Learning needs jumpstart
Good relations between partner groups improve student outcomes.

School Watch by Katherine Wagner
Originally published in The Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows Times, November 07, 2008

Student achievement across B.C. has stalled.

Provincial graduation rates have flat-lined since 2002. Across B.C., 20 per cent of students (one in five) still don't graduate within six years of starting Grade 8.

Since 2004, on average only 76 per cent of Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows public school students (three out of every four)entering Grade 8 complete high school within six years.

These numbers may have been "good enough" for the last century, but today's reality is a global society built on knowledge, information and technology.

This month, school trustee candidates across B.C. are talking about their ideas for improving student outcomes. Next spring, provincial MLA candidates will be challenged on the same issue.

Candidates for both levels of government will wax eloquently about pursuing and securing more taxpayer dollars for schools. If carefully targeted, additional funding has the potential to make a difference for students.

There is another path to enduring, cost-effective improvement in student achievement. It is an elusive and winding path through a maze of obstacles. It is a difficult path to follow and reaching its destination is more complicated than simply issuing a directive, passing a policy or enacting legislation.

Research tells us successful schools are those with effective leaders who build an environment which encourages a strong collaborative effort from teachers, parents, students and the board of education.

In other words, they adopt a bottom up, inclusive, grassroots approach.

It makes sense. We expect modern schools to prepare students for the realities of 21st Century life by emphasizing teamwork, collaboration and responsibility. Therefore we should structure our public education system in the same way.

Robert Fulghum, author of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, offers a compelling reason to build consensus and relationships among the adults in the education system, "Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you."

It is difficult to build the trust and relationships necessary for collaboration and teamwork among adults when our schools remain tightly controlled by top-down authority structures -- relics of the 20th Century industrial age.

While the value of grassroots empowerment is well-recognized, ironically it is the top-down approach to wielding power (even when it is a well-meaning effort to empower the grassroots) that often gets in the way.

For example, six years ago the provincial government attempted to legislate conditions for school level stakeholder collaboration when they created School Planning Councils.

School Planning Councils failed to bring about systemic change, but not because the concept of stakeholder involvement with school planning wasn't a good idea.

The failure occurred because the foundation was not properly prepared through consultation and consensus building with front-line stakeholder groups -- parents, teachers and support staff.

In the fall of 2006 teachers across B.C. withdrew from SPCs and they have not returned.

A Sept. 11, 2007 BCTF School Staff Alert outlines their concerns. "The guidelines, directions, and rules for the operation of SPCs mean that school goals are a foregone conclusion.There is not a genuine discussion of the needs of students or the resources necessary to meet their needs."

But they leave a door open with the statement, "Teachers are always willing to participate in educational change that will actually produce positive outcomes for students' learning."

Another barrier to trust relationships is an antiquated, adversarial collective-bargaining structure.

Don Wright reviewed teacher collective bargaining in British Columbia.

Within his December 2004 report (Voice, Accountability, and Dialogue: Recommendations for an Improved Collective Bargaining System for Teacher Contracts in British Columbia), Wright outlines three key principles necessary to create an environment conducive to healthier relationships. In addition to suggesting teachers must have a voice of influence, and that transparency is necessary to establish accountability, Wright urges the education system to, "...find the ability to engage in a true dialogue about how to make a good public school system even better."

Within a year of the Wright report, relations with teachers went from bad to worse and teachers staged a two-week walkout. Eventually, with the help of mediator Vince Ready, a five-year contract was negotiated.

It expires June 30, 2011.

This unprecedented long-term contract provides significant relief from the adversarial atmosphere that has traditionally surrounded contract negotiations. The gift of time is a unique opportunity for partner groups to build collaborative relationships with each other and boards of education.

Paula Schmidt is the District Parent Advisory Council Chair for the Kamloops-Thompson school district. She reflects on DPACs legislated advisory role, "Advising is always much more effective in the midst of respectful relationships. If we are looking for input from all partner groups then we have to create positive relationships between all partner groups." Schmidt spent two years working to rebuild relationships and looking for positives to build on.

She is pleased consultation with parents and other partners is now mostly "at the front end" but she also acknowledges there is still work to be done.

Collaborative systems are responsive systems.

When there is a trust relationship, issues observed at the front line are quickly and accurately relayed through the system to the governance and administration level and then solutions are found together.

Significant gains in student achievement are the prize if adults in the education system learn to get along and work together, while acknowledging and respecting differences of ideology and opinion.