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

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

I'm torn between thinking that every kid should have the opportunity to achieve highly if they're capable of it, and being unconvinced that most neurotypical/non-LD kids are similar enough in ability for putting them all in the same class, with similar enough curricula that they can easily move between the available options, to work.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

But I've done it. I can point you to half a dozen studies of high schools that do it consistently. Whole countries achieve it.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

Do you have time to link me to studies and evidence? I just, given what I've seen, have a really hard time imagining how this could be possible above the elementary school level.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I already have, several times, in other posts. You disbelieved them then, too.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

I'll go through the tags and try to find them then.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

I've read every post and all the comments in your journal with the "educational philosophy" tag, and I can't find any links to studies or evidence showing that a non-streamed approach works. Is there another tag that has the information?

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Most of the studies I read weren't available on the internet, but I'm certain I've linked to a couple of Amazon links to studies of that type. I'm exhausted and not feeling very well, so I won't be looking it up tonight; check under the math education tags instead since the studies in question came specifically from my math AQ courses.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'll try that. I'm sorry you're exhausted and not feeling well! I'm kind of tired of intense debating too, and I hope you don't think too much less of me after this discussion.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

Just saw your new post. I don't really feel like keeping this up either--can we call a truce for the night?

[amazonvera.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why it would be hard to believe that enough children between five and ten fall along a relative developmental median to allow for them to be educated together as long as there's a sufficient adult-to-child ratio to give support to the outliers.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Or even five to fifteen. I certainly never suggested that every single person should go to university - only that the reason they don't go shouldn't be because the schools failed to prepare them as far as they could have.

[amazonvera.livejournal.com]

Sure, I was just responding to the comment about elementary. And you know, I think a lot of the differentiation at older ages has to do with their scholastic experience K-5. I can't tell you how many times I've been part of an "intervention" program with an under-achieving student only to have it become clear that I'm about seven years late.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

That happens all the time. If I can catch them in grade two or three and correct some of their number-sense issues then, they've got a much firmer base to learn everything that's going to come after it. But if they get past grade three without understanding such basic concepts as ordered pairs to ten and twenty, it's much, much harder to bring them up to speed later.

I think a huge part of the math deficit in North American education comes about because don't go all-out to bring kids up to speed on those basic concepts in primary, so the problems just get worse in junior and intermediate until you have a high school student who not only lacks the background knowledge for the course, they lack the background knowledge right back to grade two and furthermore, are convinced they're dumb because of it.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

I'm more skeptical about older kids being sufficiently similar developmentally to each other to be educated similarly than about kids between five and ten. I'm skeptical because when I was in school I saw absolutely enormous differences in ability levels among the students, such that there appeared to be no possibility of educating them all appropriately with the same basic curriculum. However, I think it's possible that I'm thinking primarily of kids who are far enough above or below the mean that they belong in special ed.

[amazonvera.livejournal.com]

Where do you think those "enormous" ability level gaps, such as they may or may not have been and to what degree they were or weren't related to special needs students, originated? And don't you think that even if such a gap existed and existed inherently, it wouldn't be to a great deal mitigated by the increased independence of students and student work?

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

I think they are due to a combination of biologically based differences in ability with social environments that foster higher or lower levels of educational attainment. I do think that the gap would be mitigated by increased independence of students and student work, but I also think that students do need some explicit instruction from teachers to learn well. The more different curricula coexist within one classroom, the less time the teacher can devote to teaching each one.

I just...I'm sorry, but I can't believe that differences in ability don't exist. I would have to deny the reality of a huge amount of my life experience to accept that. I KNOW that I did not try markedly harder than other kids to read, write, and do math at an early age, and I did not try less hard than other kids to do well socially or to do well at physical activities. Yet, somehow, I was 5+ years ahead of my peers in reading and writing and 5+ years behind in phys ed. Differences in effort were obviously not responsible for this. Differences in environment were not primarily responsible for this, because I was way out of step developmentally even with other kids who were raised in similar homes. Some people's brains just work differently from others and give them different sets of abilities.

[amazonvera.livejournal.com]

So you believe that there's an enormous intellectual ability gap among non-special needs minors that's a combination of biology and social environments? Do you have any evidence to back that up? Do you think, if said enormous gap exists, that it's unrelated to early education tracking and the effect it has on a low-tracked student's scholastic development?

Sorry, I wasn't saying that the gap would be mitigated by independent work but that any increased difficulties in single tracking teen students would.

I don't think anyone is saying that differences in ability don't exist. But to use your example, how many of your peers were also 5+ years ahead of reading level? How many do you think were 5+ years behind?intellectually divergent.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

I'd delete "non-special needs" from that. My giftedness/ADHD/Asperger's combination was pretty far into special needs territory. I'd have to go back through my psych textbooks to find evidence--I'll see if I have the energy for that tomorrow--but I thought that the combined influence of heredity and environmental factors on intelligence levels was rather noncontroversial.

Most of my classmates in gifted classes were at least a few years ahead of grade level in reading, far enough that the regular curriculum would not have met their needs. Writing skill levels varied widely, from grade level up through 5-8 years ahead.

[amazonvera.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I see that you've been using special education, not special needs. I'll amend the question, but it still stands.

Again, I don't see anyone arguing that inherent skill and ability gaps exist. The fact that they are both large and prevalent is the assertion being questioned. And evidence for it, of course, would have to control for the type of educational disservice we're discussing, particularly in early education.

I tested as about 10 years above grade level for reading in elementary school within a district that did not offer gifted programs, and the regular curriculum was adjusted to meet my needs consistently throughout elementary school. I'd have to challenge your assertion that you and your gifted classmates couldn't have had your needs met.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

You're also basing your understanding on a system that did not support those students in earlier years enough for them to develop an abstract understanding of the math they were doing. If procedural understanding was accepted as evidence, it was quite possible the kids didn't really understand even when they passed. That didn't have to be that way, and what you were seeing was the end result of years of educational neglect, much of it premised on the very idea you're clinging to: that these kids simply couldn't do it. We don't know if they could have done it, because they weren't given the chance and the support necessary to take advantage of that chance, at any stage of their education.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

I'm not primarily talking about math. The same thing holds true across multiple subject areas: by sixth or seventh grade, I was observing extreme differences in academic achievement among students, to the point where it appeared that a non-streamed environment couldn't adequately educate them all together, and the existing non-streamed environment certainly wasn't succeeding at doing so. (To be fair, "all together" included both gifted and low-end special ed students, since everyone was integrated for non-"core" subjects, which unfortunately included French and science.)

[amazonvera.livejournal.com]

Do you think that achievement gaps based on poor scholastic experiences only occur in mathematical subjects? Because that hasn't been my experience. In pretty much every case I've seen, once a kid receives the message that they're stupid, it's all downhill from there in pretty much every regard. It often happens before they finish fourth grade.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

No, I absolutely think they happen in every subject. To be a little clearer, I was including educational experiences under environmental influences on ability. I very much agree with you and Erin that achievement gaps based on poor scholastic experience are very common--I just don't think that eliminating them would make all students' achievement levels similar enough to give them all the same basic curriculum in the same classroom.

However, Erin's indicated in her new post that she really doesn't feel like continuing the discussion tonight, and I'm kind of tired of it too. Truce?

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The same argument applies whether in math or other subjects. I used math as an example because it's the subject in which I read most of the studies on which I'm basing my position.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

Upon further reflection today, I could maybe see this working for kids from five to fifteen if kids at the extreme upper and lower ends of the distribution were excluded and if all kids were given high support from an early age. I don't think you could just put ninth and tenth graders with what are currently typical rates of educational neglect into non-streamed classes and have it work, but I'm prepared to concede that it might be possible if educational neglect were eliminated and really exceptional kids were excluded.