Issue #7 Honesty in Education

Problems: 

Too many policies, goals, bad news, and announcements are “managed,” the message goes through “branding and handling” and the public has to decipher the jargon. These are the techniques used in large corporations and politics, but they shouldn’t dominate education. It is hard enough to read between the lines in government documents, we shouldn’t have to decipher reports from the board office or guess at what is meant by "21st Century Learning."  This buzzphrase in particular has come mean everything from privatization of education, to replacing teachers with commercial distance education services, to project-based learning, to increasing computer skills. Educators must explain what they mean, and not just repeat the phrase.


Schools should be about mistakes and successes, experimentation, and ongoing development. If things aren’t going well (like finances, a program that isn’t working, a school that is empty, or a policy that is counterproductive), we (the board office, trustees, schools, teachers) need to be brave enough to confront the problem head-on and not spin the news to make it look positive. One example is the FAQs that parents received during the 2010 closure process. It seemed that easy, obvious questions were answered in a calming manner, and the tough questions were left off the list. We need to change the culture at the board office so that all partners in education are encouraged to speak plainly and openly about problems and plans. When jargon or buzzwords are used to suggest that something has changed, it can take away from the real effort staff and students put in to make a difference. The school district has entertained so many philosophies as the right way to “go forward” but does not always stop to ask if they are compatible. Professional Learning Communities (PLC), Assessment for Learning (AFL), 21st Century Learning (21C), and Personalized Learning are only a few of the concepts that are in use. Each one may have something positive to offer, but it is too easy to simply repeat the words even if the ideas themselves are not well understood or used in schools. Public education, of all places, should set the bar higher for language and communication.

Solutions:

Co-opt the support of critics and supporters alike in reviewing school district publications. Look for jargon, cliches, innuendo, and “weasel-words” (like they do on Wikipedia) and try to replace them with real data, qualitative data, or genuine language. Enlist the support of the district’s best writers and analysts to critique and edit reports and polish up documents.

Look for ways to use the school district website and other forms of communication to provide interaction with the public and employees. In 2010 the Kamloops School District used their website to post ongoing feedback on their reconfiguration (cutbacks) report, a searchable, organized collection of public input. The result was that the trustees and district staff were able to see where changes to the plan were needed and they could readjust (with wide-spread satisfaction) before heading into a “do or die” meeting. It is important to note that this was not done to please the crowds, it achieved the same financial goals while providing a more convincing case that student learning was protected.

Issue #3 Communication

Problems

Trustee Communication: Our trustees typically gather information from the public and respond at a later date. This is true of board meetings, and also of the entire Sustainability process in 2010. Individual trustees are often great listeners, and get things done for parents and schools, but their input and consultation procedures make this harder.

Website Communication: The district website has lots of information, and has improved since 2010, but is also confusing to navigate and does little to celebrate student success.  Many links are dead ends, catchment maps have not worked for two years, and the design does not have the professional appearance that might be expected of a district with a $125 million budget. Many of the school sites have the same issues. Teachers report that the site controls are too difficult to use and as a result are no longer involved in website contributions. Our biggest high school (PGSS) has given up on the district-provided website system and has their own dynamic website embedded within the dysfunctional one.

Parents Communication: parents get conflicting information when they ask for reasons behind decisions and data about their schools. In 2010, parents were shown three conflicting lists of school capacities and projections, and were made to wait for freedom-of-information requests for information that should be publicly available.

Solutions

As a parent recently requested at a board meeting, the trustees should be willing to respond to questions and presentations from the public, either immediately after the input, or publicly (if appropriate) on the district website. Parents and others who give input are rarely offering private concerns, they are bravely representing the concerns of many, and those many wish to hear what the school board has to say, even if it is bad news. Some kind of regular interaction and input on plans is needed, not just “thanks, we’ll get back to you later.” Revising the official consultation process is a tall order but must be addressed if improvements are desired.


I'm not the only trustee candidate to suggest this (Don Sabo has clear ideas about this), but I think as many trustee meetings as possible should be public.  Keep personnel matters private, but almost everything else can be dealt with out in the open as a public institution. This should also extend to the so-called "senior learning team" that has set out some excellent topics for their consideration. See p. 5 of the District Plan for Student Success. There work will be so much more powerful if their discussions, at the developmental stage, are not confined to the board office but are open to others. They can't succeed if the people who have to live with their plans (like parents and teachers) have been excluded from the planning process. More about this in Issue #8.

Add interactive functions to the school district website, fix the dead ends, and remove content that is.  It has come along way, but we can learn from other districts that have attractive, functional, dynamic websites like Kamloops-Thompson, Gulf Islands, Columbia-Kootenay, etc. The access to reports, plans, organizational charts, info for parents and educators, etc. on these sites is excellent. Let teachers and students have access to websites again, so that school websites can easily reflect the character and spirit of each school.

The board office, as part of its planning cycle and ongoing attention to sustainability, should publish a yearly synopsis of school data, accomplishments, issues that were dealt with by the board, issues on the horizon (financial, educational, community issues). We should partner with the DPAC on this, as they have already filled the gap in recent years with the excellent resources and data on their website.

Issue #2 Improving Say for Parents

Problems:

The government, as part of its 21st Learning Agenda, wants more distance education courses pushed on secondary students. While the plans are still fuzzy, the only detailed report published by the government on the topic up until last week shows a gradual shift from near-total class-based learning in Kindergarten up to near-total self-directed or blended learning by Grade 12, which relies on distance/distributed learning. There is now a new government report, but the Agenda is still vague and open to interpretation. Having a choice is great, but forcing the choice by restricting access to real school with real teachers is not productive and should alarm parents. While there are some interesting distributed learning models in our province at the secondary and post-secondary levels, our local distance education system is not up to the task of delivering the same quality of education as our “brick-and-mortar” schools. The distance education school has the lowest pass rate in our district and is designed to provide education at the edges: rural students, homebound, remedial, accelerated coursework. Students may be born learners, curious and creative, but very few possess the self-motivation and independent learning skills to succeed outside of an environment that has an active teacher, mentor, or parent. The government has made many statements about learning outside regular schools - looks great on paper but parents and teachers are worried that this is designed to reduce the number of schools and privatize educational services. The internet is wonderful, but is not a replacement for a committed teacher.

Solutions: 

Give parents a choice about distance learning, do not force the choice by removing options. As a trustee, I will pursue policy that states this.

Pilot “blended learning” programs at many schools, not just the distance education school.  This combines classroom based instruction with some independent, accountable community-based or online learning.  This has good potential for our small and rural schools, but should be an option at every high school. Give parents simple and effective tools for seeing how well these models work.

Listen to parents: use PACs and School Planning Councils to gather input on plans and programs as they are being designed instead of simply approving them after they have been made. Develop more face-to-face and digital opportunities for parents to be involved in the evolution of the school system.

Listen to educators: local professor Andrew Kitchenham has just published two guides to blended learning. A district-sponsored teacher focus group (“Quality Learning Globally”) met for a year and in 2004 reported a series of recommendations on how distributed learning could best be used in the district.  Engage these professionals and follow up or respond to their recommendations, which were ignored at the time.

Other trustee candidates, such as Don Sabo, have suggested that the board use less in-camera meetings and privatge commitee meetings to conduct business.  I think this is a great idea - public institution, should be public processes. Obviously certain personnel matters can be kept in-camera, and the trustees do need some time to talk with each other and the district adminsitration when they aren't performing for the public, but more public meetings would allow more transparency and access for parents.