Thursday, December 23, 2010

Race to Nowhere Screening comes to Calgary!


NormKelly Law, Leadership Calgary, Leadwell Foundation, TedX YYC and the Calgary Public Library, come together to bring Calgarians a very important Documentary, Race to Nowhere.

What role should our education system play in preparing young people to meet the challenges and opportunities of a changing world?


How do we best prepare young people to become healthy, bright, contributing citizens?

Please join us in the screening of Race to Nowhere, an important new film that explores these questions.


R a c e t o N o w h e r e is a call to mobilize families, educators, policy makers and citizens at large to challenge current assumptions on how to best prepare youth to become healthy, bright, contributing and leading citizens. In a grassroots sensation already feeding a groundswell for change, hundreds of theaters, schools and organizations nationwide are hosting community screenings during a six month campaign to screen the film throughout the US and Canada. We will be screening it on January 12th, 2011.

Register at,

http://leadingforwellness.com/docs/relatedevents/RaceToNowhere_Calgary.pdf

The registration/ticket page and related information is on the LeadWell Foundation/LeadWell Initiative website at:
http://race.leadwellinitiative.com

Friday, December 17, 2010

Report Cards...what is authentic assessment?

This past Monday I joined Carol Henderson, President of the Alberta Teachers' Association and Carmen Mombourquette from the Faculty of Education at the University of Lethbridge, on Alberta Prime Time to discuss report cards and more broadly, how our education system should measure 'student progress'.

Edmonton public, in two test schools, is implementing a new electronic, online system called SchoolZone whereby students and their parents receive monthly reports rather than the traditional 3-4 report cards over the school year. What this fully entails remains to be seen. I think that they are on the right track of trying to create more open communication with parents and students. There are many concerns however; is this the best use of a teachers time and energy, do teachers parents and students understand WHAT is being reported on and WHY?

Ontario has moved away from the traditional fall report card with grades and has implemented a new "Progress" report that considers learning skills, responsibility, organization, independent work, collaboration, initiative and self-regulation.

The progress report will 'assess' children (up to Grade 8) on things like; managing their personal behaviours, working with a positive attitude and healthy peer-to-peer relationships. There are no grades, rather the learning skills and work habits will recive an E for excellent, G for good, S for satisfactory or N for needs improvement.

Denmark and Scotland currently have systems that invite parents and students to help determine HOW they will be assessed and each students' report card looks very different and is 'personalized' to the individual learning needs of that student.

Which system is the most effective?

On Primetime I commented that we need to be looking at 'Authentic assessment'. That is the second piece to the puzzle because to do authentic assessment we need to have authentic learning environments and we must all have an understanding of WHAT it is that we value in our classrooms. I am trying to get at WHAT is it that we want our children to be learning? We cannot discuss how we want them 'assessed' if we have not first discussed what they are being assessed for?

Yes, I think that we all agree that we need literacy skills, numeracy skills and that we should know world history. There is an important part that is often missing however: we hear the old adage "knowledge is power"; in fact I have seen this on a poster in a teachers classroom recently and in school hallways. I disagree with this. Knowledge without wisdom is just bits of information that clutter our minds and often allow us to think we know more about something than we truly do. We must understand WHY we are learning what we are learning and for what purpose we can use the information.

This is a direct quote from Alberta's Commission on Learning "Genuine accountability brings no surprises. Fundamentally, it is about moving and improving, not about shaming and blaming."

Read further and you will see the 'Goals' there are five of them. No where in there is "performance, success, and high achievement for all students" actually defined neither do they discuss how it can or should be measured just that it should.

These are the conversations that we, as a community, must be having with our Trustees our teachers and with administrators. CBE mega end 1 is,

Each student, in keeping with his or her individual abilities and gifts, will complete high school with a foundation of learning to function effectively in life, work and continued learning.

Have we sat down with our teachers and Principals and asked them what this means to them? CBE has added the last 3 Ends (citizenship, Personal development and character) to our report cards now yet there is much confusion still as to what this means.

Consider the contrast in this scenario (which are true stories). Two children in 2 different CBE schools and one comes home with a report card with a full paragraph on the 3 ends which the parents felt was very reflective of the student as an individual learner and reflected the students contributions to their school community and the students strengths as they related to the learning environment that teacher was trying to create in the classroom. In my view, this teacher "gets it". The teacher is consciously trying to create a positive, creative feedback loop, between teacher and students, of learning and personal growth. The other child comes home with a report card that had 2 very short bullet point on the 3 ends. When the parents asked the teacher about this the teacher responded with, "I do not put down my observations of personal character traits because I am scared to do so as I do not feel I am backed by administration and I fear that I might be sued, particularly if they are negative observations."

This concerns me. If we refer back to Inspiring Action and the 3 Ends that the CBE now feel is important enough to include in our reports cards than which of these two progress reporting scenarios would you rather receive? The bullet points or the detailed observations? Of course, what is left out here, the equally important questions of who is doing the measuring and what are we measuring. I can ask 10 parents how they define personal growth through learning and citizenship in learning and I will get 10 very different answers. These are the questions and conversations that must address before we address how we assess any of this. This is what I mean by authentic assessment and authentic learning environments.

I know there are teachers who right now, everyday come up with authentic ways of teaching their students. They are creative and innovative in their approach with each student and we can learn from these teachers.

This discussion was hopefully just the beginning of what needs to be some very in depth discussions with parents, teachers, students, Trustees, administration and community members to collaboratively share thoughts and come up with ways in which we should be 'assessing' our students (if we should at all)? We are all vested in our children's best interests. It is incumbent upon all of us to do our best to create an education system that affords them their very best chance at getting the education that they most need as individuals to become the best that they can be.

How should, the CBE, be going about the business of adequately, appropriately and comprehensively measuring the progress of your child in our schools?

As I struggled with writing this blog my husband asked me this, "What is the goal, in todays world, of the K-12 public education system?" What we are teaching and how we are assessing the learning of that teaching is subsumed by answering that question.

Lets talk!

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Transformation of Education at the University of Calgary's Faculty of Education

An interesting video was posted by the University of Calgary on Youtube. Dean of Education, Dennis Sumara, speaks to the changes that are happening within the faculty as they ensure their graduates are ready to teach 21st century learners. This initiative dovetails nicely with Alberta Education's Inspiring Action.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Inspiring Education: Minister Hancock's Message to Trustees 2010

This youtube video featuring Minister Hancock's message to Trustees is of interest to parents as well. He talks about the transformation of our education system and the role trustees will play in supporting it.

Organization for Economic Development (OECD) Releases Latest PISA Survey of Education Performance

PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is a standardized assessment written by approximately 500,000 15 year olds in 70 economies across the world. Tests are written in reading, math and science, and for the first time, digital literacy was a component of the reading test. Students were tested not only on the skills and knowledge required in the curriculum, but also those needed to function successfully as adults once they leave school. Rankings are a part of this survey but the OECD also gathers other data to look at educational issues such as gender differences, class size, teacher pay and resource allocation.

According to the OECD website, the PISA initiative seeks to assist their member countries in looking at "how their school systems match up globally with regard to their quality, equity and efficiency. The best performing education systems show what others can aspire to, as well as inspire national efforts to help students to learn better, teachers to teach better, and school systems to become more effective."

In reading literacy, Canada came in 6th (Alberta was within the Canadian average).

In math, Canada placed 10th (Alberta was within the Canadian average).

In science, Canada placed 8th (Alberta was above the Canadian average).

Other findings of note:

The best school systems were the most equitable - students do well regardless of their socio-economic background. But schools that select students based on ability early show the greatest differences in performance by socio-economic background.

Combining local autonomy and effective accountability seems to produce the best results.

High performing school systems tend to prioritise teacher pay over smaller class sizes.

Countries where students repeat grades more often tend to have worse results overall, with the widest gaps between children from poor and better-off families.

If you would like more detailed reading around the Canadian results, check out "Measuring up: Canadian Results of the OECD PISA Study" released by the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC).

You can also read the press release, "Alberta's 15-year olds place among the world's best in reading, scientific and mathematical literacy," from the Government of Alberta

For media commentary on these results, check out the Calgary Herald article, "Canada slips in education rankings;" the National Post article, "Canada slipping in math, science and reading skills;" and the CTV News article, "Canadian education amongst best in world: OECD."

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Save Our Fine Arts (SOFA) Hosting a Public Meeting with Education Minister Dave Hancock

On January 25, 2011 at 7:30 pm, Education Minister Dave Hancock will be attending a public meeting hosted by SOFA at Central Memorial High School here in Calgary. SOFA is an advocacy group focused on efforts to maintain and enhance K to 12 fine arts education. The Hon. Dave Hancock will address Alberta Education's Inspiring Action initiative and the role fine arts education will play in the transformation of our education system. For more information about this meeting check their website.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Mental Health Funding Announced for Schools

The Government of Alberta has announced today that it will be investing $19M in 31 school-based, community supported mental health programs across the province. Funding will also be available for the additional 7 projects that are starting up this year. The $19M will support objectives related to improving services for children and youth at risk outlined on page 19 of the the government's recently released 5-year Health Action Plan. You can read more about this initiative in the Edmonton Journal Article, "Alberta invests $19M in mental health funding for schools" .

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Access TV's Alberta Primetime program talks about the high school drop out issue

The High School Drop Out Dilemma was a topic on last night's Alberta Primetime broadcast. Jacquie Hansen, President of the Alberta School Boards Association; Carol Henderson, President of the Alberta Teachers’ Association; and Dr. Brenda Willis, Assistant Superintendent for Edmonton Catholic Schools joined Alberta Primetime co-host, Jefferson Humphreys, to discuss Alberta Education's plans to raise the legal age of leaving school from 16 to 17 in the new Education Act. The ATA and ASBA do not believe changing the law will make a difference. According to Jacquie Hansen, ASBA President, "It is a community effort to keep kids in school." Carol Henderson, ATA President, added, "Let's make our schools more meaningful for all students." Well worth a watch.