(This article is from 2000. It's sad that not much has changed in 8 years.
Heather)
Reprinted with permission:

Sacred cows have no place in education

Andrew Nikiforuk

National Post

Nobody paid much attention last month when Ontario, the father of the
nation's most fractious school system, announced its latest achievement
results for reading, writing and math in Grades 3 and 6. And that's either a
sad comment on our cultural priorities or another cynical judgment on the
seemingly stagnant nature of student progress.

After a host of reforms, action plans and much public wailing, Ontario's
latest test results show the system hasn't gotten any smarter. When testing
first began in 1998, initial results showed about half of Ontario's Grade 3
students didn't have the reading skills to do well in Grade 4.

This year's results show only marginal change. Given this scandalous pace of
improvement another 10 years might pass before 80% of Ontario's Grade 3
students ever read well.

Ontario isn't alone in depriving children of intellectual capital. Almost
every province tests and then ignores the results. Alberta's exams, for
example, show, on average, that about one-fifth of its Grade 3 students
can't read. But by Grade 6, the failing numbers grow to one-fourth of the
student population. By Grade 9 more than one out of four students can't pass
the provincial reading test. And these children aren't being asked to read
Shakespeare.

The jarring picture of new tests, new curricula and unchanging educational
deficits should set the public's teeth on edge. Clearly something is not
working in the difficult world of school reform.

In fact, most testing won't make much difference until citizens tackle the
system's carefully guarded Brahma bulls of incompetence. Myrna McCulloch, a
feisty school critic in Oregon, calls these reform neutralizers "sacred
cows." They include teacher training, quality instruction, content and
school choice. The press rarely mention these cows and educational
bureaucracies and politicians refuse to touch them.

Take, for starters, the sacred cow of teaching training. It's a damnable
drama. Educrats and faculties decide what teachers will be taught but assume
no responsibility or accountability for the consequences. Local schools
can't question the qualifications of the trained and 19th-century union
rules often prevent administrators from picking the skilled teachers they
need. To make matters worse, the incompetent rarely get fired: They just go
on "the turkey trot," moving from school to school.

But the farce all begins in education faculties. As McCulloch notes "no one
thinks to tie some of the bad results coming from our schools to the way our
teachers are trained by professors who themselves have little or no inkling
of all the phonetic structures or spelling patterns of the English lexicon."

The solution is simple and simply ignored. Let teachers study what they love
to teach at university. Let's then train them in schools in two-year
apprenticeship programs where teachers only earn a certificate when they
prove their ability to get results in the classroom.

The next irritating ruminant is the thorny issue of quality control or
instructional design. Most textbooks or reading and math programs enter the
school system untested and with no valid research on their effectiveness.
And even the best teacher can't overcome the liabilities of badly designed
instructional materials.

Judging by Ontario's and Alberta's test results in reading, no one ever
thinks of changing the program. In fact, bad programs are being allowed to
generate bad results year after year. Only two reforms will put a stop this.
Administrators need to be held accountable for their program choices and
student results. Canada also needs a Centre for Evidence in Education where
teachers and parents, alike, can locate reliable science-based information
on what works in reading and math. All the testing in the world can't
overcome the bad work of bad tools when there are no incentives to change.

Next comes the sacred cow of school choice. Most Canadian educators believe
that school choice will destroy schooling if not the free world. The
research, however, doesn't support such idiocy. In fact schools of choice
tend to offer a number of valuable social characteristics: a high degree of
parental support, a strong sense of citizenship and rigorous academic
standards. Cities that let parents choose from competing public school
districts also tend to have smaller classes, higher academic scores and
lower school costs.

Edmonton's public school board now provides the widest range of choice of
any school district in North America and guess what? Its enrolment and
achievement scores are rising.

The next sacred cow is time. For most of this century, children spent their
time mastering the language arts (poetry included) and basic math in the
early grades. Ozone holes, computer games and gender quizzes weren't part of
the morning package. But if a school wants to get results it must devote
time to things that matter. Nothing improves student performance (and egos)
quite as much as an effective reading program combined with well-trained
teachers and more time on tasks.

Perhaps the largest and most offensive cow is content. Provincial
educational bureaucracies have done a fine job of systematically erasing
great narratives, histories and literature from schools. The emphasis is now
on learning how to learn (problem solving) as opposed to learning great
ideas that might actually help a person solve problems in the worst and best
of times.

The research on the value of content is overwhelming. A child's general
knowledge is more important for learning than parents, peers and
neighbourhood combined. Countries and school systems that offer their
children a richly organized diet of content actually narrow achievement gaps
between rich and poor while enriching all citizens with common intellectual
property. Nations that don't, such as Canada and the United States, create
growing inequalities and gaps.

This small herd of destructive ruminants (and there are a few more) beasts
can stifle reform and keep provincial test results a slow motion act. As
Ontario's schools illustrate, politicians can tinker here and there, but
until they address the system's sacred cows, too many schools will remain
barren pastures for children.
_________________________
SCIENTIA EST POTENTIA
Knowledge is power