Discussing Waiting for Superman

[velvetpage]

From pvenables: "I have a question for you about a documentary I watched recently. It's called "Waiting for 'Superman'" and (I'm assuming you have seen it but what the hey) it features the plight of the American public school system, the concept of "drop-out factories," and the perception that it is impossible to change anything that's wrong with the system due to smothering influence of the teachers unions.

One thing that particularly shocked me was the fact that American teachers can get tenure. I've never heard of that going on here-- I assume that's only in the US.

Would love to hear your perspective on the film if you've seen it and if you haven't, to hear about your impressions once you have.

The question I had for you was about Canadian (or just Ontario) schools: Do we employ what they call "tracking" for students wherein some teachers funnel students towards success while others might be destined for a lower quality of instruction or attention based on fairly arbitrary assessments? Actually, in thinking about this, I think I can probably say "yes" we do as I saw it in action when I was in school. Perhaps a better question is, how early does this begin? I know you have an objection to... what was the testing called? It was something you've asked that Elizabeth not be included in..."



First, Waiting for Superman is a very biased piece of editorializing passing itself off as a documentary. It was produced by the Gates Foundation, and its purpose is to prove that adding more choice to education (that is, making it more of a free-market model) will improve it. These same people are funding charter schools all over the U.S. and cherry-picking their evidence so that it looks, in the movie, like charter schools out-perform public schools. That's a dramatic over-simplification, to the point of being an outright lie.

The fact is that choice in schooling has not been proven to improve the education of anyone - not even the kids for whom the choice was made, and definitely not for the kids left behind in the public system. The irony here is that the example the movie uses, Finland, is actually an example of the opposite point to the one they made with it. Finland's school system involves practically zero choice. They have high expectations for their students, small class sizes, and plenty of individualized instruction geared to high-level thinking. They also pay their teachers well, recruit their best students to be teachers, and give them a whole lot of freedom in the classroom - no merit pay, nobody coming in to make sure they're teaching exactly the way they should be. And their results are stunning - over a 90% high school graduation rate. They're an excellent example of how a single public system, fully-funded, with high expectations for teachers and students and small class sizes, gives excellent results.

The studies being done in places with a little less bias than the charter-school-pushers in the U.S. are showing that students whose parents choose a charter school for them - or any other school choice, including French Immersion, for example - are likely to do well anywhere they go, not because their school is better but because their parents are engaged enough to investigate options and follow through. Stuck with a single public school (for example, in a remote location with only one school) those parents tend to get involved in the school and make it better. The deciding factor isn't choice - it's parental involvement, combined with socio-economic level and parental, especially maternal, education level.

Which is to say, the American school system is being systematically dismantled on the back of a well-spun lie.

On to the Ontario-specific stuff.

First, while we don't call it tenure, effectively, Ontario teachers have it; once you've been teaching two years in Ontario, the process to get rid of you is long and arduous and almost never happens. This has its upsides and downsides. Upside: teachers don't have to kiss principal or superintendent ass in order to keep their jobs, and they have protection from firing if a parent complains. Downside: it's incredibly hard to get rid of a bad teacher, and entirely possible to coast through the last few years of your job until retirement. I'd like to see more principals take the bull by the horns and get rid of the people who shouldn't be there, because the mechanisms to do so do exist and I'd like young, enthusiastic people to get a shot at full-time jobs. Getting rid of tenure is a bad idea, though. It's there for a lot of good reasons.

The Ministry of Education officially discourages in-school tracking at the elementary level; that is, schools rarely track all the C students into one grade two class and all the A and B students into another. The accepted wisdom is that mixed-ability classes work better, because they allow for a variety of groupings within the class. So, just because the students are all in the same class, it doesn't mean they're all working on the same work. The kids who are struggling with reading will get small-group instruction geared to their reading level, while those who are more adept will focus on different reading strategies on harder texts to improve their comprehension. As students progress, they can move through groups fluidly, because the groups should be changing all the time. The single most important feature of these classrooms is class size: it's very, very difficult to meet student needs in a diverse classroom once those class sizes start creeping up. At the moment, Ontario has a cap of 20 students per class in primary classes, but there is no cap in the junior grades and some junior teachers find themselves teaching thirty or even thirty-five grade fours - kids who, the year before, were in a class half that size. (If ETFO, the elementary teacher's union, is on the ball, this will be an election issue. If not, it will be an issue in contract negotiations next year, and if those negotiations are with a Conservative government, we'll be looking at a strike. But I digress.)

So, officially, no tracking at the class level in elementary. I know it still happens occasionally, especially in very large schools with many classes per grade, and in cases where teachers and principals are trying to make up split-grade classes. I suspect all the grade 4s in this year's 3/4 split will be fairly independent workers who can be set at a task and keep at it on their own, because the grade 3s can then get more of the teacher's attention (and this year, they need it.) But those are decisions that do not affect any future year, just class placement in one specific grade.

This changes in high school. Ontario streams starting in grade nine, into three streams. The top stream is called "academic," and basically is for the kids who are university-bound. The next is called "applied" and is supposed to be for college-bound kids, or kids who will go into a trade. In practice, it's the warehouse stream for kids who are struggling and tuning out. The remaining stream is a spec. ed. stream for those who came from special classes in elementary, I believe.

This issue is the elephant in the room of Ontario education: there's a gap the size of the Grand Canyon down the middle of grade eight and grade nine, and kids are falling in on a regular basis. It's extremely difficult to get out of one stream once you're in it, partly because you won't know the things you need to know to do the work in the next stream up, and partly because the guidance counsellors and teachers tend to take placement in a stream as a statement of ability and counsel parents and kids to maintain that established order. The high school teachers are not getting the literacy training that the elementary teachers are getting, nor the emphasis on constructivist methods, so the kids who are doing all right with support in grade eight come to grade nine to discover that absolutely everything they thought they knew about school has changed, and nobody can tell them how. The lessons are set up differently, the work expected of them is different, the level of teacher interaction or help is different, the process of improving work is different, and most of their teachers act like they should know all this because it's always been this way. We're in desperate need of high school reform to match the elementary reform we've already had under the McGuinty government. (He hasn't been perfect, but as political regimes go, he's been the best we've had since Bill Davis was education minister.)

The other big issue is standardized testing. In Ontario it's called EQAO - Education Quality and Accountability Office - and it happens in grades three, six, nine, and a literacy test in grade ten. You're right, I'm not letting Elizabeth write it. It won't tell me anything I don't know about her already or can't find out from less intrusive means, and the testing is used to hurt schools and teachers by pitting them against each other. I'll vote for any party that promises to reduce or eliminate EQAO, especially the grade three testing. This is the only spot in which the accusation of tracking fits in Ontario elementary schools: grade three EQAO results are predictive of high school graduation rates more than 90% of the time. That is, a student who does poorly (a level one or two) on EQAO in grade three has less than a 30% chance of graduating high school, while a student who does well (level three or four) has close to an 80% chance of graduating. And yet, most of the deficits in education at the grade 3 level could be remediated. There's no good reason why a kid who is reading at a grade two level in grade three can't succeed over time; she's off to a slow start but that's not statistically indicative that she can't do it, only that she needs more time. By pigeonholing them with EQAO, we're creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. They don't succeed because they know they didn't and therefore believe they can't.

To sum up, I'll say that the situation in Ontario is dramatically better than the American situation overall, though of course there are pockets in both countries where the norm doesn't hold. Ontario is near the top on the measures of school systems in North America, and holds its own against European counterparts, coming in the top ten. We've got a good public system that has improved dramatically in the last ten years. The trick now is to keep from voting in the people who want to take it down the American path.

Comments

[pvenables.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I really appreciate you taking the time to carefully consider my question and answer it so thoroughly.

Usually when I see a documentary like this I assume there's some kind of spin. This is why I like to collect a few opinions from others that I trust before drawing some conclusions.

Once again, thanks for the analysis!

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The critiques of Waiting for Superman are all over the internet, so I'm sure you can find a more in-depth one from the American POV.

[pvenables.livejournal.com]

I sure can and have been reading some of that narrative as well. There's something to be said, however, for soliciting the opinion of one such as you because I know the context from which you speak. The closeness of our situations also brings relevance to me.

I was actually a whole lot more interested in hearing your perspective on this topic than I am about the objectivity and the accuracy of the Documentary itself.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Frankly, your children and mine are both going to do just fine. The chances of them succeeding are dramatically skewed in their favour by parental education, socio-economic level, and location. Staying reasonably aware of what's going on in their schools is of course a good idea, but I'd be really surprised if any of our kids didn't at least graduate high school, and I have little doubt all four of them will do well in post-secondary. They've won the birth lottery by choosing us as parents.

My concern therefore switches to those kids who, well, didn't win the birth lottery.

[amazonvera.livejournal.com]

One of the other interesting facets of school choice systems is that in the places where it works well, like Denmark, a far higher percentage of available schools meet local scholastic goals and requirements and at risk students from low-income or disadvantaged immigrant backgrounds typically get more resources than other students, not some arbitrary uniform amount, because the system understands that there's a difference in need.

This proposed American system of school choice helping people avoid under-performing schools (if the parent is tuned in and transportation is accessible, of course) is doomed to failure. Successful kids will do little to no better and unsuccessful kids will do far worse, which is contrary to the entire purpose of a public school system. All of this aside from the fact that our school funding is tied to local housing revenues, meaning that at risk kids receive the fewest resources, which is a whole other conversation.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I have a lot less trouble with school choice in situations where the choices are not so stark. When all the available choices are decent and the move is lateral (say, a student who is particularly interested in music goes to a school with a special Arts program) it's not a bad thing. (I still don't think it's the best model available, but it's not as flat-out destructive.) But when money is being removed from the public system in order to send kids to schools that are not required to take everybody or offer the same services, while the public schools must then make less money do more things for the needier kids they have left, it's a recipe for disaster.

[tormentedartist.livejournal.com]

Basically it sucks to be poor in American. And not only that but once you ARE poor its hard to not stay that way,because of the lack of good schools in poor neighborhoods.

[curtana.livejournal.com]

It's interesting what you say about streaming in high school. In NB when I was in high school there (1994-96) there was streaming, as you describe, but with an extra level. Level 1 was basically advanced/gifted/whatever you want to call it. Level 2 was the 'average' level - many kids in these courses could and did still go to university, but it was just geared a bit lower. Level 3 was the 'not going to university' level, and then there was a spec ed stream as well (I forget if they called it Level 4, or something else). People freely switched between Level 1 and 2 for certain subjects, or from year to year - you didn't need any kind of approval as far as I recall, just your own decision that you would like something a bit easier or harder. I did Level 1 math in Gr. 10, Level 2 in Gr. 11, and Level 1 again in Gr. 12. Level 1 Chemistry in Gr. 11, Level 2 in Gr. 12 (those courses covered a lot of the same subject material, which was the only case when I felt I didn't benefit from this system...) I wasn't penalized in university admissions or by teachers for this sort of switching streams, and lots of people did it too, afaik.

Now, switching to/from Level 3 would likely have been a different matter, but even then, I seem to recall some kids who were really gifted in a particular subject doing Level 1, say, English, and Level 3 Math, or whatever. But that *would* penalize you in terms of getting into university, because Level 3 classes weren't considered admissible, and if it was a mandatory subject (like Math) you would have a hard time getting in, if not impossible without further coursework.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The whole idea of streaming is flawed from the get-go. It presumes that all the students streamed into a certain class will be able to do a certain level of work, which is demonstrably not true. Result: teachers fall prey to the thinking that says: "I taught it, it's not my problem if they didn't learn it." Second, it allows students to develop an identity based on group placement which can then work against improvement. Why would a kid want to improve out of the stream where all their friends are, especially when the kids in the higher stream are looking at them like they've crawled out of the dump? Third, of course, is mentioned above: presence in a certain stream is considered by many to be indicative of overall aptitude rather than a potential stepping-stone to the higher stream, and kids are judged based on it.

It occurs to me that probably most of the kids in NB's level 2 would have been capable of doing the level 1 work if they had enough support, since moving back and forth was so easy. In that case, why not give them the extra support and expect their very best? Having two streams seems to be a way of legitimizing lower aspirations.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

I don't think you can go without streaming at the high school level, and I'm skeptical of whether it's a good idea even at the middle school level. Kids' ability levels vary so widely that you simply cannot present the same curriculum to all students and meet all those students' needs. Streaming allows each class to include students of a less varied range of ability levels, and IMO, while some individualization will still be necessary (especially if students have to be in the same stream for every subject), the lower degree of variation in ability will most likely make it possible to present some lessons and administer some tests to the whole class. That can't be done in middle school and high school classes that include kids of all ability levels without failing to meet the needs of students in the highest and lowest ranges of ability.

Look at what happened when grade nine was destreamed under the NDP in Ontario. The material was made less difficult in order to cater to the lowest common denominator among non-special ed students. Smart kids in those classes were bored out of their minds. In my experience, that's the usual result of a non-streamed setting--the teacher presents material at a difficulty level that most of the class can grasp, which means it's too easy for the smartest half of the class and too hard for the few least able students.

I don't buy that all or almost all students are able to learn, say, calculus. If all students are streamed into a setting where calculus is taught, there are two possibilities. One is that you'll have what happened at the beginning of the transition to the new curriculum in Ontario, when there wasn't a low-end special ed stream and grade 9 applied math was harder than the previous grade 9 destreamed had been--kids drop out because they can't do the work. The other is that because many of the kids can't handle the material, the class will gradually be dumbed down until nobody gets to do calculus at all, and the smart kids who could have done it aren't prepared for university.

I do think that the recent advances in differentiated instruction are a very good thing, but it's just not plausible to me that it can be the best thing to keep kids who need completely different curricula in the same classroom.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

You don't see that it can be done because your only experience is with a system that did it poorly. It has been done and it has been done well, just not here. (And yes, destreamed grade nine was done poorly. There weren't enough supports put in place so teachers were still gearing their lessons to the middle of the class. If destreaming is to work, it has to incorporate a lot of small-group instruction and guided independent study.)

Assessment shouldn't be whole-class most of the time anyway, so making it easier to administer a test to the whole class is not of primary importance. The idea is part of a style of education that doesn't work for many students, even the ones it appears to work best for.

You've got a level of privilege here that is skewing your ability to see the possibilities and the studies for what they actually say. The studies do not support streaming; they say that high expectations paired with high support can indeed lead to a high level of success for practically all students. Why would we settle for anything less?

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

The studies I have read on charter schools are all over the place. The assessment conducted a while back in Philly showed that these schools did no better than public schools with some exceptions. The way I see it, charter schools, like all private schools get a break because they cherry pick the best students; the ones with engaged families and so on.

Teacher Unions can be problematic, but the real problem based on experiences in my family(we have a lot of educators in the family) is district and school administrations. There are a lot of politically placed people in both types of positions and they're often more interested in protecting their privileges than in serving students.

Meanwhile, the overarching issue in US education is commitment and inequality. We do not make the commitment to funding our schools that we should and we tend to fund schools with local property taxes. The result is huge inequality in schools. Also, US culture really downplays the virtue of education. So much so that teaching is dismissed a profession.

[ruggerdavey.livejournal.com]

The way I see it, charter schools, like all private schools get a break because they cherry pick the best students; the ones with engaged families and so on.

Exactly. And you can't even trust it when schools have the data to back up that they accept special ed, English-Language Learners, kids from all backgrounds and all abilities. I was speaking to a teacher in NYC this summer who shares his school building with 2 charter schools. As he said, yeah, the charter schools start out with kids from across the spectrum, but where do you think the SPED, ELL, troubled kids, etc. end up by the end of October? Back in his public school, left to look on at all the technology and special trips, etc. the charter school kids get and wonder what's so wrong with them that they don't get any of those things.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

Not every university prof has tenure in the US university system. Do they in the Ontario university system?

(That's one of the issues that confounds me about primary and secondary education in the US. In MD, teachers in primary and secondary get tenure after 2 or 3 years of teaching, period. Univ profs *might* get a tenure track position, and then possibly be granted tenure after 6 years of work, which occurs after their 6+ years of PhD work which is on top of the 4 year undergrad degree. Primary and secondary teachers only need the undergrad degree.)

[pvenables.livejournal.com]

This is a point made in the Documentary, namely, that tenure was created as means to protect academics from reprisals from their administration simply because their research might prove to be controversial or difficult for the public to accept. The process to achieve tenure in both the US and Canada is long and difficult while in the US public school system (according to the doc) "you have to maintain a pulse for two years" and you get it.

So I agree with velvetpage that teachers need protection-- not sure that it should be automatically granted. It should be possible to turf a clearly bad educator while at the same time not be a method for pernicious parents to persecute teachers they have a beef with.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The thing is, it IS possible to turf a bad teacher in Ontario. The union will go to bat for its members and make sure they have due process, which includes several observations, an improvement plan, and evidence of a lack of success even with the improvement plan. The problem is that very few principals are willing to go through the process, knowing they'll earn the emnity of a lot of people in the process. So they take the easy route - either they warehouse the person in a job where they can't do much damage, or they keep moving them around to different schools or positions they know don't suit the individual in the hope that that person will quit.

It's not the teachers' fault that the administrators are unwilling to go through the entire process to get rid of someone who shouldn't be there. Having been on the receiving end of a principal's attempt to make me quit, I'm reluctant to advocate for loosening the rules.

Reposted because I forgot to login.

[ruggerdavey.livejournal.com]

It's not the teachers' fault that the administrators are unwilling to go through the entire process to get rid of someone who shouldn't be there.

The unions have made it possible to get rid of ineffective teachers, but administrators don't want to do the work to do so.

[amazonvera.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I think I'd have to do a lot more than maintain a pulse to keep a demanding job for 2-3 years.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[pvenables.livejournal.com]

They weren't my words. I agree, it's a hard job.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

No, the university system here works very similarly to yours. But the jobs are completely different, and I'm not sure I see the value in comparing them.

I think calling it tenure is misleading; it's more about job security than tenure. It doesn't protect people from layoffs, but it does protect them from arbitrary firing. It also only applies to full-time teachers; if you're on a short-term contract you're not guaranteed anything at all. Mind you, how the board goes about deciding if a position is a full-time position or a contract of a specific duration is also subject to union regulations, which is as it should be.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

I think calling it tenure is misleading too, and part of the problem.

I fully admit to being a consistency hobgoblin, and that someone with 4 years of undergrad + 2 years of teaching automatically gets the same setup (especially when we accept that teachers need more than 2 years of teaching to come into their own, and those first 2 years should certainly be under the guidance of a mentor or some other support system) equivalent to that of some university profs after significantly more work (and theoretically a better understanding of how they'll do once they've settled into the job) really tweaks that aspect of me.

But, no one's willing to change anything. Everyone's afraid to give a single solitary inch, in part because all sides feel like they've already given everything they possibly can.

I feel fortunate to be able to send my daughter to the school she attends. And I am well aware that many of my tuition costs are going to support the building, etc. Which, admittedly, is lovely. But she's not there for the lovely grounds. She's there for the education. And there's no reason that a very similar education couldn't be provided to the children attending our local neighborhood school. (The public schools don't even offer foreign language until middle school, not even as an optional before or after school program. And when I asked about parents volunteering to handle such programs, *blank stare* and stammer.) It's disheartening. On the one hand we're told they need and want parental involvement. On the other hand, they appear to think "involvement" means "come in at report card time."

[amazonvera.livejournal.com]

I'm a contract educator, ineligible for anything like tenure. This means that when a disgruntled parent makes a big enough stink about anything I do (like, say, having their child who is 4 inches taller than any other child in their class stand in the second row rather than the first), I pretty much have to give in, even though it means multiple other children will now not be visible. If an administrator who has absolutely no training or education in my subject matter wants me to change what I'm doing, I have to change it, even if I know they're wrong and it's a detriment to my curriculum and my students. If a faculty teacher goes over my head to implement a disciplinary policy in my class that hinders my ability to teach and my students' ability to learn, I have to accept it and roll with it.

Why? Because if I don't, I lose my job. So I rarely get to teach in a way that is best for my students and their education, and that alone, along with all the disrespect and undermining without recourse, is enough to have me throwing in the towel this year. So they can replace me with a less qualified, less experienced teacher who will spend half the year just learning how to properly implement the curriculum and balance it properly with classroom management who will probably quit after their first year. Wash, rinse, repeat, and it's the kids paying the price.

I'm not saying I should have tenure (I don't have the proper graduate qualifications to qualify in the U.S., for a start), and tenure doesn't actually protect anyone who is really fucking up their job unless they work for someone who just doesn't want to be bothered dealing with them, which is the case in workplaces without tenure the world over. If I had tenure, it wouldn't even stop the above things from happening. It would just mean that I wouldn't have to give in to the detriment of my students and the educational success of my classes (something that I'm sure we all agree is extraordinarily important) or be part of a rotating door of high turnover, which is a huge problem in any workplace, because I'd have some protection. People couldn't let me go over a difference of opinion or to cover their ass with a parent over some stupid, piddly issue.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

All of this.

There are things to protect that aren't about controversial research. Seniority via a union, or a good HR department with clear boundaries, or tenure - call it what you like, but it protects people's ability to do their jobs effectively.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

There's another bit of my confusion - and it's likely related to ignorance, so I'll put it out there.

Private school teachers don't get tenure, that I know of. And I generally hear that private school teachers make less than public school teachers. (The numbers for private school teachers aren't made public that I can find, so I don't know for sure.) Yet, the private schools in my area don't seem to have huge turnover of teachers. It has to come down to more than filtering who is allowed in as a student, doesn't it?