\graeme.  I haven't seen any.  Son in highschool in ontario

keep an eye out. The right wing think tanks have made conserable inroads into the Ontario government. Some groups in Ontario  have been formed to tackle the threat of standardized tests .

Standardized tests are a threat. They provide absolutely no indication of what a student has learned or how they can apply that knowledge. Testsing in general is a profound waste of time and energy and is an exercise in redundancy. There are a lot of left-wingers that also see testing as a waste of time. Alfie Kohn (a brilliant educational theorist and psychologist) comes to mind.

There's more pressure on the education curriculum in ontario and I got that first hand from my daughters grade 1 teacher.

They are soon gonna have all day for JK/SK. They have to reach a certain level in arithmetic by counting to 100,adding/subtracting before they start grade 1. Definitely to pass on to grade 2.

Reading has to be up to standard even more so when I was a kid. My daughter can practically read a novel now! Parents have to be schooling them at home as well as at school. Its been fun and enjoyable for her, but teacher said they are only 5-6 year olds and the educational requirement is considerably higher. But thats what is passed down from the board of think tank officials of course! 

They've been in BC for years.   There is a questionnaire for students, one for parents and one for teachers.  Teachers have been advised by our union to ignore them.    I fill out the "comments" section on the parent one,  to share my opinion of the process.  Of course the questionnaires are politically motivated and an exercise in cynicism - undermining public education under the guise of improving it.

I'm in Peel in Ontario and we had our questionnaires sent out a couple of years ago.  There was a lot of controvery about whether teachers should answer the questions or not on the teacher questionnaire.  I agree that it's about undermining education and specifically undermining teachers.  I've seen that happen more and more often lately.

There is a serious and very sophisticated attempt to destroy public schools by privatizing them. It goes far beyond reports from the likes of the Fraser Institute.

The problem is it's very difficult to get the public roused about his. - especially in comatose New Brunswick.

I'm probably going to be invited to make a presentation of the issue to our elected Distrct Education Council in October. The intention, I'm quite sure, is to silence me by giving my an official meeting (which the press, owned by the same people who own the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies, will not report on.)

The damage to teacher morale - and the promotion of flunkies - under this system is already well advanced.

On one question on the 2009 student satisfaction questionnaire, apparently only 45% of BC students felt they were well prepared for post-secondary education or a career.

The Minister of Education took this to the media, and on the basis of this single question stated that schools were not meeting students' needs, and she would be looking at ways to better "personalize" student learning - whatever that means. 

One select question from one stakeholder group merits a press conference? -( and, I wonder,  how exactly does a grade 10 student determine if she/he has been well prepared for life after high school until they've lived it? It's a stupid question.)  But just one example of the misuse of survey info.

graeme - good for you for trying to raise awareness.

Surprisingly, perhaps, especially here in NB that Graeme refers to a comatose, we have some excellent teachers.  Yes, its been awhile since I was in school and I didn't have good experiences there, but my children attended junior and senior high school in this province, and now my grandchildren are in the system. 

Both grandchildren got off to an excellent start with kindergarden teachers who went above and beyond the call of duty in loving and caring for the kids as well as preparing them for the challenges they would face when entering elementary school.  Granddaughter has had the same luck most of the time from Grades 1 to 7 - with one teacher in grade 2 or 3 competent but not very personable, and one teacher in grade 7 who quite obviously doesn't like kids, doesn't like her job, and is not very happy, and another (for one subject only) who played favourites.   We keep our fingers crossed for the term coming up in just a few weeks.  We've heard good reports about the Grade 1 teacher - less filters out about junior high.

Perhaps the teachers are doing well despite the system. 

I must admit that while in Teachers' College (long ago in this province) I found myself running up against attitudes that bothered me - like teaching for the upcoming test rather than teaching for general knowledge and understanding - and rewarding those who could best regirgitate rather than creative independant thought - and of course rewarding the athletes.    Perhaps its just as well that I never taught full time in the system. 

I once organized a basketball league for the students in my first teaching job who were not the athletes who normally monopolized the gym.

To my surprise, both the principal and many of the teachers thought this unwise of me.

There is a contemptible editorial in today's Globe "Why Tests Matter". It not only makes no mention of the role of the Fraser Institute in school ranking; and it clearly has no knowledge of the thrust of a century of study by thousands of highly trained researchers in education.  Worse, it sneers at teachers for objecting to standardized testing, accusing them of being opposed to raising shcool standards. (I wrote a letter which the Globe probably will not publish.

What this is really all about is the beginning of the end of public education. Business wants a piece of the pie, and the piece can never be too big. The long term plan -and not all that long - is the privatization of education - a step back almost two centuries.

"Perhaps the teachers are doing well despite the system. "

You know, I've been teaching learning disabled students for almost 20 years, and during that time I've worked my ass off - thrown my whole heart and soul into my kids - and every year support services have been clawed back time and time again, so I've just worked harder.   And the rewards are indescribable - seeing kids who never fit into the system graduate as capable, confident young adults, and then having them come back 1,2 or even 5 years later to say thank you and tell me about their lives.  It's brilliant.  But this year our already overloaded department was cut by another 25%.  And I think this time it won't matter how hard we work or how much we care.......there comes a point where the system wins and you just can't do it well anymore.   And as more of our kids start to fail, and graduation rates start to drop, you can just bet that the media will be all over it - the public education system is failing our kids!  And private schools will be touted as the better alternative. It's so f**king sad. 

The item below is one I wrote for The Mark News  (one of the better blog sites on the web). They loved it at first, then backed off - as I rather expected they would All the news media are afraid to take on the think tanks. Too much big money behind them. The start of the first paragraph is missinig some words. Just read on. you don't need them
 

The Mark News has accepted another I did on the implications of our jet fighter purchase. It should appear within a few days to a week.

   Ayn Rand and Our Children
 

If you have something very simple and silly to say, put it in thousands of words, preferably big words, and the world will call you a philosopher.

T

“Atlas Shrugged”, written by Ayn Rand in the 1950s is a good example. It's a silliness that dictators and slave owners have always lived by without needing to put it into words. But Rand used the big words and lots of them that made the silliness into a philosophy, even a religion – a religion that turned every major religion on its head, and trashed thousands of years in our development of social morality.

Briefly, the Rand philosophy is that the rich are good and everybody else is bad.. To that she adds the dictum that government is bad because it gives money to bad people ; and it creates obstacles to good people in the form of taxes and regulations for useful things like drilling oil wells; and it makes unions legal.

It was greeted by the very rich as hogs grunt for their morning swill. Some called it neoconservatism; (which has nothing to do with conservatism). Some called it libertarianism; ( which has nothing to do with liberty.) Ayn Rand hadn't invented greed and self-interest. She did more. She made them moral.

The very rich opened mission stations all over North America. They called them think tanks.. These pump out pseudo-scientific reports, some that are outright lies, and plant stories in our gullible news media to discredit anything public – like schools and medicare. (By the gospel of Randism, lying and cheating are acts of self-interest, and so are perfectly moral).

It was Randists like Jeb Bush who launched the “Project for the New American Century” bringing us war for generations to come, and huge tax cuts for the rich. The wars and the tax cuts and liberation by less regulation brought us the recession and the Gulf oil spill.

Now, they want us to hand over our children.

That's why so many states and provinces have standardized testing and rating of schools for what they call accountability. (“Accountability” and “school-business partnerships” are Randspeak for getting private hands on the education budget.)

An example of how it works is New Brunswick. Corporate bosses own both Liberal and Conservative parties. They also own a Randist temple called Atlantic Institute of Market Studies which publishes incompetent reports on just about everything. It's CEO advertises he has published articles (always in Randist mags) disproving centuries of research by thousands of scholars on economics, climate change, health, and education. Wow! Move over, Socrates and Plato.

That is the institute that got the contract for the testing and grading of schools. Think of that. The people who advocated the system, and who pushed it on a compliant government, are the same people who evaluate whether it is effective.

The result is an educational disaster as the tests dictate the curriculum, and encourage rote learning, the shallowest form of learning. It demotes teachers to robots. It encourages the promotion of incompetent bootlickers throughout the system so corporate bosses can keep control. They call this “bringing control of the schools to the community.”

We don't have to guess where this will take us. We've seen it before. For over a century, wealthy foreign companies have taken billions of out of Congo without any restriction or responsibility. In return, they have murdered, tortured, and enslaved uncounted millions. .

Closer to home, there's Haiti. In close to 90 years of American-imposed Randism, It had very low taxes for the rich. It also has almost no public education or health care or decent housing. Six months after the earthquake, only a tiny percentage of the promised aid has been delivered. That's because the self-interest of the people who own Haiti is to keep it the poorest country in the hemisphere. . Haiti is not going to be rebuilt. Caring for other is a sin in Ramdism.

The gods of self-interest and greed ( named Ambition and Enterprise in Randspeak) have destroyed every society that worshipped them. Now, it's our turn.

If we let them.

I think it was in the 1960s when I read 'Atlas Shrugged'.  It scared the . . .  out of me.  It still does!

And while I can understand the rich embracing its philosophy, what I can't understand is the ordinary, working person thinking it is the 'way to go'.    At least one person posting regularly on the Cafe embraces this economic theory and thinks that somehow we will all be better off.  I call it the exploitation and enslavement of the majority. 

 oh Graeme, I don't think testing nor reports nor the media is going to eliminate the education system.  Hell, Ontario has never had a premiere give teachers as much as this one.

If there are no means to compare schools then students I believe are at a disadvantage. 

I doubt the questionares given out to students and parents gather much useful data but one would hope they provide a trend.

I too read that Globe piece and didnt' get your impressions.  

More importantly to me was the article looking at the percentage of kids diagnosed with ADHD and it's large group of related diagnoses that are born at the end of the year.

That is a scary study.  To think that parents and children are needlessly dealing with a "condition" with no real testing other than behaviour and that it may be due to child immaturity in comparison to the class.

There is NO such thing as a test which measures the value of a school. There is no means of measuring a ranking for schools. I'm sorry that it the case. but it is the case. We are spending millions to test something for which no test exists.

The result is that teachers are forced to teach for a test. That means an emphasis on rote learning - which is quite worthless. How much do you remember from rote learning in your school days  

If the questionnaires are faulty, what possible trend can they show? You ask parents questions they don't know the answer to. Most don't answer. Next year, twice as many answer. All you know from that is that more people are willing to answer questions they don't understand.

Read the web pages of the Fraser Institute and the Atlantic Insitute of Market Studies. They say what they're about - spreading private business into the public sector for profit. Check their hiring policies. They have openings for people who are sympathetic to spread of the private sector. In other words, they hire researchers who know the answers before they know the question. In all cases, privatize.

In the process, the "researchers" write papers that "disprove" a century and more of research by real scholars.

Why does the editor write such crap? Because newspaper owners tend to be the sort of people who share the views of the Fraser Institute and its ilk.

As for his sneer that teachers oppose standardized testing because they are afraid of higher standards - that is contemptible. Even if it were true, he would have know want of knowing it unless he knew every teacher in Ontario very, very well.

I was active in news media on a daily basis for some thirty years. I know they are all affected by prejudices and the power of money. They all lie. They all omit a great deal.

Use the web. Take a look at the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies and the Fraser Insistute. These people are driven by greed. Your children are their targets. Check out what chartered schools are. These are designed for pure profit, and the are using you dhilcren to play with -no matter what damage it does them.

Public education is probably the most important development of the past two centuries. And we're letting private investors take it over for their profit. I think parents who accept that without even taking the trouble ot checik out what's going on are either irresponsible or gutless.

American students are among the most tested in the world, and have some of the worst educational outcomes.  I would hate to imagine that Canadian schools could go the same way.

Maybe what Canada should do is copy the country that has the highest achieving school kids.  Which countries have the most literate school leavers?  The students with the best general knowledge?  The students who can do the math needed for everyday life?

Again, that's not the solution it seems to be. Japanese and Chinese kids do very well in elementary and high school. But much of that is the result of enormous pressure from family on the child. The child who does poorly become a disgrace to the whole, extended family. My experience in teaching university there was that their background also made them prone to rote learning, and often weak on critical skills.

The US is the origin of the model being pushed by think tanks like the Fraser, and it's very widespread across the US. But results have not been good

In any case, Canada already is so high is quality of education that the difference between it and any other of the best is not likely to be great.

The only countries that have higher achieving students on international tests  (and that's the only measure we have;  I'm not a huge fan of them either) are Finland and S. Korea (and Korea is only better in math).   Canada has an AMAZING public education system, which makes it a double crime to be attempting to dismantle it for profit.

And one other thing to note.....when Canadian students write those tests, they are selected randomly.  This year we had a few of our students with learning disabilities chosen to write, and they did.  I don't know to what extent other countries have the same truly random sampling.

Interesting, in Finland, children don't start school until age 7, and they only go to school 20 hours a week.  What is unique is that classrooms have 2 teachers. 

Except it has become a performance and competition based joke.  The major assessment and evaluation tool is to test the hell out our kids. Ironically, for a system of education that claims to create creative, critical thinkers, that is not very creative. It certainly is critical in a negative way, and that is a shame. Rubrics and grading students based on the rubric (which is still a very subjective grading tool, by the way), only serve to demoralize students who do not "measure up." 

An example. When I was doing my first teaching placement, I was sitting in on one of the school wide meetings. The teachers were instructed to make a wall in their classroom where all the student assignments that recieved a level 3 or better were to be displayed. If you did not achieve this arbitrary level, your work was excluded from the wall. How demoralizing is that for a student who did not achieve at least a level 3. It's public chastisement, plain and simple and is also disgusting. This was a school board policy.  "Sorry Billy. You got a level 2. According to Ministry standards, you do not measure up. See Sally's assignment, that is what YOU should be aiming for. Maybe next time."

Many people feel that Canada's education system is great. Others feel that it is a joke. I concure that it is a joke, especially in Ontario. The reason I became a teacher is to educate students in a way that fosters individuality, creativity and critical thinking. Ontario's one size fits all education fails miserably. And, when we do not allow students to create their own meaning based on what they already know, we have failed them. This is why I am HUGE supporter of progressive education and why I have something in the works that will totally change how many parents view education. Nobody will give me an opportunity, so I am going to create my own. 

Well, what happens in America often finds it's way here. In Buffalo for instance, students from grade three to grade 8 are standardized tested annually in all the core subjects. Schools who do well get more money as incentives than those who do not perform well. Those who do not do well face reviews and could find themselves eventually closed. Do not be surprised to find more standardized testing in Ontario in the next 5 to 10 years.

Yes. More and more testing. That is exactly what our students need.

ARE YOU SERIOUS?????  That's appalling!!!!   I thought that kind of disgraceful humiliation had gone the way of the dodo 20 years ago!!   Unbelievable.

Perhaps 'amazing" wasn't the best choice of words - a little too enthusiastic there, methinks!!  But I do think that overall, and with its flaws, our public education system is - or has been -  excellent compared to what I've heard or read about in other countries.  Not to say that it isn't in danger of going the way of the American system......and it certainly sounds like Ontario is further down that road than BC where I teach.  And that frightens me.  But when I think of the diversity in our schools, the ridiculously high expectations that society places on teachers to teach everything from math to morals to how not to get bitten by a dog.....I'm impressed by how well we do.  And I think that is because, in spite of the system and all its flaws,  learning is still centered on the relationships formed between students and teachers, and there are a lot of dedicated, caring, competent people out there forging those relationships.  You sound like one of them.    What scares me is how the powerful few are working to undermine it all.......larger classes, fewer resources, increasing expectations, standardized testing - how long before we can't sustain it any longer??  

In Oct., I appear before the DEC (roughly a school board) to make a fifteen minute statement on standardized testing. I've been checking over UNICEF figures in preparation.

of rich countries, the US leads in testing, but comes iin 18th for quality of education. Canada is around fifth, as a rule. Education in the US has made some improvement since Bush got the ball rolling on standardized testing. But, UNICEF shows it was improving before that, and much faster. Standardized testing has actually slowed the rate of improvement.

The reason for standardized testing is that it's a step to even greater privatization - our children, for profit.

It's going to be tough to get any action out of the DEC or out of the public. Not only will the press not dare to publish anything the Irvings don't want to see. But New Brunswickers are terrified of saying anything that might annoy their master. I've never seen anything like it.

 Sadly I think our public schools have tried to be all things to all people.

And I dont' think it possible.  

I agree that testing is problematic but how to deal with the poor teachers the poor principal the unmotivated school

Our public schools have not tried to be all things to all people. Testiing is not problematic. It's a scam. It originated with private business in the US looking to privatize as much of education as possible. They have succeeded to muscle in on public education to a greater degree than any country in the rich world. As a result, the US ranks the US 18th in education, way behind Canada.  Indeed, the pace of improvement has actually slowed in the US since standardized testing was introduced.

You certainly will not improve education by selling our kids for private profit.

Oh - do you seriously think that poor teachers, poor principals and unmotivated schools are the problem? Well, that certainly explains a big question. Generally, the highest failure rates are in schools where students are poor and non-white. So that's where they must be dumping all the bad teachers and principals.

In fact, social scientists have been pretty much unanimous for the last 50 years that the major factor in school success are socio-economic background, and parenting. The Fraser Insitute has worked - obviously with success - to plant the idea that it's all the fault of teachers and principals.

My elementary school was in a poor district. Of all the kids in my grade one class (and all includes me), not one finished high school. They werent stupid kids. Graduation just was never expected of us in that neighbourhood. It astounded me when I began university to meet kids who accepted it as the most natural thing in the world to graduate.

We are talking about two different things .

Testing of students and questionaires about teachers/schools.

I do indeed think there are some terrible teachers and terrible principals and terrible schools.  Heavens it was just last year you ranted about your wifes principal who was awful/ mean/bully...........

We have all seen those teachers that are incompetent.  For some reason it is hard for teachers to admit it and even harder to get rid of those teachers.  If you have taught then you know that at all levels of education there are terrible teachers.

Teachers are no different then any other porfession.  Some are exceptional, most do a good job and there are a few that should be fired.

Pity the poor kids who get those teachers.

The system as it stands doesn't do a good job weeding out the incompetent ones.  Like many unionized jobs it is difficult to fire them.

How are school boards to gather info about schools and principals and teachers.?  The nature of the work of a teacher is solitary, it's not like it is easy to observe them.  Performance of the students is certainly a marker. 

You object to testing of kids.  I guess you also object to reviewing teachers.

At what point though are the teachers and schools and school board accountable to the parents and the students and how would you like to see their performance assessed

Testing students is used to evaluate teachers. That  is wrong because testing students does not test the teacher. It tests the child's socio-economic background and parenting. You might as well test your car's speed by using a yardstick. There simply is no relationship between those tests and teacher ability. The tests are useless and, being designed by ideologues, are quite incompent. All that they do is force teachers to make kids memorize for the exam - the most useless form of teaching ever devised.

This sort of testing works for cars cominig off an assembly line. It does not work for people.

As to your fears that the schools are full of incompetent principals and teachers - nonsense. There are, of course, some teachers and principals who should not be there - and I did mention one. But your notion that the schools are full of them tells me that you have been reading too much Fraser Institute propaganda.

There are incompetent lazy teachers as there are incompetent and lazy doctors, lawyers, and incompetent and lazy - and thieving - corporate bosses. And corporate bosses have their own union to protect them - like all the bank directors who got millions each in bonuses for driving their banks into bankruptcy.

The idea that unions run the school is pure Fraser drivel. They don't. I taught in elementary schools before we had a union - and I well remember the contemptuous treatment we got from boards.

The major problem facing schools is not teachers or principals. The major problems are parents who don't give a damn, children who are poor, neighbourhoods which don't even have education on their radar....   That is the finding of most of the world's social scientists after a century of study.

Those are the problems. Stop fussing about tests that, in fact, don't exist, and don't deal with the main problem at all.

Do you really want to help the kids? Or do you just want to work off a decades-old grudge about a teacher you once had? That's the kind of thing the Fraser Institute is encouraging.

I just checked the lastest UNICEF rankings education in the 21 most developed counries. . Canada is in the top four - and the diffeence in scores is not great. he US is eighteenth, and the difference in scores in huge.

So here we are, copying the American system. And doing it with enthusiastic response from te news media.

I offer a current events course once a month at the Moncton library. The week before the meeting, the library  adverties its events in the Moncton Times and Transcript.. For the last three months, the times and transcript has published the announcements - except the one for my current events group.

Geneally, I finid news outlets across Canada unwilling to accept anything critical of standardized testing - even though it has been a beneral consensus of social scientists all over the world for fifty years that such tests are invalid and damaging.

I often wonder where our dozey universities are - expecially our super-dozey faculties of education.

graeme

 graeme, i know this is one of your big issues but if you look back at my post i said "some terrible teachers"  SOME.  I also said that they are no different than any profession with  "a few" that should be fired.

I have no grudge against teachers.  Only ever had one bad teacher and loved my kids teachers, mainly.

AS to whether testing kids judges teachers.  I guess I do disagree with you there.

I have volunteered in REgent park for 10 years.  I have seen a grade 5 teacher who is outstanding and gets her kids reading, writing , doing math and excelling on tests.  The other grade 5 teacher for a few years?  I volunteered in her class too and she was incompetent.  Her kids did poorly, same school, same kids, same economic level.

It was obvious by seeing how the kids did on the unit tests ( set by the department committee not each teacher)how much better one was over the other.

graeme - (happy birthday, btw!!) - if you take into account the inclusive and multicultural nature of Canadian schools, the results are all the more impressive.  

 I think lastpointe and graeme are talking about 2 different kinds of testing.  With in-school tests,  teachers SHOULD use the results to reflect upon their teaching.   In fact, in our school, the Humanities dept. tests the grade8s in September on their ability to use reading strategies.  From those results, they target specific areas of weakness and these become the focus of the year's teaching.  Then they test again in May.  The results of these tests are used ONLY for the teachers to see how well they've taught the strategies and to make plans for improvement as teachers.

Standardized testing can't be used that way.  At best it can provide a snapshot of how well a cross-section of children are achieving certain outcomes on one particular assessment.  It was probably standardized testing that in the past was used to pinpoint certain groups of children as lower-achieiving, and prompted researchers to find out why - hence our knowledge that school achievement is very significantly impacted by factors  (parents' level of education, socio-economic class, etc) that are beyond a teacher's or school's control.    Sadly,  the information is now being used to rank schools (and by extension teachers),and to try to frighten parents into choosing private schooling - which is both invalid and just plain wrong.

last pointe, your are not in disagreement with me. You are in disagreement with tens of thousands of social scientists all over the world. All of there studies, in countries everywhere, showed that the major factor in school success is the parents - their income, the education, their status, their expectations. If you wish to disagree with tens of thousands of scholars who have studied this all t heir lives, be my guest.

I objected to the "some" teachers are bad and should be fired remark because that is the lever used by the tink tanks to discredit teachers. When you plant a story in one newspaper (and all the other media feed on it), an impression gets sunk in. If the story is that a child in a school was refused permission to go to the washroom and so humiliated himself in class, it becomes the talk show topic of the day. At that point, it doesn't matter what the people on air say. The message is that teachers are bad. I was daily on radio for years. I know how the game works. The incident could have happened a hundred or a thousand miles away. It doesn't matter. The message is teaching is a real problem area.

If you don't believe in standardized testing, then you are in tune with the vast majority of social scientists in the world.

If you do believe in it, then you have to consider the UNICEF figures showing Canadian schools among the top four countries in the world. Even, UNICEF, by the way, takes pains to say their results also show that parents are the most important factor.

There is not the slightest evidence from anybody except neo conservative propgandists to say we need to extend privatization.

Anybody who has ever taught knows that standardized testing is extremely harmful to students. And I am damned if I will let some billionaires add to their billions at the cost of my children.

Sorry, lastpointe. The anger wasn't at all aimed at you. It's anger at the bloodsuckers who do this, at the news media who are too ignorant or too dishonest to report it, at parents who won't stand up for t heir own children....

Even CBC isn't talking to me now because I asked them why they were ignoring this, and even being taken in by think tank propaganda.

This is a story I've done extensive research on. I also have a lot of experience in journalism, so I know how the news media are being conditioned to deplore the state of public education in Canada. I have to get this to a wider audience.

There is no hope of getting any news outlet in New Brunswick to publish it.

I made a pitch to MacLean's and Reader's Digest (I've done quite a bit of writing for the latter, and  have lately been asked to do a history book for them.) But I don't think either of them will touch an article that criticizes right wing think tanks.

I don't know about Parents' magazine. The people who support the Fraser Institute reach deep into the media world. And the CBC is afraid to go too far for fear of budget cuts.

I should add that the churches are useless. They would rather talk in abstractions than deal with genuine sin that is right in front of them.

 As a parent what should I do?

Firstly, ignore the school rankings.

Secondly, talk to your PTA or equivalent.

Thirdly, let your elected school board officials know how you feel.

Fourthly, let your MPP know.

Fifthly talk to your child(ren) about how important you consider the testing to be.

Not necessarily in that order.

That would be an excellent start. Your province almost certainly has some group organized against this travesty.

 I must have missed the post where I said that I agree with standardized testing.

I believe I have said that I think there needs to be a better way to judge teachers and that testing their kids is certainly one way.

I believe i said that schools are unsuccessfully trying to be all things to all people.

I believe I said that there are some poor teachers out there and they need to be weeded out.  That teachers unions make that virtually impossible is not news.  It is the same with any unionized job.  I had 100 RN's working for me and it was very difficult to eliminate the ones who needed to be.  In lots of ways that is good.  Bosses or principals can't just on a whim fire people but on the other hand some need to go.

I agree that we do a pretty good job in Canada.  I would hate to see us switch to a Japanese mode of rote learning and needing to be in the right kindergarten so you get into the right medical school in 20 years .

You don't like teacher testing and you dont' like student testing.

What is your proposal for efficiently and effectively evaluating teachers and students?  You are so adamant about the sins of the system, what is the solution.

Get a solution and people will listen

1. i have nothing against student testing. Never said I did.

2, Nobody in the world has ever devised a test for teachers. It does not exist. I know the range of scholarship. No reputable scholar who has studied the field for the last fifty years has been able to come up with a test. I'm sorry I can't come up with one. If thousands of scholars working their whole lives on can't devise a test then I'm sorry, but I can't either. And, for sure, a bunch of propaganists posing as scholars in the Fraser Insistute can't do ti, either.

3. I remember the days when teachers didn't have unions. We were treated like scum. Teacher salaries were so low when I was a child, that my father made more money as a manual labourier that my grade nine teacher with an MA did. Without unions, the gap in Canada would be even worse, far worse than it is now. And almost all of us would be much poorer.

4. We cannot copy Japanese schools. The culture of Japan is different. It also creates huge problems in education. What you get is rote learning wthich is good for tests - but close to useless for an real and last learning. ditto for Korea. I have taught Asian students. I know the strengths and weaknesses of the system. I know it cannot be applied to North America - and it should be.

5. Forf fifty years, most social scientists in the world (and UNICEF) have agree that the most important factor in school succes is having rich parents. (Indeed, the UNICEF tests have found that in studies all over the world, including Japah). The second most important is how well educated the parents are. The third is family expectations. The only people I have ever heard of who refuse to recognize that are the posturing clowns in right wing think tanks.

6. Perhaps you should devise a test for suitable parents. That's where the problem is.

7. Certainly, what you should NOT be doing is throwing out a system that ranks with the best in the world, and has produced the most highly educated population in the world.

8. The solution is to stop this expensive idiocy of standardized testing which is destroying one of the best school systems in the world, and damaging our children.

Another thing might be to start recognizing that teachers are professionals and should, like all professionals, be allowed to do their job without excessive and limiting oversight by people who don't know what they're talking about, and are damaging our children.

9. As supervisor of nurses, would you opt for a system that has been proven to kill more patients?

10. In those points you agree that you said, you are absolutely wrong in all of them. And apparently have not understood or have ignored any of the evidence I have given you  several times.

I hope I am never in a hospital where you are in charge of the nurses.

And I take back my apology.

4. In my experience the people who cover for bad techers are not the unions. Pedophiles in private schools have been protected for decades by head masters and trustees. There was a case of one must recently in a distinguished (Protestant) private school in small town Quebec - and a super distinguished one in Montreal. i knew the one in Montreal. They covered for him for twenty yeears - though they knew what was going on. I have never known a teacer's union to do that.

5.

Graeme you said you disagreed with all my points

so you don't think there needs to be a better way to assess teachers and you are fine with what schools do now.  I thought your initial point was that giving out questionares is stupid and that the current way of judging teacher is wrong.

Now you think it's ok?

you, i guess think that schools are totally successful.  i guess here we just disagree.  In some areas schools do a great job.  not all.  I can just look  at the changes to the amount of physical education that kids get now and find one area where I think they do not do a good job.  you will of course come back with the issue being budgeting.......  but the point is they can't do it all on the budgets they have so that needs to be fixed.

you disagree with this.  You mean to say you think it better that there be no unions and teachers get fired on a whim?  Of course you don't mean that  So when you say you disagree with all my points you are simply being difficult????  You think I was a poor nurse manager because when i had staff that couldn't preform i worked on firing them?  you must have no idea of what it means to be a manager then.  Under performing staff are retrained, worked with and if they are unable to lean the job they are moved out.  Not many ICUs would keep an RN who couldn't do the work but I am glad to see that you think they should.  I guess because you have the mind set that an employee can never be fired.

sorry that you disagree with this.  I think the school do a pretty good job in general and  , because you disagree, you  think they do not.  and you are the defender of teachers????

 I say I would hate us to try to be like a Japanese school and you disagree.  Why exactly is that????  

So no one has yet come up with a good system for evaluating teachers.  I guess in your mind that means give up.

So then bloody give up and stop whining.

 And i would add that you seem to be a very angry unpleasant opinionated person and I am very grateful that you were never one of my teachers.

That others state opinions that you disagree with appears to only infuriate you.  Pretty poor behaviour for such a supposedly gifted teacher.

look. I'm not going to waste a lot of time on this.

1. As I have tried to explain over and over, testing students is NOT a good way to judge teachers. N O T

     The best teachers in the world will h ave a hard time with kids who are poor, come from functionally illiterate parents, and have no idea that higher education is even possible. I know the social scientists all over the world are right about that because I went to a school like that.

   The worst teacher will get great results teaching rich kids whose parents are professionals and have high expectations for their kids.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND  THAT?  It is not my opinion. It is the opinion of social scientists all over the world. Lord, I think I would have to tell  you there is a law of gravity. And you would probably argue about it.

2. of course , there are some ways in which any schools can be improved. Your way won't do it. I'm sorry I can't tell you an alternative. Nobody in the whole world has ever found one. As it is, our schools are among the best in the world. What you are proposing will destroy them.

3. Is there a test for head nurses? Were you one of the top four in the world?

4. as to mangement, I was chairman of large university department for six years. I was asked to become president of a university. I was several years Chairman of a large organization in Quebec with thousands of members and a high political profile. I did it in my spare time. I think you were a bad supervisor because you sound like one.

4. Yes, unions sometimes protect poor teachers. They also protect good teachers from bad administrators. (I begin to understand your objection to unions.)

5. I didn't say I thought giving out questionnaires was stupid. I said that was my first impression when I read it. Then, I realized it was a very skilful device to discredit teachers and sow doubts in the minds of parents. Were  you really this thick when you were a head nurse? Did any of  your patients live?

6. I never said schools were totally succesful. Nothing is totally successful. Boy, you must h ave been a real battllewagon rumbling through the corridors.

7. on unions, I'm telling you you're simple minded. You admit that without them people get fired on a whim. And I notice you don't suggest any solution to the problem. You just rant. You must have been a real sweetheard to everybody you worked with.

8. I opposed copying Japanese schools partly because they encourage rote learning. It is the most useless form of learning. When I taught iin China, I had to unteach it so I could get them to think independently. I can see why you would love rote learning. You're not big on thinking.

9. I did not say we should give up on find a metnod to evaluate teaching. That is a stupid comment. I said the mass of social scientists, thousands of them, have not been able to find such a method in fifty years of intense research. They have not given up..

What they have done is to prove the ideas you suggest are not only invalid, but damaging.

Look. You are extraordinarily opinionated and illogical woman - even an uncomprehending and possibly functionally illiterate one. You are ignorant of even the funamentals of ecucation, and have the tone of a web-covered battle-axe. You are also rude, intolerant,and have a grudge against the world - proabably because most of it sees you as you really are.

I suggest you join the Fraser Institute. It's full of people you'll like.

PS Give my sympathies to you family and neighbours.

I will not reply to anything else you write.

 5. Forf fifty years, most social scientists in the world (and UNICEF) have agree that the most important factor in school succes is having rich parents. (Indeed, the UNICEF tests have found that in studies all over the world, including Japah). The second most important is how well educated the parents are. The third is family expectations. The only people I have ever heard of who refuse to recognize that are the posturing clowns in right wing think tanks.

6. Perhaps you should devise a test for suitable parents. That's where the problem is.

That would be a novel idea...just fxxking beautiful. I wonder what the ramifications would be? Besides the obvious positives and I sincerely mean this.

That's a  great spelling. I have to remember that - though I guess it wouldn't work as well in speech.

where did I say it was a good way.  I said it was one way.  somehow in this trail you have decided I am for standardized testing.  I never said that.  I too know that having educated and well off parents is the difference for kids. 

Yes, i volunteer weekly in a school just like that.  And in my example way up thread I also talked about the difference that a good teacher over one who is burned out can make.  you disagree that a good teacher can make a difference.  Such a defeatist attitude.  I see a motivated and good teacher as making a huge difference, even with the poor.

well aren't you the condescending teacher we all love.  Graeme it isn't me who has had bad experiences with teachers.  It is you and then you become a teacher and still have a chip on your shoulder.  

WEll then when you said you disagreed with all my points I guess you were lying.  Thanks for that.  I am not sure I have proposed a "way".  In fact i know I haven't as i don't have one.

Lets just not react like this is the first time the education system has tried out strange ideas.

I went to school in the 60's.  Off the top of my head we had IQ testing where kids were put in "bright", normal" and Low levels for the rest of their accdemic time.  

Then there were the years of one large classroom with no walls and 5 classes.

Then there were the years of never test, never mark, never correct.  Fun time for kids, must have been a nightmare for teachers

Then i had highschool where there were no mandatory classes ( except in my house where my parents had alreadly put two into university and knew the ropes.  Oops, they forgot to clear that plan with universities and had tons of kids who didn't have enough English credits,     good thing for summer school those years.

Oh and then my kids.  one just caught the edge of the no phonics, whole language only , it's mandatory stage.  Luckily he had teachers who disagreed.  Luckily it became more accomodating for my second.

 Graeme, this is just one in a long line of trials for all.

Not sure why you think i would expect anyone to be in the top 4 in the world for anything.  Was i a good head nurse.  yes I was.  I had a good staff that i worked hard to coach, train, and reward.  My staff enjoyed coming to work.  I accommodated their requests and needs as best i could.  I was evaluated annually by my boss with feedback on questionaires from my staff  and her own observations and comments from the doctors with which we worked.

I am glad you have had a successful career Graeme.  I am a good manager of a unionized staff.  I have no idea of what i said that implied i was not other than it is tough to fire unionized staff.

So then once again we agree that sometimes unions protect bad employees of all jobs.  I liked being in the union and i had no issues with our union, ONA.  As I said way up thread on this topic it is a good thing to be protected from being fired on a whim by an unreasonable boss.

Man you are a nasty SOB

Once again then you were lying when you said you disagreed with all my points.

i am unsure why you have decided that i am some sort of test proponent and i see that now all you can do is sling mud.

What the hell are you talking about.  If you would just once read my posts you would see that I said I would not want us to adopt some sort of Japanese style.  Rote learning is what they do and on this we agree.  you alone seem to think I am advocating a japanese style of school.  you are the one not reading here Graeme

The above paragraph totally applies to you.  I have never met a more opinionated person than you Graeme.

Once again and for the last time, I am not proposing anything to improve the education system.

I loo forward to bypassing your comments on this site too

New Brunswick school curriculum and teaching methods are now effectively controlled by Atlantic Institiute at and expensive contract.

Standardized testing mean all schools must use the same curriculum whatever the needs of the students might be. And all teachers must teach by rote to compete on the same exam.

The man in charge of the whole operation is AIMS' head of  their education project. He is also CEO of AIMS. His qualifications?

He has a bachelor's degree in political science and another in law. He has a master's in public administration. He has no training or experience whatever in education

He would not qualify for a teaching job at any level in any public school in North America. NB parents have handed their chidlren over to him. Where are their brains? The local news media cooperate fully.The Moncton times runs regular editorials denigrating public schools and their teachers.  I have also seen it in t he Montreal Gazette, The Globe, and other papers.

We are throwing away our children's lives  - and it is virtually impossible to go public on this.

The same is happening, to the best of my knowledge, in all Atlantic provinces, Ontario, BC -and I hear Quebec is being lined up.

The objective in the long run is to get the whole of the education budget into private pockets -and to hell with the kids.

Lord, if I had a pulpit, that's what I be talking about,  - an exploitation of our children that's below child pornography. But there's not a chance a pulpit in Canada would touch it. They're rather more likely to discuss whether we'll be able to get infommercials in heaven.

I'm working on a way to get this message out to New Brunswick. A bit tough when most of the media are dominated by one family.

So - I have a current events group that meets that meets the thursday of every month in the Moncton Library. I've posted most of the local Christian clergy, the synagogue, and am looking for the mosque.

I have pointed out that this issue, involving abuse of children and geed, is a religious issue, and counter to every major religion I have ever heard of.

We'll see if the clergy are more alive and les political than most other groups in this society.

If you are willing to share more specifics, that would be helpful to some of us who care about this subject in other provinces. No doubt many of us will find that our provincial education ministries are following the same path.

they are, indeed. And you're looking at very powerful interests behind this - including a large chunk of the ownership of new news media.

I have a report of some ten pages that I shall be submitting to the board.I'll see whether I still have prints of the 35 0r 40 pages of evidence. then I'll try to figure how to send it to wondercafe.

You have to understand that in NB you have to create your own forum. The newspapers are owned by the people who are making money out of this silly scheme. And, in the petty politics of this province, everything is politicized, right down to home and school. And both the liberals and conservative are owned by the same sort of people.

It's even tough in the national media. reader's digest would never offend a right wing think tank or a large corporation. MacLean's is probably the same. I've seen high prejudice and slanting of news on this in The Globe.

The bottom lines are:

1. The UN, which has a lot more expertise than any right wing think tank, ranks Canadian public schools the fourth best in the world. The US, which has a lot of standardized testing  and ranking and privatization is 18th.

2. Standardized tests do not test either teachers or schools because the most significant elements in school success are social background and parenting.

3. Right wing think tanks are essentially propaganda agencies to get more public money into private pockets.

4.They don't give a damn about our chidren. And most of our news media are keeping us ignorant.

I'm hoping I can arouse or, at least, trust the churches in Moncton. We'll see.

Early this morning, I phoned two churches. I explained who I was, my experience in both education and journalism, and told them that I would be discussing it at the current events group next week at the Moncton Library. (I can't rely on the weekly announcements column of the newspaper because they have been omitting my part of the library announcements.)

A priest showed interest and enthusiasm. He will get back to me (and I am quite sure he will.)

A United Church minister sounded, to put it gently, non-commital.

I emailed or hand delivered another dozen mesages to various curches. So far, none has replied.

The Protestant churches, including the United Churc'hes of Moncton, have proven as gutless and submissive as I expected they would be.

I was good enough to do thousands of radio and TV commentaries in Montreal and nationally, good enough for major magazine markets but, apparently, not up to the standards of the Protestant churches of Moncton.

I have no patience with churches that are intellectually dead or politically conformist.

It's been a useful lesson.