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The Must Read on BC Schools You Won’t Like
UVic historian of education paints a bleak political picture, and blames all sides.
By Crawford Kilian, 3 Jan 2012, TheTyee.ca
Title: Worlds Apart: British Columbia Schools, Politics, and Labour Relations Before and After 1972
Author: Thomas Fleming
Published by Bendall Books (2011)
Just about everyone with an interest in B.C. schools will have to read this book — parents, teachers, trustees, administrators, politicians, the media. None of them are going to like it.
That’s because Thomas Fleming, a professor emeritus at UVic, has studied our schools for many years; he knows the system we set up back in 1849. He knows how it’s changed, not always for the better. With energetic impartiality, he finds fault with teachers, trustees, civil servants, and politicians, especially since the first NDP government took power 40 years ago.
From his earlier books and articles, I was familiar with his thesis: B.C. education had been effectively nonpolitical from 1872 until 1972. A handful of dedicated ministry officials had run the schools in an “imperial” style from Victoria, while sending equally dedicated inspectors out to make sure the system was running well. Those inspectors were often veterans of rural and urban schools who had risen through the ranks.
Vancouver Board of Education Launches Website
The Vancouver board of education commenced a review of its schools and services Thursday with the launch of a new website intended to be a one-stop shop of information for parents, students, staff and community members.
The website, called Your Schools, Your Community, Our Future (http://ourfuture.vsb.bc.ca), marks the start of an extensive review and public consultation process to determine what programs and opportunities Vancouver students need now and into the future, deputy superintendent Jordan Tinney said in a release. The review will also include public hearings at a later date.
The website will provide an array of information about alternative and special-needs programs, enrolments, seismic and heritage rankings, staffing numbers and student catchment charts, the release says.
The board approved the sectoral review after voting in late 2010 not to close five small east-side schools that had been targeted due to low enrolments. At that time, the board instructed staff to prepare a report outlining the educational opportunities available in the district.
“The question of whether the [district] has the necessary facilities and resources to support its programs in all areas of the district will be a key consideration when the final report is presented to the board in March 2012,” the release says.
Despite declining enrolments, Vancouver has closed only one school: a small annex in 2003. Vision Vancouver and COPE trustees, who form a majority on the board, have said they do not intend to close any schools.
Story by: Janet Steffenhagen, Vancouver Sun
The challenges of success: dramatic growth of open access early year-end edition
Universal access to all knowledge will be one of humanity’s greatest achievements. We are already well on the way! from Stewart Brand’s: Brewster Kahle’s 30 November Long Now Talk For fun and inspiration, check out the Internet Archive for the more than 3 million books (adding 1,000 titles per day), 100,000 concerts and 1 million recordings (3 new bands uploading / day), 600,000 movies, and of course the web itself. Thanks, Internet Archive and Brewster Kahle – and wow!
2011 has been another outstanding year for the growth of open access to scholarly resources. Highlights this quarter include the remarkable growth of the Directory of Open Access Journals, with an increase of more than 600 titles this quarter alone so far, for a growth rate of 9 titles per day. On November 26, RePEC reached a major milestone. There are now One million works available online through RePEC (Nov. 26, 2011). According to the Sherpa services blog,
60% of journals allow immediate self-archiving of post peer-reviewed articles
and the Open Access Directory just sailed past our 2 millionth view of the OAD.
From my perspective, open access has entered a new phase, one in which we are beginning to see the challenges of success. How can we track all these resources and make it easy for people to find and use them? The emerging open access marketplace for commercial scholarly publishers appears to have attracted what Beall calls predatory open access publishers as I have commented on here. As we begin to address these challenges, it is also timely to begin other overdue discussions, such as Dissension in the Open Access Ranks on CC Licenses.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Group kids by ability not age at school, public says: Government petitions ideas to remodel education system
B.C. schools should group students by ability rather than age, promote personalized learning but not at the expense of basic skills, eliminate standardized tests and provide more frequent reports to parents about student progress.
Those are among the ideas submitted to the Education Ministry after it made a public appeal for suggestions about how to remodel schools for the 21st century. The ministry is continuing to seek comment in what it has described as its “first grand experiment in citizen engagement.”
The “experiment” began in late October when Education Minister George Abbott announced a government plan for education renewal that would include an emphasis on personalized learning, critical thinking and quality teaching. But before developing policy, he said he wanted to hear recommendations from educators, parents, students and others.
To encourage discussions, the ministry posted several questions on a newly created website and invited members of the public to make submissions on what they think needs to change for students and how schools, teachers and parents can help make that change happen.
By Janet Steffenhagen, Vancouver Sun
December 29, 2011
jsteffenhagen@vancouversun.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
What Would You Like to Change About B.C. Education?
The B.C. government wants to hear your views about what needs to change in public schools to better prepare students for the 21st century.
It has created a website at bcedplan.ca and has been posting questions. You can join the conversation here. A few days ago, the moderators posted a summary of what they had heard thus far. The recommendations included calls for schools to group students by ability rather than age and an end to standardized tests. Read that summary here and my story here.
My story prompted a Twitter discussion about the value of public consultation in education. While many of the questions posed by the ministry are easily answered, some are not. For example, how much weight should government give to recommendations for ability groupings in schools when there is undoubtedly research showing whether such a change is beneficial for students? Some tweets also raised questions about the number of people participating in the public consultation, given that the ministry has received only 1,000 comments in a province with 4 million people.
Now is your chance to get involved. Here is how the ministry website describes its “first grand experiment in citizen engagement” on the website:
We recognize that part of moving toward 21st century learning is being more flexible with how, when and where learning takes place. This means having greater flexibility in when and how a school operates; ensuring students have learning opportunities outside of the traditional classroom environment and beyond textbooks, pens and paper; ensuring teachers and boards of education have more flexibility in how to deliver classes; providing students with more choice in what, how and where they learn; acknowledging that learning takes place in a variety of places; and so much more. That’s what we want to explore here.
by Janet Steffenhagen, The Vancouver Sun
December 31, 2011. 2:13 pm