades training system. Minister Jason Kenney recently took a delegation to Germany, where there is a long history of streaming students from age ten into either university or vocational schooling.  The Jobs Blueprint promise to “reengineer training and education in BC” fits right in with Kenney’s plan to “reinvent” vocational high schools.

Kenney also uses the “choice” cover for what is actually a step towards further inequality. “This is about choices for kids,” he said. “Sometimes the German system is criticized as being brutal with its streaming in the secondary school system. The truth is that they’re just trying to help reflect where kids’ aptitudes and interests are.” (Canadian Press)

Ironically Germans themselves are looking at the horrific racial and class divisions entrenched in their education system. As the Guardian reports:

“most children are streamed at the age of 10 into either the Gymnasium, a route to university; the Realschule, where mid-level vocational studies are common; or the Hauptschule, for a basic secondary education.

Inequality is rampant. Children from a privileged background are four times as likely to attend Gymnasium as a child with similar grades from a working-class home and, according to the federal education body KMK, children of immigrant families attend the Hauptschule twice as often as native children – even within the same socio-economic class.” (Guardian)

What is left unspoken by either Christy or her Federal counterparts is that this is a program to relieve business of the costs of training and at the same time practically eliminate comprehensive secondary education for many students, and in particular those who are low income or who struggle in school. Unsurprisingly, aboriginal students are specifically targeted, under the guise of special grants and mentor-ship programs.

Far from choice or opportunity, this grander scheme is about putting children in their place.

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