Public education reform, in Canada as in the U.S., is focused on improving student learning through systematic testing, data analysis, and system-wide initiatives. How do we zero in on individual school improvement and fundamentals such as curriculum quality and teaching? Time is running out to close the gaps between the educated and undereducated in our society. As the labour force shrinks and global competition escalates, we ignore public education at our peril.

 

The educational world is a strange place with its own tribal conventions, familiar rituals, ingrained behaviours, and unique lexicon. Within the system, educational reform evolves in waves where quick fixes and fads are fashionable and yesterday’s failed innovations can return, often recycled in new guises. Since the early 1990s, Canadian education has rediscovered “student learning,” and leading educators have reluctantly embraced standardized testing in the drive to improve literacy and numeracy, fundamentals deemed essential for success in the knowledge economy.

 

Student testing and accountability for results are here to stay, and for good reason. Only eight years ago, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) began producing and publishing a system of high school rankings that initially provoked howls of outrage among school board officials. Today in Atlantic Canada, education departments and school boards have accepted the need for provincial testing regimes to assess Primary to Grade 12 student performance, certainly in English literacy and mathematics. Prodded and cajoled by the annual appearance of AIMS’s Report Cards, the HRSB and the New Brunswick education department have even begun to release and post their own student test results in individual school-accountability reports.

 

Yet entering 2010, new and profoundly important questions are being raised: What have we gained through reform initiatives? Where is the dramatic improvement in student learning? And observing the painful lessons of U.S. education reform—if, via test results, schools are repeatedly identified as “lowest performing” and they fail to respond, what next? Should we in Canada begin looking at more radical measures such as “turnaround school” strategies or “fresh start” initiatives? Or is it time to return to fundamentals: good curriculum, quality teaching, clear student expectations, and more public accountability?

 

The official line: “It takes time”

Carole Olsen is remarkably frank about the challenges in improving student learning. As superintendent of the Halifax Regional School Board (HRSB) since 2002, she has spearheaded an ambitious improvement initiative with single-minded determination. In introducing her annual report last November, she conceded that pledging significant improvement by 2013 was “a daunting task.” Producing and releasing performance reports for all 137 Halifax region schools had been accomplished, but Olsen was modest in her claims. “You will see improvement over time,” she told the board members. “We still have a lot of work to do.”

 

Stephen Lund, the CEO of Nova Scotia Business Inc. (NSBI), was remarkably candid in his recent appraisal of the system. Last November he told the Truro Chamber of Commerce that too many schools were falling short, musing that on a recent public high school visit he encountered students who showed little ambition to go on to post-secondary education. His main point was that Nova Scotia’s rate of adult functional illiteracy remained high, at 38%, and that it was hurting the province, making it a challenge to find and retain productive employees. Yet it was his comments about public school students that, rather predictably, provoked a minor furore, unfortunately detracting from his key message.

 

Lund also learned a powerful lesson about the educational establishment. Few of its leaders have the capacity to practice what former McGill University president Bernard Shapiro recently termed “interesting mistake-making,” or the capacity to openly acknowledge failures as well as successes. Candour and frankness are not appreciated when the words hit a raw nerve.

 

Incrementalism and its limits

Probing beneath public education boosterism, the actual performance of students in the Atlantic provinces still falls considerably short on existing measurable standards. In Nova Scotia’s annual accountability report for 2008–09, promised results from Learning for Life II (2005–09) have not materialized. After four years, only 312 of the 432 schools (72%) had entered the much ballyhooed School Accreditation Program, and only 16 could claim to have been fully accredited. While Grade 3 language arts testing showed modest improvement in literacy, in Grade 6 progress had stalled. In 2008–09 junior high students also fell short of the identified 2% target for improvement, with 2% fewer than the year before meeting provincial expectations.

 

In New Brunswick the education department has over time developed a patchwork of learning assessments from Grades 2 to 10, far more extensive than those in Nova Scotia outside the Halifax region. In every year except Grade 3, New Brunswick students are tested and schools are engaged in developing goals for their own improvement plans. In late 2009, the education department began to rethink its heavy emphasis on standardized tests. “We’re moving in the direction of assessment for learning,” says Jeannine St. Amand, the chair of the District 18 Education Council in Fredericton. “While we still favour testing, how much is too much is being discussed right now. We’re striving for a more balanced approach of formative and summative assessment, with not too much in any one year.”

 

Educational trends in Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador mirror developments elsewhere. After introducing its first set of provincial assessments in 2006–07, P.E.I. is now engaged in more student testing in Grades 3, 6, and 9 and is sending test results home to parents. In Newfoundland and Labrador, improved student results on the 2006 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) international PISA tests provided further impetus for wider public disclosure of student-performance results.

 

Glimmers of hope

Whatever the challenges and setbacks, hope springs eternal for the latest school-improvement initiatives among most leading educators. Early learning has begun to emerge as a new policy focus. In New Brunswick, the Early Years Evaluation program, developed in partnership with Douglas Willms and the UNB Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRISP), holds considerable promise. After an initial pilot year, it was introduced in 2009–10 across the province, offering pre-K testing for four-year-olds to assess their “readiness to learn” and individual needs. In P.E.I., the education department has recently transferred kindergarten to the public school system and is now focusing on improving its Early Childhood Development program.

 

At the other end of the continuum, Nova Scotia’s bold and potentially risky venture into the Grades 11 and 12 International Baccalaureate (IB) graduation diploma program seems to be bearing some fruit. Introduced in September of 2005, with a pre-IB Grade 10 year at 12 different high schools, the two-year formal IB program with its standardized external exams cost almost $1 million; it has now produced its first crop of full diploma graduates.

 

“The Halifax Grammar School remains the gold standard because of its consistent record every year, with 96% to 98% of its students gaining the full diploma,” says John Messenger, the head of Nova Scotia’s International Baccalaureate Programs. Having conceded this, Messenger reports that the education department is “quite pleased” with the first year of IB results. While only 312 students from 12 schools achieved the full diploma, Messenger was encouraged by the fact that 82% achieved the full diploma, 3% higher than the world average.

 

“We performed weakest in higher level [HL] mathematics, HL chemistry, and theory of knowledge,” Messenger adds.

 

“But most other subjects were outstanding. Students in English SL, music, economics HL, and geography SL all achieved 100% pass rates, with history right behind at 98%, all well above the international pass rates.”

 

HRSB’s newest school-improvement initiative provided the most dramatic advance in terms of promoting student learning and accountability for results. Driven by superintendent Olsen, starting in 2008–09 the HRSB instituted a new set of assessments in Grades 2 and 5, in both mathematics and literacy, and on top of the department’s Grade 3 and 6 provincial assessments. School-by-school performance reports released in 137 schools in October of 2009 were well received by most parents but revealed startling variations in academic standards from one school to another.

 

A detailed analysis of student results at 18 schools, representing a cross-section of Halifax Regional Municipality, confirms that public schools in the South End of Halifax lead the pack in literacy and mathematics, while those in lower-income areas lag in acceptable standards. Higher high school graduation rates don’t necessarily correlate with student-performance levels; rather, they tend to reflect the proportion of students choosing the “easy route,” opting for lower level math and English courses. 

 

Current challenge: Getting it right

The past decade has produced its share of educational panaceas in Nova Scotia and throughout the region. Yet school system leaders such as Carole Olsen respond cautiously when asked what has actually been accomplished. “The bar has been raised in the HRSB,” she says,” but we haven’t made as much progress in closing the gap over the past five years.” While the top officials are concerned about high rates of functional illiteracy among adults, they’re also conscious of the limits of the board’s influence. “We have to break down the silos separating education, business, and social services,” says Geoff Cainen, the HRSB’s program director. “We need to get the different sectors working together.” 

 

With virtually everyone inside the somewhat insular education world focused on the present, it’s next to impossible to find anyone assessing the raging U.S. school-reform debates or focusing on the future. Raising the possibility that Atlantic Canada might see the advent of a “Sunshine on Schools” initiative modelled after the Ontario Society for Quality Education assessment system for parents only elicits blank stares.

 

Gazing into the future

Compared to the U.S., Atlantic Canada is a sea of relative tranquility with the odd cove of rippling waters. National concern about the state of education still runs high, judging from recent Nanos public-opinion polls from September of 2009, placing the issue (at 7%) third in importance and ahead of the environment, and even higher among the 18-to-34 age group. Yet education in Canada is the preserve of the provinces, and that may explain why, as a public issue, it lurks in the shadows.

 

What lies ahead? Business leaders such as Douglas Hall, the chair of NSBI, have become sceptical about system-wide initiatives and large-scale co-ordinated projects. “The greatest challenge is closing the gap between the educated population and the mass of children and adults who are undereducated,” says Hall. “While much of the focus is on attracting immigrants, what we really need is more literate productive people.”

 

For those brave enough to look beyond the next hill, it’s likely that provincial school rankings, more school choices, and greater competition will be gradually introduced into the publicly funded system. With the U.S. Democratic administration of Barack Obama now focusing on improving the quality of teaching, expect increasing pressure to base teacher salaries on merit, likely measured by student-performance results. Ask any seasoned and perhaps slightly jaded educator and he or she will say, with some resignation, “Look to Ontario if you want to anticipate the next wave.” If that’s the case, watch for significant early childhood education initiatives and more public accountability, not less, in the years ahead.

 

When it comes to turning around public education, there are no easy answers. Yet the raging “school wars” in the U.S. do provide a few vital lessons. One of America’s best-known education experts, Diane Ravitch, has recently pointed a way forward in her newly released bestseller, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Breaking from her past position, she now says that quick fixes such as testing and charter schools won’t necessarily lead to higher standards, more engaged young people, or even better schools. Amid the public clamour over the latest wave of U.S. reform initiatives (see box, opposite), she warns not to lose sight of what is truly fundamental: a good knowledge-rich curriculum; motivated quality teachers; informed and engaged students; and school conditions that make learning possible. Under these circumstances, everyone prospers.